Japanese developer Gotcha Gotcha Games has recently unveiled RPG Maker U2U, their new Unity-based game making tool. Designed as the next generation entry in the RPG Maker series, the program supports HD-2D-style graphics, popularized by works like DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake and Octopath Traveler. It also features a built-in map editor, allowing developers to craft their environments through an intuitive drag-and drop process.
During this year’s BitSummit, AUTOMATON met up with Hiroyuki Ichinose, the producer of RPG Maker U2U, to find out more about the new tool. Given that RPG Maker Unite, the studio’s previous project, was released specifically as an asset for Unity, and faced not-so favorable reviews due to various performance and optimization issues upon launch, it is understandable that some users may feel wary about U2U being based in Unity.
We asked Ichinose how the development team has been addressing these issues when building U2U, and what the reason behind choosing Unity as the base engine was.
“RPG Maker Unite certainly had some performance-heavy aspects to it. This time, we’ve naturally taken those problems into consideration during development. When it comes to issues like asset handling and the project becoming too big to perform smoothly, we’re working towards reducing that load,” Ichinose said.
As he explained, Unity is an inherently heavy engine, and comes with some unavoidable limitations. But on the other hand, it offers a variety of unique benefits, which is what ultimately outweighed the setbacks. “It gives us the advantage of being able to export files for Nintendo Switch 2 and PS5. Even when it comes to 3D effects, Unity is essential for achieving them, so after taking into consideration all these benefits, we decided to adopt it.”
“Of course, performance and responsiveness, which are the aspects most important to our users, will continue being a huge challenge throughout development, and we will be trying our best to reduce the load to a level everyone can be satisfied with,” Ichinose added.
RPG Maker U2U is currently in development. You can find more info about the new engine via its official webpage.
