RPG ‘Starbites’ Director Says The Turn-Based Genre Is Now In A Renaissance

Going into 2025, I never expected one of the big discussions around video games would be the revival of turn-based RPGs and how the genre fits in the landscape of the industry. But it’s not a coincidence that, right now, so many developers are looking to the heyday of turn-based games for inspiration, and trying to update those beloved classics with a modern twist. And the success of games like Metaphor: ReFanzatio and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the perfect fuel for more developers trying to bring something unique to the genre. And that’s especially true for Starbites, a new sci-fi role-playing game published by NIS America, heavily inspired by “JRPG classics.”

“When making Starbites, we were told ‘Who would play turn-based over action?,’” game director Junho Bae tells Inverse, “So we had to talk about how turn-based games have their own feature that action games don’t, and there are reasons why players like them. Due to Expedition 33 and Metaphor’s success, it makes us very happy that there is more demand for games that aren’t just action. It created more opportunities.”

Starbites is developed by Korean studio Ikina Games, a developer that, up until now, has largely worked on mobile titles, adapting some major Japanese franchises like Fairy Tail and Saint Seiya. According to Bae, working on mobile games across the last decade has helped the team hone their expertise, sequentially preparing them to make the jump to a massive RPG. This is, by far, the most ambitious game the studio has made yet, partnering with NIS America in the process.

Taking place on a futuristic planet called Bitter, Starbites tells the story of Lukida, a young woman determined to break free from the confines of the backwater planet. Bitter has essentially become a junkyard for the refuse from interstellar warfare, with its residents digging through scraps to eke out a living.

While elements of series like Dragon Ball and Alita Battle Angel inspired Starbite’s world, ironically, the inspiration for Starbite’s setting came from a hugely unexpected place — a rhythm game featuring the world’s favorite virtual diva.

“I’ve loved JRPGs since I was a kid, and in the genre, there’s a lot of fantasy and drama. So we wanted to find something unique, that would make Starbites stand out,” Bae says, “And that’s when we came across Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone. In one of the music videos, the setting is a deserted desert, and that’s where the idea came from.”

What’s most interesting about Starbites is how methodical its creation has been, and how shockingly open Bae is about the studio’s inspirations.

“Starbites is a JRPG made by JRPG lovers. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest highly innovated the genre itself, so we looked at the history of how the genre and its mechanics have changed over time,” Bae says, “We looked into what makes a JRPG fun, and that’s when we looked into Persona and Metaphor. What we notice is that turn-based is no longer about the enemy’s turn and then the player’s turn, but it’s more about what can I get to do to get more turns than the enemy?”

That’s an idea that Starbites fully embraces, building its combat around the theme of gaining more turns. On its face, battles are your standard turn-based affairs, but there’s a big emphasis on exploiting enemy weaknesses. As you do this, you’ll reduce the enemy’s Fracture count, and once that count reaches zero, they’ll be stunned for multiple turns. Simultaneously, you’re building a “Driver’s High” gauge as you attack, and when full, you can use it to immediately take an extra turn. So battles, largely, become a kind of push and pull experience where you’re trying to maximize your turns and reduce the number the enemy gets.

It’s an intuitive system that encourages careful planning, and Bae notes the team really wanted to emphasize strategy and thinking ahead, versus precise inputs in the moment. Still, even though I only played roughly 30 minutes of the game, I’m hopeful there’s some real depth there.

That’s especially true considering the game’s multifaceted way of building characters. On top of leveling up and gaining skill points to spend in a tree, each character has a “Motorbot” mech that they ride, and you can swap out the mech’s parts for various effects. It’s a lot like the Xenoblade games, and Bae says you can think of it as a kind of Iron Man situation, with the character and the suit or “mech” being separate pieces, but integrally linked. That mech system is one of the huge appeals of Starbites, factoring into nearly every facet of the game.

“The origin [of Motorbots] is the opening of Final Fantasy 6, in particular. In the prologue scene, you see how people are riding on a mechanical mount,” Bae says, “It’s shot from the back, and because of that, it gives you this feeling of anticipation and nervousness. That’s the type of feeling we wanted.”

Outside of combat, though, Motorbots allow you to fly across the wastes of Bitter, and in some way, seemingly represent the freedom that the main characters yearn for. The sense I got from the opening is that this is going to be a bit of a slow-burning story, but one of the essential ingredients of any RPG is party members. Even in just the first half hour, there’s some interesting character work happening, with a genuine sense of camaraderie.

Bae says the game’s storytelling came together in pieces, first focusing on the world setting and the type of story the studio wanted to tell. Then, after all that was locked down, the studio started creating the characters, with each character wanting to “make sure that their personalities and energies matched and complemented each other.” To that end, Bae describes the protagonist Lukida as a more happy-go-lucky hero, who’s grounded by the more stoic and serious engineer Badger. From there, the main trio is built out with the bubbly Gwendoll, who adds an element of silliness and unpredictability.

“We wanted to make sure that no one outshines the other, but complements each other. Then, as you meet more characters, and the group grows from a trio, you can see the different shift in dynamics, but the synergy remains,” Bae says.

Starbites is a game clearly built by a team that has a legitimate passion for the history of RPGs and wants to put their own stamp on the genre. The game’s sci-fi world has a certain kind of Saturday morning cartoon charm to its aesthetic, and the turn-based combat holds a lot of promise. It’s a good time to be releasing a turn-based RPG, and I’m hopeful Starbites might turn into something unique. Especially because what interests me the most about Starbites is the clear passion Bae and his team are putting into the game, and how its themes represent the studio’s own journey.

“Starbites’ main message is hope, and on the other side of hope, there are challenges. Before hope people make mistakes, and if they don’t give up, that creates hope,” Bae says, “The Starbites team has been at Ikina Games for years, and that allowed us to grow together as a team and a company. We’re using our own struggles to build that idea.”

Starbites releases in Early 2026 on PS5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.