The thing that Vileborn designer Claudio Pustorino admires the most about ‘90s video games is their limitations. Genre-defining 32-bit classics like Final Fantasy 7, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Metal Gear Solid made the most of the PlayStation’s capabilities by cramming as much content as they could into CD jewel cases. Pustorino wondered if he could channel the spirit of those games into a tabletop RPG by giving himself similar restrictions.
“They don’t have much power or memory, but they managed to create something meaningful, incredible, and memorable,” Pustorino told Polygon in a video interview. “It’s a lot easier to have 2,300 pages of books to expand your ideas as much as you want. A jewel case is quite an odd limit, but an interesting design challenge for me.”
Pustorino worked with Wilderfeast and The Queen’s Dilemma publisher Horrible Guild to develop MemoryCore, which heads to BackerKit on June 9. A box resembling a PlayStation is packed with a User Manual that provides the system’s core rules along with six tiny TTRPG modules, each based on a different ‘90s classic:
- Bloodsong: Hunters of the Night / Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- Solid State Machine / Metal Gear Solid
- Final Tournament / Tekken
- Corebound Chronicles / Final Fantasy 7
- Overdrive Crew / Need for Speed
- Extinction Protocol / Resident Evil
“The biggest challenge was deciding what belongs in the core system, because you don’t want the same experience from a survival or action stealth or fighting game,” Pustorino said. “But we are well aware that for some players, starting from zero every time and having to learn how a game works from scratch would be quite a heavy [lift]. Each game will feature specific mechanics to foster a specific kind of narrative.”
Pre-generated character sheets take the form of small cards showing a character’s backstory, goals, starting equipment, feats, and stats. Players roll different dice ranging from d4 to d12 based on their stats, and dry-erase markers are used to mark buffs and debuffs that can change the die type. The markers are also used to track health and expendable resources, which might be focus, stamina, or mana depending on the game you’re playing. Those resources can be used to activate abilities or reroll dice.
