INTERVIEW: Inside the weird, wild world of Keylocker

It can be hard for any game nowadays to catch your attention. There’s so much out there to choose from, and any given day we’re seeing the release of new titles and the reveal of more games on the horizon. In order to get some attention, you really have to stand out from the crowd. That’s where something like Keylocker shines.

Right off the bat, Keylocker is bound to get your focus. The game employs a look that’s both strikingly unique while being evocative of both more recent hits and old-school favorites. Turns out looks are way more than skin deep though, as Keylocker is also hiding a ton of mechanics, tributes and homages to some of your favorites.

Described as a “cyberpunk turn based rhythm JRPG inspired by the Mario & Luigi RPG series and Chrono Trigger,” Keylocker is colorful, brash, loud, and absolutely frenetic. To find out more about this game and its alluring world, we talked to developers Nana Moon and Anglerman for the details.

GoNintendo: When did the idea for Keylocker first come about?

Nana Moon: Keylocker’s original concept was of a visual novel set in this cyberpunk Tube world, where the world mechanics and setting was mostly similar to what we ended up getting into the final game, but featuring the now bandmate and romanceable character Simon as the protagonist. At the time, a visual novel felt like the most achievable way to tell the story of this world, however it was never the real vision, and also because I was never able to write for visual novels, as opposed to writing for RPGs, which fell easily within my skill set. As development went on, there was a realization that doing RPGs was the focus for Moonana and thus we switched projects to work on Virgo vs the Zodiac after a nice RPG maker build was made. As soon as Virgo Versus The Zodiac was nearing completion, Keylocker concepts started to reappear, as a turn-based RPG with timed hits like our previous game Virgo but with the musical component being much more integrated into the game.

GoNintendo: Keylocker is clearly inspired by games like the Mario & Luigi series, but there’s no doubt other game inspirations as well. What other titles might people be surprised to learn had an influence on Keylocker?

Anglerman: It is hard to pinpoint exactly what is and isn’t an influence but certain aspects of Shin Megami Tensei games in the difficulty and balance as well as Dark Souls in the deliberate and slower-paced rhythmic blocking and striking precisely coupled with Mother series’ urban fantasy otherworldliness, Grim Dawn’s skill and class progression, Guitar Hero’s music shows and even some Nier Automata sprinkled around with the hacking minigame being inspired by that game. All while keeping the original idea of choice and consequence and the addition of romanceable characters with a system similar to Stardew Valley adding to the upward progression of the world itself.

GoNintendo: Outside of games, what other content (movies, TV, anime, ect.) influenced Keylocker?

Nana Moon: The main plot point of Keylocker of a world without music is inspired by a novel about a world without vision called Blindness by José Saramago. I enjoy his works as he’s always trying to bring light to a world that misses something vital for the functioning of society. I wanted to explore this with something artistic like music, that could be considered a useless function of society, but that is vital for the enjoyment and experience of living. Other than that, my inspirations lie mostly with books, like cyberpunk classics such as Neuromancer (human-network connection), as well as sci-fi stories such as Wandering Earth (alternate human environments). Altered Carbon (season 1 exclusively) was a nice inspiration as well for the setting, it’s actually a bit of a funny story, I had a VERY similar idea to Altered Carbon main revelation point of the first season, but after watching it, I was so shocked by the fact me and Altered Carbon writers had such similar ideas that I decided to change the plot so it wasn’t as similar. The story ended up being heavily inspired by some of the individual tales of Wandering Earth a lot, as Cixin Liu is my favorite sci-fi author. I am also always inspired by anime like Sailor Moon regarding characterization and humor.

GoNintendo: There is A LOT going on in Keylocker, and we mean that in a good way! How daunting was it to tackle a game that merges so many genres?

Anglerman: Keeping it too closely tied to a single genre would be far too limiting. We’re lucky to have such skilled devs that could keep a track of so many elements, events, choices and characters - and a lot of back and forth with documents and discussions led us to put elements from all things we enjoyed in the game somehow. The closer to only one source you keep your work, the less amount of individuality your work will have. Being open about influences while still having a clear vision of the world and characters lets the game make itself. Nana’s direction was essential to keep everything tied together but a lot of revisions were needed along the way to tie loose ends.

GoNintendo: How would you describe the general gameplay flow/cadence of Keylocker?

Nana Moon and Anglerman: Combat-wise, our idea was to mechanize common JRPG elements that we thought didn’t get enough development over the years, such as turning both MP, general shield, magical resistance and physical damage buffs into a single bar.

By controlling the amount of EP you charge into your attacks and defenses you get a dynamic buff system instead of a static, more repetitive skill rotation. Letting players equip whatever special effect acquired from their class’ skill tree also opens up many possibilities without necessarily giving them any redundant abilities.

The intended flow is to build up EP with electrical moves and then either keep it (to mitigate electric damage) or spend it charging Life moves to improve their effectiveness as needed, all while protecting yourself from enemy attacks with timed hits and hitting your own rhythm abilities to keep up in damage.

Characters can be built in many different ways with the skill tree freedom and due to the story, your party is rarely the same for too long, so improvising is half the game.

We believe giving players more freedom can be both too intimidating at first but also extremely engaging later on once they figure out the systems. We at Moonana put a lot of value in the learning process and we don’t want to spoil all the fun of figuring out things on your own with any sort of handholding - and to reach our desired vision, the game must be hard, but forgiving - so no lost progress but also no backing off from challenges. Fights can be easily retried or restarted but cannot be escaped from. In this world, they wouldn’t let you go unless you silence your opposition like the ones in power did with the music.

GoNintendo: With all that Keylocker is, how on earth did you manage to stay on top of everything during development?

Nana Moon: That’s mainly my job as the Director. To keep everyone on their posts working cohesively, there’s a lot of general direction going on and a clear vision that everyone has to follow. That vision, when expressed clearly, creates a very resonant symphony, if I may say so myself, that really sounds like perfect music to my ears. One of our big trade secrets that always works is trying to complete small goals at a time, and keep deadlines for those goals. An example being, this week, we must complete this amount of levels with this amount of interactable NPCs and a questline. Then everyone can work towards that goal. Working remotely, of course, makes that a bit complicated sometimes when parts of the whole don’t do what is necessary for the engine to keep on running, but all in all, we managed to get to the end with everything almost intact!

The truth is that I try to make everything cohesive within the story. The story for me is everything and should bleed throughout everything, gameplay, music, etc. Of course, with things like programming, there’s just a lot of logical thinking and no thoughts about story whatsoever, just how to make things work, and that’s the part of development that may go astray, no matter how much effort is put into it, because programming can be so very chaotic when you’re working under deadlines and general pressure of game development. Bugs just randomly pop up on things that were previously working just fine, and it’s a mess. In that sense, it felt like the story is finally connected to programming, since our protagonist, B0B0, is indeed a bug in the Saturnian society!

GoNintendo: Keylocker is stuffed to the gills with ideas and content, but are there any mechanics or story beats that got left on the cutting room floor?

Anglerman: There are always more plans than time left to do them, which is why we already have some post-launch content updates initiated. A few sections had to be reduced and with them, some minigames and gimmicky sections were lost.

In a perfect world, every character would have their own quests and more sections would feature choices, but we’re proud of what we achieved by release and, in comparison to our previous game, we got a lot more into the 1.0 version than we had before.

GoNintendo: Are there any plans for DLC for Keylocker?

Anglerman: No paid DLCs or free DLCs planned at the moment, but we’ll be having content updates including at least 4 more dateable characters, expanded quest storylines as well as some alternative gameplay modes such as a semi-randomized purely combat-focused ‘black hole,’ arcade modes for minigames such as rhythm and root access as well as expanded NG+ elements (with some NG+ changes already made into the release version).

GoNintendo: Why did you feel it was important to bring Keylocker to Switch?

Nana Moon: As a lover of JRPGs, there’s definitely no other platform that fits best, you can just chill and relax with your switch and embark on a long story-heavy adventure. Many of our most beloved games were played on handheld devices, which is one of the reasons Keylocker has a pretty lax ‘save anywhere’ philosophy.

The game was made with controllers in mind from the ground up as well as making custom fonts to avoid any texts that are too small for our desired resolution. Moonana had the privilege of working with a great porting team to ensure performance would remain stable in the Switch and they managed to get the game running more smoothly than the team ever thought was possible! There’s still room for improvement but the team hopes to get better with player feedback!

GoNintendo: Without spoilers, what are you hoping players of Keylocker take from the experience?

Nana Moon and Anglerman: That they shouldn’t be too tied to the past dogmas set by other games in the genre, and the importance of sticking together against tyranny. Moonana wants people not to take music (or any art, really) for granted as well as having everyone realize the importance of social mobility due to merit rather than nepotism; how power corrupts and how corruption may eradicate what was once beautiful; how all of us have enormous flaws as well as the gigantic potential to do good. Good intentions are not enough and action must be taken, as well as how too much action might also lead into despair and increased recklessness - the focus must be in moderation and attention, deliberateness and analytical thinking. We respect our players’ intelligence and ability to learn.

In the end, it should be all about the origins of cyberpunk, to use technology to fight hierarchy, to search for individual freedom while keeping your community close by and to not bow down your heads to anyone with power, if their words are not coherent.

Keylocker is available now on the Switch eShop, and you can pick it up for $18 until October 9th, 2024 thanks to a 10% discount. The title will return to its regular $20 price after that date. The game takes up 1.1 GB of space and includes both English and Japanese language options.

A huge thanks to both Nana Moon and Anglerman for taking the time to answer our questions!