Earlier this year, we reported on One Step From Eden – an ambitious indie project aiming to revive the grid-based combat system of the Mega Man Battle Network series. With the game now funded and heading to Switch, the game’s developer Thomas Moon Kang has stepped up to talk about what his game will do differently.

During a recent interview with NintendoEnthusiast, Thomas explained that he wanted his game to be faster-pace than its source of inspiration. As such, fundamental aspects like the players’ movement area were tweaked.

“The first thing I did was streamline the whole combat system…making movement and combat much more fluid compared to MMBN’s clunkier (but more strategic) movement. This faster pace allowed for the field size to be expanded from 3×6 to 4×8, which in turn allowed for all sorts of new enemies and attacks patterns.”

Thomas also differentiated his game by making the action non-stop. Instead of being pausing to select weapon load-outs like in Mega Man Battle Network, players will have to select spells while enemies are still attacking in One Step From Eden.

“The synergies between cards in OSFE are on another level…using status effects, mechanics like catching, and even generating new spells during the battle! OSFE takes another big step away from traditional card games.”

Finally, Thomas also commented on the game’s higher skill curve. Namely, he felt that did not have to be as concerned with the game’s balancing – since players could also become just as overpowered as enemies.

“One of the nice things about roguelikes is that they don’t have to be completely ‘fair’…You have some leeway since the player can sometimes also become unfairly overpowered!”

To date, Thomas has revealed that One Step From Eden will feature 9 playable characters – with a tentative release window of January 2020 for Nintendo Switch and Steam. In case you missed out on it, here’s a quick preview of the game below:

We’ll report back on One Step From Eden as we hear more. Stay tuned.