Working Designs Gets Alundra

When Working Designs first announced that it was doing titles for Sony's PlayStation, there was no doubt that role-playing games would follow. The company has been doing translations of Japanese titles for years, the majority of them being RPGs. After Raystorm, its first PlayStation title, speculation began to grow on usenet newsgroups about exactly which RPG the company would translate first.

Put aside the speculation, because today Working Designs announced it secured the rights to Alundra, developed by Climax and released in Japan by Sony Computer Entertainment.

Alundra is an action RPG in the same sort of vein as the first few Zelda games. Instead of relying on 3-D polygons and over-the-top cinemas and graphics, Alundra is a 2-D game that focuses more on gameplay than flash. The game's battle system occurs just like Zelda, in real time, so you fight enemies onscreen without going to a special battle mode.

As many gamers may know, Climax is the team behind the Genesis title Landstalker, and Alundra was developed by the same portion of the development team that worked on that game. Working Designs will release the game this December. (GameSpot News has learned that the company has been working on it since June.)

Since Alundra is a Sony first-party title in Japan, this announcement should come as a surprise to most. In the past, Sony would not let third-party developers pick up first-party games that Sony had passed on for an American release. This has all changed, and Working Designs securing Alundra is evidence of that.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the game, check out Sony Computer Entertainment's page on the game. The page is written in Japanese, but there are pictures and movies to download to get a glimpse of the game's look.

For a look at several screenshots of the game, check out Alundra: the Zelda-killer?, an earlier GS News story.