Richard Murtland is a solo indie developer and content creator who names Dragon Warrior as one of his favorite childhood games. You can follow Richard’s work via YouTube or X.
Part Love Letter, Part Randomizer
Hot on the heels of Splintered‘s Early Access release, Richard sits down with clymax of FFV Central to give our readers an inside look at the development journey.
Q1: Looking over dotMake Studios’ developer page on Steam, Splintered appears to be your foray into indie development. Is this the game you’ve always wanted to make? Indie devs tend to have dev experience in some industry, so we’d like to ask: what’s your concurrent (or if none, former) line of work (before taking the plunge)?
A1: In a lot of ways, yes! I wanted to make a game that pushed the envelope on something, and in this case that something is: a game that’s built from the ground up to support (and be supported by) a randomizer, making it a core part of the game loop. It’s been an exciting journey with a lot of interesting problems to solve.
I was previously a software engineer.
Q2: This should be an easy one: give us your elevator pitch on why solo-character RPGs are better than party-based RPGs.
A2: I’m not sure if they are! But I’m also not sure if solo-character RPGs have been given their fair shake. In my mind, the 1v1 style combat of Dragon Quest 1 got left behind pretty quick. Sure, it’s appeared in some other games and other forms (monster battlers, Undertale, FFXVI -kidding-), but I always felt there was more to explore in the realm of a traditional 1v1 RPG. At the end of the day, I think it’d be great if someone played Splintered and went from “There’s not much you can do with just one character.” to “Oh, that was a lot of fun!”.
Q3: We at FFV Central are no stranger to rando mods for classic JRPGs. (Our flagship release is a self-randomizer capable of dynamically toggling randomization of five different aspects of the game during a run.) What aspect of Splintered barely did not make the cut for randomization at least for the foreseeable future, and why?
A3: So on one hand: I can’t think of an idea that I’ve been forced to leave behind, which was part of my goal with Splintered. Sure, some features are more difficult than others, but having complete control over the base game gives me a wide variety of possibilities at my finger tips. If there’s something I want to do, I just need to build/rebuild the features to support it.
On the other hand: This freedom also comes with a cost. The game needs to be good start to finish. From the base game with Chapter 1, to the first randomized run with Chapter 2, and everything in between as players work their way towards the eventual Chapter 5.
As I’m typing this, it’s four days after the Early Access Release and I’ve released 3 small patches. Fixing two edge case softlocks, putting my randomizer versioning to test (so that the majority of players that didn’t experience any issues can seamlessly continue their run as if nothing happened), and making improvements to the base game and accessibility based on feedback (which is actually one of the parts of development that I quite enjoy!). I’m excited to deliver the next content patch, which adds the in-game customizer that’s needed to really bring the randomizer to life, but I’ll be spending today working on a much needed Rebindable Keys feature and some related controller support. (Don’t worry though, the content patch will be out soon!)
Q4: Without spoiling anything meant to be kept as a surprise, what major feature are you looking to add to Splintered either before it makes it out of early access or, if none, during its lifecycle? Any plans for a GOG release?
A4: So a lot of the work for the “Clairvoyant Challenge Mode” is already done. It should arrive shortly after the customizer. I won’t spoil the features, but if you think “what would happen if your character was clairvoyant”, you can probably guess a few.
No current plans for a GOG release, but I’ve heard some recent interest so I’ll be considering it around release time. I’m open to the idea, there’s just a lot of other things I’m focused on atm w/ the EA release.
Q5: Even in the world of modding, it’s not easy for a solo modder as myself to go up against group mods or compilation mods, let alone in the gamedev sphere. Which parts of Splintered were done by you versus outsourced or acquired?
A5: It’s just me (with the help of Unity, Famitracker, and Aseprite). I’ll be to hiring a professional translation service to localize the game to Japanese soon. Also, within this last year, Splintered‘s had a community begin to form around the game and they’re the best! They’ve been immensely helpful with their early feedback and participation in the recent Beta Tests.
Q6: Tell us a bit about the tech behind Splintered: what’s the game engine, and how’s your experience with the engine thus far?
A6: Splintered is made with Unity. It’s alright. It does everything I need it to do and I’m hoping I’ll need to make use of the porting features some day soon!
Q7: Closing remarks: we recently conducted a player vote for a next franchise to rando-mod next. Dragon Warrior narrowly beat out Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Romancing Saga, and we’ve already begun looking at it. (Dragon Warrior was actually my first RPG, and its giveaway promo was what helped me convince my parents to get me a one-year subscription to Nintendo Power magazine.) Needless to say, 2025 is a great time to be a Dragon Warrior fan! Thank you for your love-letter randomizer and for your time for this interview.
A7: Woohoo! Sounds like a wonderful choice and best of luck with the randomizer! Thanks for having me and for the interest in Splintered!
If anyone wants to check out the game, you can find Splintered on Steam [link]. There’s currently a 10% release week sale that lasts until Friday morning (3/28 10am PST). There’s also a demo available.
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