Starbites found its desert sci-fi setting through a 2017 music video by Kenshi Yonezu and Hatsune Miku
I’m always on the hunt for mecha games of all shapes and sizes. When Starbites was first revealed in November 2022, I’ve always kept an eye on it. Developer Ikinagames recently announced that they’ve partnered with NIS America for its western release in 2026; the game will be coming to Japan this year on October 16 with Happinet as its publisher. I played a demo build of Starbites at PAX West 2025 and got to interview Ikinagames founder Junho Bae about it.
Starbites revolves around the planet of Bitter, a once-bustling destination for adventurous wanderers and pioneers. Interstellar warfare gradually deteriorated Bitter and now, it only has one city left - Delight; many of its remaining residents are composed of troublemakers and fugitives. Lukida, the protagonist of Starbites, wishes to break free from her current life in Delight.
Each playable character in Starbites has their own personal Motorbot mech that they utilize in battle. The PAX West demo had me explore a few small linear zones with the occasional branching path for a treasure chest; it had an overhead camera perspective and map that provided a good sense of where to go to proceed forward, and which routes led to optional loot. There were station checkpoints that replenished my HP and SP.
Battles in Starbites resemble Octopath Traveler’s ebb and flow, mixed with a little bit of Nihon Falcom’s Trails series. Up to three characters in battle face off against foes, and there’s a numerical shield value number to the left of an enemy’s health gauge; there are empty slots underneath a foe’s HP, as well. Each character is associated with a different damage type, such as Badger’s hammer doing blunt damage and Gwendoll’s sniper rifle inflicting pierce damage.
Through trial and error, the empty slots underneath an enemy’s HP bar will fill in to indicate that damage type is one of their weaknesses and it will decrease their shield value. Entirely depleting their shields will immobilize them for a few turns.
Characters will gradually increase their Driver’s High gauge as they inflict and receive damage. Filling it up and using it will allow that character to act again immediately, regardless of where they are on the action order timeline. While other RPGs have a similar mechanic, the one that immediately came to mind was the Trails’ series S-Crafts system.
There was only a small sample of Starbites on the show floor, but it got me intrigued to check out the full release whenever it comes out in the west. I still have to warm up to the disparity between the concept art of characters and how their in-game 3D models look; the latter exhibits a more Saturday morning-esque cartoon look, while the former has a different slick vibe to it altogether.
As I mentioned earlier, I also spoke to Ikinagames founder Junho Bae regarding Starbites.
Junho Bae, the founder of Ikinagames: At first, Ikinagames chose to announce Starbites as an indie game and since that time, we haven’t changed publishers. We were still debating on either publishing it ourselves or partnering with a different company to publish Starbites. NISA was the publisher we decided on and we were introduced to NISA due to underlying circumstances. I felt that Ikinagames and NISA would be a great fit together to release Starbites.
Bae: For over ten years, there’s a company we’ve worked with to create music tracks for our games; they’re called Producer dk. They create not only game music, but also pop music so they’re very experienced in composing things that are catchy. Currently, they’re working on the BGM of Starbites with a Japanese composer.
Bae: Ikinagames as a company has been active since 1995, and I wanted to create a company where game lovers can create games. With our previous titles, our approach is to put creators that are especially strong in certain genres; for example with All of Us Are Dead..., we’ve put the staff that are strong in writing scenarios as the core of that project.
I love JRPGs along with the rest of the team. Therefore, we’ve worked on improving our development knowledge and ability and that allowed us to take a step into a different genre.
Bae: Within Ikinagames, Starbites has been the largest project we’ve worked on. The hardest lesson we’ve had to go through in creating Starbites is that everyone has different thoughts and ways of interpreting information. When building its battle mechanics, everyone’s definitions were different on what was trying to be conveyed so it was a process of getting everyone on the same page to communicate what we were envisioning, thinking, and desiring. Still, the staff and I were able to meet eye-to-eye after many discussions and visually verifying that what we were seeing lived up to what we were expressing to one another.
Bae: The first component is a story that makes you feel a certain way; the second is fun, challenging battles; and the third is developing your characters in a way that makes them feel like they’re your own.
Bae: Building the turn-based battle system was something that we thought wasn’t going to be hard because we had previous experience building those types of games on mobile, but it turns out mobile games and not-mobile games are very different. They each have numerous factors that make them distinct from one another when you’re building the combat system for each. So even though I had prior experience creating battles on mobile games, that experience wasn’t something that could be easily be transferred over in creating Starbites.
Something I thought that was hard at first, but turned out wasn’t actually hard was map design. As we were creating new maps and layouts, I was worried that it was going to be difficult to change them as we continued to refine them; it turns out that it wasn’t so bad.
Bae: Creating the world setting came first, and I knew I didn’t want it to be a fantasy setting because there’s so much of that already. I felt that Starbites’ sci-fi world would be a key component in driving it.
Bae: There were a lot of things that inspired Starbites but a specific one I’d like to mention is that the team and I watched a specific Hatsune Miku music video that took place in a desert environment. That desert setting sparked our imagination, especially when we blended it into the sci-fi setting that we established.
(Editor’s note: This is referring to Kenshi Yonezu’s 2017 song Dune performed by Hatsune Miku)
Bae: This is the first time we are challenging ourselves in building a JRPG. Something we would like is for our players to become friends with the characters we’ve made. Our team and I have a strong connection with the characters we designed and we hope to share that sentiment to all Starbites players.