‘Lawmage Academy’: The indie role-playing game made by a Filipino human rights lawyer

Over the last couple of decades, it’s become a common trend among games to incorporate “morality systems” where you as the player can decide whether you want your character to be “good” or “evil”. Your choices usually affect the gameplay, changing how the story plays out, what abilities you have access to, or how characters in the world might react to you. 

A lot of games, however, fail to take into consideration that morality is not exactly black or white, as many of us know from real life. It’s far too complex and nuanced to be narrowed down to two choices. 

This is something that indie game developer Gian Arabejo knows is true from his own experience as a human rights lawyer in the Philippines.

Instead of a “morality system” Arabejo, who goes by Verinius online, created a story that deals with the moral and ethical conundrum of what it means to be “good” in his role-playing game (RPG), Lawmage Academy. 

A demo for the game is out now on PC via Steam and itch.io with a full release targeted for 2022 to 2023. 

In it, you play as one of the privileged few to be invited to the titular Lawmage Academy, an institution built to produce Lawmages who protect the country of Magusgaia. Like any RPG worth its salt, you’ll learn spells, craft potions, meet new friends, and go on adventures as you discover the dark secrets that await you. 

Real-world perspective

Arabejo said that he had to do a lot of world-building to come up with a meaningful story. He conceptualized and laid out everything about Magusgaia from its history, its government, its laws, and its landscape in such a way that made sense for the overarching narrative. But the concept of the game itself, he said, actually comes from knowing the importance of the law. 

“When I was in law school, I learned how important it was for people to know the law. If you know the law, the systems, and your rights, you can make things happen. You can use the legal systems properly to your advantage and you can also protect yourself,” Arabejo told Rappler. 

“In a way, knowledge of the law is like knowing how to cast magic spells.”

Arabejo, who has been practicing law for close to three years now, used his experience providing legal support to victims of human rights violations in giving his story a real-world perspective. 

“I’ve played several RPGs and JRPGs, and based on my experience, the narrative is usually ‘save the world by killing the evil boss’. It seems as if the game is telling you that if you get rid of this singular evil entity or person, the world will instantly become a better place. But that’s not true,” he said. 

“As a human rights lawyer, I realized that killing people is not the best way to solve the ills of society. Let’s take the drug problem in the Philippines as an example. Our current laws are very punitive and the government policy seeks to arrest and even kill people who are using or selling illegal drugs.”

“A lot of the victims of the drug war in the Philippines come from low-income families. These people are driven by their circumstances to engage in the use or sale of illegal drugs,” he continued. 

“I think looking at complex problems from this perspective will change the way we think about people who are viewed by society as ‘bad’” 

“By killing people, not only are we depriving them of the chance to change, but we are also affecting their families and loved ones. They are victims too. How do they heal from that? How can they rebuild their lives?”

Hitting the books

Lawmage Academy features a day-and-night cycle for doing activities and a turn-based system for combat. 

You’ll be spending a total of 200 days in the Academy, and in those days, you’ll have to efficiently manage your time as you choose what activities to take part in. These include attending classes, reading books, doing missions, and spending time with your friends, among others. Doing activities helps your character grow stronger as you progress in the game. The catch is that not all activities are available throughout the entire day. 

For instance, you can only attend classes and go out of the Academy during the daytime. At night, you’re only limited to activities that are indoors like reading a spellbook. 

Your character can also get burnt out if you read too frequently at night and don’t rest. This could eventually lead to you getting sick, which drastically lowers your performance in combat. 

“I wanted to teach players the value of rest, so if you keep doing nightly activities you will eventually feel tired, then get sick if you push it further,” said Arabejo. “I hope that learning how to find this balance will encourage people to take care of themselves in real life too.”

Lawmage Academy

There are two types of skills in the game: Spells and Aura Skills. You learn spells by attending class and reading spellbooks. Aura Skills, on the other hand, are unique to each character. To learn these skills, you’ll have to build your relationships with your friends by helping them face their problems and confront their fears. 

There are also four houses in the game: Foxhelm, Soulstice, Vissage, and Drakewood. Depending on which one you’re sorted into, you’ll have different interactions with the characters in the game and have access to exclusive items and equipment. 

When you’re not learning spells or bonding with your friends, you’ll be doing missions and battling magical creatures outside of the Academy. All enemies have Aura Shields and weaknesses. Hitting a monster with its elemental weaknesses will deal bonus damage and reduce its Aura Shields. When the Shield counter reaches zero, they will be stunned and take additional damage. After two turns, they will regain their Aura Shields and the fight goes on.

Lawmage Academy

“Let’s say you’re facing a plant-type monster with three Shields, and that monster is weak to Fire. If you hit it three times with a Fire spell, then it will be stunned. If you hit it with a Fire spell while it is stunned, you will deal even more damage,” explained Arabejo. 

This Aura Shield system also applies to your characters. Your characters will also have weaknesses based on their personalities and equipment. 

What’s great about Lawmage Academy, Arabejo, is that it’s very accessible to just about every kind of player. It’s not a graphically demanding game, so you don’t need a powerful rig to run it. The controls are also relatively simple, with it mostly boiling down to the arrow keys and the “X” and “Z” buttons. 

Making the game

Arabejo said he managed to create a playable demo of Lawmage Academy in his spare time after a year of experimenting and playing around with RPG Maker MV, a series of programs that provide developers concrete assets and tools they can use to make their games. 

Lawmage Academy

“It’s challenging but fun,” said Arabejo about the experience of being a solo indie developer. “At first, I had to learn everything from scratch, since I had no background in programming, art, music, and game design.” 

“I wanted to prove to myself and other people that even if you’re not naturally talented or it’s not your course in college, you can still learn new skills and eventually be good at it.”

Arabejo said that he watched YouTube tutorials to learn how to use RPG Maker MV. He also learned how to do pixel art to create the look of the characters in the game. When the demo was almost complete, he then commissioned artists to work on the other important assets of the game, including the music and the box art. 

“I’ve always dreamed of playing a magic school game with some open-world elements and turn-based RPG mechanics. Instead of waiting for someone to make my dream game, I figured I’d just make it myself,” he said. – Rappler.com