Kiro’o Games released a making of video for the action-RPG, Aurion: Legend of the Kori-Odan, showcasing how the game was evolved from its development in 2003 all the way up to its release in 2016.

The game started when the creative leads were still in high school back in 2003. They began designing the game as a basic turn-based RPG with crude art and designs cooked up in RPG Maker.

The creative leads, located in Cameroon, Africa, eventually began to recruit more developers during their time in college. They used a lot of stock assets and kept working with RPG Maker throughout the years to flesh out the story and characters, which is outlined in the 48-minute developer documentary you can watch below.

As pointed out in the video, the original creative leads had to draw all the sprites out using MS Paint since they didn’t have tablets to draw everything out.

After receiving some support in the RPG fan communities, they decided to start putting together an actual team and start planning how to bring the game to life in a more legitimate way by the late aughts, which included seeking out investors in 2012.

They put together various conferences and attempted to establish some measure of credibility to earn an opportunity to have Aurion funded by investors, but the banks didn’t immediately approve them for a loan since no one thought video game development in Cameroon would provide a return on investment. However, they did manage to gain enough financing to eventually invest in computer equipment, graphics cards, drawing tablets, and design software.

After some hiccups and losing their original team, they began working on prototypes and white box testing the core concepts they were planning on using for the full game. After finishing the prototypes, gaining the equipment, and rebuilding the team, that’s when development fully started getting underway.

They still needed funding to bring the game to life in full, however, which is why it eventually made its way to Kickstarter in 2015, where Aurion: Legend of the Kori-Odan was funded to the tune of €49,774.

After going into full production, Aurion was released on the Steam store in the spring of 2016.