Developing games is hard work when it's your full-time job - and it's harder still when you have to fit it into an already packed schedule of being a parent and holding down a full-time job doing something completely different. Kyle Berger has made it work, however - he's used his love for classic RPG games like Final Fantasy and Pokemon during weekend nights as his family slept to create Pixelot, a love letter to old school role-playing games.
Pixelot has just launched on Steam, and it's got all the best components of the classics: there are multiple character classes to pick from, a roster of recruitable NPCs, a leveling system that goes up to 60, 15 unique dungeons, and some 500 items to collect. As a newly awakened hero, you're called upon to help stop an evil prince from escaping a magical prison he's been banished to, and your adventure will take you across 250 different maps full of turn-based JRPG battles.
It's a decidedly low-fi affair, but it's got plenty of charm and is steeped in Berger's own sense of humour - plus lots of references to the Pokemon and Zelda series, among others, from which it unabashedly draws its inspiration.