When it was revealed that Square Enix were working on a brand-new role-playing game, exclusive for the Nintendo Switch, a lot of people were excited; especially since one of the game's selling points was its beautiful-looking retro art style.
The game in question was
Octopath Traveler, which became a hit overnight once it was released in July of last year;
managing to sell over 1 million copies in less than a month, making it one of the fastest-selling role-playing games in recent times.
Octopath Traveler has an interesting art style, which uses sprites for its character models and backgrounds but also makes use of Unreal Engine 4 to give the game a very unique visual style — which Square Enix coined as "HD2D".
Recently, Square Enix has trademarked the terms "HD2D" and "HD-2D" in Europe. What's interesting is that Square Enix had already mentioned that
we should expect more titles in the same style of Octopath Traveler, and them trademarking these terms means that we could be getting them sooner than we expected.
This new HD2D art style that Square Enix has created is perfect for players who still have a soft spot for those lovely 16-Bit role-playing games they used to play on their Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and the success of
Octopath Traveler showed that there's a demographic that are still willing to play games in the aforementioned art style.
Eight travelers. Eight adventures. Eight roles to play in a new world brought to life by Square Enix. Explore each traveler’s story and use their abilities in and out of battle. Will you expand your horizons as the Merchant or track down a traitor as the Warrior? Where will you go? Who will join you? You alone can choose your path.
Octopath Traveler is currently available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.