An epic RPG of miniature proportions!
Small Saga is a turn-based RPG created by Darya Noghani, released on November 16, 2023. The game was primarily funded through a Kickstarter campaign, which can be viewed here
. A demo is available on itch and Steam. The game's official website can be accessed here. A tie-in webcomic, Needle Knight, can be read here.Beneath the streets of modern London lies the medieval land of Rodentia, the home of many sentient rats, squirrels, shrews, and other rodents. Their land is a mostly peaceful one, as there are laws in place to avoid conflict with the Gods and Titans (humans and housecats). However, this peace is not enough for Verm, a vagabond who once lost his tail to the Yellow God of Death, and now wields the Titan Reaper (a human's pocketknife) as he embarks on a quest for vengeance.
The game includes examples of the following tropes:
- Ambiguous Time Period: Though the game takes place over a year, from Spring to Winter, no specific dates are ever given. The human world is rather generically contemporary, putting the year at "Sometime in the 21st century." With Aquila saying the first book they ever read was "The Anthropocene," a book released in 2021, and that they are elderly for a rat, this firmly places the game around 2022-2023.
- And the Adventure Continues:
- The game ends with Verm choosing to leave the kingdom in order to go adventuring and find new purpose now that he's no longer driven by vengeance, with his friends willingly accompanying him.
- Depending on the outcome of a late-game duel, it can be reported that Sir Leo and his daughter, who few others knew existed, were able to flee the revolution and have journeyed south to Aremorio to find a new home.
- Animal Jingoism: A number of the bosses faced are natural predators of rodents, such as a cat, a stoat, four young owls, and a cobra.
- Armored But Frail: The Pre-Final Boss Apocalypse Engine (a fumigation machine) has a very measly 20 HP... but has such high defense that most attacks deal 1-2 damage to it after its defense is lowered. To make matters worse, its Noxious Gas makes your team tipsy, greatly lowering their accuracy.
- BFS: The Titan Cleaver is nothing more than a pocket-knife, but when wielded by a little mouse such as Verm, it becomes a god-weapon so massive it's wondered aloud by others how he can even swing it at all. It's slightly more proportionate in the hands of the rather large rat bandit leader that originally wielded it before dying to Verm and Lance.
- Book Ends: The first encounter with the Yellow God takes place in an area introduced with the text "Heaven: Tread Softly." The Final Boss takes place in an area introduced with "Hell: Tread Softly."
- Boss Banter: Similarly to a particularly spoilery boss from The Binding of Isaac, Plaguemaster Aquila's boss theme has a vocal accompaniment, consisting of a text-to-speech program commentating on humanity's effects on the environment and the apathy humans have towards them."Is anyone even listening?"
- Brick Joke: The undetonated "Excalibur" housed atop Big Ben is never defused by the party after defeating Plaguemaster Aquila - Siobhan specifically mentions that the bomb itself is still active, but the ballista intended to launch it is no longer operational, thereby rendering it incapable of harming the city far below. Once the party have defeated the Yellow God of Death, their victory is cut short by the sound of a massive explosion. The game then cuts to a shot of the Houses of Parliament, with the top of the famous clock tower having been blown to bits.
- Cassandra Truth:
- When Verm and Lance first fight past the bandits blocking the way to Heaven, the bandit leader uses his final breaths to tell them that it's been taken over by a Yellow God of Death. Lance tells Verm to disregard the warning as the final ramblings of a villain that wants them to suffer, but it soon turns out to have been completely honest.
- If Verm attempts to tell the Wizard Lizard about the party's encouter with a rhyming Kraken, the lizard will assume that he's just messing with them.
- Cast Full of Gay: Among the playable characters, we have Siobhan (non-binary), Bruce (gay), Gwen (bi or pansexual), and even Verm himself is strongly implied to be asexual in a conversation with Gwen regarding sexuality.
- Chest Monster: Some treasure chests have a creature called an Avarice Spider living in it, which will attack the party when they try to loot the chest.
- David Versus Goliath: While the size difference between Verm the mouse and the human God he wants to kill is the most blatant size disparity, many other bosses also tower before the party, such as Tiger the housecat and Blademaster Lamia the stoat.
- Evil Overlord: King James, the mouse monarch enforcing the current status quo, eventually decides that he'd be better off using the Excalibur bomb against the commoners rebelling against him than to risk incurring the wrath of the Gods and, more importantly, losing his crown.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Siobhan's Mammy, the leader of Cranbaile, is adherent to the "Old Ways" and will not raise a paw against the gods even when a god's pet cat Tiger is responsible for slaughtering her own people. When Siobhan decides to take up arms themself and wins with Verm's help, first they're scolded for disobeying, and then a letter is sent to the king stating that Verm is a corrupting influence that needs to be taken care of.
- Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: Very common in the Mouse World of Rodentia, with quite a few characters wielding human-made objects as what they call "God Weapons." Verm's "Titan Cleaver" is just an ordinary pocket-knife, Gwen's glaive is a scalpel, Blademaster Leo uses a needle as a sword, Diego uses a gavel as a massive warhammer, the scissor-sisters Rosalie and Maisie each use one-half of a broken pair of scissors as longswords, and so on.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Pocket starts as an unscrupulous thief that's willing to help Bruce and Anton commit a heist until things start going bad, at which point he abandons them to save his own skin. After a battle with Bruce, Pocket has a change of heart and infiltrates Clan Grey by himself in order to break everyone out before Lamia can eat them.
- Bree and Stilton, a Fat and Skinny pair of sewer rats, are the first battle in the game as they attempt to rob Verm and his brother. Near the end of the game, they're the ones organizing a revolution on Verm's behalf in order to help Verm's party infiltrate the royal palace.
- If certain sidequests are done before the end of the game, Rosalie, George the rabbit, and Nemian the Hedge Knight, all of whom were previously battles, assist Verm's party in revolting against the King.
- Hopeless Boss Fight:
- Lance versus the Yellow God. None of his attacks deal a single point of damage to it, and once Lance gets its attention, the Yellow God uses its hand to crush Lance several times for damage way over his maximum health, killing him.
- The first Duel Boss against Blademaster Leo has him parry everything Verm throws at him. Even after Verm manages to break Leo's weapon, he still follows up with an attack with his broken weapon that deals several times Verm's health.
- Humans Are Cthulhu: The people of Rodentia call humanity gods, and many are terrified of even the chance of gaining their attention. The opening lets us briefly control a mouse who is attempting to attack one of them as a distraction, and it's an utter Curb-Stomp Battle where the human is left completely unharmed and the mouse is crushed to death almost immediately by an attack that does hundreds of times more damage than their maximum health.
- Interface Spoiler: Several of Verm's Tech Tree skills have their names redacted during the prologue, which might be a clue he will change his fighting style before too long. In a wider scale, averted in that his brother Lance has an entire tree of skills you will never get to use.
- Mouse World: The land of Rodentia is this, being an entire miniature kingdom built under a human city, with its own mouse-sized cafes, barracks, and other fully-furnished locales.
- No One Gets Left Behind: After the events of the opening, Verm gets a headache whenever he even considers leaving a friend of his behind, causing him to go to their aid no matter the risk.
- Orphaned Series: While the game itself was complete when it launched, the tie-in Needle Knight webcomic made during development only lasted 21 pages and covers just the first half of Sir Leo's "song".
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: Mention is made of "Muswolves," but they're implied to just be a myth. "Ghosts and muswolves" is a Rodentian idiom that seems to basically mean "that sounds like superstitious nonsense." However, ghosts are seen at a few points in the story, and Vinium's new champion gladiator is said to be a muswolf... but it's just kayfabe.
- Out of the Closet, Into the Fire: Bruce first encounters Gwen in a Clan Grey dungeon where the latter's crime was simply being queer in a territory that doesn't tolerate it. Bruce himself is arrested alongside his boyfriend Anton, but their main crime is thievery.
- Pacifism Breaking Point: Bruce is averse to combat, preferring to support his allies with music. However, upon reencountering Pocket, the thief that betrayed him and led to Anton being imprisoned by Clan Grey, he decides this is a matter he needs to deal with himself and learns his only offensive skill, "Thwack".
- Point of No Return: Once Verm talks with Bree and Stilton in a tavern about organizing a revolution as a distraction so Verm's party can sneak into the palace to deal with King James, Plaguemaster Aquila, and the Yellow God of Death, they warn his party that there's no going back once it starts, with Verm's allies suggesting some final sidequests to undertake first. Talking to the tavern mice again initiates the final sequence of the game.
- Relocating the Explosion: Inverted. Excalibur is "disarmed" by making sure the ballista it's hooked up to doesn't launch it. After the final boss fight, it explodes anyway, destroying the clock tower it's in.
- Resourceful Rodent: While Rodentia as a whole is filled with intelligent rodents, Verm's party frequently comes up with innovative ways to solve their problems, such as Siobhan repurposing a lighter as a God Weapon that fires its flame like a cannon.
- Running Gag: Whenever the party has to jump down from a high place, Siobhan always lands on their face, with a squeak instead of a thud.
- Save Point: The game can be saved at any idol, whether it's a golden statue honoring a war hero, a carved wooden figurine, or simply an action figure purloined from the Gods.
- Seers: After the jailbreak and becoming enemies of Clan Grey, the part seek out the Cailleachnote in order to know where to go next. It turns out that Clan Grey beheaded the Cailleach long ago after being given a prophecy of their downfall, but her four owl children are willing to answer one question for Verm before they demand tribute and try to kill him.
- Shout-Out:
- One location is a toy store that includes a doll of the witchy rabbit persona of Lilith Walther, the developer of Bloodborne PSX and Bloodborne Kart.
- Plenty to Final Fantasy, given the game functions as a throwback to many classic JRPGs:
- Bruce gets called a spoony bard in a rare case of the word being used correctly.
- The Octopus boss singing is a reference to Ultros from Final Fantasy VI.
- Verm says "let's mosey" under White Hall.
- Verm's Cleave attack bears a great resemblance to Cloud's iconic Climhazzard Limit Break, also from FFVII.
- Gwen's a white rat with a cape, nicknamed "Dragon," who wields a spear, all pointing to Freyja from Final Fantasy IX.
- Blademaster Leo bears a great resemblance to General Beatrix, also from FFIX - both are high-ranking soldiers loyal to a monarch, who are famed in-story as peerless warriors, and are fought as a Hopeless Boss Fight. And just like Beatrix, Leo eventually turns on his monarch when he learns the truth behind his cruel and selfish nature.
- Verm himself bears more than a passing resemblance to Guts from Berserk.
- The mythical character of Ratlas in Murida is a reference to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
- Superweapon Surprise: Averted. The royal court of Murida is aware of the threat the Yellow God poses, and is prepared to defeat it by dropping "Excalibur" on it: an unexploded, salvaged World War 2-era bomb from the Blitz. The problem is that while this would certainly kill the Yellow God, it would also obliterate half of Murida, killing tens of thousands of rodents — and for King James and Aquila, this is the point. The party therefore has to sabotage Excalibur to prevent it from being launched, and defeat the Yellow God the hard way.
- Time-Limit Boss: Aquila's boss battle is a lot more dire than most since they need to be defeated quickly in order to prevent Excalibur from launching. You have 240 seconds (4 real-time uninterrupted minutes) to do it or it's automatically Game Over. Aquila outright says that since they have no battle experience, they can't hope to defeat Verm's group; they just need to buy enough time for the weapon to fire.
- Voice of the Legion: Most Titans speak in a large, jagged font, befitting their nature as terrifying monsters to mousekind. Some of them are able to affect a less intimidating voice, like Diego when speaking to his friend Leo, or Lamia until her Horror Hunger kicks in. At the end of the game, Verm speaks in such a font when he tells the fallen Yellow God to "RUN."
- Weird Currency: Seeds, though they're a fairly reasonable currency for rodents to have.
