Anxiety Fuels Game Developer's Creation of Bureaucratic Nightmare in New RPG

TOKYO — In a stunning breakthrough for the gaming industry, video game designer Katsura Hashino has harnessed his own elevated levels of anxiety to craft a virtual world where players must navigate an absurd bureaucracy to combat their fears.

"When I’m supposed to be relaxing, and instead I’m spiraling into existential dread, I realize I'm just laying the groundwork for a game where relaxation is a distant memory," Hashino explained with a grin. This inspired him to develop Metaphor: ReFantazio, a standalone, turn-based RPG that promises to take players on a wild ride through a system of paperwork and approvals.

Hashino elaborated, "As players strategize with party members to defeat embodiments of real-world anxiety, they’ll find themselves entangled in a web of bureaucratic red tape. Instead of just battling enemies, they must grapple with the realization that they're contributing to a never-ending backlog of tasks!"

The game features an innovative twist: actions are delayed due to mandatory waiting periods and paperwork, mirroring the frustrating real-life bureaucracy we all know and love. Players will not only fight their fears but will be forced to confront the crushing weight of form-filling and line-waiting.

"In our battle system, players will have to manage their party members' anxiety-induced hesitations while deciding how to approach each magically inconvenient line they must stand in. It's a group effort to dodge the emotional fallout!" Hashino said, chuckling.

Despite the heavy weight of anxiety in the game's design, Hashino is hopeful that players won’t feel overwhelmed. "I just hope the anxiety-haunted monsters don't leap out of the screen and start clawing at the players' ankles during battle!" he concluded, holding back laughter.

At publishing time, Hashino was seen nervously checking over his shoulder before pulling up his collar and requesting that no one engage him in conversation until game launch.