Tuscaloosa Developer Releases His Second Video Game, ‘Geo Mythica’

A Tuscaloosa developer is celebrating the release of his second video game, a March debut called Geo Mythica, which features nods to its West Alabama roots.

Chris Guin is a Tuscaloosa native who returned to the area in 2014 after a decade in Boston with a master's degree in computer science from Tufts University.

He works locally as a software engineer but has also dipped a toe increasingly deeper into video game development. He said the hobby is inspired by the games he grew up on - old-school Japanese role-playing games like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and the Final Fantasy series.

A few working concepts eventually led to his first full-fledged video game, a 2020 platformer called The Adventures of Chris. Now, five years later, Guin has released Geo Mythica, which is currently PC-exclusive and available on the game marketplace Steam.

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"It's a Japanese-style Role-Playing Game, set on actual Earth in 199X and the idea is you're on a globetrotting adventure saving the planet from an evil corporation trying to dig up magic artifacts around the world," Guin told the Thread.

If the last few paragraphs sound Greek to you, that's understandable, and thanks for reading this far! But if you've played some of the games referenced above, Guin said Geo Mythica could be for you.

"If you're totally new to gaming, there may be a little bit of a learning curve, maybe start with Pokémon and see how you like it," Guin laughed. "But if you like RPGs of any stripe, especially if you remember a bygone era, all the music in the game is authentic 8-bit. All the artwork is NES-style sprites with that limited palette. If you get nostalgia for that or appreciate the good old days, maybe give it a try."

Guin said he's proud of how the game bridges the old and the new, featuring real-time combat and an open world that's a little more modern than the JRPGs that inspired it.

The game features lovingly rendered characters and areas, including a map paying homage to Tuscaloosa, where players can find a secret area and notes from Guin about what inspired other locations in the game, like those set in the United Kingdom or Mexico.

"It's a secret, bonus town - I have pixel-art representations of all these locations around the world and I knew I had to put Tuscaloosa in there," Guin said. "So you can find that secret, visit my house and find some developer commentary."

Both of Guin's games are available for sale on his Steam page here.

For more coverage of news and local interest in west Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.