Dev Blog: Ledgerbound's Inspirations

You’ve seen it everywhere because it’s a core pillar of our marketing: Ledgerbound is hilarious.

Our team draws inspiration from years of professional experience where bureaucracy reigns supreme and 120% of our capacity goes towards successfully shipping a game, even at the cost of our personal wellbeing. But we don’t draw the line at personal anecdotes. When it comes to delivering satirical comedy with a dash of relatable struggles, we take notes from several of The Greats and are sharing a few to give you a look into our creative process when considering the vibe of our game!

These are just five of easily 15+ titles that we often see a piece of Ledgerbound in. And what’s fun for us is that none of the titles are exact 1:1s for our game, which is the entire point of making a new game to begin with. Our Game Director, Russ Nickel, puts it best here:

"I don't think there's ever been a game that's managed to make me laugh the way a sitcom can make me laugh, specifically with characters you care about and a perfected sense of comedic timing. It's what makes our approach to dialogue in Ledgerbound unique to other projects I've worked on in the past and something we hope players will appreciate when they experience it for themselves. While navigating bureaucratic nightmares, our character-driven comedy balances humor with responses to real situations and genuine stakes that you end up falling in love with."

#1: Everything Everywhere All At Once

This movie brought something undeniably fresh to Hollywood and may or may not have made us cry several times.

We love to look at how Everything Everywhere All At Once balances its hilarity with powerful, touching themes like finding the meaning of life through love, kindness, and family. The story we tell in Ledgerbound takes on corporate culture’s expectations of perfectionism and poor work-life balance. Comedic moments are balanced with grounded exploration of how these things impact the lives of characters you can’t help but care deeply about as you experience the journey alongside them.

“What a crazy plot, characters you care about, and a bureaucratic nightmare - what’s not to love? I don’t know!” – Russ Nickel, our Game Director

#2: Parks and Recreation

Steam post image As far as sitcoms go, Parks & Rec is a great comparison to Ledgerbound, especially the satire on bureaucracy and our resterlude/camp phases of gameplay.

This show has a ton of heart and characters you fall in love with throughout all the scenarios they find themselves in. You also fall in love with their ACTUAL love as relationships grow over time. Ledgerbound ’s characters are all SUPER dateable (see Chart 6 of our Playtest Survey Results blog) and we’ve put a lot of care into each of their dialogue branches to give you the space to build your own relationships with them as your story progresses.

#3: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Steam post image Ya. You knew this one was coming, didn’t you.

Love it or hate it, the Fire Emblem series is one of the gold standards of the tactics genre. Three Houses in particular follows a similar gameplay loop to what you’ll find in Ledgerbound: combat phases interspersed with socialization phases that take place at the academy, or in our case, camp. You’ll have to balance your time between buffing up your team for the next battle, replaying old battles in pursuit of perfecting them, and deepening your bonds with your favorite coworkers. Plus, you can play with Merp. So many choices, so little time.

#4: Tactical Breach Wizards

If we’re mentioning Fire Emblem as a gold standard for tactics, it would be really weird to not mention this self-published indie darling from 2024.

A tactics game where the puzzles of each stage make you feel like a genius, Tactical Breach Wizards also brings hilarity from its premise and its characters. That level of wittiness and charm is something we prioritize among our own characters, going so far as to create a custom dialogue system that allows for voice lines to interject so their dynamic feels realistic.

#5: The Stanley Parable

We are legally obligated to mention The Stanley Parable for its stellar satirization of office bureaucracy.

Rayna is like our Stanley, although we won’t call her stupid or have her unintentionally explode herself. We will have her be a workaholic who loves to hide away in filing endless paperwork in a world that values administrative procedures above everything else. Despite Eldarra being a high fantasy setting, it mirrors and pokes fun at similar hierarchies you may find in our world. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ # # #