Honestly, walking into the classroom of Kenta, the aspiring game designer in RPG Time: The Legend of Wright, feels less like booting up a video game and more like stepping into the daydream of a creative ten-year-old. It's chaotic. It's cardboard. It is, quite literally, a game made of notebook paper, sticky notes, and scotch tape. You aren't playing a high-fidelity RPG on a modern console; you're playing a game inside a game, sitting at a school desk while a kid named Kenta manually moves cardboard cutouts and flips pages to tell you a story.
It's weird. It's brilliant.
Developed by DeskWorks, a tiny Japanese indie team that spent nearly a decade refining this project, the game is a love letter to childhood imagination. Most "hand-drawn" games use digital assets that look like drawings. RPG Time: The Legend of Wright actually looks like someone took a bunch of markers and a ruler to a spiral notebook during math class. It took fifteen years to finish. Think about that. Most AAA franchises iterate every three years, but Kenta’s story was a labor of obsessive love that nearly didn't see the light of day.
The Absolute Chaos of Kenta’s Desk
What makes this experience so jarring, in a good way, is the lack of a standard HUD. You don't have a health bar in the corner of the screen. Instead, Kenta has glued a physical health meter onto the side of the notebook. Your "menu" is just him opening a pencil case. It's tactile. It's tactile in a way that most digital media completely ignores.
The game shifts genres faster than a bored kid changes subjects. One minute you're doing a turn-based battle using a pencil as a sword, and the next, the notebook flips over and you're suddenly playing a side-scrolling shooter or a weirdly complex puzzle involving a literal cardboard maze. It's constant. The mechanical density is staggering. Most critics, including those at IGN and Famitsu, pointed out that while the actual "RPG" mechanics are fairly simple, the sheer variety of interactions keeps you from ever looking away.
You’re playing through the "Legend of Wright," where a hero must save a princess. Typical stuff. But the charm isn't the plot; it's the execution. Kenta is constantly chiming in, acting as the Dungeon Master. He’ll draw a new path while you’re walking on it. He’ll "fix" a boss’s health bar with a marker if things aren't going his way. It creates this strangely intimate bond between the player and the fictional creator. You aren't just a protagonist; you're Kenta's audience.
Why the Development Took 15 Years
Fifteen years is a ridiculous amount of time for an indie game. Most studios would have gone bankrupt or lost interest. But Tomohiro Kudo, the director at DeskWorks, had a specific vision for the "Notebook" aesthetic. Every single frame of animation had to be hand-drawn to look like it wasn't professional. That is an incredibly difficult balance to strike. Making something look amateur while maintaining the polish of a functional product is a technical nightmare.
The Craftsmanship Factor
If you look closely at the screen, you’ll see the texture of the paper. You’ll see the "pencil" marks that aren't perfectly straight. They didn't use shortcuts. Every transition, every "page flip," was treated as a piece of art.
- Animation Style: It mimics stop-motion. It’s jerky because that’s how a kid would move paper cutouts.
- Audio Design: Everything sounds like it’s happening in a classroom. The crinkle of paper, the squeak of a marker, the ambient noise of a school hallway.
- UI/UX: The interface is literally physical objects on a desk. No floating icons.
This level of detail is why the game won the "Best in Play" award at GDC 2018 and the Grand Prize at the Sense of Wonder Night at Tokyo Game Show. It wasn't just about the gameplay. It was about the commitment to a bit. A bit that lasted over a decade.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Difficulty
A lot of people go into RPG Time: The Legend of Wright expecting a grueling, Dark Souls-style challenge because it calls itself an RPG. That’s a mistake. If you’re looking for complex stat-crunching or deep builds, you’re in the wrong classroom.
This is a narrative-driven adventure. The "difficulty" comes from the puzzles and the sheer unpredictability of what Kenta is going to throw at you next. Sometimes you have to blow into your microphone (or press a button to simulate it) to clear away "pencil shavings" from the board. Other times, you’re using a literal ruler to measure something on the screen. It’s more of a toy box than a traditional game.
Honestly, the "Legend of Wright" itself is intentionally cliché. It’s a kid’s story. The dragon is scary because Kenta says it is. The stakes feel high because Kenta is getting excited. If you judge it purely on its RPG mechanics, you’re missing the forest for the trees. The real "game" is the interaction between the player and the kid sitting on the other side of the desk.
The Technical Wizardry Under the Cardboard
Despite looking like a craft project, the game runs on Unreal Engine. It’s a weird choice for something that looks 2D, but it allowed the developers to handle the complex layering of "physical" objects on the desk. Every item on that desk—the erasers, the snacks, the loose pens—is a 3D object that can be interacted with.
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The lighting is surprisingly sophisticated. It mimics the overhead fluorescent lights of a schoolroom, casting shadows on the notebook pages as they flip. This subtle 3D depth is what makes the "pop-up book" effect work. If it were flat 2D, it wouldn't have the same soul. It would just be a drawing. Instead, it feels like a tangible object you could reach out and touch.
Is It Actually Worth Your Time?
There’s a specific kind of player who will adore this. If you grew up drawing your own levels for games in the back of your notebook, this is going to hit you like a freight train of nostalgia. It’s a short experience—maybe 8 to 10 hours—but it is packed. There is no filler. Every screen is a new drawing, a new mechanic, or a new joke.
However, if you hate "gimmicks," you might struggle. The game is 90% gimmicks. But they are high-effort, incredibly charming gimmicks. It’s available on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC, so it’s pretty accessible.
One thing to keep in mind: it requires your full attention. You can’t really "zone out" and grind levels like you can in Dragon Quest. Because the gameplay changes every five minutes, you have to be constantly engaged with what Kenta is telling you. It’s an active participation in someone else's imagination.
Actionable Insights for Players
If you're planning to dive into Kenta's notebook, here is how to get the most out of it without getting frustrated:
Don't overthink the mechanics.
Most puzzles have a very "kid-logic" solution. If something looks like a button made of an eraser, try to push it. If there's a scribble over a secret, try to "rub" it out. The game wants you to play with it, not solve it like a math equation.
Pay attention to the desk, not just the notebook.
Kenta hides a lot of personality in the objects surrounding the main play area. Looking at the snacks he’s eating or the drawings he has pinned up gives you a better sense of who this kid is. It adds a layer of storytelling that isn't in the dialogue.
Play it in short bursts.
Because it’s so visually dense and mechanically frantic, it can be a bit overwhelming if you try to marathon the whole thing in one sitting. It’s best experienced like a Saturday morning cartoon. Give yourself an hour or two, see what crazy new idea Kenta has, and then step away.
Check the "Extra" pages.
There are often hidden collectibles and side drawings that Kenta tucked away in the margins. Finding these usually rewards you with more flavor text or funny little animations that showcase the depth of the hand-drawn art.
RPG Time: The Legend of Wright isn't just a game; it's a reminder of why we liked games in the first place. Before we cared about frame rates or ray tracing, we cared about whether or not we could slay the dragon with a wooden stick. Kenta hasn't forgotten that. Neither should you.