Fantasy game inspired by colonisation of Southeast Asia, Last Regiment breaks with Eurocentric tropes of gaming industry

Most games have European roots – think dwarves with Scottish accents and in-game religions influenced by Christianity – that mean little to players elsewhere

Last Regiment’s fictional world is taken from colonial Southeast Asia. ‘This was the history of my designers and artists,’ says the creative director behind it

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Last Regiment, a game by Boomzap Entertainment, takes inspiration from the colonisation of Southeast Asia. Photo: Boomzap

Published: 12:45pm, 17 Jul 2020Updated: 1:02pm, 17 Jul 2020

If you’ve ever played a fantasy video game, you might have noticed a trend – most mainstream fantasy games have decidedly European roots and historical influences. Think dwarves with Scottish accents, in-game religions influenced by Christianity (often accompanied by nurturing clerics and upstanding paladins) and a generally mono-racial cast of human characters.

It’s part of the reason Christopher Natsuume, creative director of Singaporean games developer Boomzap Entertainment, wanted to do things differently with the company’s latest game, Last Regiment.

“My staff can tell you stories about how the Spanish colonised the Philippines, or about Raffles in Singapore,” says Natsuume. “This history was just more a part of us than the stories of Europe – so we decided to run with it.”

Boomzap’s developers, artists and managers come from Southeast Asia; Natsuume says they’ve had people working in places like Iloilo in the Philippines, and Bandung, Medan and Bandar Lampung in Indonesia. Mainstream fantasy games didn’t represent the world that the team behind Boomzap Entertainment grew up in.

During the production of Last Regiment, Natsuume began reading a book on the British East India Company. “It got me thinking about where the people who were going to make this game came from,” he says. “The history I was reading about was the colonisation of Southeast Asia – this was the history of my designers and artists, the people who were going to make the game.

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