Planet of War: The Legend of Fu

I have a soft spot for the small, stubbornly ambitious games that slip through the algorithm entirely, and Planet of War: The Legend of Fu is exactly that kind of release. Built solo under the studio name not me RPG Games, it dropped in September 2023 into near-total critical silence - no Metacritic score, no review queue, a Steam community hub with only a handful of threads. That context matters, because it sets the right expectations before you load it up. What you get is a top-down, 2D pixel RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world, and the first thing to appreciate is how much mechanical ambition is packed into something this quiet. Combat is turn-based and tactical, built around a party of three characters whose stats you distribute freely. The skill pool is genuinely large - there are over 50 character and equipment skills to draw from, plus over 10 distinct damage types that interact with different armor resistances in ways that reward reading the tooltips carefully. The developer even added an in-game damage type manual delivered by a military instructor character named Banz early on, which tells you something about the authorial care here: the systems are complex enough that the game itself builds in a tutorial item rather than dumping a wall of text at you. The self-described "easy to play, hard to master" design philosophy holds up. You can brute-force early fights. Later, you probably cannot. The narrative layer is where the game earns its runtime. Your characters carry personality traits that gate certain dialogue options, and a merit point system determines how persuasive you can be in any given confrontation. Ruthlessness and compassion both have mechanical weight: forcing your way through something costs you cooperation elsewhere, and the world quietly adjusts its posture toward you based on your cumulative choices. The claimed ten-plus distinct endings for the main story are not marketing padding - most side quests carry their own branching conclusions too, which is unusual for a one-person project of this scale. A single playthrough runs roughly 20 hours, and the faction system (three factions, each with unique gear loadouts) gives a second run a meaningfully different texture. The honest caveats are real. This is a solo debut with a minimal community footprint - only a small number of Steam reviews exist, the player base is essentially absent right now, and a graphics initialization error thread in the community hub suggests the technical experience is not seamless on all systems. The pixel art and soundtrack - over 20 original tracks - carry a particular quiet weight that suits the tone, but players expecting commercial production values will feel the budget constraints. The pacing in the opening hours is deliberate. It asks you to sit with the world before the stakes clarify. I am willing to defend that choice given how the systems eventually interlock, but it will lose anyone hunting for a fast hook. For the right player - someone who finds joy in a deeply personal, lore-invested tactical RPG built by a single person who clearly cared enough to patch in new dialogue after early feedback - this is a genuine hidden pocket. It does not scream for your attention, which is part of why it deserves some.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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