Starlight Re:Volver was inspired by Sailor Moon, One Piece, and Monster Hunter

Starlight Re:Volver wears its anime inspirations on its sleeve — but there are some deep cuts, too

Pahdo Labs

Starlight Re:Volver stole the show when it was shown off at the PC Gaming show last week, with the anime-inspired multiplayer dungeon crawler exciting fans with its flashy gameplay and bright, colorful visuals. It’s not hard to see why — it’s unlike anything we’ve seen in the past, and it looks majorly ambitious, though it’s not quite as ambitious as it seems, according to its creators. 

We had the pleasure of speaking to Pahdo Labs’ founder and its creative director ahead of the show, where they told us how Starlight Re:Volver came to life. They also told us about the game’s inspirations, and as you might expect, anime was a big part of it. 

Pahdo Labs’ creative director Alijah Ladd didn’t hesitate to start rattling off anime that played a part in bringing Starlight Re:Volver’s aesthetic direction into line. And it wasn’t just specific anime, it was entire genres, too. 

“It’s no secret that we’re inspired by the whole mahou shoujou (magical girl) genre,” Ladd tells GLHF. “Obviously Sailor Moon and all of [Sailor Moon creator] Naoko Takeuchi and [Inuyasha creator] Rumiko Takahashi’s work, [they’re] some of our favorites. But I wouldn’t say that we’re exclusively inspired by mahou shoujou, there’s a lot of shonen that inspires us as well.

“One Piece is a huge inspiration and, to me, a benchmark for what fantastic world and character building looks like. It’s an example of something that just builds and builds, and gets better and better with time.” 

Promare – and the rest of Studio Trigger’s work – was a major inspiration, too, along with games like Hades, Monster Hunter, Street Fighter 2, Mega Man Zero, and more. There’s a long list of DNA that goes into making a game like Starlight Re:Volver, and according to Pahdo Labs founder Daniel Zou, most of that comes from having such a broad, diverse team. 

“We have an interesting mix of folks on the team, but I think one of the interesting parts is that we have very young people in decision-making positions,” Zou says. “We actually have a very discontinuous set of games and references. It wasn’t like ‘Oh, we all love all of these things,’ it was ‘We love a different set of things, but we were brought together by a similar set of emotions and motivations.’

“There are some areas of the game where we wear our heart on our sleeve and you can really see the inspirations shine through. For example, our character designs, to me, are largely inspired by artists like [Mega Man artist] Toru Nakayama and [Pokémon artist] Ken Sugimori but then there are things that are more obscure. There’s some pretty deep cuts in Starlight Re:Volver.” 

Starlight Re:Volver will launch in Early Access on Steam in 2025.