This game looks so much like Nier that even Yoko Taro is a fan

Two days ago, we highlighted Aikode, a promising action-RPG so heavily inspired by the Nier games that it could almost have been plucked straight from Yoko Taro's enigmatic mind. Today, the Nier director himself thanked Aikode's solo creator, who goes by Ace, for loving the Nier games so much.

Japanese gaming outlet Automaton cited our original report in its own story on Aikode, and Taro shared Automaton's article earlier today with a sweet and simple "thank you." 

Naturally, Ace was thrilled to see the director behind one of his biggest influences formally acknowledge his efforts. "No way! I'm speechless," he said, sharing Taro's tweet via the official Aikode Twitter. 

I reached out to Ace to get his thoughts on the response Aikode has seen in Japan and from Taro, and he was understandably on cloud nine. 

"To be honest, I'm still speechless," he said. "I didn't expect any of this. I knew there would be some repercussions, but I didn't expect a Japanese outlet to make an article, much less all that support from Japanese gamers, and suddenly I saw Yoko Taro's response and he followed me. I still have a hard time believing it."

Ace says he started to get a lot of Twitter notifications after our initial story on Aikode went up, and as more Japanese followers and comments flooded in, he learned that Automaton had picked up the story. "I read the Japanese article and a part of me was thinking maybe Yoko Taro will read this," he explains. "Yeah, maybe. It was like a fantasy in my mind! I didn't expect him to actually notice this.

"Today I was at university and I started getting more notifications," he continues. "A lot. And again, they're Japanese people. What happened? I arrive home, I'm on Discord, and then I see a guy saying that he comes from a Yoko Taro retweet. And I'm like, what? Yoko Taro retweet? That can't be possible. And I go to Twitter and I'm like, no, this can't be happening. It was just a couple of hours ago, I still don't believe it. It was like a dream come true. 

"What he was saying is 'thank you,'" Ace says of Taro's tweet. "So I was like, why is he thanking me? What is this response? He's actually thanking me. I'm the one who should be thanking you!" 

"I'm a fan of Yoko Taro's work in general," Ace previously told GamesRadar+. "I love Drakengard, Nier, Nier Replicant, Automata. I love a lot of things from Nier games, Taro's storytelling and stuff like that. There's a lot of inspirations from a lot of games. People who play a lot of games will notice that."

If you're just catching up on all of this, I'll first cheekily refer you back to the original report linked above, but here's the short version on this absolutely bonkers game: Aikode is a third-person, open-world action-RPG made in Unreal Engine 5 and set in a fragmented, futuristic world that mirrors but distorts our own. It's got multiple playable characters, mechanics and ideas partly inspired by a range of Ace's favorite games, and an original story years in the making. 

Apart from some music and writing assistance, it's almost entirely the work of Ace, a former VFX artist who learned to program just so they could make this game. Ace has been working on it for about two years, and reckons it needs another two years in the oven – which should be a bit easier now, as he says this wave of support has been quite energizing.   

For promising games in the near-future, have a gander at our list of the new games of 2022.