Combining two established genres is rarely as simple as placing their familiar mechanics beside one another. For Nocturne, developer Ben Pracy spent approximately 10 years determining how the progression, equipment, exploration, and narrative structure of a traditional RPG could coexist with combat decided primarily by the player’s rhythm-game skill.

The project began as a solo endeavor inspired by Undertale and Pracy’s childhood fascination with Chrono Trigger, but gradually expanded into a small-team production supported by musicians and artists. Its lengthy development included three major rebuilds, hundreds of handcrafted maps, battles, and cutscenes, and extensive public playtesting. The resulting game features a 100,000-word story, 101 playable tracks, six difficulty options, and boss music performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. Since launching on Steam on September 22, Nocturne has received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from players, with 99% of nearly 500 user reviews currently rated positively.

In this interview, Pracy explains why early versions abandoned conventional leveling, how the team eventually reconciled character progression with skill-based combat, and why the game polls keyboard input at 1,000Hz to achieve millisecond-level timing. He also discusses using StepMania as a technical reference, building the project with Unity and Wwise, developing internal tools for a content-heavy RPG, and deciding which systems needed to be rebuilt rather than continually expanded.

Firstly, can you just start by telling me a bit about the game and your own background?

Ben Pracy, Owner at Pracy Studios: I’ve been telling stories my whole life, both as a writer and a video editor. After playing Chrono Trigger as a kid, my world was opened up, and at age 11 I began scribbling game design ideas in the back of my school workbooks. 

Nocturne has been in development for around ten years as your first mostly solo project. Looking back, what was the original spark for the game, and how much has the vision changed between the first prototype and the version launching on Steam?

Ben Pracy: Undertale was the game that inspired me to begin creating Nocturne. The combination of RPG and Bullet Hell worked so great, and that’s the spark that allowed me to combine RPG with Rhythm Combat. The game has changed so much since I started. In the early days, I would take prototypes to local indie events, so it’s been years of iteration and player feedback that shaped exactly how the gameplay is today. 

Ten years is a long time. I think the obvious question is: What on earth took so long!?

Ben Pracy: RPGs are notoriously difficult to build because they require so much bespoke content. I can spend days perfecting a complicated cutscene sequence, and players see it once, and then that content is never used again. Every map, cutscene, and battle is meticulously handcrafted. It also didn't help that I rebuilt the game 3 times before I was happy with it!

Nocturne combines traditional RPG systems like leveling, stats, items, equipment, bosses, exploration, secrets, and cutscenes with an entirely skill-based rhythm combat system. How did you approach blending those two genres so the rhythm mechanics feel like the combat system rather than a separate minigame?

Ben Pracy: First, I wrote a list of every mechanic from both RPGs and Rhythm games, then I forced myself to justify why each one should be in Nocturne. Very early prototypes didn’t even have leveling, because I hadn’t yet figured out how to make that feel satisfying alongside the Rhythm combat. What would gaining a level even mean when players can hit every note perfectly right from the start?

I’m really happy with how the levels, stats, and items counterplay together in the final version. I also took a story-driven approach, where the music was composed to match the exact emotional arc of the characters. Every boss fight conveys the intensity and emotions of the characters in that moment, and as they evolve during battle when twists are revealed or stakes are raised.

For 80 Level’s audience of developers, can you walk us through how Nocturne’s rhythm combat is built under the hood? What were the biggest design or technical challenges around timing windows, readability, input feel, enemy patterns, difficulty, and syncing gameplay to music?

Ben Pracy: Layering combat on top of an already intense Rhythm game means a solid foundation to build upon. Open source projects like Stepmania and its variants were a great technical reference for timing, input, and audio syncing. Nocturne actually polls your keyboard at 1000hz to get millisecond-accurate timing. 

What software, engine, and tools did you use to build Nocturne, and how did your pipeline evolve over the course of such a long solo development cycle?

Ben Pracy: Nocturne needed tools and a workflow that could scale to the size of the game's ambition. Development began by recreating the contents of the original 2020 demo in Unity with Wwise as audio middleware. Nocturne supports .sm chart formats, which allowed me to work with community members to create top tier Rhythm charts with open-source tooling. Cutscene and dialogue systems were created using Unity's Timeline and Cinemachine tools. Good tooling became a key part of how the game was able to scale up.

The game has a distinct 2D pixel-art style with colorful, stylized, retro, and anime-inspired elements. How did you define the visual language of Nocturne’s digital afterlife, and what were the main artistic influences behind its characters, environments, UI, and battle presentation?

Ben Pracy: The art direction was retro pixel art with a modern minimalism. If you compare Nocturne’s sprites with retro RPGs, you’ll notice the game uses far fewer colors, so the sprite work isn’t as busy. Nocturne’s lighting and shadows are HD, giving everything a softer edge. Crosscode’s character portraits and Hyper Light Drifter’s environments were big inspirations. 

How did you balance writing, art, combat design, programming, level design, music implementation, testing, marketing, and production planning over ten years without losing sight of the original goal?

Ben Pracy: While I started out solo, I’ve had a lot of help over the years now, so it’s by no means a solo project anymore. I’ve been working with a musician to compose all the music, and various artists for pixel art, just to name a few. Believe me, my own pixel art I drew for the early versions was not good! The production side of things has been the biggest learning curve, keeping track of all the work so nothing falls between the cracks has required me to rethink my documentation a few times over.

The boss music was recorded live by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, which is a major production milestone for a solo-developed indie RPG. How did that collaboration come together, and how did hearing the score performed live affect the way you thought about Nocturne’s combat and emotional tone?

Ben Pracy: It was a collaboration of a lifetime. If I’m honest, hearing the opening theme performed live brought me to tears. They brought out so much of the emotion of the story and characters in a way I’d never felt before. 

Now that Nocturne is finally approaching launch, what are the biggest lessons you learned from spending a decade on one personal project, and what advice would you give to other solo developers trying to build something ambitious without compromising the thing that made them start?

Ben Pracy: Get your games in the hands of players as soon as possible, far before you think it’s ready. Those early prototypes are so much easier to iterate on before you start to lock in. Be very mindful of small features that balloon in scope, keep them under check. I thought adding live ladder climbing would be easy (instead of making it an auto cutscene), but they ended up being something that would constantly break as I discovered more edge cases that needed to be accounted for. Build good tooling early on to save you the busy work, when you’re setting up hundreds of cutscenes, you’ll be extremely glad for every click you saved yourself.

Ben Pracy, Owner at Pracy Studios