Video Game / Small Saga

An epic RPG of miniature proportions!

Small Saga is a turn-based RPG created by Darya Noghani, released on November 16, 2023. The game was primarily funded through a Kickstarter campaign, which can be viewed here. A demo is available on itch and Steam. The game's official website can be accessed here. A tie-in webcomic, Needle Knight, can be read here.

Beneath the streets of modern London lies the medieval land of Rodentia, the home of many sentient rats, squirrels, shrews, and other rodents. Their land is a mostly peaceful one, as there are laws in place to avoid conflict with the Gods and Titans (humans and housecats). However, this peace is not enough for Verm, a vagabond who once lost his tail to the Yellow God of Death, and now wields the Titan Reaper (a human's pocketknife) as he embarks on a quest for vengeance.

Darya Noghani previously worked on Aviary Attorney.

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The game includes examples of the following tropes:

• Ambiguous Time Period: Though the game takes place over a year, from Spring to Winter, no specific dates are ever given. The human world is rather generically contemporary, putting the year at "Sometime in the 21st century." With Aquila saying the first book they ever read was "The Anthropocene," a book released in 2021, and that they are elderly for a rat, this firmly places the game around 2022-2023.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  • The game ends with Verm choosing to leave the kingdom in order to go adventuring and find new purpose now that he's no longer driven by vengeance, with his friends willingly accompanying him.
  • Depending on the outcome of a late-game duel, it can be reported that Sir Leo and his daughter, who few others knew existed, were able to flee the revolution and have journeyed south to Aremorio to find a new home.
• Animal Jingoism: A number of the bosses faced are natural predators of rodents, such as a cat, a stoat, four young owls, and a cobra. There's also a major subplot about grey squirrels with an Eagleland bent having deposed and replaced native red squirrels, representing how gray squirrels from the Americas have become invasive in Europe and started outcompeting the Eurasian red squirrel.
• Animals Not to Scale: House mice are depicted as larger than moles, while actually small moles are somewhat bigger than large mice. Squirrels are portrayed as lightly built and smaller than rats, though gray squirrels (the larger, invasive species represented by Clan Grey) are very robust and commonly get a bit bigger than the biggest rats, and actually larger than stoats. The size differences between mice and the other species are also somewhat de-emphasized.
• Armored But Frail: The Pre-Final Boss Apocalypse Engine (a fumigation machine) has a very measly 20 HP... but has such high defense that most attacks deal 1-2 damage to it after its defense is lowered. To make matters worse, its Noxious Gas makes your team tipsy, greatly lowering their accuracy.
• BFS: The Titan Cleaver is nothing more than a pocket-knife, but when wielded by a little mouse such as Verm, it becomes a god-weapon so massive it's wondered aloud by others how he can even swing it at all. Siobhan can't even lift it. It's hefty but slightly more proportionate in the hands of the rather large water vole bandit leader that originally wielded it before dying to Verm and Lance.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are a lot of arthropods serving as minor antagonists, from sewer roaches and treasure chest spiders to scorpions. They're fairly large compared to the rodents making up the cast, but would only qualify as bigger-than-normal to humans.
• Book Ends: The first encounter with the Yellow God takes place in an area introduced with the text "Heaven: Tread Softly." The Final Boss takes place in an area introduced with "Hell: Tread Softly."
• Boss Banter: Similarly to a particularly spoilery boss from The Binding of Isaac, Plaguemaster Aquila's boss theme has a vocal accompaniment, consisting of a text-to-speech program commentating on humanity's effects on the environment and the apathy humans have towards them.
  "Is anyone even listening?"
• Brick Joke: The undetonated "Excalibur" housed atop Big Ben is never defused by the party after defeating Plaguemaster Aquila - Siobhan specifically mentions that the bomb itself is still active, but the ballista intended to launch it is no longer operational, thereby rendering it incapable of harming the city far below. Once the party have defeated the Yellow God of Death, their victory is cut short by the sound of a massive explosion. The game then cuts to a shot of the Houses of Parliament, with the top of the famous clock tower having been blown to bits.
• Carnivore Confusion: A book in Cranbaile insists that carnivores are barred from Rodentia. Real rats eagerly hunt and eat mice but that doesn't come up here. However, Blademaster Lamia is a stoat and makes frequent allusions to eating rodents. Other than Duke Josh, who feeds her prisoners and enemies, everyone including his other guards is distinctly uncomfortable about this. When the party fights her, she eats a nearby guard, which is distinctly played for horror. Halfsight the cat is given dead gladiators to eat in exchange for deterring other Titans from Vinium, but despite Bruce thinking about Lamia the local rodents are not concerned and even consider the old cat harmless.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • When Verm and Lance first fight past the bandits blocking the way to Heaven, the bandit leader uses his final breaths to tell them that it's been taken over by a Yellow God of Death. Lance tells Verm to disregard the warning as the final ramblings of a villain that wants them to suffer, but it soon turns out to have been completely honest.
  • If Verm attempts to tell the Wizard Lizard about the party's encouter with a rhyming Kraken, the lizard will assume that he's just messing with them.
• Cast Full of Gay: Among the playable characters, we have Siobhan (non-binary), Bruce (gay), Gwen (bi or pansexual), and even Verm himself is strongly implied to be asexual in a conversation with Gwen regarding sexuality.
• Chest Monster: Some treasure chests have a creature called an Avarice Spider living in it, which will attack the party when they try to loot the chest.
• Cunning Like a Fox: It doesn't appear in the game itself, but Sir Leo got his reputation by killing a fox that had been raiding a shrew settlement. The fox, as revealed in Needle Knight, had been allowing the shrews to live in one of its "many dens" and claiming tribute in the form of food as rent; when they ran out of provisions, it switched to eating the shrews.
• David Versus Goliath: While the size difference between Verm the mouse and the human God he wants to kill is the most blatant size disparity, many other bosses also tower before the party, such as Tiger the housecat and Blademaster Lamia the stoat.
• Deal with the Devil: Needle Knight includes a story about The Legend of Oisín the Oathbreaker, a mole lord who made a deal with a Titan, a stoat named Hera, who would single-handedly (pawed-ly?) kill the enemies facing the mole city in exchange for half of his treasury. The legend thinks this would have ended fine, except that Oisín reneged on the deal and hid away most of his valuables before she came to claim them. Hera, displeased, then killed and ate half the town's nobles. It's generally believed to be a very bad idea to break a deal made with a Titan.
• Evil Overlord: King James, the mouse monarch enforcing the current status quo, eventually decides that he'd be better off using the Excalibur bomb against the commoners rebelling against him than to risk incurring the wrath of the Gods and, more importantly, losing his crown.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Siobhan's Mammy, the leader of Cranbaile, is adherent to the "Old Ways" and will not raise a paw against the gods even when a god's pet cat Tiger is responsible for slaughtering her own people. When Siobhan decides to take up arms themself and wins with Verm's help, first they're scolded for disobeying, and then a letter is sent to the king stating that Verm is a corrupting influence that needs to be taken care of.
• The Farmer and the Viper: A book of fables recounts the story of a viper who wants to cross a river and asks a raven to carry her. The raven is aware of this trope but despite his instincts picks her up and flies with her... and they land safely on the other side, where the viper thanks the raven.
  "Hold up. Why didn't you bite me? You had every opportunity. Isn't biting in your nature?"
  "In all thingsss of nature, there is something of the marveloussss."
• Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Most of the cast are completely bipedal. Violet the bat also walks around on two legs and has generally quite human anatomy. Titans, being larger and less anthropomorphic, are more likely to be found on all fours, other than owls.
• Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: Very common in the Mouse World of Rodentia, with quite a few characters wielding human-made objects as what they call "God Weapons." Verm's "Titan Cleaver" is just an ordinary pocket-knife, Gwen's glaive is a scalpel, Blademaster Leo uses a needle as a sword, Diego uses a gavel as a massive warhammer, the scissor-sisters Rosalie and Maisie each use one-half of a broken pair of scissors as longswords, and so on.
• Gladiator Games: The shrew settlement of Vinium has an arena where gladiators are made to fight Scary Scorpions and duel on moving "chariots" (RC cars). A citizen speculates that since the entire town is built of plastic LEGO bricks the people crave the relative reality of a blood sport.
• Hair Rasing Hare: Sir George of the Hall of the White Gods worships those gods and thinks the animals they experiment on should accept any treatment, up to and including being killed, with a glad and gracious heart. He's not pleased with his ex, Gwen, for her disagreement and for doing things like running away and dyeing her hair.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Pocket starts as an unscrupulous thief that's willing to help Bruce and Anton commit a heist until things start going bad, at which point he abandons them to save his own skin. After a battle with Bruce, Pocket has a change of heart and infiltrates Clan Grey by himself in order to break everyone out before Lamia can eat them.
  • Bree and Stilton, a Fat and Skinny pair of sewer rats, are the first battle in the game as they attempt to rob Verm and his brother. They go straight post-prologue, wanting to inform the king of Rodentia's unaddressed problems and discussing issues with other citizens. Near the end of the game, they're the ones organizing a revolution on Verm's behalf in order to help Verm's party infiltrate the royal palace.
  • If certain sidequests are done before the end of the game, Rosalie, George the rabbit, and Nemian the Hedge Knight, all of whom were previously battles, assist Verm's party in revolting against the King.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • Lance versus the Yellow God. None of his attacks deal a single point of damage to it, and once Lance gets its attention, the Yellow God uses its hand to crush Lance several times for damage way over his maximum health, killing him.
  • The first Duel Boss against Blademaster Leo has him parry everything Verm throws at him. Even after Verm manages to break Leo's weapon, he still follows up with an attack with his broken weapon that deals as much damage as the grip of the Yellow God.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: The people of Rodentia call humanity gods, and many are terrified of even the chance of gaining their attention. The opening lets us briefly control a mouse who is attempting to attack one of them as a distraction, and it's an utter Curb-Stomp Battle where the human is left completely unharmed and the mouse is crushed to death almost immediately by an attack that does hundreds of times more damage than their maximum health. A book by a Loremaster who dedicated her life to understanding the behavior of Gods says the question she's asked most often is whether Gods are mortal and says this is a controversial topic, but there are verified accounts of them dying.
• Humanlike Animal Aging: To a point. Rodents don't live as long as humans do, usually measuring time in "seasons" rather than years. Plaguemaster Aquila complains that "gods" live one hundred times as long as rodents, which may be them exaggerating. But there's never discussion of the different rodent species having radically different lifespans - actual gray squirrels can live up to twenty years, compared to mice and rats which can rarely reach four years of age - something that would have made the kingdom of Rodentia quite dramatically different.
• Humanlike Hand Anatomy: It'd be difficult to build such an advanced Mouse World without them! The most striking example is probably Violet the bat, who's fully humanoid and has basically finned upper arms, rather than a membrane stretched between elongated fingers. Larger animals known as Titans sometimes also have hands - the stoat Blademaster Lamia is quite capable of using weapons - but are often less anthropomorphic.
• Interface Spoiler: Several of Verm's Tech Tree skills have their names redacted during the prologue, which might be a clue he will change his fighting style before too long. In a wider scale, averted in that his brother Lance has an entire tree of skills, some with unique names, that you will never get to use.
• Lizard Folk: There are only a few lizards to be seen in Rodentia, and their being lizards isn't commented on.
• Mixed Animal Species Team: Verm's party consists of himself (a mouse), Siobhan (a mole), Bruce (a red squirrel), and Gwen (a white rat).
• Mouse World: The land of Rodentia is this, being an entire miniature kingdom built under a human city, with its own mouse-sized cafes, barracks, and other fully-furnished locales.
• Nice Mice: There are plenty of mice and they have variable temperaments. Since they're smaller than rats are and mainly don't have a lot of power, they're generally depicted as ordinary civilians.
• No One Gets Left Behind: After the events of the opening, Verm gets some level of a flashback whenever he starts to walk away from a friend or ally in need, causing him to go to their aid no matter the risk.
• Orphaned Series: While the game itself was complete when it launched, the tie-in Needle Knight webcomic made during development only lasted 21 pages and covers just the first half of Sir Leo's "song".
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Mention is made of "Muswolves," but they're implied to just be a myth. "Ghosts and muswolves" is a Rodentian idiom that seems to basically mean "that sounds like superstitious nonsense." However, ghosts are seen at a few points in the story, and Vinium's new champion gladiator is said to be a muswolf... but it's just kayfabe.
• Ominous Owl: They're referred to as Nightwings and of course are extremely threatening to the residents of a Mouse World.
• Out of the Closet, Into the Fire: Bruce first encounters Gwen in a Clan Grey dungeon where the latter's crime was simply being queer in a territory that doesn't tolerate it. Bruce himself is arrested alongside his boyfriend Anton, but their main crime is thievery.
• Pacifism Breaking Point: Bruce is averse to combat, preferring to support his allies with music. However, upon reencountering Pocket, the thief that betrayed him and led to Anton being imprisoned by Clan Grey, he decides this is a matter he needs to deal with himself and learns his only offensive skill, "Thwack".
• Pets Versus Strays: Since the residents of Rodentia consider humans to be Gods, they're fairly positive about pets, who they regard as having been chosen and freely given housing, food, etc. Gwen contrasts that to living in the Hall of the White Gods, which offers those same benefits but makes them "transactional" as the White Gods have many cruel demands of their experimental subjects. A brief conversation with Halfsight the cat suggests cats have a more varied opinion, with some regarding collars as marks of slavery and others seeing them as akin to fine jewelry.
• Point of No Return: Once Verm talks with Bree and Stilton in a tavern about organizing a revolution as a distraction so Verm's party can sneak into the palace to deal with King James, Plaguemaster Aquila, and the Yellow God of Death, they warn his party that there's no going back once it starts, with Verm's allies suggesting some final sidequests to undertake first. Talking to the tavern mice again initiates the final sequence of the game.
• Red Herring: When Verm goes missing after being soundly defeated by Sir Leo and falling into the sewer there is a Time Skip, and the game resumes with his friends trying to find him. They hear rumors of a particularly ferocious fighting mouse in the Gladiator Games in Vinium, so Bruce follows up on this lead. Verm is in Vinium thanks to an unscrupulous shrew rescuing him to exploit, but he's been keeping his head down and farming the whole time. The ferocious fighting mouse just has the gimmick of being a 'muswolf' to get the crowds going, and she's quite chill out of the arena.
• Relocating the Explosion: Inverted. Excalibur is "disarmed" by making sure the ballista it's hooked up to doesn't launch it. After the final boss fight, it explodes anyway, destroying the clock tower it's in.
• Resourceful Rodent: While Rodentia as a whole is filled with intelligent rodents, Verm's party frequently comes up with innovative ways to solve their problems, such as Siobhan repurposing a lighter as a God Weapon that fires its flame like a cannon.
• Running Gag: Whenever the party has to jump down from a high place, Siobhan always lands on their face, with a squeak instead of a thud.
• Save Point: The game can be saved at any idol, whether it's a golden statue honoring a war hero, a carved wooden figurine, or simply an action figure purloined from the Gods.
• Scary Scorpions: Vinium has several scorpions referred to as Imperators - presumably after emperor scorpions - to pit against rodent gladiators. The scorpions are non-anthropomorphic and unlike most foes are killed in these combats rather than disengaging.
• Schizo Tech: The kingdom of Rodentia is roughly medieval, with animals forging swords and wearing armor. The human world above them is on the modern side, enough to have Gameboys and calculators, and various animals use human items as "god weapons" or else as props, such as the Duke of Clan Grey having a vape pen. Rodents also steal electricity from humans. Aquila also develops simple mouse robots suitable as Mecha-Mooks.
• Screwball Squirrel: In the backstory, militaristic and intolerant Clan Gray squirrels came from across the ocean and displaced the gentler local Clan Red squirrels, invoking how grey squirrels from the Americas became invasive and outcompete Eurasian red squirrels. Individual gray squirrels vary in personality with many actually being quite nice, but Clan Grey's leader Duke Josh is volatile, ensures security by employing a stoat who eats people he's had imprisoned, and won't stop vaping in front of people.
• Seers: After the jailbreak and becoming enemies of Clan Grey, the part seek out the Cailleach^note "divine hag" in order to know where to go next. It turns out that Clan Grey beheaded the Cailleach long ago after being given a prophecy of their downfall, but her four owl children are willing to answer one question for Verm before they demand tribute and try to kill him.
• Shout-Out:
  • Verm is an expy of Guts from Berserk, from his clothing and the BFS that many characters marvel at him being able to use, to an arc of learning to accept and rely on the help of others and that there's life beyond revenge, to even his personality. He even says "As long as I was swinging my sword at a foe, I didn't have to think", and then there's this moment that's a clear visual reference to Guts riding Zodd.
  • One location is a toy store that includes a doll of the witchy rabbit persona of Lilith Walther, the developer of Bloodborne PSX and Bloodborne Kart.
  • The mythical character of Ratlas in Murida is a reference to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
  • Sir Diego in his armor◊ resembles Executioner Smough, complete with hefting a gavel like a war hammer.
  • An in-universe book called "The Destitute" involves Sir Jacques pursuing Volejean.
  • Needle Knight has a reference to Seven Samurai (or any of the many things inspired by it) as Leo remembers the Tokudaia Ten, a band of warriors who taught a village to defend itself against water vole raiders.
  • One of the items is an Oaken Ocarina, which has a The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shape and is described as "Nostalgic to the ear".
  • In the remains of a burnt-out Clan Red city, there's the remains of a statue. "Two vast and trunkless paws of stone stand before you."
  • A shrew ate a bad mushroom and had a vision of being the main character of Aviary Attorney.
  • Plenty to Final Fantasy, given the game functions as a throwback to many classic JRPGs:
    • Bruce gets called a spoony bard in a rare case of the word being used correctly.
    • The Octopus boss singing is a reference to Ultros from Final Fantasy VI.
    • Verm says "let's mosey" under White Hall.
    • Verm's Cleave attack bears a great resemblance to Cloud's iconic Climhazzard Limit Break, also from FFVII.
    • Gwen's a white rat with a cape, nicknamed "Dragon," who wields a spear, all pointing to Freyja from Final Fantasy IX.
    • Blademaster Leo bears a great resemblance to General Beatrix, also from FFIX - both are high-ranking soldiers loyal to a monarch, who are famed in-story as peerless warriors, and are fought as a Hopeless Boss Fight. And just like Beatrix, Leo eventually turns on his monarch when he learns the truth behind his cruel and selfish nature.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Small Saga's small mammals are mainly Civilized Animals with a full Mouse World. Some of the cast walk around mainly naked with a few accessories and basically look like bipedal rodents, some are more on the Funny Animal or even Beast Man side and have head hair and wear full human-style garb including pants and boots. The most anthropomorphic character is a bat that's basically a fuzzy human with batlike ears and a nose and finned upper arms, able to play a guitar and wear a T-shirt. Larger animals or "Titans" are on the Partially Civilized Animal or Talking Animal side. Titans are generally willing to eat rodents, while the smaller animals, including rats, don't go in for that sort of thing. There is also a Friendly Neighborhood Spider who doesn't speak but seems to understand the concept of trade.
• Sneaky Spider: If a treasure chest is in a room by itself with spiderwebs about, it's actually an Avarice Spider. Fortunately, they're not as deadly as they seem, and there are less than five of them throughout the entire game.
• Superweapon Surprise: Averted. The royal court of Murida is aware of the threat the Yellow God poses, and is prepared to defeat it by dropping "Excalibur" on it: an unexploded, salvaged World War 2-era bomb from the Blitz. The problem is that while this would certainly kill the Yellow God, it would also obliterate half of Murida, killing tens of thousands of rodents — and for King James and Aquila, this is the point. The party therefore has to sabotage Excalibur to prevent it from being launched, and defeat the Yellow God the hard way.
• Time-Limit Boss: Aquila's boss battle is a lot more dire than most since they need to be defeated quickly in order to prevent Excalibur from launching. You have 240 seconds (4 real-time uninterrupted minutes) to do it or it's automatically Game Over. Aquila outright says that since they have no battle experience, they can't hope to defeat Verm's group; they just need to buy enough time for the weapon to fire.
• Tuft of Head Fur: A number of characters have these, ranging from just slightly longer fur that seems to be little different from the rest of their fur to a full Furry Female Mane that may even be brightly colored.
• Unexpectedly Human Perception: Part of the anthropomorphization package. All rodents, moles included, can read and are happy walking around through spacious brightly lit environments, and don't make all that many references to whiskers and scent.
• Unusual Euphemism: Anton tells Brian he should "tuck" when in Clan Grey territory, and clarifies that he means Brian's tail. His nose, paws, and ears being red will apparently go unnoticed but the tail is too far. When the Duke becomes suspicious of the performers, he demands to see Brian's tail and has to clarify that he means his actual tail, since at first Brian says "I'm flattered but you're not my type."
• Villain Holds the Leash: The prison warden of Clan Grey has the remote control for a mechanical Titan, an Aibou-looking robot dog. His only move is to give it an extra attack; take the Titan out and he's helpless.
• Voice of the Legion: Most Titans speak in a large, jagged font, befitting their nature as terrifying monsters to mousekind. Some of them are able to affect a less intimidating voice, like Lamia until her Horror Hunger kicks in, and Halfsight, who's old and harmless but as a scary-looking cat scares threats away from the shrew town. Diego, while very large, is probably a rodent under his armor, and he speaks like this except when addressing Leo as his friend. At the end of the game, Verm speaks in such a font when he tells the fallen Yellow God to "RUN."
• Wise Old Turtle: Verm can go on a sidequest to steal paint from a human. In doing so he angers the human's pet tortoises, first being attacked by an indignant tortoise child, then the child's angry father for beating her up, then the larger female tortoise for attacking her family. The two smaller tortoises then want all three to gang up on the thieving mouse, but the mother is a Gracious Loser. Her daughter protests that stealing is wrong, and she says yes but sharing is good, and their God has so much paint while the mouse is only taking a very little.
• Wise Serpent: A slow-worm can be found in the Gloaming Woods who'll reward Verm for telling him something new. Slow-worms are actually legless lizards, but Verm does think this one's a venomous snake at first, and it's posed in a classical serpentine way rather than being rather stiff-bodied as legless lizards are.
• Weird Currency: Seeds, though they're a fairly reasonable currency for rodents to have. As Lance explains, they're portable and don't go bad.
• Wolverine Claws: The champion gladiator of Vinium has gloves like these. Knowing Vinium and its propensity for using human toys, they might actually come from a Wolverine action figure.
• Women Are Wiser: In Needle Knight, out of the Thimble Guard party investigating Solhill Rosalie's the one female and the only one who comes across as a professional. Their leader Sir Alex is happy to abandon the village to be devoured by a vulpes, Val is mainly interested in the contents of their peanut flask, and Leo is courageous and knows their duty is important but is also flighty and erratic. When Alex and Leo duel over the fate of the village, Rosalie is scornful and says they should've just compared tail sizes.

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