Exploring the Quirky World of 2026’s Most Intriguing Game: Salmon, Psychedelics, and Shake-A-JPEG Tech

AP Thomson, the creative mind behind Titanium Court, is a kindred spirit for any fan of Golden Sun. During our chat, I ask him to kick things off with a brief introduction, and as he begins, he spots the original instruction manual for the Game Boy Advance classic, Golden Sun, perched on a shelf behind me.

“Is that the original manual? Or is it The Lost Age? [I hand it to him for a closer look.] Oh, nice! Both games are fantastic. I have such fond memories of the first two. I think I played the second one over a weekend, which was a first for me with a game that long.”

Thomson’s passion for handheld gaming shines through as he shares his backstory. He reminisces about road trips with his parents, always bringing his GBA along, and how he’d play it during family evenings when TV options were limited. It seems that those moments of craning his neck in the backseat or awkwardly perched in a chair to finish a dungeon left a lasting impression.

This nostalgia might explain the aesthetic of Titanium Court, which has a distinct handheld vibe with its tiny sprite characters and a simple color palette. Thomson mentions he drew inspiration from Downwell to ensure his color choices worked well together. I primarily play Titanium Court on my TV through a complex PC setup, but it feels right at home on the Steam Deck too.

Thomson describes Titanium Court as a “match-3 tower defense for people who like to read,” likening it to The Return of the Obra Dinn’s “an insurance adventure in minimal color.” I’ve been telling my friends it’s like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but with a tower defense/match-3 twist in the tactical sections, featuring characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the musical Pippin running around the Navidson house instead of the academy exploration.

Explaining Titanium Court can be a challenge, a fact Thomson humorously acknowledges in its trailers. He admits that while it’s not impossible to describe, traditional terms often fail to capture the essence of the game. “I noticed that when I described it in simple mechanical terms, people tended to skip all the text during playtests. It’s a gamer tradition, but I found that when I didn’t use those mechanical terms, they actually engaged with the text.”

While many games labeled as “solo dev” efforts aren’t truly solo, Titanium Court comes close. Until last fall, Thomson was the sole person behind the keyboard and mouse, though he did receive feedback from playtesters. After that, a publisher joined the project, and he brought in editors to refine the text.

The game is a true reflection of Thomson’s vision. It started in 2019 as a Ludum Dare project themed “start with nothing,” which he initially ignored to create a tower defense game called Little Beetle Bottle Battle. That version was purely mechanical, with players selecting units before battles that played out automatically. After the event, he set Little Beetle Bottle Battle aside to work on Consume Me with Jenny Jiao Hsia and other side projects, but in 2020, he decided to revisit it, believing he could turn it into Titanium Court within a year. It ended up taking six.

As a result, Titanium Court is infused with Thomson’s unique experiences and ideas. The main character unexpectedly becomes the queen of a faerie court, guided by Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was the first Shakespeare play he ever saw. Early in the game, she drinks a love potion and suddenly enjoys baseball, a plot point inspired by Thomson’s own experience with psychedelics.

One of the game’s running gags is that the faeries don’t believe cars are real. “If you’ve ever tried psychedelics, you might know that experienced friends often give you tips. One thing I distinctly remember is being told that if you think you can fly, start from the ground, and cars are always real. So I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if fairies just didn’t believe one of those two things?”

The art style of Titanium Court, featuring exaggerated still images of characters, is inspired by campy stock photography and what Thomson calls Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ “patented Shake-A-JPEG technology.” He recalls his amusement at the expensive, choreographed anime cutscenes in Three Houses, only to encounter a major scene where a character transforms into a dragon, represented by a still JPEG with dialogue boxes. It was so absurd that he decided to adopt a similar approach for Titanium Court.

Three Houses also influenced character development, particularly the protagonist who finds herself in charge of the court. Thomson points out the humorous disconnect between how the game presents the protagonist and their actual behavior, especially when fishing becomes a resource-free activity that players are incentivized to maximize. “It creates a character who seems more interested in fishing than being the chosen one, which is a much more interesting take than a blank slate hero.”

“I believe it’s important to let characters reveal themselves during game design. Once you understand who they are, you can have fun with that.”

Thomson also composed the music for Titanium Court, drawing from skills he developed recently. Although he had been making digital music, he decided to learn guitar during lockdowns to create songs for the game. Initially, he planned for all songs to have lyrics for boss fights, but since they ended up being three to five minutes long and battles only last 30 seconds, he pivoted to instrumental tracks. Players can even choose to watch a full in-game video of Thomson performing a song to skip a boss fight. The first one, titled “F*ck Off And Die,” humorously addresses salmon spawning and dying.

Yes, Titanium Court allows players to skip boss battles. While there aren’t explicit difficulty settings, Thomson has included various in-game features to adjust the challenge level. I eventually unlocked a feature that let me bypass gameplay entirely to explore and interact with characters. When engaging in the match-3 tower defense mechanics, players can toggle a thermostat in the protagonist’s office to “comfort” or “strife,” which randomizes perks that can make fights easier or harder. Choosing comfort comes with no penalties, and the game rewards players for committing to either option, with characters commenting on the pros and cons of both.

“I think we should have more fun with difficulty,” Thomson explains. “Both sides of the discourse have valid points. The traditional easy, medium, hard settings can feel arbitrary and don’t convey much about what they mean. Plus, they’re often a one-time decision that players don’t reconsider.”

As I near the end of Titanium Court, I’m cautious not to spoil any surprises or emotional moments in the game’s conclusion. However, I’m curious about the themes in the latter half, particularly regarding the player’s relationship with the game as an art piece. Without diving too deep, the second half challenges players on how much they want to consume and when it’s time for the game to conclude. It’s a unique approach I haven’t encountered in a game like this before.

“I think many players approach games with the mindset of consuming everything—unlocking achievements and completing 100 percent playthroughs. While that’s a valid way to play, I want to encourage leaving some aspects unexplored. Some of my best gaming experiences have come from not finishing everything, allowing the game to linger in my imagination.”

“The latter half of Titanium Court is about not overstaying your welcome with fairies, which ties into the game’s ultimate goal: to change the player. It’s a spell cast in their direction.”

As we wrap up, Thomson shares a unique insight I’ve never encountered in an interview before. Knowing he’d be speaking with multiple outlets, he prepared different fun stories from the development process to share, ensuring each interviewer had something fresh. Here’s one he told me, and I’m frustrated I only learned about it at the end of Titanium Court when it was too late to see it in action:

“Every character who speaks has either red or blue text, which was intentional. Generally, red-text characters only converse with blue-text characters, creating a writing constraint that simplifies scene combinations. The narrator, however, doesn’t have a color, allowing them to engage in every conversation. Some characters, like the cat, count as both red and blue text because they technically speak in both colors.

“There’s one more twist: two characters were written with the same actor in mind, so they never appear in the same scene. That’s something to keep in mind.”