How Afrime’s Afro-Futuristic Action RPG Hopes To Advance Industry Representation

We can’t imagine many game studios are born in an Uber ride. But when Crandon Dillard picked up games industry veteran Erik Reynolds as a customer, it proved to be the start of a journey far grander than either of them had anticipated. While waiting 20 minutes for a pizza order, the two began chatting and discovered a shared love of gaming. Dillard may have been working as a driver at the time, but he spent his spare hours learning to program. His dream was to develop his own sci-fi RPG.

Reynolds was immediately taken by Dillard’s vision and drive. A phone number swap and another cab ride later, and they found themselves heading down a path that would eventually found Afrime: A new studio with a goal of delivering games from and for a demographic that both believe the games industry has long underserved. Recently, Restart had the chance to speak with Dillard and Reynolds and hear their vision for a new Unyverse in gaming.

“We're a fairly young company inside the gaming space, but I've been a lifelong gamer myself and I have loved mainly single-player games,” says Dillard, now CEO of Afrime. “And so I wanted to infuse that with something that looked more and felt more authentic to my culture. Because when you think of the RPG space, we haven't seen the game like that.”

Dillard had grown up watching his older brother play titles like Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy. But while these helped to shape his interests, it was rare that he’d see a world or characters on the screen that reflected his experience of life or community as a black American.

“How many black-owned video game studios are out there?” Dillard asks. “How many of them are at the AA or AAA level? I think almost every ethnicity on this planet has a game industry built with them in mind, yet the people of my culture don't have them. That's a clear opening in the market. Supply and demand – if there’s a gap in the market, somebody has to come in and provide that supply.

“Why not do it from an authentic standpoint, so that we aren't complaining that someone is coming and taking advantage of that space? How about [we] go in that space with the intention of providing quality content and setting the bar, setting the level of what expectations would be for that space. That's what we imagine that we can do at Afrime Studios, and that's what we're doing.”

Action RPG meets Afrofuturism

Unyverse is Afrime Studios’ first game in development, and Dillard’s hope to plug that vacancy he sees. An afro-futuristic action RPG, it stars a bounty hunter, or Mwindaji, on a planet at the edge of the known galaxy. Returning from military service, they find themselves caught between the interests of the planet’s communities and those of larger outside entities. It’s an ambitious first project for a studio, but one that Dillard approached with enthusiasm long before Afrime officially opened.

“I'm making the game that I've always wanted to play,” Dillard says. “My question had always been: ‘Are there enough gamers out there who felt like me, who want to play this game?’ And unless I come out here and make it, they'll never actually get to do it. I don't want to go another four or five years before I see something like this. I don't want to go another six or seven years before someone even thinks that there's a market for that.”

After working solo for multiple years, Dillard began to assemble a team. But rather than looking locally, he spread his search across the globe. Before long, Afrime was working with artists and coders in Ghana, Portugal, Nigeria, Brazil, and beyond. That international talent was crucial to Dillard’s vision. Unyverse’s afro-futuristic planet and cities will draw inspiration from Afro-descendant groups across the globe.

“For instance, the Mandé tribe in Africa, they’re some of the oldest blacksmiths in the world,” Dillard says. “And so, one of the cities that we built is kind of built [through] us imagining a culture somewhat like theirs but in the futuristic setting.”

These real-world references will mesh with ideas inspired by some of Dillard’s personal gaming favorites. Most notably sci-fi RPGs like BioWare’s Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic. It’s a unique mix that brings refreshing ideas like folding fashion into fighting practicality. When not in use, the weapons of Unyverse’s futuristic world will transform into jewelry – earrings, chains, and more that you’ll see characters sporting as they walk around cities.

“It's hard for me to point directly at something else that looks and feels like this, because Afrofuturism hasn't been done in video games before,” says Dillard. “So taking you to a place that you haven't fully experienced, when you think of sounds, when you think of music, when you think of cultures. Because normally inside the sci-fi space, you don't get to hear Afro-descended accents.

“We have a culture here in America called Geechie, which is the descendants of slaves that, when they got here, mixed their language with English. And it has a really unique sound profile. Some of the characters in our game will have that type of [accent], which is something that hasn't just been displayed on this level in this space.”

Making the cut

The drive towards representation, inevitably, led the team toward the topic of character creation. For Dillard, it was vital that players be able to create their own custom avatar. Not only to immerse players in Unyverse, but to show the industry how badly current creators are failing players of African descent.

“Normally, you get four or five hairstyles out of the 30 or 40 that they give you that actually are specific to my culture,” Dillard says. “And of those five, four or five are usually not done well. And so whenever I've created a character, I’ve either got to make them bald or to put a helmet on, because the four styles usually were bad. … Something that we're going to make sure people understand is, if you are an Afro-descendant character, you're going to see hairstyles that you really wear on a day-to-day basis.”

It’s a problem pervasive through all stages of game development, not just at the AAA level. Scouring asset stores during his early days of solo development, Dillard struggled to find many options for black characters and decent hairstyles. It’s his belief that if Afrime paves the way, others – even larger studios – will be more able and inclined to follow or go further.

“This is what allows us then to be able to hold companies accountable,” says Dillard. “Because we're always talking about representation in the industry. Well guess what? If we can prove that it can be done, [then] you don't have an excuse for why you don't do it.”

Sometimes, the improvements that matter most to players are details that many might not even think to notice. Dillard vividly recounts one instance while showcasing the Unyverse character creator at Dream Con. A player, who was sporting an afro herself, was visibly stunned to see the in-game haircut move and bounce with the motions of the character – not just act like a rigid helmet.

Body building

Getting a handle on hair is only the first step. Allowing players to express themselves and their culture properly means so much more. Face paint, jewelry, and, perhaps most important of all, body shapes. They’re all elements that Unyverse’s character creator aims to account for, and the latter is an aspect in which Dillard hopes the game will excel.

“We focused on: 'What are the different hip shapes that you see people have, what are the different body structures?'” says Dillard. “Because we're not all shaped the same. And so when you think about how games have done it up to this point, you [usually] get one character model. And you can make the character bigger or smaller, shorter or taller. And it may or may not actually represent a real person out there. and just understanding that. As is the culture, us as a people come in all different shapes and sizes. So can we take that realistic change and really put that in a game?”

The goal is to deliver cities and environments that aren’t filled with effective clones. Where, sci-fi dressings aside, you can relate the diversity of people filling digital streets to that you might see when you step outside.

“When you start to see people walking around the world and you see these nuances, these little subtle differences,” Dillard says. “Now, when you're looking at your NPCs, you may not necessarily notice it as a person, but subconsciously, you're going to notice that person looks a little different. So now when you start to see that variety, the world looks more alive because everybody's not built out of the same character model.”

Unyverse’s character creator has understandably become a core focus for the team, both in development and promotion. Afrime also has plans to offer elements of it, such as hairstyles, to other developers.

There’s plenty of work still to be done before Unyverse’s planned 2025 release, and Afrime has lofty aspirations for almost every element of its maiden project. But if Dillard and his team can sustain and harness their evident passion, there’s every chance it’ll make a lasting impact on the industry.

“I've come across a lot of my elders and I've heard them tell me directly: ‘I never imagined that we would have a game like this.’ And so for them, it's been a watershed moment. They don't even play video games. But there's an 80-year-old man right now who's invested in the company because he never thought that there would be a game that has a predominantly black cast that allows him to imagine something different, not playing sport, not being in the hood.

“So to be able to say I can provide a group of people a place for them to imagine themselves and imagine that? That is probably the thing that I'm most excited about. To spark that imagination inside, not the next generation, but all generations who decide to pick up this game.”

Our thanks to Crandon Dillard and Erik Reynolds for taking the time to speak with us about their work on Unyverse.

Unyverse

Release Date: 2025

• Windows
• PlayStation 5
• Xbox Series