First Prototype — January 2014
The first recorded game creation predates the Blade Zenon forum by more than a year. On January 30, 2014, the creator reported successfully building a first game. The concept: a 2D adventure with swords and bows. Sprites were to be drawn in MS Paint and cut in Photoshop. No engine name is mentioned — this was a primitive prototype, not a Unity build.
Two months later, on March 5, 2014, Unity entered the picture. The creator announced they were downloading Unity 3D to build their "first game" — framing the January prototype as a stepping stone, not the real start. The stated goal: post on Steam, earn money, and eventually visit Japan to meet manga creator Eiichiro Oda.
These two moments — the Paint-sprite prototype and the Unity download — bracket the real beginning of the project.
The FreeRealms Context
Blade Zenon was born directly out of the shutdown of FreeRealms, a Sony Online Entertainment MMORPG that had been a significant game for a generation of young players. When FreeRealms shut down, its community fragmented, searching for something to fill the void.
Ryujinni — then 12 years old — decided to build that replacement himself. Community member Hiruko Kagetane later confirmed this directly, noting the project had originally been intended as a FreeRealms replacement before things slowly fell apart.
Lygon
Before there was a game, there was a group. Lygon was founded in 2013 — not as a studio, but as a friend circle. By 2014 it had become the core creative engine behind multiple game projects, described retrospectively as its golden era: a team working together toward the shared ambition of founding a famous games company.
The group's self-description in later years: "A family of people destined for greatness."
Lygon's preliminary end came in 2015, with its complete dissolution in 2016.
Studio Lygon X
The project was developed under the banner of Studio Lygon X, credited in the forum's footer as the production entity behind Blade Zenon (2024 archival note).
Release Date & Platforms
The game was officially targeted for release on October 24, 2015, with support announced for:
- Windows
- UNIX Systems
The forum carried an age rating of 13+.
The Forum Launch
The ProBoards forum at bladezenon.boards.net served as the project's public face — a place to post news, gather community feedback, coordinate guilds, document lore, and recruit players before the game's release.
Moderators were appointed early: BigeCZ, Darky, Lady Nanami, Sȶar, Aʞasa, and Ryujinni himself.
The Name Debate
The project's name was never universally agreed upon. Among contributors, an orthographic split persisted between "Blade Zenon" and "Blade Zenom" — the latter spelling appearing regularly in internal discussions. No official ruling resolved it. The public-facing forum and assets used Zenon, but the alternate spelling continued to circulate informally throughout the project's active period.
Companion Project: Infantaria
Blade Zenon was not the only project under development during this period. A companion project called Infantaria (Infantry) was in active development as early as January 2014 — over a year before Blade Zenon's forum launched. It was developed by a team of four people and was similarly targeting a 2015 release, with Steam named as the distribution goal.
A surviving beta demonstration shows the game's water graphics engine, labelled Água Beta (Water Beta), with an acknowledgement that the visuals were still early-stage.
Figure 1. Infantaria water graphics beta, January 2014. The post notes the game was being developed by four people and targeted a 2015 release with a Steam launch objective.
By July 2015 — just as the Blade Zenon forum was at its busiest — Infantaria was already being recalled with nostalgia by the same contributors who had built it.
A 2018 retrospective assessed Infantaria as a failed project while noting that Blade Zenon had still carried real potential. The same retrospective acknowledged that neither project had ever been finished — ambitious goals that never reached completion.