"The game's developers grew up playing PlayStation and Super Famicom games as well as watching anime; "VA-11 HALL-A" tries to "make players feel what we felt when playing our favourite titles back then", says Ortiz.Fernando Damas, writer and programmer of "VA-11 HALL-A", added in an interview that the game tries to make the player "feel small", and rather than guiding them through the basics of the plotline, the player is instead thrown into the middle of everything and only given the means of piecing together what is going on.