Quirky Indie RPGs - Depression is optional

[Sparky Lurker]

It is funny because you could still use leftist stuff with just "muh racism" or "eat the rich", it would have fit the setting like a glove, but nope, it is all about coomer shit nowadays.

 

[The Feline Solution]

The game released, according to some positive reviews the game is "Berserk with mouses" although more negative ones claims the dev pushes a political agenda nowhere to be seen on the demo, make of that what you will.

I am playing it currently, about two or three hours in. It had a scene release yesterday, had my eye on it for a while, the sprite work and character design is absolutely gorgeous. I'm a big fan of Redwall and also of oldschoo JRPG's and i'm sure "Derya" Noghani, the creator of this game, is too. I'm taking a break because i need to to talk about this absolute bullshit that is going on right now in the story, i swear i got fucking whiplash from the tonal shift.
Thank God that this thread showed up right away, i was actually unsure if my post wouldn't fit better in Stinkditch than in Games.
The game is good. Really good. I was completly sucked in after ten minutes when the sorta prologue finished. While the mechanics aren't too deep, the world building and story are great, so is (or rather fucking was) the dialogue and the whole feel of the game in general. I wouldn't even call it quirky to be totally honest, it has no leddit/capeshit quips nor cringe humour in its first hour, nor any troon stink.
Then you meet your third party member, a Scots speaking red squirrel bard dressed in a harlequin costume and a luchador mask, so far nothing indicates any faggotry is abound whatsoever.

In the fucking next hour you learn that he's a fag, his boyfriend is a russian grey squirrel or mouse or whatever
and they are on their way to red squirrels ancestral homeland (which your character is trying to reach, too because reasons). Said homeland had a racewar between red and grey squirrels, reds lost, red fag is one of the last of its kind and he plans on robbing the current Duke as some kind of revenge. He also has never been to his homeland before and only heard stories about it from his father. A quote that gets mentioned at least thrice is "The tree where we used to live was always surrounded by a rainbow of butterflies". Party eventually splits and you play from the squirrels POV. You reach the tree and boyfriend tells gayfaggot out of literally nowhere "Oh you need to tuck before we go inside. You need to hide your tail or they will see right away that you're a red squirrel! They throw you in the dungeon!".
Then you enter the tree and find out that the grey squirrels are literally fascist chuds, who are anti degenracy and no fun allowed republiKKKans. In Nazi uniforms, which you at first could mistake for a generic WW2 era military uniforms but then the prison chief shows up wearing full SS commissar regalia, including red armbind, though sans swastika. You eventually end up in said dungeon and your cellmate turns out to be a tough lesbo warrior (of course she's your next new party member). Who you learn got thrown into the dungeon because, as the brave, outspoken lesbian that she is, she unabashedly hit on the the right hand "man" of the grey squirrel duke. Which you now find out is actually female, with neither the sprite nor the dialogue making any indication of this being the case before.
In a brief and completly pointless scene lesbo warrior then shows of her prosthetic leg, can't risk players thinking that anyone in this fictious world of anthropomorphized rodents is ableist, can we? I mentally checked out completly at this point and just wanted to make it so save point, on the very short way there i learn the grey squirrel Gestapo prison chief is named "Captain Aiden", incredibly subtle foreshadowing for the super original plot twist that's bound to happen in the next five minutes. That'll show these chuds that claim they can clock trans folx IRL, heckin' valid my dood.

I'm in utter fucking disbelief at this point, but then i finally make it to the save point in the tree, see this and i just completly lost it.


The leader of the chud nazi grey squirrels is named "Josh". Is this even the real world?! Literally O B S E S S E D. I refuse to believ that this wasn't made intentionally.

 

[MooseGump]

In the fucking next hour you learn that he's a fag, his boyfriend is a russian grey squirrel or mouse or whatever
and they are on their way to red squirrels ancestral homeland (which your character is trying to reach, too because reasons). Said homeland had a racewar between red and grey squirrels, reds lost, red fag is one of the last of its kind and he plans on robbing the current Duke as some kind of revenge. He also has never been to his homeland before and only heard stories about it from his father. A quote that gets mentioned at least thrice is "The tree where we used to live was always surrounded by a rainbow of butterflies". Party eventually splits and you play from the squirrels POV. You reach the tree and boyfriend tells gayfaggot out of literally nowhere "Oh you need to tuck before we go inside. You need to hide your tail or they will see right away that you're a red squirrel! They throw you in the dungeon!".
Then you enter the tree and find out that the grey squirrels are literally fascist chuds, who are anti degenracy and no fun allowed republiKKKans. In Nazi uniforms, which you at first could mistake for a generic WW2 era military uniforms but then the prison chief shows up wearing full SS commissar regalia, including red armbind, though sans swastika. You eventually end up in said dungeon and your cellmate turns out to be a tough lesbo warrior (of course she's your next new party member). Who you learn got thrown into the dungeon because, as the brave, outspoken lesbian that she is, she unabashedly hit on the the right hand "man" of the grey squirrel duke. Which you now find out is actually female, with neither the sprite nor the dialogue making any indication of this being the case before.
In a brief and completly pointless scene lesbo warrior then shows of her prosthetic leg, can't risk players thinking that anyone in this fictious world of anthropomorphized rodents is ableist, can we? I mentally checked out completly at this point and just wanted to make it so save point, on the very short way there i learn the grey squirrel Gestapo prison chief is named "Captain Aiden", incredibly subtle foreshadowing for the super original plot twist that's bound to happen in the next five minutes. That'll show these chuds that claim they can clock trans folx IRL, heckin' valid my dood.

I'm in utter fucking disbelief at this point, but then i finally make it to the save point in the tree, see this and i just completly lost it.


The leader of the chud nazi grey squirrels is named "Josh". Is this even the real world?! Literally O B S E S S E D.

So what you're saying that there's an exact point where the game just takes a nosedive as the dev trooned out, and not only that started to see fellow troons be made fun of by the evil fascist farmers (possibly, but looking certainly)? That's pretty amazing and on par for these creatures

 

[The Feline Solution]

By what I've seen, between the demo and release the dev trooned out, so of course the full game is full of stuff like this
View attachment 5500889
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Many such cases lads

First pic is shortly before i quit. Funnily enough, my game bugged out completly in that room in the last pic, party moved through the walls and then out bounds, couldn't check the shelves so i missed that particular piece of haram. The picture above that makes sure that i won't pick the the game back up again, which is dissapointing, as it completly shits over 90% of the indie, faux retro JRPG i played over the last decade. Dude "gets" JRPG. I am pretty sure that first part of the game was programmed and written by him pre-trooning, the difference in tone, as already mentioned, is brutal. Googling "Daryah Noghani" at least still gives a link to the KS of the game where he introduces himself as Jeremy as the first result. Fucking queers.

So what you're saying that there's an exact point where the game just takes a nosedive as the dev trooned out, and not only that started to see fellow troons be made fun of by the evil fascist farmers (possibly, but looking certainly)? That's pretty amazing and on par for these creatures

Shit, didn't see your post while typing mine up, that's exactly how it felt and it's a shame it happens so early in the game already.

 

[DuranceVile]

Wow, flew off my wishlist at light speed after reading all that. So yeah another example of a game dev trooning out and injecting their discord's opinions into the game.

Reminds me of a game called Timespinner I played a few years ago. First hour or so (sans side quests, I'll get to that in a minute) is pretty normal. It's a Metroidvania heavily inspired by SotN. Female protagonist doing time travel stuff to stop some evil empire.

You start to notice a trend in the side quests. Everybody's gay.

Well, everybody who is "good" is gay. Everyone. Legitimately every person you bring back to your base ends up being some brand of LGBT. It culminates in a scene right before the end where the main side character comes out as a troon right the fuck out out of nowhere. I believe it was another example of the devs trooning out and smearing it all over the game.

Anybody here finish Sea of Stars yet? I started it, and while the plot wasn't anything memorable in the few hours I played, it seemed wholesome enough.

 

[ShitLurker]

Based on this post it's probably not good.

View attachment 5500860

By what I've seen, between the demo and release the dev trooned out, so of course the full game is full of stuff like this
View attachment 5500889
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View attachment 5500891

Many such cases lads

To the trash it goes

The leader of the chud nazi grey squirrels is named "Josh". Is this even the real world?! Literally O B S E S S E D. I refuse to believ that this wasn't made intentionally.

Though this is fucking amazing, any if you faggots already shared this in the MATI thread? I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it.

Anybody here finish Sea of Stars yet? I started it, and while the plot wasn't anything memorable in the few hours I played, it seemed wholesome enough.

It's in my "I'm interested in it" list and haven't heard anything particularly egregious about it. Though it does have a cameo from The Frauditionist which might make it unintentionally hilarious.

EDIT: Took the liberty of sharing the Josh image and a link to @The Feline Solution 's post about the insanity in MATI. Post in question

 

[Famous Actor]

Well, everybody who is "good" is gay. Everyone. Legitimately every person you bring back to your base ends up being some brand of LGBT. It culminates in a scene right before the end where the main side character comes out as a troon right the fuck out out of nowhere. I believe it was another example of the devs trooning out and smearing it all over the game.

Not quite, what you're talking about was the result of the dev team outsourcing the writing (of all the things to outsource...) to a "narrative design firm" a la Sweet Baby. In Timespinner's case those responsible were Silverstring Media, who unfortunately appear to still be around.

 

[LucasSomething]

Shame the rat rpg went unironicaly full panderverse but i'm pirating it right now to see how bad it gets, will post back soon.

Well, everybody who is "good" is gay. Everyone. Legitimately every person you bring back to your base ends up being some brand of LGBT. It culminates in a scene right before the end where the main side character comes out as a troon right the fuck out out of nowhere. I believe it was another example of the devs trooning out and smearing it all over the game.

The game was written by silverstring media which allegedly had Anita Sarkeesian as consultant at the time, thus why it's like that. I actually finished the game back then and it had evil lgbt people too, but it was only the two female emperors who were both lesbians mad the other one killed their lover.

Anybody here finish Sea of Stars yet? I started it, and while the plot wasn't anything memorable in the few hours I played, it seemed wholesome enough.

I tried but the game is just so badly written (writer is french canadian and literally doesnt know english) and boring it and shallow i couln't handle it. Every character has exactly 4 spells, every dungeon is linear diorama where you have to climb, jump,push, etc to look fake dynamic and the protagonists might as well be silent after the intro. There is also Garl who never shuts the fuck up and hijacks every scene.

It's still wholesome and playable if you're not expecting a big story or complex combat. The fact it got so many awards shows how low the standards for indie rpgs are nowadays and how graphics can really sell a game.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Wow, flew off my wishlist at light speed after reading all that. So yeah another example of a game dev trooning out and injecting their discord's opinions into the game.

Reminds me of a game called Timespinner I played a few years ago. First hour or so (sans side quests, I'll get to that in a minute) is pretty normal. It's a Metroidvania heavily inspired by SotN. Female protagonist doing time travel stuff to stop some evil empire.

You start to notice a trend in the side quests. Everybody's gay.

View attachment 5501024

Well, everybody who is "good" is gay. Everyone. Legitimately every person you bring back to your base ends up being some brand of LGBT. It culminates in a scene right before the end where the main side character comes out as a troon right the fuck out out of nowhere. I believe it was another example of the devs trooning out and smearing it all over the game.

Anybody here finish Sea of Stars yet? I started it, and while the plot wasn't anything memorable in the few hours I played, it seemed wholesome enough.

The art style turned me off early (just the portraits, everything else was surprisingly good), and navigation was a chore so I didn't get far. Now I'm glad, how ridiculous.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Anyway, has anybody tried Ib?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1901370/Ib/

It caught my eye and have had it on my wishlist for a while, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Curious to see any takes about it from you guys.

Original Ib was fun but be aware it's way more on the adventure game side than RPG and goes very heavy on the brooding Japanese style slow-burn horror. If you're into that sort of thing Mermaid Swamp is worth the hour or so it takes to complete.

I tried but the game is just so badly written (writer is french canadian and literally doesnt know english) and boring it and shallow i couln't handle it. Every character has exactly 4 spells, every dungeon is linear diorama where you have to climb, jump,push, etc to look fake dynamic and the protagonists might as well be silent after the intro. There is also Garl who never shuts the fuck up and hijacks every scene.

It's still wholesome and playable if you're not expecting a big story or complex combat. The fact it got so many awards shows how low the standards for indie rpgs are nowadays and how graphics can really sell a game.

I don't think there's any way to describe how bad Sea of Stars is with text alone but I feel required to mention that your core damage output throughout the entire game (I assume, I just gave up around the halfway point and backgrounded a longplay to see how it resolved) hinges on two skills which operate on dead man's volley rules and you better enjoy playing DMV because you're going to do it thirty fucking times on every boss fight.

Also because it's Sea of Stars I'm required by law to yell about character design because the developers never stop malding over people losing their shit over getting *this* as a big bad reveal:



And that's not a visual misread like people parsing emperor Geshtal's sprite as a dog in FF6, that guy is absolutely 100% on-model Daffy Duck in a shaman costume. Sea of Stars sure is a game.

 

[Coolio55]

By what I've seen, between the demo and release the dev trooned out, so of course the full game is full of stuff like this
View attachment 5500889
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Many such cases lads

With Small Saga I could tell by the art-style and theming alone. Something *eminated* from it.
It also didn't help that proto-troon "Nathan Karr" ftom the OHRRPGCE scene had similar wierd interests and was the first guy I saw posting about it.

Actually, I think that's him in the book...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

I don't think there's any way to describe how bad Sea of Stars is with text alone but I feel required to mention that your core damage output throughout the entire game (I assume, I just gave up around the halfway point and backgrounded a longplay to see how it resolved) hinges on two skills which operate on dead man's volley rules and you better enjoy playing DMV because you're going to do it thirty fucking times on every boss fight.

Yeah, DMV is really annoying. If it happens every once in a while it would be fine but it is MANDATORY! in almost every enemy encounter.

I'll explain the combat system a bit. You don't have a lot of health and regular enemies can take off quite a lot of it in one hit. This is balanced by a dungeon not having many enemy encounters. In general, don't get hit too much. This is achieved by shutting enemies down. When they're going to make their special attack they get a bunch of symbols over their head and a counter next to it telling you when it's going to happen. Hitting them with all the elements/weapons represented by the symbols makes them do nothing.
So one enemy has, among other symbols, four moons over their head. Well, time to DMV. They also have three poisons, time to DMV. Two blunt damage symbols, timing button presses solves that. It's a bit annoying with regular enemies but with bosses it's straight up boring because you quickly figure out what needs to be chained together and then you do it over and over and over again. They're designed to be a puzzle similar to a Zelda boss. Just imagine how tedious it would be if a boss in Zelda needed 50 cycles instead of 3 to go down.

I remember one boss where I was pretty certain that it was one of those fights where I was supposed to lose(somehow?). No, it just took 15-20 minutes and I was never in danger nor did it feel like I did any damage to the boss.

Another problem is that save points are packed tightly together and they heal you. Enemies in a dungeon doesn't respawn either. So you take a couple of hits because you don't want to volley anymore and the save point is five seconds away. What do you do? Dungeons are small so after the next mob the save point is 9 seconds away. Then 14 seconds away. Then you find a new save point.

In general there's way too much Mario RPG. Hit the button at the right time and a character will swing again, hit the button at the right time then and they do more damage. When an enemy attacks, hit the button at the right time to block and takes less damage, if they have an attack that hits several times then hit the button several times... there's just too much pressing A all the fucking time.

It's not a bad game in my opinion but then this cal-arts fucker shows up

and maybe they hired a new writer with really bad ideas at that point in the game because it really feels like a mary sue. Best at something even though she's only done it once and everyone is in awe of how awesome that character is and despite being a cursed ghost she can shred and pull of solos on a lute and then they talk about bardcore. The tonal shift is jarring, it was pretty generic before, with some hooks that seems interesting, but at that point it really took a shit.

Then there are elements they introduce in the very beginning that seemed like they were very important that is then rarely used.

 

[X Prime]

The problem with Sea of Stars is that it feels "competent, but soulless" if that makes any sense at all.

It's really difficult to explain the exact problem. Like you can't objectively say it's terrible, it's just that the characters are hard to care about.

 

[ShitLurker]

...between these two exhibits and the feedback you guys are giving, Sea of Stars gets yeeted out of the backlog.

 

[Replacement Account]

Wow, flew off my wishlist at light speed after reading all that. So yeah another example of a game dev trooning out and injecting their discord's opinions into the game.

Reminds me of a game called Timespinner I played a few years ago. First hour or so (sans side quests, I'll get to that in a minute) is pretty normal. It's a Metroidvania heavily inspired by SotN. Female protagonist doing time travel stuff to stop some evil empire.

You start to notice a trend in the side quests. Everybody's gay.



Well, everybody who is "good" is gay. Everyone. Legitimately every person you bring back to your base ends up being some brand of LGBT. It culminates in a scene right before the end where the main side character comes out as a troon right the fuck out out of nowhere. I believe it was another example of the devs trooning out and smearing it all over the game.

I thought I was the only one who felt this way about the game.

 

[LucasSomething]

I reached *that part* of the game and yes, it's that bad. The The fascist leader JOSH(ua) will VAPE between lines a call the squirrel and his boyfriend degenerates and "prancing fairies". It's also absurdly immersion breaking how everyone suddendly talk like internet edgelords.

(thats a vape yes)

If you play until the cat fight you'd think it shouldnt be on this thread since it's not "quirky" but then it swings hard into quirky random humor and fails everytime.




ALL COPS ARE BUSTED


(the red hood rat is a ripoff from Freya from FF9 and i hate it)

There is also no self awareness, like the lesbian rat being a pervert reading the "smut" as they call it, thus reeinforcing the logic that faggots are degenerates afterall.

I dont understand wtf happened, it's like the writer died (or transitioned) and was replaced by someone else. Yeah it looks like a funny rpg with a rat that looks like Guts berserk but it started really earnest and took itself seriously, now everyone is calling each other cringe and "bozos" and shit. Shame.

I wont clog the thread with this game it but i'll post more once i'm finished.

The problem with Sea of Stars is that it feels "competent, but soulless" if that makes any sense at all.

It's really difficult to explain the exact problem. Like you can't objectively say it's terrible, it's just that the characters are hard to care about.

I saw someone say SoS is a jrpg game made by someone who loves the "idea of jrpgs" but not a story as a whole and that makes sense. The game has all the elements of a jrpg but they all detach from each other and are less than the sum of it's parts. There are 2 heroes. There is a childhood friend. There are villains. We must save the world. And then X happened. We're introducing new random lore out of nowhere. And then Y happened. There are mcguffins now. And then Z happened...

It's a story that doesnt say anything because shit just happens and you move along. The Messenger was also like that where you go to the right and have fights/jokes and then you save the world and now there is time travel and everyhing is the fault of a cursed music box somehow. That was nonsense but easier to forgive cause nobody expects good story from platformers, a jrpg cant get away that easily.

I also forgot to clarify that when i said "writer" i meant more like "the guy who typed the ingame script", which is in fact the company's president who doesnt speak english and has no writing experience, as he admitted in the game's discord. There is no "writer" in the sea of stars credits.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

...between these two exhibits and the feedback you guys are giving, Sea of Stars gets yeeted out of the backlog.

The game isn't bad, the thing that really makes me tired is the constant button pushing. It is seriously excessive. There's a charm/rune that does it for you at the expense of damage but NOT for the god damn DMVs.
The game would have benefited from having scrub mobs. Right now every mob can hurt you pretty significantly. This doesn't make the encounters meaningful or challenging, instead it is annoying and makes you choose between using a healing item(food) that you can only hold 10 of and need to craft from limited resources OR run back to the save point that is 1½ screens(5-10 seconds) away to get full health/mana for everyone. After playing for a while you will understand that this is the core of the game and it won't change. It's not bad but it is disappointing and the game is a good example of why less can be more and why "balance" can be a detriment.

It's on gamepass so if you have that give it a try.

 

[JamusActimus]

Anybody here finish Sea of Stars yet?

Yeah I actually enjoyed it.
The pixel art is top tier, the music is good, the story is decent/bad and the gameplay gets better.
The story has some cringe moment, does not always make sense all character but one are a bit shallow and flat.
Just turn your brain off sometimes and don't take the story that seriously. The thing is that they want to make a quirky funny story but the characters and world lack the charm and they can't make a serious story because the characters and word lacks deep and logic.

The game thinks you're retarded for a while it's only after you're 25% in that it gives you more liberty and choices gameplay wise.
The game also sometimes does not respect your time that much despite some QOL stuff it sometimes feels old.
With all the party members and skill, it actually feels good to play, matching and mixing skills and party members during battle feels good.

I would say that Sea of Star is carried by the visual, music and animation.

I actually managed to finish it. Can't say the same about chain echoes.
I think bug tales is better because the game does not treat you like a child and most characters and the world have charm.

The problem with Sea of Stars is that it feels "competent, but soulless" if that makes any sense at all.

It's really difficult to explain the exact problem. Like you can't objectively say it's terrible, it's just that the characters are hard to care about.

Oh yeah beside the third party member they all felt flat..

 

[ShitLurker]

The game isn't bad, the thing that really makes me tired is the constant button pushing. It is seriously excessive. There's a charm/rune that does it for you at the expense of damage but NOT for the god damn DMVs

Fair enough, but I have an obscene JRPG backlog, currently starting proper with Triangle Strategy, but also as "high priority" Ar Tonelico, Skyes of Arcadia, Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy, Lisa the Painful and have parked but hope to get back to Pokemon Clover, Atelier Rorona and Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn). That's without counting on other games farther in the back like Grandia 2, Tales of Symphonia or anything from Ys or stuff I'm waiting to be released/localized like the next Legend of Heroes, the AtlusFantasy game and the new one from Vanillaware.

I definitely do gaming but unless a game grabs me hard by the balls, I tend to take my time with them, so I rather not invest time on games that are just there and Sea of Stars sounds like the bog standard definition of "mid". I certainly don't mind sinking my teeth into a "flawed game" but it needs to leave an impression.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Quote bug but regarding Sea of Stars:

> I saw someone say SoS is a jrpg game made by someone who loves the "idea of jrpgs" but not a story as a whole and that makes sense.
> In general there's way too much Mario RPG.

Complete agreement. SMRPG is one of my favorite games ever and it really gets to me that we get games like SoS that are very blatant about it being an influence (i mean come the fuck on they stole Moleville outright) yet don't pick up on any of the nuances on what makes SMRPG work.

Timed hits and limited movesets work if your game is 6 hours long because you're getting a new move, weapon or combat-changing relic every 20 minutes and any of those will shake up your strategy a bit so the combat never stagnates. All of the Mario RPGs manage their disconnected writing by just being a series of vignettes that intend to feel like saturday morning cartoon adventures and aim hard at wordless physical comedy over deep characterization or pop culture references. SMRPG also gives you a very clean, easy to navigate map where you can get basically anywhere you've been before in under 5 minutes (much less in the remake since they added inter-area fast travel) and will change up towns and NPC dialog as you proceed through the game in order to give you actual reasons to backtrack since every location has at least a handful of unique items and quests.

SoS tries to pace itself like a 60-hour game like Star Ocean, has effectively zero meaningful backtracking, no interesting relics, weapons or skill progression, no status effects, and the comedy is all wink-wink nudge-nudge metahumor that completely breaks the mood. I really wonder what these people got out of SMRPG because it sure wasn't good design principles.