• Source: Sea of Stars

Sea of Stars is a 2023 role-playing video game by Sabotage Studio. The game was released for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S and is set thousands of years before Sabotage Studio's previous game The Messenger (2018). In the game, the player takes control of two heroes named Valere and Zale, who use the power of the sun and moon to fight against an alchemist. Sea of Stars features puzzle-solving and turn-based combat, with the player able to control up to six characters. The game was well received critically and commercially.




Gameplay


Sea of Stars is a role-playing video game (RPG) set primarily on a set of islands in a fantasy world, in which the player navigates the terrain and fight off hostile creatures. The game world is divided between an overworld map, depicting the landscape from a scaled-down view, and navigable areas such as forests and cities that are depicted as more realistically-scaled scaled. Both of these are presented in a fixed isometric view using two-dimensional pixel art, similar to Super Nintendo Entertainment System-era RPGs such as Chrono Trigger (1995). In the navigable areas, the player can converse with locals to procure items and services, solve puzzles and challenges, or encounter enemies.
The player navigates the game world by controlling either Valere and Zale, the Solstice Warriors, which they select at the outset of the game. The other members of the active party, up to two characters, follow them. The characters can freely run, swim, and climb the terrain as appropriate as if it was a fully three-dimensional world. Enemies, typically monsters, are located in specific locations throughout the game world, and will attack upon being approached, with battles taking place in fixed positions at those locations.
Battles are turn-based, with no time limit on turns. On each of the player's turns, they can have one of the active party members take an action: attacking, using a unique ability, using an item, or using a special charged ability. Once a character has taken an action, they cannot take another one until all active party members have done so. Enemies have countdown timers for the number of player turns until they can take action; multiple enemies can take an action on the same turn if their timers run out simultaneously. Characters and enemies each have some amount of health points; when enemies run out of points they dissolve, while when characters run out of points they are knocked unconscious for a number of rounds. If all characters are unconscious at the same time, the game is ended.
Characters also have mana points, which is used for their unique abilities; these abilities might damage enemies with elemental effects, heal characters, or revive unconscious characters. Often, enemies will charge up an attack for multiple rounds, which can be stopped or mitigated by attacking with the element types that break their "locks"; these lock types may be hidden or require multiple characters to break. Different characters have different elemental affinities, such as Moon for Valere or Sun for Zale. Attacking enemies can release "live mana", which can be absorbed by characters to grant elemental damage to otherwise physical attacks.
If the player has more than three party members—up to six—they can swap out reserve characters and active characters who are available to take action at any time without penalty. Special charged abilities charge up over the course of a battle as enemies take damage, and often involve multiple characters working in concert. If the player correctly times button presses just as a character attacks an enemy or vice versa, they can cause the character to do more damage or reduce the amount of damage taken.
Outside of battles, the player can interact with non-playable characters, which can have short conversations, sell armor, weapons, and items, and give quests. They can also fish at specific locations, pick ingredients, rest and cook those ingredients at campfires to create food items, and save their game at books throughout the world. Puzzles are required to be solved throughout the game, usually by moving blocks, flipping switches, and using Zane and Valere's Eclipse magic to adjust the time of day. Multiple modes of transportation become available on the world map throughout the game, such as boats or being hurled between islands.




Plot


Valere and Zale are Solstice Warriors, individuals who have control over Eclipse Magic. Their power is the only magic able to harm the Dwellers, otherworldly monsters created by a god-like alchemist called the Fleshmancer. On their journey to defeat the last known Dweller, the Dweller of Woe, they are assisted by their childhood friend, a warrior-cook named Garl, then an assassin named Seraï. They eventually track down and defeat the Dweller alongside the other Solstice Warriors — Erlina, Burgaves, and Headmaster Moraine — after which the former two betray the group and summon a cult serving the Fleshmancer. The acolytes use the monster's remains to revive the powerful Dweller of Strife. After reaching safety, Moraine tells Valere and Zale to confront the Dweller at the cult's stronghold on Mesa Island.
On their way to Mesa Island, the party discovers the home of an alchemist named Resh'an, who is later revealed to be the Fleshmancer's rival and former associate. Together, they created the elixir of life, which granted them immortality. The Fleshmancer gradually became cynical and misanthropic, leading him to create the Dwellers to spread chaos. In response, Resh'an began training the first Solstice Warriors, sparking a conflict between the alchemists spanning countless parallel universes. The conflict continues in each universe until the Dwellers grow into apocalyptic beings called World Eaters, or the Solstice Warriors gain enough power to become guardian gods.
Resh'an agrees to fight by their side, but he warns that he cannot engage the Dweller of Strife, leaving Valere, Zale, Garl, and Seraï to confront the Dweller without him. On the verge of losing, Seraï attacks the Dweller with Resh'an's hourglass in desperation, and its power attracts the attention of the Fleshmancer. The alchemist dismisses the Dweller, acolytes, and Brugaves to his lair, appoints Erlina as his lieutenant, and mortally wounds Garl before leaving. Resh'an uses his power to temporarily extend Garl's lifespan, and the warrior-cook spends his remaining time helping the party secure passage through the Sea of Stars before dying. The party travels through the Sea of Stars to cross between worlds in pursuit of the Fleshmancer.
They arrive at a technologically advanced planet, which Seraï reveals is her home; she had traveled between worlds to recruit Solstice Warriors who could liberate her people from the Fleshmancer. The party fights through the planet alongside B'st, an ancient spirit given a new body by Resh'an, and they confront the Fleshmancer at his lair. The Fleshmancer summons Erlina, now transformed into a demonic being named Elysan'darëlle, and orders her to attack. The party defeats Elysan'darëlle, and Resh'an convinces the Fleshmancer into accepting defeat. Learning that a World Eater is approaching, Valere and Zale gain enough power to become guardian gods, and they leave their friends to protect the universe.
If the player completes a set of specific sidequests, an alternative ending is unlocked. The party locates a device left by Resh'an, which they use to prevent Garl's death by traveling to the past. They replace him with B'st, who assumes Garl's form throughout his final moments to prevent a time paradox. During the confrontation with the Fleshmancer, Garl provokes him into battling the party himself, and they force him to retreat. Elysan'darëlle appears in another world, reunited with a transformed Brugaves. Valere and Zale ascend into guardian gods, and return once a year to meet Garl on his birthday.




Development


Sea of Stars was created by the Quebec City-based indie developer Sabotage Studio. The company was founded in April 2016 to create The Messenger, a side-scrolling action-platformer; creative director Thierry Boulanger was interested in creating an RPG, but felt that it would be too complex for a studio's first game. Instead, the team used the idea as motivation, and decided that if The Messenger was successful enough, they would make an RPG as their second game. As the game won several awards and sold well, the team began development on Sea of Stars immediately after release in 2018. During the course of development, the studio grew from the seven developers of The Messenger to twenty-five.
Boulanger's concept for the game was to combine what he saw as the best parts of several older RPGs, such as the way Chrono Trigger integrated battles into the game world and gave narrative purpose to the differences between regions, Super Mario RPG (1996) used timed inputs to make combat interactive, and Illusion of Gaia (1993) gave a sense of the game world having a history. The team wanted the game to evoke the memory of those older games via the aesthetic, such as a 2D pixel art style, but to modernize the gameplay and design rather than directly copy elements. One of Boulanger's design goals was to integrate the game's art and map design by having seamless traversal of the terrain, with characters able to freely move around the terrain and climb vertical elements rather than having grid-based movement or a division between the game area and artistic elements. Similarly, composer Eric W. Brown designed different ambient sounds for all of the areas to create a sense of place and connect the audio experience with the gameplay.
Each area of the game was intended to be distinct so that players would be constantly discovering something new and not get tired of an area or not want to replay it. Similarly, the design tried not to overly reuse enemy and art designs to avoid a sense of repetition. The difficulty was balanced so that players would not be discouraged from skipping battles or moving to the next area, or incentivized to spend time grinding in one place. Additionally, the overall world was designed to give the player the sense that it had a history that went beyond the game's immediate story. Elements were also added to hint that the game was a distant prequel to The Messenger; the combined game universe was one that Boulanger had been developing since childhood. As sun and moon-based magic was a large part of the story, Sabotage felt that it was important to have lighting effects integrated into the game, and so spent the first six months of development creating dynamic lighting capabilities that appeared visually consistent with the pixel art.
The game's combat was designed to emphasize tactics while removing the restrictions of the inspiration games. The active elements were to allow player skill to play a part in battles, while leaving the overall battle turn-based without a timer meant that players were encouraged to think about their tactics rather than react quickly. The tactical options were expanded by allowing players to change the order of character actions, as well as swap out characters at will without penalty.
While The Messenger was published by Devolver Digital, for Sea of Stars Sabotage wanted to handle the majority of the publishing and marketing itself. It started discussing the project outside of the development team in September 2019, and in order to prove the viability of the project to themselves and investors, the team planned to launch a Kickstarter campaign in March 2020 alongside a reveal to the press at the 2020 Game Developers Conference. The conference was changed to a virtual event less than two weeks beforehand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Sabotage decided not to postpone the reveal. In the middle of the campaign Yasunori Mitsuda, the composer for Chrono Trigger, agreed to compose several tracks for the game, which producer Phillip Barclay has said gave a boost to the campaign. It concluded with over 25,000 backers and CA$1,600,000 in pledges. The following February, Sabotage received funding from video gaming investment fund Kowloon Nights, which it said was required to avoid cutting any content from the design while still self-publishing.
The majority of the game's music was composed by Eric W. Brown, who had previously composed the music for The Messenger and who composes and performs chiptune music. Brown was primarily inspired by Chrono Trigger, which was the first game he played where he felt the music was connected to the game design. He based the sounds in Sea of Stars's music on the specific sounds used in Chrono Trigger before allowing them to expand beyond the literal limitations of the era, and describes the end result as from an "SNES plus plus". He gave each island in the game a signature instrument to create a distinct atmosphere, such as pan flutes or chimes. In addition to Brown, Mitsuda contributed twelve tracks, the top of the range Sabotage had asked for, including battle, boss, and town tracks, as well as Seraï's theme. The music was released as a three-disc digital album, Sea of Stars Original Game Soundtrack, as well as a 2-disc vinyl LP record.
Sea of Stars was released for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on August 29, 2023. It was the first game to release simultaneously on Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus via its Extra tier. A physical edition was released on May 10, 2024, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. An artbook, "Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho", was released in May 2024 by 3dtotal. A free update to the game, "Dawn of Equinox", was released on November 12, 2024, adding up to three-player co-op options, changes to combat mechanics, and a revised prologue. A larger free downloadable expansion, "Throes of the Watchmaker", is planned for release in early 2025.




Reception



Sea of Stars received "generally favorable" reviews for the PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 versions and "universal acclaim" for the Nintendo Switch version, according to the review aggregator Metacritic. It was ranked as one of the top 20 games of 2023 by aggregated score for Windows and PlayStation 5, and the sixth-highest scored Switch game and ninth-highest scored Xbox Series X/S game. Sea of Stars sold 100,000 copies in 24 hours and over 250,000 in its first week. The game had been played by more than five million people by March 2024, and six million by November 2024.
Many critics noted the game's inspiration from games such as Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Golden Sun. Most critics concluded that the game successfully modernized and innovated on the genre's formula, though some notable reviews considered it lacking innovation compared to past games.
The Guardian compared it to a "lost, late classic of the Super Nintendo era". They praised the modernized JRPG gameplay systems, visual style, soundtrack, environments, and homages to past games. They concluded that "Sea of Stars is no shallow mirror of RPGs past. Its depth and sparkle make it a modern classic in its own right." Eurogamer concluded their review by stating that "Sea of Stars' well-considered inspirations are shot through with smart, modern sensibilities, creating a more-than-welcome addition to the contemporary throwback RPG club." Game Informer directed particular praise towards the game's modernization of various older JRPG mechanics, which "leads to a smooth, consistently thrilling adventure with fun combat, all in a gorgeous and inviting world." IGN praised the game's visuals, soundtrack, and gameplay, but viewed the game as more derivative than innovative in relation to the genre.




= Accolades

=
Sea of Stars won Best Indie game and was nominated for Game of the Year at the 2023 Golden Joystick Awards, and won Best Independent Game and was nominated for Best Role Playing Game at The Game Awards 2023. It was an honorable mention for Game of the Year, Best Design, and Best Visual Art at the 2024 Game Developers Choice Awards, and won the award for "Game, Original Role Playing" and was nominated for "Gameplay Design, New IP" at the 2023 NAVGTR Awards.




Notes






References






External links


Official website

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