Star Stealing Prince (Story of a Snowbound Kingdom)

Making a game is hard. Even though it sounds like a great idea, it's actually really, really difficult to pull off correctly. So many elements have to be considered: gameplay, graphics, plot, writing, setting, audio, and more. Fortunately for aspiring developers, tools such as RPG Maker exist to supply code, art, and sound to make the creative process easier. Unfortunately for players, the fact remains: making a good game is still hard. Thus, most projects made in RPG Maker are unfinished, broken, or just plain bad. But when the rest consists of games like Star Stealing Prince, it's hard to complain.

There's a prince in it. You'll never guess what he ends up doing.

Star Stealing Prince is largely a celebration of what so many people love about role-playing games in the first place. At its heart, it's the story of a young prince who sets out seeking adventure with a small band of unlikely friends. Dungeons are explored, puzzles are solved, climactic (and difficult) battles are fought, bonds are forged, worlds are saved, and yes, stars are stolen. Despite the fairly linear storyline, there's a good focus on exploration, secrets, and hidden items, and especially dedicated treasure-seekers may find a path to a secret dungeon and an alternate ending (which is absolutely worth pursuing). 

While all this stuff sounds pretty cool, it's not exactly unusual for RPGs, and as mentioned before, countless bad games have been made in the past. Star Stealing Prince is good because it does these things well, while also bringing in a few surprises and twists along the way. The plot presents itself as a simple matter of "go on a quest and save the princess" at first, but this is very quickly thrown by the wayside in favor of a complex and deep narrative about selfishness, trust, and grief. Characters are both endearing and realistic (well, as realistic as they can get in a world where magic and ghosts both exist and are important), and their actions and feelings are presented to the player in a manner that can go from heartwarming to tearjerking to gutwrenching in the space of a single scene. It feels much like a fairytale or fantasy novel, and despite the occasional writing goof, it may be one of the best stories I've ever played through.

Exploring often leads to nice rewards. This isn't one of them.

The world of Star Stealing Prince is as rich and detailed as the story. Even though the setting is rather limited in scope, there's many areas to search, and finding objects hidden in every nook and cranny is very rewarding. Many things give responses if checked, and tidbits about the backstory of the characters and the world they inhabit can often be found in unexpected places. There's also a ton of foreshadowing which only becomes evident in hindsight, so read everything carefully. Every bit of every location feels at least a little bit significant, and the mixture of stock art and fantastic original art is very nicely put together, feeling like a coherent whole.

Even places like this snowy town avoid feeling bland or repetitive.

Of course, games have to be fun, too. And Star Stealing Prince definitely manages to be fun. A common pitfall of RPGs is when either they are too easy, in which case actually playing just feels like an annoying delay in getting to the actual story; or they are too hard, which in an RPG translates to forcing the player to fight enemies over and over for hours on end to get strong enough to continue. While Star Stealing Prince tends a bit toward the hard end of the spectrum and may require a bit of "grinding" to get through, its difficulty usually comes from the fact that actual thought and strategy has to be put into both puzzles and combat. Every puzzle feels well-designed and has a reasonable solution, and this extends to boss battles as well, which while tough can usually be overcome once the player figures out their strengths and weaknesses. It helps that the battle system encourages experimenting with different equipment and skills, so even ordinary fights rarely become boring.

This thing is still probably going to kill you at least once.

Every element of Star Stealing Prince, from its artwork to its gameplay to its wild story, comes together to make it an RPG worth experiencing. If you're looking for a fantastic adventure to carry you away, finish up your homework, download Star Stealing Prince, and buckle up.

OFF (the wall)

If video games are art, OFF is probably what you would get if you handed the surrealist movement an RPG Maker kit and told them to go wild.

What exactly are we supposed to expect from this?

OFF does not waste much time on introductions. Your protagonist, a baseball player simply called "the Batter", is on a sacred mission to purify the world's Zones and defeat the specters that plague them. A perpetually-grinning cat calling itself "the Judge" gives you quick tutorials on combat and solving puzzles, and before long you'll be busting ghosts and letting the intimidated inhabitants of Zone 1 get back to their important jobs of mining smoke and extracting metal from cows. If none of that makes any sense to you, you're not alone; explanations for this game's events are few and far between, and all answers just serve to raise further questions. It's that kind of game.

The world map itself is confused.

Even before the Batter arrives on the scene, the universe of OFF is on its own the definition of bizarre. The Zones, where all the action takes place, are essentially huge metal platforms floating in a sea of liquid plastic. There are very few signs of any life in the world other than the specters and the not-quite-human residents of the Zones. (And the aforementioned cows.) There's an air of artificiality to everything, and this, combined with the fact that the world bears little to no resemblance to our own, makes the atmosphere distinctly unsettling.

It's the art direction that really supports this feeling. Graphics are mainly minimalist, flatly colored sprites, unless they decide to be hand-drawn pencil sketches, or rendered photographs. Most characters are totally monochrome, while their environments are brightly colored. The strange combinations really hammer in the constant feeling of unfamiliarity that totally permeates the world of OFF. The soundtrack also deserves mention here, being an unconventional mix of ambience, harsh noise, and the occasional jazzy swing bit. It's a shining example of how all the elements of presentation can combine to set the mood, which in this case is almost terrifyingly surreal.

Also, there's pedalos.

And as for the Batter's own journey, well! I won't go into much detail, because there's a lot of things that are better experienced first without knowing about them beforehand. However, the plot of the game is every bit as weird as the world it takes place in. Symbolism is rampant, and it's often unclear what exactly anything is referring to. There's a wide range of theories about just what is going on, especially in later parts of the game, and nothing can really be proven. The one thing that does become clear is that there are sinister forces at work in the world. OFF's genre is often classified as "surreal horror", and while much of this post focuses on the surreal aspects, it definitely does earn its horror designation. Even the Batter's motives and the consequences of his actions are thrown into question by many characters and by his own actions, yet the Batter presses onward.

Or rather, you push the Batter onward.

In my last post, I talked a good deal about the impact of a player's choices on a game designed around them. In contrast, OFF presents very few in-game decisions to the player. Certainly it's possible to take in the sights in one Zone for a while, or return to a previously purified area before continuing on to the next, but ultimately, the Batter will end up at the same destination no matter what path you choose for him to get there. Yet this, too, is a way to look at the player's ability to choose. As is eventually revealed, even if there seems to be no other way to go, there is always one decision the player can make: to quit and leave the world of OFF behind, or to keep going and fulfill the Batter's mission. And, within the game's universe, this may be the choice with the greatest impact of all.

But if you don't play, you won't get to meet this guy. Just saying.

I do have to admit, however, that there is a particular flaw in OFF that detracts a bit from the experience. For a game that is all about kicking the player's expectations and knowledge about how the world works to the curb, the combat system is remarkably straightforward. Purifying specters (and the occasional whale) is done in a very stripped-down version of an RPG battle system, and the fact that your moves have such names as "Saturated Chain" and "Run with Courage" does little to hide the fact that there's little actual strategy involved. Even boss battles can often be won simply by setting the fight to "Auto" and watching the Batter smack away with his pixelated baseball bat, with occasional breaks for healing. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, if not for the high frequency of both random and forced enemy encounters that leave the Batter no choice but to fight. Perhaps it's meant to be a statement about how senseless violence is a poor solution to our problems? In this game, that's entirely possible.

This specter looks like it just told us a really bad joke.

In the end, though, boring combat isn't enough to totally ruin the brilliantly bizarre atmosphere that OFF sets up. In some ways it even improves the experience, by encouraging normal RPG players to pay attention to the world and the story unfolding around them when they would otherwise be hacking through as many foes as possible. And OFF's worldbuilding and story are practically perfect, if often incomprehensible. Its greatest strengths lie in its ability to draw players into its wacky world, make them believe that the weirdness is entirely plausible, and then, when things get bad, remind them that they always had the chance to leave if they really wanted to. So, when you finish your homework and are looking to be transported to a whole new world, give OFF a try. You might not regret it.

Iji (Fighting Aliens and Other Questionable Decisions)

If you liked freely blasting your enemies to bits in Cave Story, Iji is going to be a fun and interesting experience for you.

A young girl stares at her own name projected in the sky.

Iji is just an ordinary girl, taking an ordinary trip with her ordinary family to the ordinary research facility where her ordinary dad works, when she looks out the window and sees some definitely-not-ordinary lights in the sky. The next thing she knows, she's laying in a bed, and the bodies of several researchers are laying right outside the door. As her brother Dan explains over the facility's speaker system, the lights came from aliens called Tasen who struck the building with a barrage of lasers before descending into the facility and killing everyone they could find. However, all hope is not lost, as the survivors have spent the last six months(!) using Tasen nanofield technology to turn Iji into a weapon capable of standing against the invaders, able to use Tasen weaponry, upgrade abilities, take machine gun fire to the face, survive long falls, crack codes, and basically do anything a video game protagonist would need to do. Now, Iji is the last hope for the humans against the Tasen invading force.

And all that before you even get to the controls.

So begins the tale of Iji's fight against the Tasen. Gameplay-wise, the game is essentially based around shooting aliens and trying not to get shot by them in turn. The research facility setting, while full of branching corridors to explore, is not exactly conducive to jumping around and falling into pits, so instead, Iji gets its difficulty from constantly thrusting its heroine into combat.

A fairly standard situation for Iji.

Enemies get stronger and more numerous as the game progresses, and Iji too gets stronger as she gains more experience in fighting. Killed aliens drop nano fields, which can be picked up to increase stats and gain the ability to wield rocket launchers, machine guns, and ever more powerful guns. From beginning to end, Iji is a constant battle against merciless foes, and Iji guns them all down, because that is the only way that she can save the last vestiges of humanity.

...or is it?

Near the beginning of the first level, Iji encounters her first opponent, the lowliest of Tasen foot soldiers. Dan's advice says that while she should kill the enemy in order to grow stronger and get used to fighting, there is nothing stopping her from simply walking past. Some players might not even notice this line before they open fire and clear the path; after all, the alien has no qualms about attacking the moment it sees Iji. In truth, this is a choice that will be repeated throughout the game. Iji herself expresses doubt about killing Tasen, and while players used to other games may not think twice about mowing down a hallway filled with alien soldiers, sparing their lives is always an available choice.

And ultimately, it is choices that define Iji's journey. The game does a brilliant job of handling the player's choices and reacting to them. As stated before, the most commonly recurring choice throughout the game is whether or not to kill. It is in fact possible to complete the entire game without taking a single life, and without going into too many plot details, this does have an effect on how the story plays out. Both pacifism and murder are viable solutions here, and Iji, Dan, and the rest have their own opinions on how the situation should best be handled, but it comes down to the player to guide Iji down their chosen path. And, by the end, the player will have to decide whether they really made the "right" choice.

Dan would rather not think about things like that.

Player choices extend beyond the simple "fight-or-flight" of combat. Head down this hallway, or take that elevator? Upgrade health to take more hits, or upgrade weapons to deal out more damage to enemies? Use a valuable item now, or save it for later? All of these choices can end up changing not only the player's experience of the gameplay but how the characters themselves experience events, and many actions, even ones as minor as ignoring a single logbook, will be commented on by the characters. The result is a game where every action the player takes feels important.

What begins as an ordinary sci-fi gunfest quickly blooms into something surprisingly deep. Everyone, whether human or alien, generally avoids being one-dimensional or stereotypical, and their actions and reactions make sense; Iji herself in particular reacts just about as well as you would expect to suddenly having all the hopes of humanity riding on her. Surprisingly for a game with such a bleak premise, there's a good amount of humor as well, as Tasen logbooks complain about everything from the weather to the pests to the guns that only their higher-ups are allowed to have. There's a terrific attention to detail as well, and while the game only takes two or three hours to play all the way through once, bonus features, difficulty levels, and loads of secrets keep things fresh even when replayed.

One of the advantages of video games as a medium is that they give players the power to make choices that affect how things turn out, and Iji is possibly one of the greatest examples of how the element of choice can be used to make an impact on players. When your homework's done and you're looking for a game with an excellent story, playing Iji is definitely a good decision.