When Sabotage Studio’s debut The Messenger released, there were hardly any expectations put forward. As an homage to NES platformers—and Ninja Gaiden in particular—it went far beyond a typical retro tribute, delivering a genre-bending platformer with a novel time travel mechanic, paying dues to its predecessors while hiding plenty of surprises. Many awards and positive reviews later, Sabotage is finally ready to reveal its follow-up game, the turn-based RPG and Messenger prequel Sea of Stars.
Sabotage’s CEO/Creative Director Thierry Boulanger makes no bones about it: Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario series. Sabotage’s sophomore release seems an ambitious blend of familiar, tried-and-true aspects, an inspired approach to navigation, and a conversational, character-oriented narrative, centered on two protagonists associated with the sun and moon.
While Sea of Stars is a single-player affair, you choose to play as either Valere, the moon-powered spear-toting monk, or Zale, the solar blade dancer, as your primary avatar, with the other ing alongside you as a follower. The "Solstice Warriors" kick off their quest on Watcher Island amid mountainous creeks, glowing ancient statuary, and lush forests, with the area named after the large kneeling humanoid statue located to the northeast. They’re hot on the heels of the Fleshmancer, a mysterious, heretofore-unseen villain whose vile abominations and corrupted creatures lie in wait within a secret cave.
Thierry might disagree, but the tone of the game appears to be considerably darker than that of Sabotage’s first release, which bore plenty of irreverent and cheeky humor. Breadcrumbs to the wider story of Sea of Stars—which itself takes place hundreds of thousands of years prior to the events of The Messenger—exist throughout the other game, but watching 16-bit renditions of patchwork Cronenbergian monstrosities stomping around a dimly-lit cave adds a certain body-horror flavor to this title. Eagle-eyed gamers will still notice signposted lore references in The Messenger, but the presentation here is so different that, currently, the link between the two games implies that no previous experience will be required to fully invest in this narrative.
Some things remain the same, though, and Rainbowdragoneyes is once again taking care of soundtrack duties. While the demo only featured a couple of different tracks, fans of The Messenger's ears are probably already perked up with this mention, and the composer is returning to this world with some rambunctious SNES-flavored pieces. The battle track alone seems instantly reminiscent of classic fight music, equal parts Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
As for the gameplay, fans of the Paper Mario series will feel right at home, especially in of the agency offered to players during the menu-driven combat: “...the timing [of] your hits and the active input in combat? That’s the thing I found missing in so many RPGs. I’ll try to press the hit button during the animation [in other games] to see if I could deal more damage. I’m like, ‘It doesn’t work! They should all be like this game!’” In other words: this isn’t going to be a matter of mindless treill turn-based combat, and timing will factor into most every chosen action. Within the demo we watched, a boomerang ability rewarded well-timed button presses, and defending at the right time will greatly reduce enemy attacks. There are also tactical choices to be made for counteracting enemy attacks, most of which make use of the solar/lunar concept.
Much like Chrono Trigger, there will be no surprise enemy encounters to deal with, and absolutely no transition screens introducing these bouts combat: “[This] was the first thing: everything is seamless. There’s no separate arena. Everything is in the same world, alive, that you can see and touch.” Making their way past the Fleshmancer’s minions, the two main characters skulk by pacing monstrosities in the darkness, with no random encounters in sight (though dodging these battles seems tricky).
Watching the demo play out, there’s an intriguing emphasis on exploration mechanics for a game in this genre—it almost comes off as a kind of isometric parkour. The characters leap onto lake beds, are carried away by rushing rivers, and clamber over cliff sides to progress. This mix of light platforming and navigation with turn-based tactics adds an interesting balance to the RPG package, and also heightens the apparent tangibility of the world, where puzzles are activated by time of day and pillars arise to create paths through bottomless pits.
So, can the characters fall to their deaths? What do fail-states look like in Sea of Stars? “We have some penalty for dying, but what we do for every single system we look at is: we either need to cater to a thing that aged well—and that is mandatory for the game to open that nostalgia box, and to feel right and to give you the emotional journey we want to give you—or, if it didn’t age well, we need to rethink that. And so, is that [aspect] a character, is that something that builds the world, on top of only serving as a mechanic?” It’s this sensibility that seems to carry the game beyond its Chrono Trigger touchstone, where moving throughout the world and looking for tucked away secrets and puzzles is just as important as winning each battle. Navigating around each level will reveal rewards, but players shouldn’t expect bottomless pit insta-deaths.
Choosing to battle should mean upgrades, though, so what might that look like in Sea of Stars? “With progression, we’ll be coming with something other than an amount of digits you’ll never care to read until the next time you gain three ive stats, in a way that’s not truly meaningful.” Thierry insists that leveling up remains a work in progress, but there’s a concept to start with: “For now, the idea is you’ll be collecting little pieces of stars, and whenever you come across a pond in the game, at night, you can look at the reflection of the stars. Looking up at the skies, you’ll choose which star you want to light up in the constellations, so you’re writing your destiny. So it wouldn’t be just like, you’re level four instead of three, so here’s +2 agility. It’s like, what do you do with this one star?”
“Very much, in the core vision, there’s no grinding. Your characters will evolve along with the story. And you should have some incentive to do every single fight at least once, because it gives a meaningful reward.”
Sea of Stars is currently looking at a 2022 release, and their freshly-launched Kickstarter will let fans into the development process as the Sabotage’s wheels meet the road. With one of 2018’s most impressive and slickly-designed debuts under the belt, there’s more than enough reason to stand at attention.
