Pop Culture Advent 2023: Door 19
Sea of Stars
Door 19! Yikes! Where on earth did the time go? Thanks to anyone who’s been reading along, I really do appreciate it! One thing I’ve been remiss about is including games. After being raised on a diet of Nintendo, I let life get in the way of gaming, until I got back into it during lockdown. (yes I absolutely jumped on that Animal Crossing bandwagon) I now take great delight in the amount of nostalgic gaming places that have appeared over the past couple of years. (Thank you NQ64 and Four Quarters).
So i’m really grateful to the ones of the nicest people I know (and my future brother-in-law) Stuart Pert, for bringing my attention to the game Sea of Stars.
Released this year by Sabotage Studio, Sea of Stars is a role-playing game. Players take control of characters Valere and Sale, who use the power of the sun and moon to fight against an alchemist. The game features puzzles, combat, and players can take control of up to six characters.
Stuart recommends the game because: “There’s been a lot of big releases this year like Spiderman 2 and Mario, but I really enjoyed this small indie game, as it harked back to the old days of Japanese SNES RPGs (role-playing games)”
First announced as a Kickstarter project in 2020, Sabotage Studio wanted to make a role-playing game which showed more ambition than their previous release, The Messenger. The aim was to include higher stakes and explore different ways of storytelling. Creative Director Thierry Boulanger has referenced games such as Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and the Paper Mario series, as influences.
Sea of Stars has gained praise for it’s turn-based combat, with gaming review site, Rock Paper Shotgun commenting that it was the stand out feature of the game:
“With monsters roaming the map in plain sight, combat never comes as a surprise, and your party of three will instantly leap into action right there on the map. It borrows and pilfers from other RPG systems brilliantly, mixing the timed button presses of the Mario & Luigi games to deal extra damage with Chrono Trigger’s character-based combo attacks to satisfying effect” [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/sea-of-stars-review]
You can play a demo of the game, by following the link the official website here:
Cheers Stu, I really really want to play it now!
Sea of Stars has been released for Windows, Nintendo Switch, Playstations 4 and 5, Xbox One, and XBox Series X/S.