Sea of Stars is an entirely different throwback from The Messenger Devs – Preview

Game development is about to get a whole lot more difficult for indie developers. The advent of blockchain technology has created the potential for an entirely new type of game, and Sea of Stars is the first glimpse into that future.

The “the messenger game” is an entirely different throwback from the developers at The Messenger Devs. It features a retro-style pixelated graphics and a cool soundtrack.

Sabotage Studio’s creators created a name for themselves when The Messenger was released in 2018. About halfway through the game, their imaginative tribute to the tough-as-nails platformers of the eight and sixteen-bit eras showed itself to be a sprawling and entertaining Metroidvania. This unexpected combination of genre, tribute, and faithful adherence resulted in one of the year’s most highly lauded independent films. Sabotage Studio begins to tease their upcoming game, Sea of Stars, in early 2020.

Sea of Stars is a JRPG with a turn-based system. It revolves on Zale and Valere, two characters. The two of them are Solstice Children, persons born on the Summer or Winter Solstice who have been infused with Eclipse Magic’s potency. This fortunate birth puts them on the front lines of the fight against The Fleshmancer, an uncool alchemist who calls himself The Fleshmancer.

Sea of Stars is a near-total departure from Sabotage’s debut game, while being a prologue to the scenario of The Messenger. The 16-bit platforms and jittery eight-bit reflexes are no longer available. We have gorgeous top-down aesthetics and juicy JRPG turn-based action in their stead. Dungeon depths filled with vital objects, clever combat, and mystical tomes have replaced jumping, dodging, and gliding. This kind of pivot is normally a dangerous move, but their Kickstarter target was met in seven hours, earning them a standing ovation.

Other Verbs: Fighting, Brawling

Image courtesy of Stabogae Studio

In the style of party member-based team assaults, the fights are inspired by classics like Chrono Trigger, as well as more current influences like the Shin Megami Tensei titles, which include “locks” that may be broken to nullify damage from incoming spells. The game’s meat and potatoes are meant to keep the player interested at all times. The turn-based fights are full of timing-based triggers that will raise your damage output or the amount of targets struck dependent on performance, akin to the Mario RPGs that inspired it. Characters having the ability to fling adversaries close each other, setting them up for area-of-effect attacks, are also used in these confrontations.

In these confrontations, there is also a “lock” mechanism that is extensively used. Some foes may start charging spells and abilities that do a lot of damage. If the player is hit with strikes that match the symbols above them before the turn counter runs out, they may negate or lessen the damage.

The numbers that determine health and MP are modest, but they are significant. In Sea of Stars, your characters won’t be taking thousands of blows, and your adversaries won’t be damage sponges. During our preview, the focus was on encounter speed, and although we weren’t shown the boss of the previewed region, we were informed that encounters are meant to be more like puzzles than equipment or damage checks.

Sea of Stars seems to be somewhat different from The Messenger on the surface, yet there appears to be a similar design concept at work here. Sabotage Team has established themselves as a studio that wants to pay current respect to a bygone era of gaming with The Messenger. The game’s fundamental turn-based combat may seem to a newcomer to be a nostalgic storyline designed to entice longtime lovers of the genre, but closer study uncovers fresh upgrades woven into the fabric of an, simply fascinating, fighting system. Fans of the genre may be found in plenty at Sabotage. Small details outside of the combat, such as the level of aggressiveness shown by adversaries on the overworld while seeking interactions with the player, puzzle originality, and the clarity of character skills, demonstrate that this is a game made by hundreds of caring hands.

During JRPG combat, players might easily go into a state of autopilot, but the timing-based triggers reward the player for being aware. The Sabotage touch is evident in the game’s tempo and intent to keep the player on their toes throughout.

In Sea of Stars, there’s everything from a fun fishing minigame to side missions from a colorful cast of characters to an in-game tabletop game called “Wheels” that we didn’t get to see.

Crossing the Star-Strewn Sea

Sabotage Studio provided this image.

How did Sabotage Studio transform the runway so dramatically? Obviously, studios aren’t always constrained to a specific genre or obligated to keep cranking out sequels to their blockbusters. Sabotage seems to have had Sea of Stars in mind from the beginning. Thierry Boulanger, president and creative director of Sabotage Studio, said at the preview that starting work on Sea of Stars was “their dream.” The Messenger, although spectacular, is in some ways a product of the time’s resource and personnel constraints. Sabotage has increased dramatically in terms of both money and labor force since the original disclosure of The Messenger. 

Beyond creating a post-apocalyptic scenario beset by a recursive demonic onslaught, The Messenger, according to Boulanger, “laid the ground for Sea of Stars.” The crew was well-prepared to take on such a large-scale RPG. Their most serious problems were from growing pains rather than the need to reroute the ship. Sabotage has been hampered more by logistical concerns than by research or development issues, with the workforce almost tripling in size throughout development and the big curveball that was the full year of 2020.

A feeling of momentum has been carried over from their work on The Messenger. Characters create chances for each other to earn more damage via combinations and repositioning, resulting in light-hearted conflicts after the “problem” is completed. That doesn’t mean the game isn’t plenty with interesting friction in the form of difficult hand-crafted encounters.

Aside from the increasing hardships, the Sabotage Studio staff has welcomed the genre shift. They’ve put their creative problem-solving skills to use while working on bending the genre framework of The Messenger. They’ve created a game that seems like it’ll be able to replace the void left by its predecessor in thrilling, nostalgic, but updated ways.