With beautiful pixel graphics, a turn-based combat system, and a cast of charmingly quirky characters, Sea of Stars has everything RPG fans love about the genre. While Sea of Stars is clearly reminiscent of early RPGs, those classic gameplay elements manage to feel completely fresh in Sea of Stars’ new demo. This is by design, says Sabotage Studio CEO and Creative Director Thierry Boulanger, who told Game ZXC he wanted to make a game that kept the nostalgic feeling of those 90s RPG games, but with a modern twist.
Sea of Stars, the second major title from indie game studio Sabotage Studio, released its first official demo on February 8, 2023. The demo allows players to take control of three main party members as they explore an island. Players can explore the bustling Port Town of Brisk, solve puzzles in a mystical dungeon, catch fish to cook meals, and face off with enemies in turn-based combat. While this may sound typical for an RPG game, each of these systems has been completely updated to feel seamless and new, yet still retain that retro feeling.
The majority of the Sabotage Studio team grew up on 90s SNES RPGs, said Boulanger, citing games like Lufia, Illusion of Gaia, and Super Mario RPG. Boulanger said that each of these old games had features and ideas he liked, but it seemed like no game had it all, and new RPGs seemed like they continued to stray from these classic approaches to the RPG system.
"As I was growing older, when new RPGs were being announced, they were less and less like these classic approaches to the gameplay systems. I feel like we always kept missing out on the one game that ticked all the boxes… but now that’s what we get to make, essentially."
One of the main things Boulanger mentioned he wanted to improve on was the traversal system of these old RPGs. Rather than movement being locked to a grid where players can move one step at a time, Sabotage wanted to do what they called “unshackling the traversal”. In Sea of Stars' demo, players can jump up and down from almost any point on any platform, enter and exit bodies of water with ease from any point, and explore areas of the world seamlessly.
With old RPGs, you are always bound to the tile set– bound to the grid then you move one step at a time, which we did for the world map as a call back to those games and those kinds of controls. That's how you control your character on the world map. But otherwise, we wanted to do what we call 'unshackling the traversal'. So the fact that you can hoist up, jump up from anything, exit in and out of the water with no clear transition between entry points and exit points–everything is organic, making it more of a world that you can touch
This seamlessness is translated into how enemies function in the game as well. Every enemy in a given area is visible, doing away with the random encounters seen in old RPG combat systems. Battles are initiated by coming into contact with these enemies, who interact with the terrain of the area just as the player does. Everything feels connected, and it’s more like you're actually there.
One of the main ways players can see how Sea of Stars innovates on these old systems is in the combat system. Rather than just simply clicking on spells and having them be cast automatically, players have to time their clicking with the character’s animations, keeping them constantly engaged in combat. While spells consume a lot of MP, it regenerates throughout combat, meaning players no longer feel obligated to do things like hoard MP to use all at once at the end of a dungeon. Even after a character dies in combat, they’ll revive after a few rounds as long as other party members are alive. Exploration, combat, and even fishing in Sea of Stars all have changes that do away with some of the frustrating mechanics of early games of the genre, which was exactly Sabotage’s goal.
“Before we work on any game at Sabotage, we see what genre we’re going to be working on, and make a list of the known irritants or things we feel we could improve upon.” Boulanger stated he wanted to make sure the game retained its retro roots, while still feeling like the next iteration of the genre.
“We can’t make you be ten years old again. But we can make you feel like that–the way you felt while you played those games. What we’re shooting for is a game that is as good as your memory of those games.”
Sea of Stars’ demo is available now on the Nintendo Switch.
