In Stars And Time

10/10 awesome game feels like watching a car crash except you are in the passenger's seat and yet can do absolutely nothing to stop it

a psychological horror time loop game that actually manages to be annoying in the right ways for the story it's trying to tell.

Я очень жалею, что прошёл эту игру. Так бездарно просрать 20 часов своей жизни очень обидно. Самое обидно, что у игры был очень хороший потенциал на интересный проект, НО КОНЦОВКА, Это АБСОЛЮТ СОЯ!!! Я не понимаю как люди могут хвалить эту игру, сюжет полностью слит, все его сильные стороны сливаются в унитаз, а на перёд выходят соевые сопли. КАК ЖЕ ГОРИТ С ЭТОГО!!! Ещё и геймплей максимально затянут, игру спокойно можно было сократить часов на 10, потому что то эти 10 часов долбишь одинаковых болванчиков и накручиваешь очередной круг в этой петле. ОЧЕНЬ ЗАТЯНУЛИ!!!! КОРОЧЕ, ИГРА КРИНЖ ПОЛНЫЙ

Honestly, I’d probably give this game a sideways thumb if that was an option. I have…very mixed feelings about it. [h3] Short Version: [/h3] Pros: -Lots of exploration/interactivity in such a small space -Interesting ideas, design, and themes -Lots of considerate QOL features -Very effective ✨Ludonarrative Harmony✨ -Delightful artstyle and a [i] bangin’ [/i] soundtrack (every song hits) Cons: -Bad dialogue. Like, really bad -Inconsistent tone -Drags in some spots (for non-timeloop reasons) -Long-winded tutorials and over-explanations of simple plot points - [spoiler] Underwhelming ending [/spoiler] [h3] Full Review: [/h3] If you’re the kind of person who loves fandom culture (Tumblr/Ao3 type stuff), you don’t need to read any further, just play the game. You’ll love it. For everyone else: I am positively brain-rottingly obsessed with this game, but it wasn’t always this way. Isat utilizes a lot of creative storytelling methods and provides a very very well-thought out experience in some ways, but it does ask the player to push through a lot to get to the juicy stuff. The biggest obstacle in isat is the dialogue; it is incredibly unengaging to read. I like the characters and the ideas behind them, but in general they don’t show much deeper complexities beyond their initial shallow defining trait (the anxious one was anxious, the mean one was mean, etc.). They do get some expansion on their backstories as the game goes on, but those don’t much flesh out what we already know about them, and even when we do get some personal emotional moments, they tend to feel diluted by the large amounts of dry exposition they’re delivered through. The writer does not seem to trust the audience to understand what they’re trying to say, both in terms of explaining gameplay and storytelling, and felt the need to explain every plot point and character’s thoughts in such excruciating detail that it kills the flow of most scenes. It felt like they were terrified of getting called out on twitter. There are good moments and some funny bits, but generally the dialogue felt too unnatural to connect with. The main characters talk more like Discord screencaps than people. The gameplay is your standard rpg affair of checking/interacting with object and npcs, and turn based fighting. The battle system is…fine. If you don’t like typical rpg combat, you probably won’t like it, and if you do, it’s a fun but uncomplicated rock-paper-scissors system (literally) with fun theming that’s sufficient if you’re in the mood to beat something up, but I wish it had been a bit more challenging. I do appreciate that you can dodge the monster encounters in the overworld if you’re careful enough (I despise invisible random chance encounters), and that they aren’t present at all in rooms where you need to explore and do puzzles (the main reason I haven’t picked up OFF again). In general, isat has a lot of nice little QOL details like that. For a game about tedium, it does go out of its way to eliminate as much unnecessary hassle as possible (some reviews seem to say the scene-skipping feature was buggy when the game came out, but this has been fixed). If you can’t stand rpg style fighting at all, then you probably won’t enjoy yourself, but if you can tolerate it, it is worth pushing through, as fighting becomes less and less relevant the further you get into the game, [spoiler] and there’s even an ability you can get around the midpoint that scares monsters away and makes fighting basically irrelevant. [/spoiler] The exploring/interacting elements of the game are pretty solid. Isat is a narrative-focused game, so that’s where all the juicy stuff is. I’ll spoiler tag this for those who want to go in completely blind, [spoiler] but to get the most out of isat, it’s best to examine the same objects over and over again, which is both a strength and weakness. Isat is a game about repetition, so thematically this makes sense, and there are some good story beats that come from this delivery method, but it’s hard to say how willing a player is to repeat so many of the same actions over and over again. [/spoiler] I loooove just how densely packed the game’s environment is. The setting is very small, but there’s so many little things to interact with in the contained space, and those interactions evolve in interesting ways over the course of the game with the protagonist’s mood and experience. It is absolutely wonderful to watch unfold. I was still being surprised by new little interactions I was discovering very late into the game, and despite how thorough an explorer I was, I still missed a number of cool impactful things in my playthrough. This game is just that jam-packed with surprises (which is sorely needed and appreciated in a game about repeating the same events). [spoiler] There is one very significant plot-beat that greatly takes away from the story if you miss it, and it’s very easy to miss, but in general I do appreciate that isat doesn’t force every side bit on you and instead allows you to stumble upon them on your own. It’s strange how much of a contrast this gameplay element is from how isat handles its dialogue and main story… [/spoiler] The narrative and gameplay synergize phenomenally, creating that sweet elusive ludonarrative harmony. A lot of reviews complain about it achieving this effect by making the player go through an unenjoyable level of repetition, and I…do and don’t agree with that criticism. The amount of repetition could be a reasonable turn-off for someone, but I knew what I signed up for when I bought a time loop game (although I’d highly recommend you play in shorter sessions, as “binge-playing” will definitely lead to compounded frustration). Admittedly I am a very patient person, and yes this is a game about repeating the same day over and over, and you are meant to feel the tedium of that repetition, but I felt the game sprinkled in enough tweaks in each loop and evolved at a reasonable enough pace to keep its premise engaging. That being said, the over-explaining nature of the dialogue and a few weirdly-structured puzzles do strain a pace that’s already asking a fair bit of the player’s patience. I know I’ve mentioned the dialogue already, but I cannot stress enough how incredibly grating this game’s dialogue is. Watching the same scene play out for the twentieth time didn’t bother me, but having a character explain the same basic concept to me in four different ways in a single scene just in case I didn’t quite get the first three times is a worse torture than anything Siffrin went through. If you’re the kind of person who tends to bottle things up and try to handle your problems on your own, the main character’s story has some excellent beats that you will enjoy. I wouldn’t call Siffrin ‘peak mental illness rep’, or any of those other lofty claims I’ve heard from fans (in fact I think there are some things that could’ve been better about their character), but Siffrin’s inner monologue is (usually) written much better than the game’s general dialogue, and you can tell the writer was pulling from personal experience in a lot of the writing choices they made with Siffrin (specifically with isolation during covid lockdown). The writer does tend to lean on some tired memes and overdone fanficy tropes, but the way the environment and gameplay evolve over the course of the story truly does make excellent use of the video game medium. Isat is a very unique and engaging story, but I’d be lying if I said you didn’t have to put up with a lot to get to the good stuff.

despite being part of the intended audience ( a neurodivergent young adult who grew up with tumblr humour and queer topics and is not going to leave an "EW I HATE WOKENESS" comment unlike some people ), and having it be recommended to me by several friends whose values in media i tend to appreciate... i ... really couldn't enjoy the game. don't get me wrong, it has it's good moments! the characters were somewhat charming. the graphics is nice. the hook is EXTREMELY interesting. but the gameplay timeloop thing is extremely unfun, the dialogue often is kiiind of boring and cheesy to read, the bugs occured to me throughout it keeping me away from continuing properly and needing to backtrack to another save (which is a huge issue! that's a published STORY game, you should NOT allow such bad bugs in something like that!) all of that is ouch. and then, theres the actual reason i couldn't enjoy it: this game, despite having a sweet, cartoony style, cute characters, and way of talking with no proper swears, and very kindly offering you a trigger warning list before you play it, and no seemindly "adult" rating to it that i could find easily, just has it's adult characters go talking drinking and sex, sometimes in front of a kid character... which... is heavy. these are not casual topics. they should have had been included in a content warning. like hey, i am an adult, but this makes it impossible for me to continue the game safely as a person with PTSD related to both. a sensitive teenager might feel even worse. you CAN have a psychological horrory, and very mature in it's themes story without being explicit. i really expected it to be something like deltarune or omori, or something like the western shows that clearly inspired the graphics behind the game, and it simply... wasn't. i'm not sure whether the author indended it to be something specifically for adults or PG at all. the experience was disturbing, and i don't think i can finish the game, despite already spending a lot of my money and several hours. i regret getting this game, but honestly, glad to have played it and formed an independent opinion on it, even if it's not positive at all.

[h1]🎭Handlung🎭[/h1] Eine Gruppe von Abenteurern bereist seit einem Jahr die Welt, um einen Bösewicht zu stürzen, der eine ganze Nation in der Zeit eingefroren hat. Die Gruppe macht gerade ihren letzten Stopp, bevor sie die Festung des "Königs" stürmt. Recht bald merkt einer der Gefährten aber, dass den "König" zu schlagen das geringste Problem darstellt, da man in einer Zeitschleife feststeckt. [h1]⚠️ Potenzielle Triggerpunkte! ⚠️[/h1] [list][*] Das Spiel behandelt Themen wie Pronomen und Geschlechtsidentität. [*] Depressionen [*] Suizid[/list] [h1]🎮Gameplay🎮[/h1] [b][u]JRPG mit einem Twist[/u][/b] In Stars And Time ist oberflächlich betrachtet ein [b]klassisches JRPG[/b] mit ATB (Active Time Battle)-System (Aktionsleisten aller Kampfteilnehmer füllen sich abhängig von deren Agilitätswert und vorangegangener Aktion. Wer eine volle Leiste hat, kann eine Aktion ausführen). Man findet mehr oder weniger nützliche Ausrüstung und Heilitems. An vielen Stellen kommt man plötzlich [b]nicht mehr zurück[/b], zum Beispiel nach Betreten eines Bossraumes oder eines neuen Stockwerkes. Genau so gibt es keine anderen NPCs wie Händler zum Interagieren. Allerdings wird man bei Speicherpunkten komplett geheilt und die Kämpfe sind wenig fordernd. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757832011 [b][u]Loopings. Davon kann man ja nie genug haben. Auf einer Achterbahn.[/u][/b] Das Kernfeature von „In Stars And Time“ ist das [b]Looping-System[/b], mit dem der Spieler in der Zeit zurück und vorwärts reisen kann. Diese Möglichkeit bietet sich jedes Mal, wenn der Spieler stirbt, sowie zu anderen Gelegenheiten. Man kann auch einfach den jeweiligen Bereich neu beginnen, muss aber Items, die man in diesem Bereich gefunden hat, wieder einsammeln. Durch das Speichern werden allerdings die Level der Charaktere gesichert. [b]Sobald man den Obermotz besiegt[/b] hat, folgt ein kleiner Abspann und man ist wieder am Anfang eines neuen Loops. Der Einzige, der seinen Level behält, ist der Hauptcharakter. Alle anderen sind wieder auf dem Level, auf dem sie am Anfang waren. Das Spiel besteht im Grunde darin, immer wieder die selbe Zeitspanne zu durchleben, Informationen zu sammeln und nach und nach das Rätsel um die Loops zu entwirren. [b][u]Die Macht der Erinnerungen[/u][/b] Jeder Charakter kann neben physischen Ausrüstungsgegenständen auch Erinnerungen ausrüsten, die man in den Loops durch spezifische Aktivitäten erlangt. Diese geben dem Charakter entweder Zugriff auf hochstufige Fähigkeiten oder boosten seinen Status. Im Falle des Hauptcharakters sind auch tiefergehende Änderungen möglich, wie dass Gegner vor einem fliehen. [b][u]📉Meckern auf hohem Niveau📉[/u][/b] [list][*] Die Idee hinter den Loops ist ja nicht schlecht, allerdings wiederholt sich vieles. Um genau zu sein, gut 80–90 % der Dialoge. Man kann zwar bereits bekannte Dialoge skippen, aber man muss trotzdem immer durch denselben Dungeon laufen, Schlüssel einsammeln und jedes Mal dieselben Pflichtkämpfe ausfechten. [*] Als Visual Novel oder Adventure wäre es sicher besser umsetzbar gewesen, da das RPG Gameplay schlicht zu schwach umgesetzt ist und der Fokus hier klar auf der Handlung liegt. Das Label "RPG" und die Optik haben es für mich recht interessant gemacht, aber der RPG-Teil ist nur rudimentär vorhanden und die Optik kann auch nicht über den repetitiven "Gameplayloop" hinwegtrösten. [/list] [h1]💀Schwierigkeitsgrad💀[/h1] Der Schwierigkeitsgrad ist anfangs noch ein wenig fordernd, aber je mehr Loops man hinter sich bringt, desto stärker wird man und die Kämpfe sind recht bald nur noch reine Formalität. Rätsel gibt es auch keine. [h1]🎵🎨Soundtrack, Grafik, Steuerung🖱️ / 🎮[/h1] Der Soundtrack ist ganz nett gemacht. Wie die Grafik nicht zu aufwendig, schlicht sogar. Für die Steuerung ist die Tastatur ausreichend, aber es gibt auch Controllerunterstützung. [h1]🧾Zusammenfassung🧾[/h1] [b]✅Pro:[/b] [list] [*] Charmante grafische Gestaltung [*] Handlung recht interessant erzählt [*] Puns [/list] [b]❌Kontra:[/b] [list] [*] kaum bis kein strategischer Tiefgang in den Kämpfen [*] repetitiv[/list] [b]⚙️ Bekannte Bugs[/b] [list] [*] Gegner bemerken einen manchmal nicht, wenn man direkt vor ihnen steht [*] Beim dritten Boss verschwinden nach dem Tod des Hauptkörpers die Adds manchmal nicht [*] Screenshots im Fullscreen haben Steambenachrichtigungen mit drauf[/list] [b]🏆Achievements[/b] [list] [*] Viele bekommt man durch das Durchspielen der Handlung [*] Einige sind versteckt[/list] [b]⚖️Fazit:[/b] In Stars And Time ist ein relativ kurzes Spiel, das sich meines Erachtens zu sehr gestreckt anfühlt. Wer mehr eine emotionale Geschichte sucht, als ein spielerisch anspruchsvolles RPG, der wird hier fündig, wer allerdings nach solider RPG Kost sucht, wird enttäuscht. Ich kann hierfür leider keine Empfehlung geben. [b]------------------------------------------------------------------------ [i]Wenn ihr weitere ansprechende Reviews lesen wollt, dann folgt doch der [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32139821/}]GermanReviewGroup[/url][/i] oder [i][url= https://store.steampowered.com/curator/875292/}] GermanSteamCommunity[/url].[/i] ------------------------------------------------------------------------[/b]

Pronouns, in video games? more likely then you think. [i] loop [/i] Pronouns, in video games? more likely then you think. [i] loop [/i] Pronouns, in video games? more likely then you think. Great game 10/10 I am unwell :D