Cris Tales
This many-faceted indie jewel gives you the power to change the future
PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Developer Dreams Uncorporated, SYCK
Publisher Modus Games
Format PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Origin Colombia
Release November
With the world perhaps finally waking up to its responsibility to work towards a better future, Cris Tales’ premise seems particularly apposite. Protagonist Crisbell can view the past, present and future simultaneously, and hop between all three, providing a means to alter events and improve the lives of those around her. This dazzling time manipulation mechanic is presented within the familiar framework of a side-scrolling JRPG, but given its own identity with lavish 2D hand-drawn art that reflects the people and culture of the developer’s native Colombia.
It’s also the device by which its creator has been able to add layers of depth and social commentary to the game without it coming across as heavy-handed. “We see videogames as art, an interactive medium that allows you to have fun but also to offer a message,” explains Cris Tales’ creative director Carlos Rocha Silva. “We have a lot of sensitive subjects: refugees, civil war, a lot of the things that we have felt here in Colombia, but portrayed in, let’s say, a safe way. A lot of people don’t realise it, but when they play games they actually enjoy a lot of those messages that the creators have put in.”
Said messages are woven into the game’s narrative and sidequests, and how you choose to act as Crisbell will affect not only her progress, but the lives of others and entire social groups within each kingdom. The city of St Clarity, for example, has a huge divide between the rich and the poor, and there are characters on both sides of this who you can choose to help. Over time, you can improve the slums, perhaps taking some of the shine from the affluent walled city in the process, or help the wealthy and let the poorer districts suffer – the future consequences of which you can see being changed by your present actions.
The screen is split, with Crisbell’s present viewed within a central triangle. To the left of this are events in the past; to the right, the future – with all three realities appearing to exist simultaneously. As Crisbell walks through a scene, people to her left appear as they did in the past, perhaps as children, finally becoming old as they pass over to the right. Some will disappear, indicating they may have passed away entirely. Others embody consequential changes to their lives. We watch a young violinist busking on the streets in his past timeline; as we pass from right to left, we see him in the present – older, still playing his music in the streets, yet clearly impoverished. As he passes into the future third of the prism, it’s clear his poverty has led him to a life of crime. We bear witness to not only the fates of
individuals, but of the environment itself. The city’s slums, which are frequently flooded by sewage from the wealthy walled city, are now completely underwater.
The coexistence of these three timelines means that every aspect of the world has been created a minimum of three times – no mean feat for a team of just 23 people. Some environments, Silva tells us, have been assembled as many as 20 times. In one scene, for example, Crisbell is asked for her opinion on what colour an NPC should paint her house; all possible future options have been catered for. “Even when you don’t see it, these layers are all there, all the time,” Silva says. “Of course it’s important not to charge the RAM of the computer with what you’re not seeing, but conceptually it’s all there – it’s a super-heavy burden to try and make everything so many times. We set ourselves that work, but it has been a lot of work.”
For Silva and his team, that has amounted to five years of endeavour, lovingly building a multi-layered JRPG from the initial genesis of its core time-spanning viewpoint. “The root mechanic was born even before we knew it was going to be an RPG,” recalls Silva. “It was born out of a weird idea. My girlfriend was holding a mirror – she was looking at herself and I could see her, and what she was seeing in the mirror as well. I thought, ‘That’s interesting because I’m seeing two things that are completely different at the same time.’ So with that, at the beginning, it was just an idea of exploring two different places, different spaces in the same screen. But then we thought, this would be more interesting and easier to communicate if it was time. In the original prototype you could see a little seed, a growing tree and a dying tree, and Crisbell walking on top of that.”
From there, Silva expanded the idea into what he describes as a “love letter from childhood” to a genre that was close to his heart. “We went to a story idea of how a Disney Princess would look if she was Colombian, and this crazy idea that in the beginning nobody at the studio wanted to make, about seeing past, present and future in the same screen. Nobody understood it, nobody understood why, or with what purpose. It was after we got those two concepts matched together, and this idea of a triangle was born as a solution, then we had to decide what genre we wanted to put this game in. We decided to go with a genre that all of us adored, which was JRPGs.”
Although structurally Cris Tales closely follows a tried-and-tested JRPG format, there are some interesting twists, particularly in its approach to turn-based battles. Crisbell’s time manipulation can be used to land status-effect attacks on an enemy in the past to significantly weaken them in the present. Some enemies will be older, frailer and easier to attack if you time-hop into the future; others will have become stronger over time and it may be advantageous to attack an enemy in the past before they become a bigger threat. The game’s world, too, while conforming to many usual RPG fantasy tropes, is anchored in a real-world, though perhaps no less unfamiliar, setting. Silva tells us he wanted to reflect not just Colombia’s socio-political landscape but also its physical landscape – which gives Cris Tales a very specific aesthetic and a contextual base upon which to build the game’s fantastical world. Subverting the idea of magical realism, Silva refers to this as “endemic fantasy.”
“Magical realism is trying to make magical happenings, like, a normal everyday thing. We are trying to do the opposite – and transform these real places, this culture, into something fantastical,” he says. “It’s not only the places and the regions we want to highlight, it’s also the appearance, how people dress. Colombia has changed a lot over recent years, but we would really like people to experience this and see it through a different light.” Cris Tales certainly provides plenty of alternate perspectives, and just like its coexisting timelines, presents layers of fresh ideas busily working away beneath its beautiful surface. Needless to say, we are looking forward (and backward) to this multi-faceted adventure through time.
“We are trying to transform these real places, this culture, into something fantastical”