In Stars And Time
Stars, is that the time already?
Should you feel anything like we do, you’d probably appreciate a good time loop by now – with all the games and books to enjoy and magazines to make, there just aren’t enough hours in a day to fit it all in. Unfortunately, the loop In Stars And Time features requires death, and it’s altogether more serious than dying for a good book.
The world is going to end tomorrow. Well, it is if you die. After a long and arduous journey (which you do not play through), Siffrin and his adventuring party – including Mirabelle, the Chosen One – are about to enter the final castle and challenge the King, a malevolent entity who has frozen most of the world in time. Defeating him will break the curse, and now it’s the final thing your party needs to do. However, Siffrin gets squashed by a boulder and dies in the very first corridor. Classic mistake. Shortly after, however, he wakes up, realising he’s caught in a time loop.
DIE AGAIN?
In Stars And Time is a 2D adventure told completely in black and white, made by solo developer Adrienne Bazir under the pseudonym Insertdisc5. Bazir’s main idea was to take a more emotional look at the concept of time loops, since few stories focus on how experiencing things repeatedly makes the characters feel.
Your goal is rather simple: to get to the highest floor of a castle full of enemies, called sadnesses, and defeat the King. Battles are turn-based. Rather than giving characters and monsters the usual elemental weaknesses, each of them is a rock, paper, or scissors type. You can often guess what type a sadness is simply by looking at them – stone types often ball their fists, scissor types might throw a cheeky peace sign. Combat is decently challenging because health items are rare and every skill has a cooldown period. We never die in battle during our time with the game, but you need to use your skills cleverly, especially the ability to give a turn to another party member, to exploit enemy weaknesses and not be hit too hard yourself.
The biggest hurdle in In Stars And Time isn’t monsters, however, it’s locked doors. You will inevitably search as much of the castle as you have access to just to find keys, and this, more than anything else, will lead to Siffrin’s (often voluntary) demise. When we envisioned the reasons our protagonist would have to heroically face death, we didn’t think it would be ‘shoot, the key for this door is in a drawer on the second floor, but we are on the third floor and can’t go back.’ Situations like this don’t exactly help to produce an emotional time loop story.
In Stars And Time tries to keep the frustration looping can cause to a minimum.
We also don’t loop very often – maybe we’re just naturally gifted at time-loop gaming, but we loop when the game doesn’t allow us to progress otherwise, and that’s frustrating rather than interesting. ISAT tries to keep the frustration looping can cause to a minimum. Siffrin retains his experience and skills even if he dies, you keep equipment, and you can equip memories of skills your party members may otherwise have lost. But the game doesn’t support autosaving, and the only save points are at the beginning and end of a floor. This means that with each loop you end up backtracking through at least one floor, and since the level design is simple and enemies respawn immediately, even just a few loops feel like work.
In Stars And Time fails to make the time-looping concept interesting from a gameplay perspective, but its writing and characters make up for a lot of that. We keep playing just because we want to spend more time with this motley crew of adventurers, including kindhearted himbo Isabeau and Bonnie, snack time expert. The character design is endearing, and the love the team members have for each other is so palpable it feels almost unfair you’re meeting them on their final quest. There’s also a lot of worldbuilding packed into each conversation, and we happily trail along just because we want to see find out more – despite the other shortcomings.
An interesting premise meets outstandingly written characters, but the gameplay is lacking. Might have made a better visual novel than a dungeon crawler. Malindy Hetfeld