REVIEW EDITED

I love the style and individuality of this SP RPG, it's delightful to look at and play. It's also different in that it's kind of a puzzle RPG in that as well as levelling up and following a main quest, you'll need to complete mini-quests similar to point and click adventures along the way to help you unlock the travel-by-map needed to progress.

But those aesthetics, they're great - a kind of 2D Parappa in a 3D(ish) world where your view is restricted to always forwards, your movement is restricted and you feel like you're in a comic book. I guess this will frustrate some trad 3D RPG players but it's very much a part of how the game works and once you get that, you'll work out how to use it to your advantage, such as battle avoidance (or purposeful battle to grind up stats)

It's not too grindy though, the battles are traditional turn play and in the rare event you get defeated you can restart and try a different approach. You do need to take some fights to ensure you level up enough but we're not talking about kill 90 badgers levels of grind! The game does well in making you know roughly how powerful you are with few sudden leaps in enemy difficulty. There's a nice - if slightly trope-y - range of regular and special moves which become more malleable as your party grows.

The characters and dialogues are well written and interesting and the RPG mechanics solid, I like where the story is going (probably about 2/3 of the way through as I write.) You can tell that a lot of effort has gone into this aspect while also respecting the player - every dialogue is relevant (no [...] to be found thankfully!) and it is all voiced as well as written, but I really appreciate how you can quick-skip the voice and read the whole dialogue quickly if you like. Player friendly game mechanics are a massive plus to me. No over-long cutscenes either, another plus point.

It's new, different and charming in every way and I liked what it's doing so I will for certain complete it. It's evident that thoughtful design has been put into the whole game, from puzzles to art, from writing to gameplay. It's a very satisfying play which feels very professionally made. To make a kinda weird comparison it plays like the South Park RPGs (but wholesome - oops, sorry!) while offering a Stranger Things or Goonies vibe with the rag-tag group of teen protagonists, and that feels very 'right'

Highly recommended, but if you think it's a touch pricey be aware that you'll get more than a dozen hours out of this, probably 20 - and a sale price at around £8 would be a bargain.

NB: I have not experienced the sound issues mentioned by some reviewers, so that may not be a thing all players find as an issue

I recommend this game but with a current caveat: There's some kind of weird audio bug that happens in longer dialogue sequences. So far that has really been my only complaint so once it gets patched, total recommend.

This game is so full of heart. I love the Paper Mario visual vibes and I've found myself pretty interested in where the story is taking us. I really like that learning new skills is done through a character development cutscene. The link skills bringing characters together for cutscenes was also really neat. The combat makes me laugh a lot with all the ridiculous attacks we get to use and the enemy names definitely had me chuckling. It would be nice to be able to specifically turn down the character voice lines in combat cuz they're a lil loud. Will update review when I fully finish the game :D

I do recommend this game, however I recommend waiting a while for it to cook a little longer before making your purchase.
The art is fantastic, the music is a JAM and the combat is really fun! But, there are some technical issues that need addressing.
A very distracting static noise builds the longer the characters are talking in a scene, only going away when changing the scene, but then beginning again. So, you get some really intolerable noise in longer dialogue. Some camera jank but not enough to harsh the experience. However, if you are capturing the game there is some finagling you have to do. The game runs its sound through a web preview, basically, so you'll have to use desktop audio, and window capture the game with a different setting than most.

Looking forward to playing more of this, and sharing it with others as it has SO much potential! Will come back when it's had some time to be refined and update the review. <3