Indie Game of the Week 390: Light Fairytale Episode 1

Light Fairytale Episode 1 is the opening chapter of a multi-episode narrative project that seeks to revisit the creatively ambitious PlayStation 1 era of RPGs, notably taking after Final Fantasy VII in its presentation and setting but also bits and pieces from Wild Arms and others. Another Indie throwback, in so many words, though at least that period of 32-bit RPGs taking their first steps into the immersive possibilities of polygonal 3D is not an era that many small developers have the means or ambition to recreate. Subsequently, this game's making the smart choice (possibly also inspired by FFVII, at least in its current Remake incarnation) to cut up its epic-length story and release each episode independently with the revenue from each funding the next. It does create this sort of detached feeling when the episodes take a while to come out but still expect players to be all caught up with where the story is at each time—I feel like this estranged disconnection problem is why Toby Fox has chosen to release the remainder of Deltarune's episodes all in one go—but it's a small price to pay if it helps see this adventure through to its end.

The story presently concerns Haru and Kuroko, two orphans living in a lower strata of a subterranean urban center that humanity flocked to once the surface became unlivable due to some ancient environmental calamity everyone's long forgotten about. Dreaming of the sky, something the people of this city have lost all knowledge or context of, and tired of the tyranny of the local governance and their well-stocked armies after they arrest a friend of his, Haru eventually opts for rebellion and the lovestruck and impulsive Kuroko follows his lead out of habit. This opening chapter is about two to three hours in length with a smattering of battles and puzzles to solve and a single dungeon by way of a warehouse attached to an old sewer system (gotta have that early-game sewer dungeon) which leads to the episode's cliffhanger conclusion.

Given the point is to recreate RPGs of the late-'90s, the turn-based combat is very straightforward and right now doesn't offer a whole lot of tactical variation beyond standard attacks, a single spell, and an alternate weapon slot which I'm guessing later on will allow you to equip gear of multiple elemental types to account for a range of enemy weaknesses. There's also a limit break "fury" attack, though Haru's is actually a heal spell which is also the only means to recover HP besides items. The encounter system is set up in such a way that you'll bump into "Battle Zones": these have visible areas of effect (sort of, they require the use of your AR goggles, which also helpfully point out area transitions and NPCs to talk to) where a battle might occur and a limited stock of encounters before they're exhausted, giving players plenty of agency when it comes to clearing them out at their own pace. Most encounters are simple enough to be brute-forced though the episode's final boss takes a bit more consideration due to its heavy firepower.

Beyond the basic combat, the game's mostly going for a style piece with an underworld setting very reminiscent of the murkier areas of Midgar beneath its plates complete with gaudy neon signs, pipes running everywhere you look, and a rundown, rust-covered playground that's nevertheless of great sentimental value to its young heroes dreaming of a better world. It utilizes that similar sort of atmosphere-drenched meandering feel as the intro to Final Fantasy VII as it endeavors to draw you into this dystopian milieu to punctuate just how much more bleak living in these conditions is compared to the fresh and bright world awaiting the party just outside the city limits; given there's a flyer for Light Fairytale Episode 2 which shows a snowy and more natural region I suspect this game's story will take a similar environmentalist-friendly route. As stated above, while this part of the game is mostly a "Point A to Point B" affair, there's incentive enough to investigate everywhere and talk to everyone for extra details and backstory that's incidental to the main narrative but serves as workable worldbuilding. There's a couple of mini-games too: a pretty basic arcade racing game and a story-related stealth game where you earn points for moving between cover as guards patrol nearby, the more daring the better.

Light Fairytale is evidently a game where I'm going to have a better sense of its potential once more of its episodes are out. The second is available, and I happen to already own it, so I'll probably give that a spin sometime next year. It has me intrigued enough with its storytelling and the way the game feels geared towards the narrative strengths of its genre rather than the gameplay ones—I am still hoping the combat improves, of course, once it has more variety and features to it—and I'll admit to being curious about its episodic format too and how it intends to factor all those cliffhangers into what was probably originally intended as a single, lengthy, contiguous storyline. While the episode takes about three hours to complete there's the aforementioned event scavenger hunt plus an entire alternate retelling from the perspective of Kuroko—though this runs into the issue Tales of Xillia had where the two protagonists' respective viewpoints spend a long time being identical owing to how often the two are together—to bump it up a fair amount, giving you plenty to be getting on with for how little these episodes are going for on Steam. Though what's presently here is an attractive but surface-level RPG, at this point of the process it's more of an investment than anything: like a demo or early access for what promises to be something special once it's fully complete.

Rating: 3 out of 5.