T
he creative director of Sea
of Stars, Thierry
Boulanger, is making the
kind of game he dreamed
of as a kid: a turn-based, NES-esque
RPG, but with the crispness,
seamlessness, and graphical magic
tricks available today. It’s still two
years away from release, but its pixely
world looks fantastic already.
One modern twist is the dynamic lighting
system. In a remote demo, I watched
Boulanger cycle the time of day, rotating
the shadows and swapping the sun and
moon with a smooth transition from warm
to cool light. I’m still enchanted by the
NEED TO KNOW
RELEASE
2022
DEVELOPER
Sabotage Studio
PUBLISHER
In-house
LINK
seaofstarsgame.co
A retro RPG in a strange,
watery world
SEA OF
STARS
PLAYED
IT
novelty of pixel art that behaves like a 3D
world, and this isn’t just something we’ll
see in tech demos: Manipulating the time
of day will be a key skill.
The main characters represent sun
and moon magic, and they’ll combine
powers to solve puzzles and defeat
monsters. It sounds a little quaint, but it’s
not unimaginative, and even a little bleak
in places. In one scene I saw, the heroes
stumble into a room that seems to be full
of baby gorilla butts. It turns out the
gorillas are all sticking their heads through
the floor, watching their mother, who’s
been trapped by a gruesome necromantic
monster below. Poor gorillas!
Tyler Wilde
4
Sea of Stars
PREVIEW