Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Quick Take: Sylia

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 6, 2011

I think at this point it’s pretty safe to say that I’m a somewhat veteran, hardcore computer RPG fan.  Console RPGs, too, to a lesser degree. I guess having played them for longer than some game reviewers have actually been alive might give me a little bit of cred. I’m nowhere near the most veteran, experienced, hard-core players. The CRPG Addict has demonstrated that you can exceed my “decades” of experience in a little over a year of hardcore playing. And he probably had me beat to start with. That’s cool.

I try not to go overboard, but from time to time you’ll catch me grousing about RPGs getting “dumbed down.” This is me being selfish, because I want games written for me. Me: the hard-core, old-school, veteran RPG fan who wants games challenging his existing skills and fearlessness at comparing stats and evaluating deep game rules. Well, okay, maybe ‘fearlessness’ isn’t the right term. Less fearfulness? I still just wing it sometimes. But anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Advanced, hard-core RPGs. Mmmmm good. Gimme more games like Eschalon, or Knights of the Chalice, or Din’s Curse, or Spiderweb’s games, or…

Well, you get the idea.

The thing is – I want games like that because they’ve become something of a vanishing breed. But you know what will accelerate their vanishing, and make them completely extinct? Their customer base dries up. And how will that happen? That’ll happen if our ranks aren’t filled with new members. New members who perhaps never played the original Fallout, and for whom the names “Ultima” and “Bard’s Tale” are somewhat meaningless. We need gamers who have fond memories of more recent RPGs – RPGs that aren’t just action games in disguise (though those are cool, too).

That’s why I like talking about folks like Aldorlea Games and Amaranth Games. Most of their games have that distinctive 16-bit era console jRPG flavor – mainly due to the use of the RPG Maker game engine / toolkit. I don’t pretend that the people who play Laxius Force today are going to have a ton of crossover potential to more hardcore, western-style RPGs, or vice versa. But there is some intersection in current and future audiences (hey, that would include, like, me…) and I’m thrilled to see new audiences introduced to turn-based, traditional RPG fun.

All this is a build-up to me noting one of Aldorlea’s latest games, Sylia. Having been swamped with day-job-ness, Frayed Knights development, and a backlog of other indie games (many in-development) that I’ve promised to take a look at, this one took a while for me to get around to. It starts out with an amusing bang, then lags a little bit, and for me is starting to pick up again after a couple of hours.

I’ve had a really tough time trying to figure out how to talk about this game without giving away a pretty significant spoiler. I guess I’ll say this: This is a game I’d probably consider a ‘beginner’ level RPG probably geared towards younger players. And girls. It’s cute. It’s amusing. It features a large cast of playable characters, and up to around 40 hours of gameplay. The introduction hooked me immediately with its twist on traditional RPG and high fantasy tropes. It’s about a group of adventurers trying to repel an alien invasion led by a rather amusing sorceress.

If you want to check it out, here’s the link to Sylia.

Now I’ll show you a video, and after that I’ll talk a couple of spoiler-ific details.

Okay, if you are still here, here’s the twist that makes this game interesting:

It starts with a group of veteran adventurers beginning their final assault on the alien forces and their mastermind, an evil (but amusing) sorceress. The adventurers banter back and forth, speak of their previous defeat by her, and basically do this whole in medias res thing as they go to what seems to be the climax of the game. At this point, I assumed that the game would be some major flashback to how they got there. Give you a taste of awesome might at the beginning, and then start over.

Well, it does that, but not in the way I anticipated. The heroes defeat the sorceress in a battle, but then she pulls a fast one and finishes her evil plan – which turns every human in the world into stone. Including the heroes.

So now you find yourself playing a couple of domestic animals – a cat and a dog – who must gather together a force of unlikely animals  to break the curse and free the people from their petrified forms. And defeat the sorceress before she and her alien minions drain the planet of all of its energy and minerals.  So you get to lead a bunch of talking animals around with some pretty interesting special abilities.

One of the most interesting special abilities is the ability to call an enemy creature to join your side. Not just for a single battle, but indefinitely. I managed to turn a bear to my side early in the game, which was effective for many levels.  They don’t level up with the rest of their party, so their value drops over time, but it’s a pretty cool thing to pull off.

Another interesting variant (so far) is that most “items” in the game are food items. Food items act as healing / skill point restoration items, as well as conferring other bonuses to party members. The trick here is that the food items are not equal for all party members.  The food has to match the animal. Some animals will utterly refuse to eat certain kinds of food (the rooster won’t eat meat, for example), while in other cases it seems like a food item will be more advantageous to one animal over another.

The game also doesn’t take the frequent jRPG approach of making sure all encounters within a region are relatively equal in terms of difficulty. While the world does seem to be broken up into some “range bands” of effective monster difficulty, there are definitely harder monsters (usually stationary, and almost always avoidable) lurking in one area that are significantly tougher than their neighbors. I like this because it teaches players that not everything in one stage of the game will fall to brute force immediately. Sometimes you have to avoid an encounter and come back later.

Its an amusing little game.  I look forward to playing some more of it as I find time, but I wanted to pass it along. While it’s not my usual fare, I’d recommend checking it out, especially if you are looking for an introductory kind of game for yourself or a friend or family member. As usual, there’s a free demo to try it out before you buy it.


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