Your Star V.3

Hello,
welcome to a new review, of an old 2013 adventure game created by Natahem using RPG Maker XP: Your Star!
In Your Star we play as a boy that is looking for his sister Maya, after he woke up inside a large and apparently abandoned mysterious mansion with overgrown gardens. He also suffers from amnesia, despite remembering clearly about the sister, and the adventure is about investigating the place, explore and find items. Apparently there are some dark and sinister creatures, but did they kidnap Maya? Or are they using her image to trick our alter ego protagonist?

Anyway how heroic kid isn't defenseless: in fact he can attack and defend (with the S and D keys, for strike and defend) in real time using a ragged teddy bear as a weapon (!). Anyway being this a dark game combat should be avoided since there is no experience that can be earned, and the possibility to heal are very rare, so the best thing to do is to spare the energies to fight the unavoidable opponents, like the bosses.


Since this is an adventure game we'll have to explore various rooms and manipulate useful items to solve puzzles!

But that's not enough because once found one of the eyes of the bear it will be possible to scan the area (using the W key) to learn IF there are useful items (but not their location!) even if this consumes the boy's willpower so it must not be used frequently.

Same goes for the pots of ink. What are these? Well simply they act as the ink ribbons from Resident Evil: they let you save. Anyway there is an important difference, that saving is always enabled and you do not need to enter a particular room (like in RE) anyway writing an entry on the diary depletes one of these pots. Playing the game I noticed that you start with four pots but you can find six others during the adventure, for a total of ten. You've been warned!

Finally there's the real meat of the game: puzzles! Luckily the developer included a walkthrough since not every puzzle is easy (on the other hand there is the possibility to select the difficulty of the game between easy and normal, even if I do not know what this affect exactly), most requires backtracking, mathematics and sometimes you even have to look for clues in locations with hostile creatures (that as mentioned in the combat part earlier, are best avoided since random enemies are just a nuisance).


Your Star not only includes an inventory and a map, but also a log with characters' details!

The game has two different endings, one good and one bad, and depends on how may pieces of the teddy bear are recovered (at least four for the good ending I think, anyway there are six pieces: four limbs and two eyes). During the boss fights our little hero will have also some flashbacks and visions of the past. If you got the good ending you also get a final choice that will provide one of the two different post-credits scenes, but only one of these two will really explain what happened to the boy, revealing also his name.

The game has been translated from french and despite some few errors, the translation is ok in my opinion, but what really makes the game stand out are the graphics: everything is custom made and hand drawn, creating a powerful atmosphere (the uses of colors, the red of the altered realm, these are really impressive), everything from the cutscenes, to the facesets, charsets and menus feels unique and really inspired.


The protagonist's method of attacking is a bit weird but... it works!

Final Verdict
Your Star is a pretty cool dark puzzle game adventure and it's clearly aimed to those who like to play a mysterious adventure where you also have to manage your resources. And solve puzzles, a lot of them. And do math too. If you like this then it's the game for you, the only reason you won't like it is if you do not like survival horror puzzle adventures, but in this case it would not be a fault of the game, of course! This is polished, stylish and well made game, it's pretty good and for us good means 4/5.