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Intro to Solest



Introduction
World Remade, formerly Project Kobold is a heart-and-soul project of the developer team Solest, comprised mainly of ArtBane and Volrath, as well as others. I remember ArtBane showing me little snippets of a game he had been thinking up, involving a fire dungeon with several levels and tile mazes similar to the ones seen in the team's most recent effort, Labyrinthine Dreams. Fresh off the commercialization of that project (which is available on Steam now for $4.99 USD), the team has decided to depart from the emotional puzzler territory back into the world of Master of the Wind. Hundreds of years before any of the events of the seven-part episodic game Master of the Wind even happened, World Remade explores the war that was a cataclysm of the greatest kind. Spurred on by the Indie Game Maker Contest 2014 with a $10k prize, Solest have created World Remade as a demo for the ambitious prequel. The other members involved with development of this project include scripter Fomar0153 and sixtyandaquarter as developers, and the ultra-loyal Solest-head NeverSilent and person-I-do-not-know loyalrpgfanatic as testers.

Story
Master of the Wind is a game that should be mentioned when talking about World Remade. The launch-point of the lore and land of Solest, development of this game lasted several years as more and more gamers tuned in to the coming episodes in an increasingly large following until the game became one of the most downloaded and played games of this site. Consisting of several arcs, the storyline was a swooping view of a world where fantasy meets superhero themes. Cade Mistral and his best friend, a skeleton named Bones, worked as armor merchants at Torto's Shop in the beautiful seaside town of Port Arianna.

This game is a prequel to that. Beginning in the middle of the cataclysmic war that ravaged the world and left it unrecognizable, a trio of wandering loners must go on a pilgrimage to an ancient church which is sacred to the followers of a god named Arcadius. The trio consist of newcomers Rustek (the main character who is a kobold), a female dark mage named Taraja, and (minor spoiler alert) Stoic/Bones returns as the third actor in your party. World Remade plans to feature an eclectic cast of new characters, but in the beginning it feels rather slow to introduce. Where Master of the Wind's intro was a spectacle that welcomed the quirky and vibrant personalities of Cade Mistral and Bones in a vibrant seaside town, World Remade seems more subdued, more pale in style, and generally less interesting. The superhero aesthetic of Master of the Wind renders it more of an exciting thrill ride, whereas World Remade's adopted tedium, which I assume is supposed to compliment a more stylistically mature story, just leave things a little bit bland. That is not to say that the world we are placed in is uninteresting however.

We are still invited to delve into the Solest writing team's deep world of lore and events, including the happenings that spurred on the war, revealed in scattered books and other tomes written by authors of old. I would have rather thought that an exciting, burning stronghold with tons of action happening at the start would have been a more exciting build-up than the current post-conflict atmosphere. There is also no previous established world of peace to compare to the current war-ravaged city you find yourself in, at least not until later where flashbacks and the like may happen. But without a peaceful, thriving world to compare to the current war-ravaged one we have right now, there is no reason to care about the pre-war world... at least not yet. I have good faith that the pre-war world will be further explored in flashbacks, stories and the like. It's simply the case of not caring about something being destroyed if you didn't know what it was like to begin with. Even a brief establishing shot or memory indicating the world that Rustek used to live in may have sufficed.



The trio of main characters have differing, contrasting personalities, but they are somewhat bland in their disaffected talk and lack of passion. This is probably due to their post-war fatigue, but most conversation feels like it's dragging along extra baggage, with drooping eyelids and a sullen frown. There seemed to be a distinct lack of variety in emotions, with there being mostly a grey endless landscape of singular worry and anxiety. I think I heard SnowOwl say once that his grandma said, it's better to feel all the emotions at once than none at all (or something along those lines). I agree with that, and I think that more exciting unexpected events would have made World Remade a much more thrilling introduction into the game's world.

Gameplay
The game consists of standing encounters that are placed on the map, which you can encounter in a variety of orders. One of ArtBane's favourite RPG Maker games is Wine & Roses, and it seems that the influence is shown here. I believe that the aim of this entry into Solest's catalogue was to focus more on a balanced and interesting battle system with strategies akin to those found in puzzles, which the developers felt may have been lacking in the slightly dated battle systems of their earlier work. So the reinvention of the battle system was necessary, and they felt to include Fomar as a scripter to provide the base of their battle system. Most of their recent material (X-Noir and the newly commercialized Labyrinthine Dreams as well as Autumnal Dreams) have been games that do not include combat, so perhaps for the Solest team to return to a combat-centric game (perhaps even more so than Master of the Wind) was a tonal shock. That said, the Solest team is more than capable to provide an interesting gameplay experience, shown by their previous work.

The game is aimed to be equally engaging to both newcomers and oldheads of the Master of the Wind experience, and Solest lore. This goes not only for Solest storylines, but also the gameplay experience, whether it was intentional or not. World Remade's battle system is far removed from Master of the Wind's, utilizing an economy of mana and health resources to provide an almost deterministic non-random feel to battle encounters. This actually reminds me of another IGMC 2014 entry, The Heart Pumps Clay, which also features standing encounters, boss-like gameplay for every encounter, and economy of resources as well as full healing from each battle and no game-overs.

The custom battle system is Fomar's scripting I believe, but vision-wise, this is ArtBane's baby. Perhaps since Master of the Wind and the recent gaggle of Solest games hvae been very story-oriented, the Solest team wanted to tip a little more on the gameplay side of the spectrum and show off ArtBane's balancing capabilities. To some extent, this is pulled off with great aplomb. The ArtBane/Fomar relationship led to a unique battle style, culminating in a varying degree of strategies that can all lead to victory. The smart game design decisions that made Wine & Roses a classic in the RPG Maker scene are emulated here, and they provide a sturdy, meaningful and logical experience. The battles are well-balanced, and they provide plenty of opportunities to think things through and come to a strategy of your own. It's an example of emergent gameplay, providing a platform where players can input their own ideas into a machine and come up with new ways to accomplish their goal that most RPGs lack.



Unfortunately, there are downsides to this, that World Remade shares with games like The Heart Pumps Clay. Ultimately, everything is a bit sluggish. Not that the game does not have a quick feedback cycle logic-wise, but things like repetitious layout of standing encounters means that you often face the same enemies over and over again, and things get a bit monotonous. You know that something is a little repetitive when after the first hour of play, you have only faced about 3 or 4 different kinds of monsters that could easily be defeated with certain strategies. Not to say that the types of battles weren't fun, but as opposed to games like Wine & Roses, World Remade features battles that just aren't as interesting and engaging and play with far less variables to begin with. Perhaps that's a difference in design, World Remade being of much larger scope in playtime than Wine & Roses, but that gives it no excuse to be dull. If anything, battles in World Remade should be breezy and provide free-wheeling thinking opportunities that give feedback for your strategies. World Remade, with its much broader scope, sacrifices some of the puzzle-like strategy for its long-term learning curve, which Wine & Roses never did, and that is why the latter was successful. The slow, gradual exposition of skills and strategies leaves the learning curve far too shallow, even for a new type of battle system such as this.

That is not to say that World Remade doesn't do battles right. What it does pull off, it pulls off with commendable success. But with a game so focussed on these battles (about 90% of the game so far is battles) it doesn't transcend as greatly as Wine & Roses did. Where Wine & Roses uses complex underlying rules of sanity and learning by death, in World Remade you don't learn by death, and the strategies just don't advance as quick as I believe they should.

Hopefully in the grand scope of World Remade's production (on the gamepage it says it is 1 of 7 episodes complete), the strategy will improve in complexity to the point where it becomes far more engaging and interesting to continue on. For now, those who are not completely enamoured by this style of battle will not be impressed.



Conclusion
The beginning of such a large venture is less spectacular than I would have hoped, but if I had one adjective that would describe the game, that would be "solid". The world building is solid, the writing is solid, and the game moves along at a uniformly revealing pace. It is only sometimes that I wish to have a little of life's spice thrown in to jerk everything out of 1st into 6th gear, and give me a little bit of a bumpy ride so that things don't seem so methodical and uniform.

Thanks for reading this review.

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