Astral Fantasy (Demo)

Growing up, I loved any kind of story about traveling to different worlds and exploring the galaxy. My favorite shows/movies were Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Wars. And I would watch any sort of space documentary I could get my hands on. If you are into those things as much as I am, you’ll be drawn into the world presented in this game.

Astral Fantasy takes a lot of hints from the Space Opera type of fiction. It’s a pretty good blend of science fiction and fantasy elements. You begin the game with a very well-presented opening scene reminiscent of the opening crawl of Star Wars, as well as an intense battle between escaping good guys and ominous-looking bad guys.



Eventually, you will run into the main bad guy who may or may not be your cousin’s brother’s nephew’s divorced father twice removed. After this moment, you are dramatically tossed into an escape pod by your brother and sent down to an alien planet with your goal to escape that world.

In the demo, there are five different environments to explore with some treasure hidden here and there, and an NPC or two to talk to. Some of the NPCs could use a bit more fleshing out and the dialogue felt a little stiff. I feel that the interiors could have more interactive features. But there are a few well-polished areas like Cheryl’s pub. It would be nice to see some more aliens rather than just humans. The aliens that were on display had some pretty interesting designs.

The demo is a promising glimpse into what could be a very epic tale of planet-hopping on a galactic scale. But it’s not without its flaws.

There are a few areas that the game is kind of weak in and I’d like to see fleshed out a bit more. Notably, in the first 45 minutes, I feel that the characters could be developed a bit more and some of what could be high-impact moments felt a bit stale with dialogue feeling a bit samey (“You’re right" is an extensively used piece of dialogue).



There were also numerous tech issues that the developer has been working to patch up. The biggest problem I noticed is a lot of moments where you try to do something that the developer didn’t anticipate and it throws you into a cutscene that you have already witnessed. There are a few items that were not set up correctly and you could use them over and over again without them being exhausted.

But there are moments of pure charm as well. When Riggy2k3 was playing the game, he said that it felt like a classic RPG Maker game. And I’d have to agree with that. It has the charm that games did in the early days of RPG Maker. It’s not overstating itself and if you can appreciate that simplicity then this might be a good game for you. If you look past some of the technical shortcomings, and love science fiction JRPGs then this might be a game worth trying.



I am giving it a 4 out of 5 because I feel it represents a promising game world to come, and even with the technical/writing shortcomings I still had a lot of blast exploring what the demo had to offer. I look forward to playing the final product!