Hello adventurers!
Today I played Erayu, a 2016 RPG Maker XP game made by Lucy Fox, author of A Ghost's Lullaby, a short game I reviewed some time ago.
But Erayu isn't a short creepy game, this is a fantasy adventure game but wait... NOT an rpg and clearly not your usual rpgmaker game! Oh no, this is instead a (5-6 hours)classic point-and-click adventure game. A game about a game called Erayu!

Josh is our protagonist that lives in the real world. He lives with his brother Alex and his father that despise him because he's really fond of books and videogames... and when his mother died everything became even worse!
But one day Josh goes to a small video store with his friend Naru and finds a cd-rom. This is a fantasy videogame called Erayu. So Josh takes the game home and starts playing: Erayu is the name of the fantasy world, that was ruled by a good immortal princess, but she suddenly disappeared. From that day the light starts disappearing from some lands, and the place engulfed into darkness disappeared like they never existed.
In this game Josh's alter ego is a white haired traveller that wakes up inside a tent with no recollection of his past, not even of his name...


A classic fantasy tavern... where clerics and healers are in demand. Nothing new!

Erayu is basically a story of two interwined stories, the mundane life of Josh and the fantastic adventure of the white haired boy (we will get the opportunity to name him), that is waken up by Nam, a magical fairy and starts a quest to save the region from the approaching darkness by restoring the "hearts", basically helping people and giving hope to them, while trying to understand if the voice he hears in his head is the key to remember his past. I liked a lot how the stories are linked and they alternate, showing a normal world and the everyday life of a boy and the adventures of a young man in a world populated by many bizarre creatures. I'm pretty sure that The NeverEnding Story was one of the source of inspiration, since the plot was similar (except with a book instead of a videogame).

Now the gameplay: Erayu is a fantasy (at least partially, since there are the real-life segments) point-and-click adventure in which we will have to collect useful items, negotiate with Npcs, solve puzzle, combine items, and so on. Expect lots of characters, many dialogues, no battles, and a custom interface and menus. The game shows various points of interests (including characters) and clicking there you can open a sub-menu that gives different choices: talk (when possible), examine, use or combine with an inventory item, simple but effective, like in the good old adventure games of the past. It's all enjoyable and fun, I liked the logic puzzle and also the simple Jacob real life sections, where he just has to buy groceries or talk with his brother, anyway these part well alternate to the more fantasy scenarios.


This game looks like a typical rpgmaker classic jrpg but no! It's a classic adventure game!

Visually the game is beautiful: colorful and full of detail, with great use of the special effecxts and lights. There are custom made portraits for most characters (even if sometimes the style looks a bit different), often with different espressions. The developer spent a lot of time curing the aestetics, just like at the sprites. Characters sing, change clothes and so on, not to mention that the style of fonts, dialogue windows, and menus are different depending if the scene takes place in the real world or on Erayu. The intro screen and the scene that plays when first entering Erayu are very pretty, and it's amusing seeying the comments of Jacob ("no title music? Weird" and "This game must be old, looking at the graphics")!
The many details like falling leaves and wild animals running or flying around are well complemented by ambient sounds that give life to the various scenes, from the birds singing in the wild areas, to the murmuring of the people in town. It's really good from this point of view. The soundtrack is also pretty good and while music isn't particularly memorable they fit the various moments pretty well (I especially liked the main theme, and the songs that plays at Silver City and in the swamps).

There are also some additional bits like collectibles and a gallery of pictures and there's even a guide available if you've some trouble with the puzzles (anyway taking your time and thinking rationally is often enough to ). Oh and remind that depending on some choices you may obtain one of the two different endings.


YUP! Time for pizza... and time to end this review!

The Final Verdict
Erayu is a really sweet and detailed point and click adventure with great atmosphere and story. The game is brilliant on treating the emotions of the various characters and also proposing a different kind of gameplay from the usual fantasy rpgs and horror scenarios. And it works perfectly. but the game is not only well thought-out (the two parallel scenarios work well) but also enriched by many details and well refined. The only weak point is probably the mouse/keyboard control system, since rpgmaker wasn't exactly made for this kind of games, anyway the result is still pretty good! I liked Erayu, recommended!