Remnants of Isolation

When a developer, or team of artists, has a month to create a complete, satisfying experience -- with contest deadline looming and pressures running high -- what is perceived by many to be a simple task of creating an elegant one-hour spectacle can quickly become an intimidating nightmare. The journey, more often than not, is characterized by unmet (or unset) milestones, produced results falling short of what the brilliance one might have imagined in one's head, and an overwhelming sense of incoherence and incompleteness.

Often games produced in such a short period of time exhibit either products of overwhelming inexperience (messes that happen from lack of effort or skill or tact), or of unripe genius, usually style over substance affairs with flashes of brilliance, pretty, but with a concept more ambitious than it is fruitful. Thus it was a surprise, at least to me, that the winner of the Indie Game Maker Contest 2014 was a game made using what looked to be the RTP (but what I later learned was only in the style of RTP), and that my immediate reaction was to discard it as fodder for RPG lovers, and perhaps even bias towards the RPG Maker engine by the judges themselves.

I'll be quick to amend that this was not the case, and that Remnants of Isolation was, in my opinion, fully deserving of the Grand Prize, even if I would have also been happy with other entries such as Last Word winning in an alternate universe, but it would have been a shame to have excluded Remnants from the winning list entirely, simply because it is most deserving of such acclaim.

STORY
Remnants wears its Ico influences on its sleeve. An isolated fortress. There are hints of subtractive design, by excluding NPCs from being the points of interaction that flavour the world, but rather letting the tete-a-tete interaction fuel the narrative and world-building. By promoting isolation, the aim is to increase levels of immersion.

A lone unnamed pink-haired mute Albino lady wakes from her slumber, and suddenly she is freed from her prison of magic. She has been entrapped in a cage, and freeing herself enables her to be empowered again. She meets Melchior, a green-braided ex-mage. They are tasked with escaping the fort together. To do that, they must power up the five crystals, which are activated by completing themed zones.

Red Nova's writing, and Sooz's editing, create a slow build of character development, and as is common in Red Nova works, it involves the main protagonist coming to terms with themselves and their inner demons. Unity handles the dungeons, balancing linearity and non-linearity adroitly. Sooz draws the monsters and handles editing of the dialogue, drawing from her comic-drawing roots to buff Red's character chops.

Storytelling is implied often through exploration and gameplay rather than through the normal conversation-based exposition. Yet, elements of the story are exposed at a uniform rate, tightening up the tension over time - a slow burn. Notes are scattered throughout that tell a story that reveals parts of a character's past, but I was not attentive enough to craft a story out of them other than scattered pieces of what happened, and the effect these events had on one of the protagonists.

Special map powers are used throughout the game that prove important to storytelling, even until the end. Melchior's jumping power is used to separate him from Celeste so he can have a truly introspective moment and be able to show his feelings out loud without fear of being judged. At these moments, we are allowed to feel like a voyeur into his inner monologue.

Some have complained about the dynamic between Melchior and Celeste containing hokey exposition due to Celeste being effectively mute, but I would argue that Celeste has facial expressions that make her more than a completely mute companion (much to Sooz's credit), and that her intent is often understood by Melchior more and more as they progress throughout the dungeons, signifying a growing bond between the pair.

Three endings exist. I usually find multiple endings frustrating, but in this case, they elevate the game. An arc exists for each of the two characters, coming to terms with their inner demons, and realizing the true power of love. All resistance will be overcome by good, and to win against figures that exert their dominance by means of sole obedience to authority, rather than being a good authority, is one of the most important victories a person, or society, can have. The hope is that this story of overcoming can encourage players to have courage to overcome their own domineering parents/governments in a just way, if they believe these authorities to be severely unjustly or cruelly oppressing their dependents.

GAMEPLAY
Battles require strategy to complete, while ramping up the difficulty consistently throughout. Winning battles revolves solidly around Spell Fusion, by utilizing the duo's functionally unique set of skills. In turn, they can modify each others' attacks/heals, providing ample opportunity for dynamic combination of effects to produce unique emergent possibilities.

Games often boast to "let you play how you would like", but you would think for a linear RPG this would be a false boast. For many, it is, but in Remnants, you have a good amount of freedom to play how you choose, and for there to be many valid strategies to be effective battlers.

There is a puzzle in the game, and this was a weak point. The puzzle was a play-by-the-numbers trial-and-error puzzle that didn't fit the style of the game, I believe.

GRAPHICS
The maps contain elements of surreal architecture that does not make sense spatially, but since the fortress is implied to be somewhat metaphorical rather than existing in real space, this makes sense in the story. Magically locked gates conceal cliff vistas overlooking vast chasms of nothingness. It's safe to say that much of the architecture is not existing in the plane of reality.

Much of the game is mapped in RTP, but plentiful edits are used too. In the commercial version, the battler graphics and backgrounds are well-drawn and contribute to an isolated, threatening and oppressive atmosphere. In late game, battlers exhibit a sense of body horror and get scarier and scarier. Credit to Sooz for crafting truly creepy monsters to battle against.

CONCLUSION
Remnants is a solid example of how great an RPG Maker game can be. Eschewing flashiness for a solid conventional experience, while injecting new flavour into the formula, it shows that you can be innovative while still utilizing the best aspects of what has been proven before. As solid as an RPG Maker game should be, I give this strong character-based all-rounder a 4.5/5.