Ellie Starling's Very Long Walk

Intro

If there is one word that comes to mind when I think about "Ellie Starling's Very Long Walk" then it's disappointment. This isn't because the demo put out by everybear is awful and I feel like this game would be an absolute waste of everyone's time. The problem here is that the demo seems like it's for a pretty solid game about someone trying to figure out who they are. The reason this project is disappointing for me is that it never got past the demo stage.

And considering the demo was posted back in August of 2015. I can be fairly confident that this game will never be completed. That it's one of the many RPGMaker games that someone has started work on but eventually abandoned. Unfortunately I really can't tell you why this game was dropped. As far as I'm aware the developer just quietly dropped it and all of their other projects and disappeared into the ether.

Story

You play as Ellie Starling a young girl whose struggling to learn who she is and be accepted by others. This is because Ellie isn't particularly wanted by her parents since she doesn't conform to gender norms.



Something her conservative parents find highly frustrating. And the only person that does seem to accept her is Kenny, her best friend that wants more from Ellie than he/she/they are willing to give.



Though after running away from Kenny's unwanted advances it appears that Ellie has wandered into a forest on another world that is filled with magic and dangerous creates and in order to go home Ellie will need to learn how he/she/they arrived in the land of Idjarden in the first place. A process that will require the player to track down various magical stones representing the seven elements. And while the game does refer to the first one as wood I'm guessing these stones are based on nature, water, fire, earth, light, darkness, and spirit.

Unfortunately I'm never going to know that for sure considering the demo ends shortly after you've gained the first of these stones. And since the demo is meant to showcase the story. You really don't get to even play around with the powers of the one stone you collect either.

Gameplay

The demo features a bar intended for an active-time battle system like several entries in the Final Fantasy series. Though it appears the demo is set to passive mode so combat might've felt more like you're using the conditional turn-based system from "Final Fantasy X" or "Phantom Brave". Unfortunately the demo really doesn't showcase how easy or hard the developer intended to make this game since every fight ends after a single hit and the player always goes first.



I can tell you the developer intended for the player to be able to switch between various magical transformations as they acquire additional elemental stones, but this system isn't put to the test at all in the demo. In fact, the demo doesn't even include any special attacks for either your base form or transformations. And while I realize this was because everybear wanted to promote the narrative. I also feel like this was a bit of a bad idea since it means everybear wouldn't be able to get any meaningful feedback about combat in this demo.

Graphics & Sound

As far as I'm aware both of these aspects of this game are entirely custom which means this game definitely looks and sounds unique. It's just too bad the time and effort put into those assets were only ever put to work in a demo.

Conclusion

On one hand this demo is pretty solid in my opinion as far as the narrative goes, but at the same time this project has most likely joined the long list of projects that have been abandoned and forgotten about by many over the years. As such there really isn't much reason to play this one. Especially since it will only leave you saddened about what could have been if everybear finished this project. As it stands the only reason to play this demo anymore is to put together a review for it.