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Something is coming... will defeating it be enough?, June 3, 2023Starlight Shadows follows Lyra, a teenager with some sort of telepathic and prescient skills/powers, trying to figure out what to do after she gets a message that something wrong is about to happen at this (costumed?) party...
This short game is quite simple: you have one hour to gather your fighters before a fight with those strange entities is about to break out, and fight them. Unlike Autumn's other time/resource-management-gameplay games, you are able to interact with (and potentially recruit) every named individuals: your twin brother who's annoyed by you derailing his party and would only relent to help with threats, your (maybe more/less) ex who's witnessed your powers before and know you mean business, the social butterfly who's just a school acquaintance and is really into that one old book series, and the underprivilege gifted kid who is a loner. Whether you convince them is a different story...
When you have recruited your agent(s) - you need at least one - you wait until the clock strikes 8 to run fight those strange entities. Follows a turn-based beat-em-up fight against one entity, (Spoiler - click to show)revealing two endings: one failure where you are saved and told you require more training*, one winning where you realise there will be more fights ahead.
*This was an interesting ending, teasing something a bit ominous, maybe an experiment?
The game feels more of a preview of a larger one, where you'd follow Lyra as she takes on fighting different entities, and save the world (or maybe not...) (and maybe explore that past incident?). But considering it was constrained to a 4h deadline for writing and coding, it is an impressive rounded piece on its own.
Even with its limited sizes, there are a handful of Easter Eggs from Autumn's previous work: referencing A Paradox Between Worlds in the book Cy is reading or during your conversation with Cassie (she is a big fan!) (also Cassie's name feels very APBW too), the mentions of DNA-storage/archiving mechanism from The Archivist & the Revolution*... Also the recurrent theme of the main character not liking being around crowd/attending parties (very Karen from Pageant vibes).
*If the names of some of those characters are familiar, it's because they appear in documents of TA&R, making this game some sort of the latter's prequel...
Final note: only when writing this review did I realise that all characters were named after a constellation... and that is also related to the title...