It’s nothing like its predecessor; it’s brief and doesn’t finish effectively. (Content material warning: Comprises dialogue of suicide.)
All of it started with a single quote from Joe DeVader on our website Slack channel:
“”Fata Morgana devs launch spinoff the place they reuse characters and belongings to inform a narrative about an indie dev and his followers getting isekai’d into his fantasy sport” was not on my bingo card”
This idea sounded completely ridiculous, however given my emotions about The Home in Fata Morgana I needed to take the danger and acquired Seventh Lair. A number of hours later, I used to be left in tears, reaching for the antidepressants I used to be utilizing to get by way of Persona 3 Transportable, and questioning simply tips on how to get my ideas down on paper for this sport.
As Joe so blithely put it, Seventh Lair flagrantly reuses the character fashions and backgrounds from Fata Morgana for a model new story. That is talked about on the sport’s eShop web page and the FM characters are actually credited by title within the credit, in order that they’re trustworthy with it. The “You” character is portraying a Paris-based sport developer with the hacker alias Darkish†Knight, who has created some small indie releases on his personal web site “Royaume Heaven*”. After a little bit of creator’s block, he publicizes a brand new launch for April Fools’ Day, however as the sport goes stay he falls unconscious and wakes up in a clearly-Dragon Quest-inspired JRPG because the hero character. Common members of his website’s boards begin showing as different social gathering members and even – in a single occasion – NPCs, and the social gathering should work their solution to the tip of the sport utilizing solely Darkish†Knight’s recollections of the planning notes for the sport. After some sequence breaking that might make a Tremendous Metroid speedrunner blush, the endgame reveals the rationale for the characters being dropped at the fantasy world to start with, which includes discussions of suicide (amongst different issues) that left me extremely shaken.
Not like its predecessor, Seventh Lair is a short journey; I used to be in a position to get by way of it in a handful of hours. There aren’t any decisions within the story, and apart from a short post-credits “brief story”, what you get in the primary plot is it. Sadly, the enhancing of the story itself is a bit tough, as there have been extra typos / missed phrases on this transient journey than had been within the entirety of Fata Morgana. I might need been tempted guilty the writer particularly because it was their maiden effort on Change, however MangaGamer did publish the unique English launch of Fata Morgana that the console releases (revealed by Restricted Run Video games or its predecessor) had been based mostly on. Hopefully the textual content will probably be cleaned up afterward.
Given the open asset reuse, they did a great job adapting the characters and environments to a “fantasy RPG” world. There’s even a motive why the primary character has extremely lengthy hair in-universe, which was a little bit of consideration to element that I appreciated. The soundtrack retains a propensity for haunting melodies, with the songs “One Lower Deeper”, “Land of Nowhere”, and particularly “The Voice of Fairy” being standouts. (The final of these is definitely used as part of the plot, as effectively.)
I don’t remorse taking a couple of hours to learn Seventh Lair, although I did want a number of minutes to gather myself on the finish of the story. With some cleaned up textual content, it might be an all-time nice visible novella – however for now, it’s a strong one with some issues value discussing.
