Waking Mars educates one about an alien planet’s ecosystem

I’ve never been to Mars and probably never will in my lifetime, but I’ve both read and seen a lot of hot takes on the red planet, such as Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, The Martian by Andy Weir, and 1990’s Total Recall. I’ve even played a few games set there, like all the Red Faction joints. Chances are I wouldn’t survive long, knowing only how to make hot dog rice and a slumber party tent using two chairs and an old bedsheet, but that’s expected. Also, if hostile alien lifeforms exist, I wouldn’t know what to do to keep them from eating my Earthly flesh. Related to that, one is still trying to survive the harsh landscape in Waking Mars, but the true focus is on study and education, on discovering what makes this world alive and function.

Tiger Style put out Waking Mars in early 2012, but I only discovered it the other night in my Steam library, way at the bottom of the list. I honestly have no recollection of how it got there, but I’m going to assume it was through a Humble Bundle of sorts. Without knowing too much about the game other than some of the Achievement descriptions, I loaded it up and was surprised to discover that it is…a science-fiction adventure game with light platforming in the veins of a jetpack. Also, it’s totally about gardening. The year is 2097, and life has been discovered on Mars. Your mission of first contact takes a real bad turn, with American astronaut Liang becoming trapped by a cave-in. He must master the alien ecosystem to better survive and progress, as well as discover the secrets of the planet’s past.

Right. First off, instead of shooting your way to safety, Liang must grow a lively ecosytem to open passageways and redirect water to the areas that need it most. This was a great surprise. Much like The Swapper, combat is not the focus; instead, exploring your surroundings and puzzling out what to do next is the main mechanic fueling progression and storytelling, and that has actually made the jet-packing all the more fun because you are not trying to fire a blaster and dodge acid bombs at the same time, but rather zip around in search of places to grow some local life. Instead, you are looking for plant seeds and fertile ground, as well as scientific remnants of a co-worker that has gone missing. Each area has a Biomass rating, which you must raise to open up new areas to explore, and you do this by making life thrive. Plant seeds in the right spot, cultivate them, mix seeds with other seeds, avoid dangerous plants, and watch how everything interacts.

Waking Mars, so far, has a somewhat compelling story, but I’m more interested in the diversity of its cast, as well as the strong voice acting, which gives more meaning and urgency to the search for alien life and a way back to the headquarters. Liang is quiet and curious, but also physically alone in these Mars caves. In his ear are two support team members: Armani, an upbeat scientist, and ART, a humorous and glitch AI (think TARS from Interstellar). At different points, you’ll stop for conversation and figure out what to do next. These are linear moments, but they do reveal a lot about each character and provide hints at what is really going on here.

The gardening is fun. I generally always have fun growing digital plants, but the fact that everything interacts with each other to either raise or lower your Biomass rating is fascinating and much different than other games. Makes me feel like a scientist doing scientist-y things. You are also encouraged to get creative and research each plant fully, figuring out how it reproduces or reacts to prey. Once you know more about each respective plant, you can create a highly efficient zone, one that almost takes care of itself. It’s difficult but not impossible to reach five-star Biomass rating, and I suspect doing so will have a unique result on the current environment; alas, I’ve not been able to do this yet.

According to the Internet, Waking Mars takes about six to eight hours to complete. I’ve only put in two hours so far, which means there’s plenty of Mars left to explore and turn into my personal zoa garden. We’ll see if I have a green or red thumb.

Get it?

Y’know, because the iron oxide prevalent on the planet’s surface gives it a reddish appearance?

In the end, Earthlock: Festival of Magic is amicably middling

Well, I was dead wrong with my assumption that Earthlock: Festival of Magic was like Costume Quest 2 and Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness in terms of its length. I was expecting an eight- to ten-hour adventure, but ended up seeing credits roll after something like nearly twenty-six hours. Eep. I mean, yeah, part of me is to blame, as I simply had to see everything and pop all the “rare” Achievements, considering I saw them all as potentially achievable, but much blame can go to the developers as well, as some of their decisions unnecessarily padded out content. Like giving you two under-leveled party members late into the adventure or locking garden recipes behind difficult side bosses. More on that in a bit.

I beat Earthlock: Festival of Magic the other night, and I still really don’t know what the plot was or why this diverse range of colorful characters were working together. It’s real simple to say they were trying to save their planet Umbra, but things get more murky beyond that goal. From who? Not sure. Why? Well, because. It begins plainly enough with a journey to rescue desert scavenger Amon’s uncle from an ancient cult that is after some even ancienter gizmo. Basically, there’s a magical doodad that evil-minded people want for evil-minded means, and us, the good guys, which consists of a mythical hogbunny called Gnart and Ive, the daughter of a famous general from the House of the Great Wave, and a few others, must do everything to stop this. Because we’re the heroes, dang it.

Look, I didn’t come here for the story. I was initially intrigued by the game’s art style and heavy influence from classic RPGs from the late 1990s, such as Final Fantasy VII and Wild Arms. I’m a real sucker for turn-based combat, though I prefer it when taking turns becomes more than just that, with extra mechanics tossed in to liven things up. Like button prompts in Paper Mario: Sticker Star or enemy location manipulation in Radiant Historia. There’s some of that here, though not enough to get me gushing. Actually, let’s dive into the combat, since a major chunk of the game is spent with you commanding your party to attack, heal, buff, and wait against enemies.

I already told you it is turn-based. The turn is order affected by individual character speed stats, as well as whether or not you have initiative when entering the fight. Your party of four battles in two pairs. For me, my go-to pairing was Amon with Gnart and Ive with Taika. You might find other pairings better to your liking. Basically, each pair gets special stats and buffs as their bond together grows. When damaged by enemies, they accumulate support points, which can be used to activate special moves once the bar fills up. These include healing your entire party or attacking every enemy with a magic spell for big damage. Other than that, each character has two stances, which affects their attacks (range versus melee, healer versus soldier, etc). I think I maybe switched stances less than five times total; my suggestion is to find a style that works for you, and double down on it. You’ll be fine. There’s some fun to be had early on with the combat as you begin learning who can do what, but it quickly grows mundane and repetitive when you have to grind later to get all your party members up to level 20. Thankfully, you can kite more enemies into a single fight because the more you battle at once, the bigger the XP gains.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time gardening in Earthlock: Festival of Magic. Not like I do in Stardew Valley or Disney Magical World 2, but enough to see my thumbs turn green. This is because, as mentioned earlier, I mained Ive and Amon, two characters that use ranged weapons, and those need a bunch of different element-based ammo to get through all them repetitive fights. Gardening isn’t tough, and you can easily fall into a hypnotic rhythm of harvesting, watering, harvesting, watering, and so on. I still feel like Plumpet Island was severely underused; there are areas that seem like they’d be accessible or eventually open up to offer more things to do, but that never happens. Basically, you have a garden, a place to craft ammo, a place to craft talents, a shop, and an inn to rest for free. Considering the amount of time you spend there and the fact that towns are few and uninteresting, I was hoping for more interaction. Something like from Dragon Age: Origins, where you can chat with your party members.

Even if I had finished Earthlock: Festival of Magic back in December, it would not have made my top five games list. It’s not a terrible RPG, nor is it going to blow you away. It hits the average mark and does not waver. The ideas are there and staples of the genre, but that alone does not make an astounding adventure.

Another garden to tend to in Earthlock: Festival of Magic

Currently, I’m juggling a lot of gardens. There’s the one in Disney Magical World 2, which is where I’m looking to harvest some rarer fruits, vegetables, and flowers, such as spooky carrots and solar sunflowers. There’s the one in Dragon Age: Inquisition‘s Skyhold castle, which seems to only grow plants after I’ve traveled between a set number of regions to recreate some actual passing of time. There’s the one in Stardew Valley, which is your biggest means to making money through the four seasons, and I now have the game also on Xbox One, resulting in double the work if I plan to continue with my PC save as well. All of that is to say that there’s now one more place to grow and cultivate plants in Earthlock: Festival of Magic, a colorful RPG from Snowcastle Games, as well as a monthly freebie back in September 2016.

I’m about nine to ten hours into Earthlock: Festival of Magic, just around the 50% completion mark, and, alas, I don’t think I can sum up its plot easily from the top of my noggin. Not because it is extremely deep and layered, like multiple seasons deep into Game of Thrones, but more that it is not extremely clear or focused. I’m going to have to resort to the developer’s own words and see if it stirs anything new from me:

Embark on a journey to save the beautiful world of Umbra, a harsh planet that stopped spinning thousands of cycles ago. What started as a mission to rescue Amon’s uncle from the clutches of an ancient cult, soon spirals into an adventure that was centuries in the making. You must bring together this group of unlikely heroes to stop the ruinous past from repeating itself.

Yeah, sure. That’s kind of being descriptive without providing any actual details. At this point in the game, I’m in a town called Suvia, lurking through sewers after the bad dudes that stole some machine. A machine that may or may not be connected to a relic that Amon and his hammerhead uncle stole at the start of the game. I don’t know. I’m kind of moving from place to place, fighting enemies every few steps and talking to a minor amount of nonplayable characters for some background lore. Oh, and there’s a boy in a frog suit that has given me a special, magical area, almost like Bastion‘s Bastion, to grow plants, craft ammo, and create talent upgrades for my team, and it’s where I have been hanging my hat the most, as the actual towns in Earthlock: Festival of Magic are not many, nor are they all that interesting to explore.

This is very much a throwback to the adventure RPGs of the late 1990s with a heavy focus on turn-based combat and character progression, such as Chrono Cross and Tales of Phantasia. I’m going to dig into the combat first. Speaking of first, enemies are always present on the field, and you can gain the advantage of attacking first if you press “A” before the enemy runs into the party. I don’t know if I’ve missed this chance once yet. It’s probably hard to miss. As previously mentioned, combat is turn-based, with a list of turn order on the far right of the screen. Each character has different stances, which determines what attacks they can do, such as ranged or up-close melee or dancing between support spells and attack magic. For instance, Alon, the protagonist–or, at least, my assumption is he is, though you can switch to play any other character if you want–can either get intimate with a knife or use a gun to attack from a distance. Switching stances costs a turn, which I personally think sucks, and so I’ve been sticking to one stance per character for most of the fights unless the scenario obviously calls for a change.

Upgrading each character reminded me of how it worked in Final Fantasy XII with the License Board, which consisted of a tiled board with hundreds of squares. Each square represented an ability, spell, equipment piece, or augment, and these could be unlocked after earning LP. Here, in Earthlock: Festival of Magic, you have a similar board for each character, with some predetermined abilities (passive and active) locked in place. As you level up, you’ll earn Talent Points (TP–hee hee), and you can build each character’s skill tree as you wish using a mix of talents to boost stats like strength, defense, accuracy, magic, and so on. Defeating bosses gets you access to special tiles that do things like help reduce the time it takes to switch stances or even see hidden ghosts on the field. I really like this system as it does offer a lot of control and personalizing for each character. Also, you can pair each party member with another to grow a stronger bond between the two to unlock more stat upgrades and abilities. Phew. There’s actually quite a lot going on with the combat, though to be fair, it doesn’t go much deeper than this, and the secret to beating tough bosses like GobKing and Mushriga is simply grinding.

In terms of graphics, I’m conflicted when it comes to Earthlock: Festival of Magic. Everything is cartoony and colorful, with a looseness that is both stylish and on purpose, reminiscent of Broken Age and Tales of the Abyss, which I’m all about. In fact, its look, from the few screens I saw of it and not knowing much else about the title, was enough to get me to install it. Unfortunately, the overworld map is severely dull and bland, and by that I mean it is lacking textures for the ground you are running on, which makes it feel unfinished. I also think some more love and pizzazz could have gone into the location titles (see Final Fantasy IX for inspiration). Sound is a different subject, and the soundtrack is quite good, a mix of upbeat, battle-appropriate tunes and relaxing notes for watching plants grow, though I did notice a lot of effect noises missing during a few battle sequences. See, conflicted.

Earthlock: Festival of Magic is an indie RPG with dreams of being big. Extremely big. You can see what it wants to be by noticing where it is lacking. For instance, there’s not a lot to discover in this fantasy world, other than a hidden treasure chest or two. Towns are tiny and only hold a limited number of people/things to interact with, and the interactions are slight at best. The story seems to have fun, unique characters, but no one is really standing out currently as somebody to champ for, except maybe the hogbunny Gnart. I plan to finish it and hopefully pop every Achievement–most of which are labeled rare because not many people are playing–but thankfully this RPG is only as big as Costume Quest 2 and Dragon Fantasy…and not Dragon Age: Inquisition, which might not ever end at the pace I nibble on it. As always, that’s a different post.