Lonely White [론리화이트] Game Sample - PC/Dongin

So I've been looking into smaller niche projects to get into to help pad the bigger or more "passionate" projects I've been working on and while games from the West and Japan are typically front and center, I've fallen into a pocket of charming Chinese and Korean games that took me by surprise lately thanks in no small part to Steam (I've also gotten more proficient at playing them as well). Today's game is a neat little title by the name of "Lonely White", developed by the near-solo dev, Nomary (as in, they have limited assistance from others but do the majority of the heavy lifting). Most of the games I've seen from them seem to use the RPG Maker / Tsukuru Runtimes and are rather compact, lasting only a couple hours or so, but they still exude a level of polish you don't see in your average Indie works (in this case, "Dongin", the Korean equivalent of "Doujin"). They're also extremely cheap and you can get most of them on sale for under a single dollar... if this is the model they're going to use to build their base and inevitably fund their way of life and hopefully even bigger projects, I'm all for it because their games have charm and whimsy, but let's dive into the game further. The game involves an amnesiac girl named Lumiere (Lumie for short) who wakes up in the dark abyss of the Shadow World when she gains consciousness due to a faint presence reaching out to her in the area. She was "intended" to be locked in this abyss forever, but spatial cracks in the area have begun to form and a strange creature known as Astra compels her to escape into the light before nearly being attacked by a mysterious girl in black. This girl, who we come to know as Noir, is essentially the other half of Lumie who has her own motivations for stopping you and will use any means necessary which is not limited to kidnapping and murder. Lumie travels the land with Astra (The Guide of Light) as an "Otherworld Being" who is trying to figure out why she is here and how she can get back to where she belongs while meeting many strange characters along the way who live in the Shadow World and also occasionally running into Noir and the mysterious "G" who knows who Lumie is on the other side. Nomary, like most of us, initially went into game development nearly blind, knowing very little about code or how to get their ideas off the ground. The RPG Maker Series has been a boon for a lot of amateurs who have more ideas than know-how and Nomary had a vision for an adventure-style game with exploration and interactivity playing a large role but shelved numerous concepts until Lonely White came along. The game draws inspiration from Nintendo's "Wario Land" with running and bumping gameplay (although one could also argue it's like "Algarna" and earlier "Ys" games) with a black and white motif to help simplify production as their first major work. While the game definitely seems to use some stock sounds and music I've found in other Indie works, the graphics beyond basic effects seems to be original and are a cohesive, stylistic choice to evoke cuteness but also intrigue and isolation. The interactions between characters and the many nuanced secrets create more player agency than one might notice at a glance as well. If the player takes a beeline straight to the end game, Lonely White is a rather short game and much of its runtime is not especially difficult... but doing this would be doing the game a disservice. Nomary has gone to great lengths to fill the game full of secrets, mini-games, and alternate objectives that change based on the player's stats. While the game seems like an ARPG on the surface, they used most stats within the game's engine more to serve as "flags" to trigger events than to outright strengthen the player as almost every object is begging to be interacted with, lore dumps exist in sometimes the most unlikely of places and the game is all the more brilliant as a result; it actually uses a lot of ideas from a scrapped game I was developing myself long ago (name redacted). For example, the stats range from Courage, Kindness, Wisdom, Observation, Tenacity and Luck... can't meet the dressmaker's daughter if your kindness isn't up to par, can't "see" certain things hidden in the game world if observation skills are lacking, things of that nature. There are also costumes, accessories, artifacts and such to augment your abilities. Combat is mostly a simple affair of ramming into enemies with SP acting as Stamina to prevent spamming, but certain spells and setups can alter this. There are a lot of shops with a lot of items and facilities. Lonely White is not life-changing and it's not perfect, but it's easy to recommend and a no-brainer at 3$ max. This is a vid in action, you can get it at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/20... Enjoy. ADDITION - Visit Us At: http://www.gamingsanctuary.org