The online games festival BitSummit Gaiden runs from June 27 to June 28, and one of the games featured is Who is the Hero? -Lycoris-, a retro-style game about a girl named Rico going on an adventure to help the people in her village. It begins with a character asking Rico to take a paintbrush to an artist in a cave south of the village, and then you’re given control of the demo.
Voxel graphics make up the art style, and while the blocky characters and environments are a little odd at first, they grow on you as you play. The rest of the game’s presentation isn’t quite there yet, with dialogue feeling unnatural and abrupt. Some of this is clearly because of the translation, so hopefully, it will get a stronger editing pass ahead of its final release. The controls also took a little getting used to, as Rico moves immediately in whichever direction you press, yet the game’s idea of “up” wasn’t quite the same as mine. Once I adjusted to the controls, however, it became more natural.
I spent a little bit of time exploring the village, and aside from a bug that forced me to start the demo over when I fell through the environment, it was entertaining to walk up to NPCs and see their dialogue, stilted or not. Some dialogue hinted that there might be a greater plot later on, as well.
After getting the paintbrush for the artist, I headed south to find the cave. Along the way, however, I ran into monsters. Rico has no way of fighting, but she does have a special ability granted to her by a fairy that lets her turn invisible for a brief period of time. (This was presented to me through a tutorial that told me to hold my breath, and after a few seconds of nothing happening, I hit the ability button to see if that would work.) The idea is that you turn invisible to make sure monsters can’t see you and then sneak past.
In practice, that doesn’t work quite so well due to the number of monsters in the area and the limited duration of the invisibility. I found myself avoiding the nearest enemies only to immediately draw the attention of another mob before the ability had recharged. It only takes a few hits for Rico to lose all her health, too. Fortunately, each death ended with Rico saying it was only a dream and standing up again, but I assume that’s a special feature for the demo.
I finally made it to the cave and gave the artist his paintbrush. He painted Rico’s portrait and then the demo ended, leaving me relieved I didn’t have to work my way through that gauntlet of enemies again. Who is the Hero? has a charming art style and some interesting ideas, but it still needs a fair amount of polishing before it will be ready to go.
