Unraveled: Tale of the Shipbreaker’s Daughter by RosePortal Games

RosePortal Games is a small indie studio known for creating titles with unique storylines and their upcoming release, Unraveled, is no different. Currently doing the rounds on Kickstarter, Unraveled is the tale of a young girl who lives at a shipbreaking yard. Separated from her family, the game follows the journey of the girl as she searches for them while traversing the dangerous environments. As she is still a child the girl sees her surroundings in a more whimsical and magical way and even imagines her stuffed animal coming alive to serve as her guardian.

Unraveled features a demo, so we were able to take quite an extensive look at the game and what it has to offer. RosePortal has aimed for a classic SNES/PSX visual style where everything is represented by detailed 2D art. Don’t expect a typical 2D role playing experience however as Unraveled deviates a bit from the norm. Firstly, the game will be almost completely dialogue-free and instead aims to show you everything that is happening to the girl instead of trying to explain it. Secondly, instead of the usual random combat every two steps, almost every enemy you fight will feel like a boss encounter and require strategic thinking to beat.

Combat is turn based, but each character has what is called a State Balance scale. Instead of mana or magic points, skills are classified as “Calm” or “Anger” and can raise or lower the state balance scale. The more extreme ends of the scale allow the character to use stronger skills, but also leaves them susceptible to attacks from the opposite type, which makes combat a careful balancing act. It also means you have to plan ahead by taking the state balance scale of your enemy into consideration.

Then there is the exploration which involves plenty of jumping, climbing and shimmying across gaps. It feels a bit more dynamic than simply walking from point A to B like in many role playing games and also makes the exploration element a bit more fun. Last up is the music, which features the involvement of Hiroki Kikuta who was the composer for Secret of Mana!

The setting and characters for Unraveled is definitely very distinctive, so anyone with an interest in something fresh should show the developers some support. Time is running out though, so head on over to the Kickstarter page for some more information as well as the demo, which you can try out for yourself.