Technical Information

Developer: Tuomo Laine
Publisher: Tuomo’s Games
Release Date: October 22, 2021

The game takes place in 1985. You control Asuka, a girl who has a friend who always insists on her doing bad things. The adventure begins when her friend convinces her to enter an abandoned amusement park.

Final Thoughts – Analyzing the Game as a Whole

Graphics and UI

I really liked the game’s art. The scenes, enemies, and objects are very well done.
None of them seem to have been bought from asset packs (that standard “template” aesthetic is quite common in RPG Maker games, even when the art is original, it often feels reused).

The few animations present are quite simple, but since this is an RPG Maker game, I wasn’t expecting anything too elaborate. For the story’s proposal, they work well.

There are various adjustment options (graphics, sound, language, etc.) in the menu.
For those already familiar with games of this kind, there’s nothing new. For newcomers, I don’t think it presents any barriers, since the options are very clear.

During gameplay, you can save and load the game at any time.
There are several save slots, which I found a bit excessive, considering the game’s length.

Soundtrack and Sound Effects

The ambient sound is good, but the default audio balancing bothered me quite a lot because the enemy noises were too loud. I understand this was meant to scare the player, but for me it became uncomfortable. I ended up lowering the sound effects to have a more pleasant experience.

The game recommends using headphones. I didn’t use them, and even so, I found the sounds and music immersive.

Gameplay

Scarred Stars follows the typical RPG Maker narrative formula: you explore areas, search for items, and use them in the correct places.
There is no combat. You must constantly flee from enemies, somewhat similar to Clock Tower. There are HP and sanity bars, and you must keep them full to avoid dying.
You also have an endurance gauge that decreases as you run.

I found the pursuit mechanics a bit stiff. It’s quite easy to escape enemies, even without running, simply by hiding in designated spots. Since the areas are small, escaping isn’t very challenging.

If your main interest is following the story, this might be a positive point. However, if you enjoy tense chase mechanics, you may be disappointed.

When I first played the game, it failed to load the graphics (a loading animation appeared and wouldn’t disappear). It only worked properly when I tested it on another machine.
There’s also a slight slowdown in the section where thorns grow from the ground. Aside from these two issues (which seem related to optimization and graphics card compatibility), I didn’t encounter any bugs.

The puzzles are quite intuitive, except for the ending. I only managed to get the bad ending. :/

The game includes Portuguese (Portugal) localization, but all references to Momoko use masculine grammatical forms. This made me suspect the text may have been machine-translated or translated without full context of the story.
In some parts, there are broken lines showing raw line-break commands. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have gone through proper revision.

I found the story interesting, but its pacing feels somewhat generic.
(Basically, you read text fragments scattered around and gradually piece together connections between them and Asuka’s friend, Momoko.)

Replayability and Game Retention

It’s a simple game with a shallow story, but it can still entertain players who enjoy short horror experiences.
I believe it may appeal to those who like games such as Mad Father and Red Bow.