The game is a story driven adventure with loads of imaginitive characters, all wrapped up in a lovely story about a young boy in hospital and his favourite story book. The book tells the story of a man who travels to a mysterious place called Morizora’s forest where he overcomes many challenges to speak to the guardian of the forest, Morizora where he can get his wish granted. The boy one day asks his mum if he can go and visit Morizora and get his own wish granted.
The game is inspired by some of the best 16 bit RPG’s including Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana. The world of Rakuen has some beautiful pixel art that looks almost hand painted and definitely gives off the same amazing style as some of the older Mana games!
Throughout the game you learn about the other people in the hospital and their alternate selves in the world of Rakuen. The fun begins when you find a secret entrance to the world of Rakuen in the hospital and begin to make your own journey to Morizora’s Forest! Along the way you meet many wonderfully weird characters.
I’ve never played it, but Laura told me one of the biggest inspirations for the story and feeling of the game was Suikoden on the PS1. She really wanted you to feel attached to the characters and find out all the little back story details during conversations with them. I love the fact that each character is so unique and you can ask them about how they feel about other characters and see their reactions. It’s clear a lot of time and effort went into making all the characters believable and unique and it definitely paid off!
I won’t go into too much detail with the story as I don’t want to spoil anything, but rest assured that It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, but most importantly, it will suck you into it’s world and make you feel a sense of wonder and imagination that I haven’t felt from a game in a long time! The music is also incredible, as expected. Sometimes i’d just leave the game on in the background just to keep listening to the music! All the tracks in the game are made with such care and really compliment the story.
There’s also a surprising amount of puzzles which break up the gameplay, these are all well thought out and give you a sense of satisfaction when you figure them out! There’s also a few pretty stressful escape sequences! Theres a huge cave near the start of the game that definitely gave me the feeling of going through a dungeon in Zelda!
This game means quite a lot to me. Back in Uni I was working on my own game in RPG Maker, Quantum Shift. I played a lot of games to get inspiration, including one called To The Moon. That game was amazing and the ending theme, sung by Laura, really stood out to me. After playing that, I became quite a fan of her works and used to listen to some of her original songs and covers while I was working on my game. I was very excited when I found out she was also making a game in RPG Maker!
I’ve been following the development for the past four years and it’s exciting to see it be released.
The game is available to buy on steam for PC, Mac and Linux on May 10th. I hope you enjoy the game as much as I did!
I definitely encourage you all to check it out on steam when it’s released!
Thanks for watching, check out Laura’s Youtube channel for some amazing original music and to listen to some of the Rakuen soundtrack..
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