Cope Island: Adrift

There's no doubt that the market for RPGMaker games on Steam is saturated, so when looking at any given game from it, one has to ask the question, 'why should I play this game?'. Why play Cope Island: Adrift over any other of the RPGMaker games out there? Well. Cope Island is a little different from your usual RPGMaker game. There's no huge, epic story spanning dozens of hour here, no large continents to explore, and you're not a boy on a destiny to save the world from a terrifying demon emperor. Instead, Cope Island is a personal journey. You arrive on the shore of a small island as a nameless protagonist, get into a fight, and then open your first chest. And therein lies part of the appeal of Cope Island. On every given run, you'll get a completely random weapon. Said weapon will have two skills assigned to it. Each weapon has it's own distinct use, with some being more support based, while others are all-out offensive, and some lie more in the middle. In Cope Island, you won't be leveling up, or acquiring new skills besides your weapon based ones, so it's up to you to adapt to what you're given, and experiment with your loadout on any given run. That's not to say you won't b…

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It doesn't take very long to finish this game, but that's also what makes it fun. It may seem like a simple short game with a distinctive mood (music and visuals complement each other well) but you'll keep discovering layers and layers that will make you want to go back and look for secrets. You get different weapons and skills during each playthrough, which adds a lot to the replay value. Certain key items remain in your inventory forever after you get them once, so going through a few times in a row is actually the key to getting more secrets. Of course, none of this would be worth it if the game itself weren't enjoyable to play. The combat starts like a basic RPG but as you progress you'll gain the ability to attack two and even three times in a row. This allows for very strategic thinking as you can heal yourself and use multiple skills in one turn. The endgame enemies are challenging and will force you to give careful thought to each turn. All in all, it's very immersive and fun, well worth playing.

First off, my playtime is not reflective of an actual playthrough. I was a tester for an earlier version, so I logged a bunch of hours before it got onto steam. Second, I received this copy for free. Again, see previous. I was a tester. Now, with that out of the way, let's dig in. Cope Island is a turn-based philosophical rpg with tight design, crunchy-but-simple combat, and a gameboy color retro aesthetic. It's an rpgmaker game, but it does not suffer from stock assets syndrome---it looks and plays like something that would have been an instant cult classic had it debuted on handheld console 20 years ago. The core gameplay loop is simple (get weapon, do battles, unlock areas, do more battles), but the core gameplay loop is the foundation for something that's closer to a puzzle/adventure game, where clearing the game unlocks new and different clear conditions for each following run in an evolving narrative about what the island is and why you're there. If you've played either Mownt: For Peace or Three Ghostly Roses, you already know the gameplay loop, worldfeel, and narrative elements that Cope plays with. If you haven't heard of either of those games, they're both free and hig…

This game is a masterclass of mood, non-linear gameplay and storytelling. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. This game has a lot of post-game content available too. I have been aware of zDS's work for a long time, and their games, while they not seem super flashy on the surface, they exhibit a level of depth underneath that is very engaging. I highly recommend this game A+++

This might be a little game at first sight but it offers great "replayability," which is a crucial part of the design. It's an RPG Maker game but far from your standard fare and in my opinion a better piece than To The Moon. The story is an abstract fantasy, which is trying to touch important philosophical and ethical questions. Whether it succeeds or not is questionable as is the nature of such topics. It certainly cares them well and while the themes might feel little forced sometimes, it's never without a taste. Besides that I would recommend the game for swift gameplay centered around weapons and skills tied to them. This makes each playthrough different. Graphics are really nice and some of my favourite pixel art i have seen this year. Especially the colours are very well selected. And man, I love the soundtrack. It's where the game really shines. Somewhere among classic rock, Carpenter's synths and 16-bit fantasy games, it hits the sweet spot and just rocks.