Sea of Stars is one we’ve been excited to play for a while, especially when Sabotage Studio confirmed it was not only coming to Xbox but also to Xbox Game Pass! Now, Sea of Stars is finally here, and we’ve got a lot of questions. Luckily, Sabotage Studio CEO and co-founder Thierry Boulanger (also creative director for Sea of Stars) was kind enough to answer everything we wanted to know about Sea of Stars’ gameplay, achievement design, story and more!What is Sea of Stars?Sea of Stars is a turn-based RPG “inspired by the classics.” It’s developed and published by Sabotage Studio. When does Sea of Stars launch?Sea of Stars is out now!Will Sea of Stars be on Xbox Game Pass?Yep! It launches into Xbox Game Pass today as a day-one addition.What’s it about?In Sea of Stars, we know that two Children of the Solstice, Valere and Zale, set out to use their sun and moon powers for Eclipse Magic against The Fleshmancer. Boulanger shares more details on the Sea of Stars premise, adding, “It’s a world where it’s understood that there were two alchemists who had a falling out.” From the Sea of Stars Kickstarter, we know that these two alchemists are Aephorul and Resh’an, who managed to create the elixir of life but came to a crisis as Aephorul became corrupted by evil. Boulanger continues, adding, “They’re both immortals, and in their battles they used very powerful and forbidden magic, and it changed the world of Sea of Stars. The game takes place in an archipelago, but there are remnants and vestiges of what happened in the alchemists’ bouts millenia prior. So there are big statues, sundered land — things like that. The idea is that in the wake of all of this, the alchemists are both gone — but the evil one, The Fleshmancer, left what are called Seeds of Evil. These grow into Dwellers, which are monsters that are impervious to all but Eclipse Magic, which is wielded by the Children of the Solstice.”That’s where Valere and Zale come in. “So if you’re born on a winter solstice, you get the power of the moon, and if you’re born on a summer solstice, you get the power of the sun; Eclipse Magic is a combination of solar and lunar magic. It’s the only thing that can damage these types of Dweller monsters. The Dwellers are impervious to even that magic, but when there is an eclipse, that’s kind of like the magical moment where for a short, brief window, the Dwellers become vulnerable. So the Children of the Solstice train to become Solstice Warriors,” he continues, “to hone their powers, and then they organize what is called cleansings — they’re tracking the Dwellers’ presence up until that point, and whenever the eclipse happens, for them it’s a moment of ‘We’re going all in, we’re hunting this Dweller this time around!’ The Solstice Warriors are trying to prevent the Dwellers from feeding. If Dwellers are left to their own devices for too long, they will turn into a Worldeater. A Worldeater will literally eat the world, and so it’ll turn into basically the apocalypse.”It’s a fair bit of pressure for two young heroes, but Boulanger adds, “The other thing that underpins all of that is that the good alchemist tried to buy time by performing transmutation alchemy on the spacetime continuum. So he split reality in countless timelines and he became an archivist, and we’re only playing the one thread in Sea of Stars.” This good alchemist, Resh’an, is trying to figure out all possible outcomes, while also looking for one where Aephorul (now The Fleshmancer) realizes what he’s done. “So the idea is that these things happen over different timelines; some of them are getting lost to Worldeaters, some of them get saved in timelines where Children of the Solstice emerge into Guardian Gods, and the understanding is that we’re playing one of these threads where… well, we play two that seem to have very high potential, where Children of the Solstice will do their best to fight off those creations.”Along the way, Valere and Zale will meet a host of other characters. “Sometimes epic, sometimes silly, and other times emotional, Sea of Stars does its RPG duty of exploring classic themes of adventure and friendship, while also being chock-full of the unexpected twists and events you’d expect from a Sabotage production,” the Steam page adds. These characters include warrior cook Garl (a close friend who grew up with Valere and Zale) and portal assassin Serai.How does Sea of Stars play?There’s a whole lot to do in Sea of Stars. It has a big focus on turn-based combat, but there are also a whole host of other activities to do in the world of Sea of Stars, including exploring, cooking, sailing, fishing, and more. Boulanger explains that a lot of that is entirely optional, though. “Some people won’t fish at all, or they’ll only sail in a straight line to get to the next thing. There are some optional bits and things that of your own volition you can choose to go for; maybe you hit a wall where you’re like, ‘Hm, I don’t know what that ruin means, but maybe later I’ll be able to open something,’ and it can later resolve as a thing where you get a cool item out of it. But exploration is definitely welcomed.“There’s this fishbowling theory from game design where at first you’re a small fish, so we give you a small bowl,” he continues. “As you start growing, we give you a bigger bowl. That was very much applied in the game, so that as things open up — by the time you get your boat, for example — you’re not on rails anymore. Now you’re free to go to the next island or wherever the next thing is. But you can also go back to where you started off; maybe there’s a stone you left unturned, or maybe now you can open a thing you saw when you were just starting off that you couldn’t access before.”Another important thing you can do is head into a tavern and play some Wheels, a tabletop minigame. “We have a mysterious character in Sea of Stars; she’s only known as The Watchmaker, and she’s so good at her craft that when she toils away in her workshop, there is a tingling of magic in the air that she can capture and infuse into the pieces she’s working on,” Boulanger explains. “And so, she invented a tabletop game called Wheels. Everything is clockwork; it’s just a kit that she ships and sells throughout the world. Every tavern has one, it’s all the rage, and it’s basically a fantasy battler. You have your little figurines, your characters, and you’re spinning the wheels tying to match enough of their power icons to get your figurines to act and attack your opponent. You want to basically break your enemy’s bulwark, and then attack their crown (which houses their hit points). So you unlock new figurines as you’re playing.”These new figurines begin at level one and proceed to level up as you play. “You get XP by acting, attacking, things like that, and by the symbols that you can match. So sometimes it’s a bit of a race, where you’re deciding ‘oh, do I want to attack more? Do I want to focus on XP or not?’ because if an opponent’s character gets to level three… it’s not exactly a sudden death, but they become pretty deadly. As you progress, you have your own wheel that’s pretty bad at first — but you get upgrades for it by beating champions in different towns. There’s five wheels total you use in a match; four of them are default wheels which come with the table you’re playing at, but you contribute the fifth one, which gets better as you accumulate wins — you add more face symbols or earnable bonuses to it.”Then there are playable classes to unlock, “which are all cliché; The Watchmaker really wanted to make something that would feel kind of childlike. It came from her inner child — so it’s like you’ve got The Archer, The Mage, The Wizard, The Assassin, The Priest, things like that. The games are meant to be really short; they’re just an excuse to hang out and unwind before the bigger beats of dungeon exploration or heavier story beats.” You can even listen to pirate bands in the taverns, who play you acoustic versions of the game’s soundtrack. Boulanger goes through Wheels in more detail in the video below: Another big focus of Sea of Stars is that it aims to modernize the classic RPG while still holding onto a sense of nostalgia, and pay homage to classic systems while updating them for a smoother experience. “The first thing when trying to modernize is to consider: where is the tedium? That’s really the main one,” Boulanger says. “I can only speak for myself, but I feel like it resonates a lot when I mention these things to other people — I remember being a kid and with certain games… well, they were actually very imperfect and full of tedium, full of little things that didn’t really work out. But there weren’t that many games back then, so you often made do with what you had. We just went out of our way to get the good out of a game.“But the game wasn’t hand-holding in any way, the tutorial was lackluster if it was there… what we’re trying to do is consider: how do we design something that feels as good as what we got out of those games ourselves? How do we do it in a way where a modern player will still come across it, even though the attention span and patience for things is a bit imperfect? We try to adapt to where that’s at today and make sure that with the good things about those games, the player stumbles upon our adaptation of it in an empowering way, that feels like theirs,” he continues. “So just that on its own is an entire project: how do you take what was good about that time and make sure it comes across for everyone today?”Along with Sea of Stars’ other activities, there are also NPCs to chat with. “There’s no ‘official’ quest log — but there are some activities; you could meet some people who are looking for a little bit of help, or find a minigame where you open a chest to see if you win a prize. But certainly hanging out, venturing into the world, a place where we want you to want to be. It’s not just something you plough through, you try to be there and we want you to connect — you know, smell the flowers a little bit.”What’s the world like?One thing Sea of Stars aimed for with its exploration was “unshackled traversal,” where you can swim, climb, vault, and more, “as you traverse seamlessly through the world with a navigation system based on platformer expertise that breaks free from the classic bound-to-the-grid tileset movement.” Boulanger elaborates on this, adding, “The idea was that we want this to feel kind of like a summer vacation, where you’re undertaking the more dreadful aspects of it to make sure the world can stay beautiful for everyone else. There’s a whimsicality to it and it will reward curiosity for sure.”Any news on the Sea of Stars achievements?Yes! We have the Sea of Stars achievements, and while it’s a secretive list, be sure to keep an eye out for an article later today where Boulanger discusses the team’s design process for the Sea of Stars achievements!
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