Curate of Curiosities

So now that we've done everyting that we need to with The Reconstruction, it's time to move on to Space Lizard's next project.

It appears that Space Lizard began work on I Miss The Sunrise in 2010, a year after releasing The Reconstruction. He did document the process on his personal blog, but not all of the articles were archived, so we only have a fragmented view of what went into the game

Unlike The Reconstruction, I Miss The Sunrise was released in episodes from 2010 to 2012, as the title copyright would indicate. So this makes this the third episodic game showcased on this site, as well as the second finished episodic game showcased.

I read somewhere that it was meant to buck trends in sci-fi the same way that The Reconstruction did for fantasy RPGs. But I'm not quite as familiar with the former as with the latter, so I don't think that I'll have much room to remark on that.

If you're just expecting a space-themed retread of The Reconstruction, then you're in for a shock once you select a new game, because this game comes equipped with a customizable main character! There are three different species to choose from for your avatar, SOL, ordinary humans, AUG, cyborgs, and LAC, Lacertians, lizard people who look suspiciously like the Shra.

Not just that, but there are three different sliders for personality. I don't think it has quite the same system that Taming Dreams had where your personality traits determined your "combat effectiveness," for lack of a better term, but Space Lizard has already proven himself to be capable of extensive changes to RPG Maker's engine, so who knows how these will come into play.

And so begin the adventures of Ros Ouranos, cyborg space pilot.

And so our story begins with the character waking up from cryosleep, and left in the care of one Marie Salazar. If you remember, she was one of the people that Tezkhra contacted in The Reconstruction's epilogue.

She asks us a few questions, that we cannot answer to her satisfaction. Our guy has amnesia. Real subversive, Space Lizard.

Also, we belong to whatever this is. Not sinister at all.

So there are three possibilities here, we're a space criminal, the Inquiry is staffed by space criminals, or we were made for the express purpose of helping these guys.

For now, we have the opportunity to explore the Inquiry, the space station that we've found ourselves in. It's divided into a number of rings that are represented by wrap-around hallways. Our destination is right down the hallway that we're on.

Here's Rami, the other person that Tezkhra talked to. He runs the medical facility, so when Tez refered to him as Doctor Ransend, that meant he was, in fact, that kind of doctor. Now all we need to do is find out what the other terms that he brought up mean, like latent energy.

While talking to him, you're given a dialogue option, like in the opening scene with Marie, and the option I pick gets a positive reaction from him. It seems that sucking up to allies is a good way to earn their favor, as a general rule.

Emitters, you say? So at least we have an idea as to how they ended up on whatever planet The Reconstruction takes place on.

The next person we have to meet is...none other than Tez! That took no time at all, didn't it?

Here he is. Doesn't look very god-like, doesn't he?

So as you could guess, Lacertians are analogous to the Shra, and they're incompatible with augments. Remind you of how the Shra were said to be inept with magic. Uh-huh. So augments are magic in this world. Figures, given their overall resemblance to the Fortians' eyepieces.

We're supposed to head to the briefing room after this, but we're in no hurry. Let's check out the kiosks in the hallway to save and read some text logs. The two most important entries right now are Shine and Emitters. The Shine is the disaster that seems to have led to Ros waking up, and the emitters are what allowed humanity (and presumably the Lacertians) to halt the aging process and become effectively immortal, to the point where they were able to outlive their sun. So that means that this game, and The Reconstruction by extension, takes place billions of years into the future.

So the emitters' most serious side effect is a noticeable lapse of consciousness, you say? Hmm, could that expain how the party ended up spending nearly a decade in the Watchers' domain while the world ended below them. Still doesn't explain what happened to Rulian and Havan when Tez touched them.

Now on for our briefing. We're informed about how the Shine wrecked the whole universe, and it's up to us to fix things. I suppose the game didn't expect you to actually read the entries before heading here.

Alright, you may have figured it out already, but I'll just tell you: this is The Reconstruction IN SPACE! We have a hub area, from which we can take requests that require us to go out into the world, or the universe, as the case may be here.

Our mission is to deliver supplies to the Machinatorium, home of the...

Weapon-building cult. How it ended up lending its name to a pacifist cult is beyond me.

But that leaves one more question: why us? Why did we have to be awakened on such short notice? Well, this is why we are the chosen one, not because some old lady arbitrarily picked us, but because we have something in our bloodstream that essentially allows time to stand still from our perspective while we make decisions, and as such, we will be made fleet commander.

Having infinite decision-making time is one thing, but I don't believe that whatever we have has given us actual tactical ability. There's no indication that we have any training at all on battle tactics, which I feel is far more necessary for a commandeer to have! But whatever, we're in dire straits, and need every single advantage that we can get our hands on.

And we're off! This may have conceptually similar to The Reconstruction's prologue, but at least our party members for this mission aren't completely irrelevant.

Quests in this game work very differently from in The Reconstruction, seeing as how they now take place over whole regions of space rather than enclosed environments, and instead of being able to roam freely, you hop from node to node on a map. However, there's still a target time, or rather, a target turn count And even with the abstract appearance of the map, you can tell how much damage the Shine did. And keep in mind that this was able to affect the entire inhabited universe!

And you don't even need to look at the map; partway along the path to the destination, there's a ruined habitation that the party can explore. Not much there other than treasure and a very simple switch puzzle.

Speaking of loot, The Reconstruction didn't have much in the way of collectable loot, other than items that were required for a quest, and, unlike most RPGs, had no consumable items at all, owing to its adventure game influence. Here, we have items to collect, both in quest areas and in the Inquiry itself, as well as a proper currency system. Nothing to spend it on just yet, though.

From there, we get into our first battle. At least this game actually does a decent job of explaining its combat mechanics. All ships have three different health bars, representing Hull, Systems, and Pilot, and have a maximum of 1000 in each. And unlike The Reconstructions party members having a fixed set of five skills, our fleet members have up to five interchangeable weapons on their ships. There do seem to be equivalents to the Chain and Rush mechanics, but for now, it's best that we don't bother with them. Overall, battles are a lot faster paced than they were before, especially since it's now possible to one-shot these enemies right out of the gate.

At the end of the area, and then are attacked by a pack of "Lessers," whatever they are. We kill the boss in the first round before it can do anything and sweep up the minions on the next round. Pretty cool music though, a lot better than the stock MIDIs that made up most of The Reconstruction's soundtrack.

Speaking of stock assets, this game is a rarity among RPG Maker games in that it uses absolutely no stock assets from its version of the engine (RPG Maker VX, to be specific)

This is Mahk Sikohlon. He's less than pleased at the fact that he's being forced to make a deal with the Inquiry. At least this confirms that Lacertians and Shra are, in fact, one and the same species.

Good thing that Ivoronus, his father, comes through with a better deal; Mahk will join our fleet. We could always use more party members, but I'm not sure about him. So you expect me to believe that this whiner ends up being Lizard Gandhi?

But that's not all. Meeting up with the Machinatorium unlocks the weapon building mechanic. Now we can use the random junk that we've collected back at the habitation to build new weapons. Not only can we name them ourselves, but their elemental attributes, range, and damage types depend on what materials you use to build the weapon.

And that's the end of the prologue.

So, here's the problem. I first played through the prologue back when I still used Windows, and since I only played for around a half-hour, I thought that I could simply go back to where I left off after switching to Linux. However, with both Wine and Proton, the game runs at an unbearably slow framerate. There's just no way that I can play through a 20+ hour long RPG like this. This seems to be a problem with RPG Maker VX games in general; I downloaded a game called Star Stealing Prince (which, incidentally, is part of the same free game bundle as The Reconstruction) and it had the same problem.

So it looks like I'll be putting my documentation of the Reconstruction saga on hold for now. At least I don't have to deal with Google or a dead cloud saving service or anything like that.