Estelara is a Farm Life Sim inspired by Rune Factory (and actually started out as a Rune Factory fan game) and as soon as Lily figures out how to program, she'll set about actually making it.
Set in the fantasy realm of Altaevia, a young man is found in a river near the village of Estelara, unconscious and bleeding. After being rescued and brought to the town clinic, he awakens only to find he has no recollection of his past, or even his name. The locals decide to call him Jake (or whatever the player inputs) and, with nowhere else to go, he ends up staying in the village's old abandoned farm.
From there, the game is relatively standard: you grow crops, tend to animals, befriend the townsfolk, and can marry one of the eligible bachelorettes in town.
Tropes associated with this game include:
- Achey Scars: Jake has a pretty twisted scar on the left side of his chest, and while usually it's just a normal scar, it tends to flare up in pain whenever he tries to use magic. Roland theorizes the scar has something to do with Jake's memory loss.
- Afraid of Blood: Matthew tends to faint whenever confronted by blood. Which would be less of a problem if he weren't the son of the town doctor.
- Alternative Calendar: The Altaevian calendar is split into eight monthsnote , each spanning thirty days.
- Ambiguously Human: Jake, by and large, looks human...sans the Pointy Ears and violet eyes, neither of which are normal for humans.
- Amnesiac Hero: As befitting a Rune Factory-inspired game, Jake can't remember anything about his past, even his own name.
- And Your Reward Is Parenthood: After you get married, you're asked how you feel about children. If you say you're interested, your chosen wife will become pregnant and give birth a few months later. You can also say "not right now", but you'll be asked again at the start of each month until you say yes.
- Anti-Frustration Features: If you try to give a townsperson a gift they dislike or hate, they'll reject it and the item will remain in your inventory, preventing you from wasting it.
- Babies Ever After: Once you get married, you'll end up having a kid, either a son or a daughter.
- Background Magic Field: Wild magic leaks into Altaevia through portals to Tír na nÓg, and can be used to cast spells. Estelara has a much greater concentration of wild magic than usual, explaining both its unique appearance and the chimera infestation in the surrounding area.
- Bad Moon Rising: Altaevia has two moons, and while the Pearl Moon is a regular moon, the Red Moon has a magical effect that sends the chimeras into a frenzy. Worse, portals to Tír na nÓg open and redcaps (a type of fae) come through, intent on wrecking things and hurting people until the night's over. Suffice to say, there's a very good reason the people of Estelara stay indoors whenever the Red Moon is full.
- Blue Blood: Demetrius and Juliet Diamanté are quite wealthy and live in the largest house in town. Frederick works for them as their butler.
- But Thou Must!: Some time after getting married, your wife will ask if you want kids now. You can say no, but you'll be asked again at the start of each season until you say yes.
- Canon Name: The protagonist is nameable, but the default is Jake; similarly, the default name of his child, regardless of gender, is Aster.
- Crapsaccharine World: Not quite to the degree of other examples, but Estelara, despite its bright colors and fairytale aesthetic, is plagued by wild magic that has caused wicked spirits called chimeras to run amok, making venturing into the surrounding wilderness incredibly hazardous. Part of the plot is about figuring out where the wild magic is coming from.
- Does Not Like Spam: Befitting a Farm Life Sim, everyone has at least one food they don't enjoy.
- Funnily enough, the game gives the Player Character one. Jake hates seafood, which comes up in a few events.
- Expy: As something of a remnant of when the game was a Rune Factory fangame, the Diamanté family is this to the de Saint-Coquilles.
- Fairytale Wedding Dress: The bachelorettes sprout quite nice ones when getting married. In one event, while discussing her own wedding, Agate mentions the traditional white dress originated from the wedding of St. Brynhildr's daughter Nanna.
- Family Eye Resemblance: Aster inherits Jake's violet eyes.
- Family Theme Naming: Pops up here and there.
- Incanta (incantation) and her grandchildren Ward and Charm are named for kinds of spells.
- Rose and her daughters Daphne and Celica have Floral Theme Naming.
- The blacksmith Agate and her children Lapis and Jasper. Roy, their father, is the Odd Name Out.
- Juliet is named after one of the title characters of Romeo and Juliet, while her father Demetrius is named for a character in A Midsummer Night's Dream (his late wife Helena is named after that character's Love Interest).
- Feeling Their Age: Incanta's grandchildren have to help out a lot in the store, as Incanta's age makes it difficult for her to maintain it on her own. Ward and Charm are constantly worried for her, and also scared for when she dies and they'll be on their own.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: As Jake can't remember his real name, Aurora (who found him in the river) offers to help him come up with a new one; Jake is the default, but it can be changed to whatever the player likes.
- Inept Mage: While a skilled potion brewer, Charm's actual magical skills are...lacking.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Averted where Xinying and Saito are concerned, who hail from Fantasy Counterpart Cultures to China and Japan respectively; a distinction is drawn between both countries.
- Interspecies Romance: Jake is (probably) human, and can potentially marry Charm (a half-elf).
- Last-Minute Baby Naming: Interestingly averted; before the baby is born, there will be a cutscene where Jake and his chosen wife are trying to come up with names. A few options are brought up, but the one Jake comes up with is Aster, which his wife also likes; sure enough, when the baby is born, that's their default name.
- Lethal Chef: Jake can make simple dishes like Toast just fine. Anything more complicated than that? Expect fire, a trashed kitchen, and a taste like eating every poison in the known universe simultaneously.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Aurora and Vesper, where Aurora is the Light Feminine and Vesper is the Dark Feminine.
- Locked into Strangeness: A variant: Jake ends up with a purple streak in his hair after reaching the twenty-fifth floor of the mines and taking the Crystal Shard.
- Love Interest: As is standard for the genre, Estelara has several to choose from. In order: Aurora, Vesper, Rena, Lapis, Charm, Sophia, Xinying, Kemarin, Juliet, Daphne, and Yumi.
- MacGuffin: The Crystal Shard you get after clearing the twenty-fifth floor of the mines. While its exact properties are unknown, it does grant Jake the ability to use magic and brings back some of his memories. It also turns part of his hair purple.
- Mana Meter: One unlocks after defeating the first boss, allowing you to use magic. Unlike health and energy, mana replenishes over time, albeit very slowly. Like the aforementioned two, It regenerates in full if you go to bed.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: As is usual for a Farm Life Sim, the three children in town—Celica, Jasper, and Marian—will never grow older no matter how much in-game time passes.
- Not So Above It All: Usually, Jake is an Only Sane Man, albeit a more resigned one than most. Whenever magic comes up, however, he'll gleefully demand more information, talk to himself, and generally act a lot more manic than usual. Lapis even admits that she gets scared whenever he's like this.
- In general, a lot of the humor in the heart events comes from Jake being just as weird as the people around him. Possibly more.
- Our Fairies Are Different: Fae are the inhabitants of Tír na nÓg, a realm of wild magic that exists parallel to Terra. They're partially Made of Magic, and thus potent mages, but they're also more susceptible to anti-magical substances, like iron. While none are seen in-game, they can cross-breed with other races to produce Half Human Hybrids (or half-elf/dwarf/whatever) called changelings, whose children in turn inherit faerie blood; these descendants are called faeblooded.
- Pamphlet Shelf: Justified; what you read in-game is a snippet of a longer book, but Jake gets bored and doesn't bother reading any further.
- Parental Abandonment: Most characters don't have both their parents.
- Vesper lives with Cole and Irene in the bakery, but is explicitly noted to not be their daughter. She doesn't talk about what happened to her parents.
- Ward and Charm's parents died when they were young, and they have lived with their grandmother ever since.
- Kemarin and Tykorvi have a mother, Elmerra, but no father; it's implied he passed away prior to the events of the game.
- Juliet lives with only her father, and it is explicitly stated her mother died when she was young.
- Matthew's father Roland is the town doctor, but his mother is never mentioned and both refuse to speak of her.
- Averted with Aurora, who has both her parents, and Lapis and Jasper, their mother being the local blacksmith and their father a priest. Rena is also mentioned to have family back in Alcryst, and while Xinying's father is a traveling merchant and thus is rarely home, he does show up for a few of Xinying and Zhenya's heart events and Xinying's wedding.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Kemarin and Tykorvi are twins, but they couldn't be more different; Kemarin is loud, brash, and hotheaded, while Tykorvi is quiet, calm, and quite reserved.
- Practically Different Generations: Celica is a child, while her sister Daphne is old enough to get married. The same applies to Jasper and Lapis.
- Raised by Grandparents: Ward and Charm live with their grandmother Incanta, the owner of the potion ingredient shop.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Five Saints are named after mythological deities: St. Brynhildr, St. Gwydion, St. Panacea, and St. Horus. St. Celaeno is the Odd Name Out, though hers ties into the Stellar Theme Naming (Celaeno is the name of a star).
- Shining City: Alcryst, the capital of Altaevia. We don't see it in-game, but some of the characters have visited and a few come from there. The reason the farm is abandoned at the start of the game is because the previous farmer's son left town to live in Alcryst, and after the farmer died, no one was left to take care of it.
- Stellar Name: The town Estelara derives its name from estelle, which means star. Aurora and Vesper are named after the dawn and dusk respectively. And the default name of Jake's child is Aster, which is the Greek word for star.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Averted with Aster. Outside of inheriting Jake's violet eyes and pointy ears, they look very little like either of their parents, with a darker skin tone, lavender hairnote , and a birthmark resembling a splotch across their left eye.
- Supreme Chef: A few of the bachelorettes, such as Daphne and Vesper.
- Sweet Tooth: Several characters, including Jake, Charm, and Celica, have a strong love of sweets and sugary food. Saito claims he doesn't, but sweets are among his Loved gifts.
- Technicolor Eyes:
- Jake has deep violet eyes, which are repeatedly noted by other characters as being unusual.
- Vesper's eyes are pink.
- Textile Work Is Feminine: Aurora has a knack for sewing and aspires to be a tailor someday. She also happens to be one of the more feminine bachelorettes.
- Uneven Hybrid: Aster's appearance remains the same even if you marry a non-human like Charm.
- Vague Age: Averted; the characters might not get any older, but they do have defined ages. Jake and the bachelorettes, for example, are 22.
- Wizarding School: Alcryst has one: the Hekatia Institute of Magic. Charm admits she used to dream of going there when she was old enough, but unfortunately, she was never quite skilled enough to make the cut (plus she was always too busy).
- World of Technicolor Hair: A good chunk of the cast has natural hair colors that aren't seen in normal humans. In this case, it's given a proper explanation—Altaevia's Wild Magic, and the sheer amount of it compared to other continents, caused several of its earliest residents to be born with vibrant hair and eye colors not usually seen in their species, which passed down to their descendants. Indeed, the characters not born in Altaevia have normal hair and eye colors.
And now for some trivia.
- Inspiration for the Work: Rune Factory, specifically Rune Factory 2.
- Permanent Placeholder: Estelara was a placeholder name before the creator got too used to it and just made it official.
- What Could Have Been:
- Back when it was a Rune Factory fangame, the name of the game was Rune Factory Arcana.
- Jake's default name was originally Jove, and Aster's default name was dependent on their gender (Altair for a boy and Astrid for a girl).
- Lapis's name got changed a few times: first it was Lazuli, then she was renamed to Lana, then Leila, before finally settling on Lapis.
- Incanta was named Margaret before it was changed to fit better with her grandchildren. Her original name was given to Aurora's mother instead.
- Originally, the player character could have three children, with the younger two being male-female fraternal twins. This ended up being scrapped due to it being too difficult to work with.
