MAKE FRIENDS WITH GHOSTS
- REST THE WICKEDS
Farewell Sen
is a short and sweet surreal adventure RPG from developer amoxy, made in the RPG Maker MV engine. It tells the story of Soot, a typical do-gooder who is stopped while driving due to an SOS signal sent out by a broadcast tower. He searches the nearby town to locate it, and ends up getting a lot more than he bargained for when the town is overrun with creatures known as sendaggers.
Along the way, Soot befriends Floe, an ice elemental, who doesn’t want to concern herself with the plight of the others and just wants to go home, and Bolt, a broken robot who immediately assigns Soot as it's caretaker and joins in on the fight against the big bad/partial anti-villain Prong. Also included is a cast of eccentric townspeople such as Tabs, a burly shopkeeper who somehow always seems to know where you’re heading next, Lacy, header of a huge ship and who wears a big diving helmet, Mavi, a robotic scientist and friend/potential lover of Lacy, and of course all the citizens living in a literal ghost town, who all seem to have names relating to the colour purple.
Farewell Sen takes inspiration from older RPG Maker games, most notably OFF, a 2008 RPG by developer Mortis Ghost. It also takes inspiration from old handheld RPG titles that centre around exploring a small town that’s under attack.
It is also highly recommended to play the game in its entirety before viewing the tropes below.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Soot, Floe, and Bolt all fit under this, as each of them have practically no fighting experience but still manage to kick ass when necessary.
- Adorable Abomination: The sendaggers, to an extent. The messy art-style paired with their featureless bodies gives them a kinda cute image. (and the fact that a lot of them look like cats)
- Aerith and Bob: Downplayed slightly, with Soot, Floe, Tabs, Prong being the Aeriths, and Bolt, Lacy, Mavi, Dell being the Bobs.
- Affably Evil: Prong seems to be this to an extent, as despite the fact they basically want to destroy the world as we know it, they're well-mannered, refers to Soot as darling multiple times and even spares the main characters once before warning them not to interfere any further. Discussed by Soot and Prong in the ending:
- Soot: This feels anticlimactic.Prong: Well, how else was this going to end?Soot: I guess I expected you to be meaner.
- Almighty Janitor: Tabs, the shopkeeper, always seems to know where to head next before you do. He’s also the one who saves Soot and the others from Prong the first time and constantly gives Soot free items.
- Ambiguous Ending: We don’t ever see what happens after Soot and Prong’s conversation. We’re told, by Prong, no less, that Floe, Bolt and all the others are fine, but we never get confirmation on it. The game simply ends after Prong’s home planet explodes and presumably takes Prong and all the other sendaggers with it. Although Prong already said before that he was ‘long dead’.
- Anti-Climax: After the long and unusual 4 phase boss fight with Prong, the final scene and ending of the game has Prong and Soot simply… talking. Lampshaded by Soot during their brief conversation.
- Anti-Villain: Prong, as it turns out. Prong’s home planet was practically doomed from the start, but Prong hoped to save it, and tried to take over Soot’s planet to do it. But, even they acknowledge that both them and theyre home have been dead for a long time. This is actually foreshadowed by earlier boss fights, as every encounter has you taking the first shot; the bosses seem rather reluctant to fight you and only do so as a necessity.
- Band of Brothers: Soot, Floe, and Bolt.
- Big Bad: Prong, for the majority of the game. They're final boss fight has a whopping 4 phases, when every other fight, including bosses, up until this point had 1.
- Bloodless Carnage: Usually done in battles, but is subverted in some key moments outside of it, such as after you meet Floe, and after your first encounter with Prong.
- Creepy Basement: Lacy sends the party down into the boiler room of the ship in order to get the ship going again.
- An earlier example happens on the farm, where Dell, the owner, sends you down into the cellar to retrieve his assistant. As it turns out, she’s possessed, and a fight ensues.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Soot, of course. His first reaction upon hearing an SOS signal is to immediately find out where it’s coming from himself, he immediately jumps into battle to help out the town, and anytime anyone needs anything done, even if they are perfectly capable, Soot immediately volunteers himself and whoever he has with him.
- Colourful Theme Naming: All of the ghostly townspeople (officially called Gusts) are named in relation to the colour purple. (Wine, Raisin, Indigo and Violet being the most obvious examples)
- Cute Machines: Definitely Bolt. After the team is almost killed by Prong, Bolt is momentarily rebuilt off-screen with Soot recovers elsewhere. When Soot and Floe reunite with Bolt, the conversation that follows is nothing short of adorable.
- Bolt: GREETINGS CARETAKER!Soot: Hey dude! You alright? We got beat up pretty bad yesterday!Bolt: AFFIRMATIVE. MAVI REPAIRED ALL DAMAGES CAUSED AND UPGRADED MY BODY!Soot: Well, I’m very glad you’re okay, buddy. Are you ready to go?Bolt: (face showing :D emoticon) AFFIRMATIVE.[beat]Floe: …That was adorable.
- Elemental Embodiment: Floe, who is definitely an ice elemental of some kind. Every special attack she has is ice-themed, and her outfit suggests this as well. Her name literally means ‘a sheet of floating ice.’
- Final Battle: Your second and last encounter with Prong is this.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The first encounter with Prong counts as this, as they one-shot you immediately.
- Ideal Hero: Soot can be considered this, as everything he does in the game is pretty much out of the goodness of his heart; he can very easily turn and leave at any point. Well, at least up until the point where it’s clear that if Prong succeeds in whatever they plan on doing, the entire world will be destroyed.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Prong’s justification at the end of the game, although they also acknowledge that it doesn’t mean they were right or that they should be forgiven; they assert that they are still a monster.
- Ghost Town: A literal example, as the town is inhabited primarily by ‘Gusts’.
- Last Chance to Quit: Prong gives the main trio this when you first encounter them. They one-shot your entire team in one turn and warns Soot to not interfere any further.
- The Magnificent: Between conversations with Tabs, he will put a comically small hat on one ear and for a brief time, his name is changed to ‘The Cooler Tabs’.
- Meaningful Name: Most of the cast fits under this, for example:
- Tabs literally keeps tabs on the party by staying ahead of them constantly. He’s the one who saves the trio after their encounter with Prong.
- Floe is an ice elemental. A floe is a sheet of floating ice.
- Soot is a being seemingly made entirely from soot and ash.
- Bolt is a robot.
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Nintendo Hard: Battles are non-repeatable so money is finite (and they don’t give a lot of money anyway), replenishing stations (represented by vending machines) are one-use only save for very few occasions, and a majority of the de-buffs you can get either make attacks unpredictable/self-harming, weaken your attack significantly, or make you unable to fight at all. The only solace you get is that Floe has a special healing skill and you generally get a decent amount of HP/AP restores.
- Shout-Out: A subtle, potentially unintentionally one happens shortly after Soot meets Floe. The two enter into a room to find its inhabitant with its upper half decimated and the room covered in red. On the left side, however, you can see a switch, with OFF being highlighted above it.
- Stumbled Into the Plot: Essentially how Floe ended up getting roped into the story. She was visiting her mother’s farm in her childhood town for nostalgia’s sake when he got trapped in by sendaggers. Her mother hasn’t even lived there for some odd decade or so.
- Tragic Robot: Downplayed with Bolt. When you first find Bolt, they're blocking your path to next area and seems like nothing more than scrap metal. When you beat the boss of the area, you can reactivate them. They don't seem to have any memories before they're shutdown, but recognises that they, for some reason, doesn’t have a caretaker and immediately assigns themselves to Soot. It’s revealed later by Mavi that Bolt’s original caretaker was killed early on during the sendaggers’ attack.
Should have made friends with ghosts…
