Ceress and Orea

RPG Maker strikes again! "Ceress and Orea" is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. In this case it does appear some of the assets are bespoke, but not many... the majority still seems to just be flipped assets from Kadokawa. As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development. Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers. Notably the developer here couldn't work out how to use RPG Maker to make an RPG... and that's the only thing RPG Maker can do properly... except it's not even very good for making RPGs. Instead, we have a painfully mediocre and cringey romance adventure game with a linear plot and a couple of lame puzzles, but is otherwise indistinguishable from every other RPG Maker asset flip infesting Steam. The game is very very short and can be finished in under an hour.. Developers have at least some responsibility to provide enough content to make a game last more than 2 hours if they're serious about providing something of value to gamers. There's less content here than some free game demos. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. To make matters worse, while lazy, low quality pixel "art" has been used, making the game look bad, many elements of the game aren't done with pixelcrap... which accomplishes a couple of things. First, it shows the developers perhaps could have done better and they knew it, so that's a major screwup. Secondly, it destroys any hopes the developer had of creating a "retro aesthetic" as their excuse for the lazy pixelart compromise... It looks completely inauthentic from a retro gaming perspective. Visually, this is a hamfisted mess, a dogs breakfast of bad visuals, and this kind of laziness and poor quality should never be foisted on gamers. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? "Ceress and Orea" is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

Very cute and wholesome! Could be longer imo though that's my only critique!

Ceress and Orea is a wonderfully cute, yet short RPG game that depicts the determination and grit that it takes to overcome discrimination and prejudice in a fictional-medieval world. In this tale, Plueschkatze and co. depict a lesbian couple- a wealthy-higher up oracle, Orea, and her guard, Ceress- that while being a wholesome, well developed relationship; is seen as one of sin and one of moral corruption to those around them solely because it is same-sex. They don't listen to Orea's pleas for forgiveness and a shared punishment as they sentence Ceress to death via their Deities judgment in the beginning scene. Our story really kicks off as Ceress challenges this belief, stating that this discrimination is one of injustice and she wills these same Deities to allow her to live and rejoin her love in the end. And they do just that, although they aren't quite as benevolent as one may think. They view such a request as a challenge, and an unwinnable one at that, as they task Ceress with the quest to make her way through this "underworld". Pros: While some of the puzzles were extremely easy and outright tedious at times, I could appreciate the rendering and attention to detail that the developer put into this "afterlife". Rather than being a traditional depiction of either a realm influenced by religious ideology or a nothingness- this realm is one of nature and beauty, as well as a representation of Ceress' memories in certain areas. While these areas can be hidden, they are rather easy to find if using a guide or just paying attention to the mentioned details (the placement of the boat, hole placements, etc). I rather liked the clear influence of traditional Fae and/or "Fair Folk"-traits that are used for these Deities- the mischievous and sometimes malicious writing makes these little guys appear almost endearing once you understand that they don't really care that much about human life. They just do their own thing and view these sort of issues with a fairly neutral perspective. It's nice to see this sort of representation when media tends to depict Fae/Faeries in a Pixie Hollow-esque way. I also liked the more creepy depictions of this world towards the end, as it gives this short story a more clear conflict or "Bad Ending" that Ceress could succumb to and become if she doesn't end up completing these trials. Cons: As you could tell, this story is very short. Any extra time that could be added to this game would be if you missed an achievement or two, however, I don't think it's necessarily that much of a con. Considering the price and the hours of work that probably went into making this game, I'd say that it's a well meet price for the experience. The writing is well put in areas and is rather endearing during some of the flashback scenes. To be honest, I would actually pay a bit more, if not pay for the soundtrack feature at least to provide some more support to the developer. Overall, Ceress and Orea is a very cute, mythical take on a tale of survival and determination to live a normal life as an LGBTQ+ youth and adult. For this price; the beautiful rendering and detail; as well as a few easy easy puzzles and achievements (for those looking for them), I can't not recommend this game to anyone and everyone.

I wish there was more to it, but considering I got it for less than a dollar, it's worth it if you want just a short cute game. It has nice art with a fine lesbian love story and good music, but the puzzles are really easy and just overall kinda meh.

Top notch work. The great aesthetics and soulful sountrack carries the game. I think some people might have a point while complaining about the easy puzzles, nevertheless they're fun and cute. I enjoyed the experience overall.

Boring story, boring characters, too short (but thank god it's not longer...) I keep missing one of the memories and then can't go back once I reach a certain point. Waste of time.