Stargazer

Anyone looking for an old-fashioned RPG experience should give this one a try. Not too difficult, relaxing, with a neat puzzle element as well. Definitely worth the five bucks.

I have played this through twice. The soundtrack is awesome. I really enjoyed some of the areas because of it.

This is one of my all-time favourite RPGs and I play it about once a year.

The story is great, the characters are well-defined. It's funny and romantic. Loads to do and a quest journal to keep you on track of what you're doing.

I wish there were more games like this.

I also wish that Steam would get Stargazer Christmas. If you agree you could try putting it on your Wishlist - I've got it on mine and if enough of us did this maybe it'll work.

An Excellent RPG games Overall.
Has a lot of side quests, Well balanced difficulty.
Music Is Great, and The character interactions are hilarious :D
It has some minor bugs, but everything else is fine

Rate : 8/10

TLDR: I'm a huge fan of Amaranth Games, but it somehow took me forever to get around to playing Stargazer, where they're billed alongside lead developer John Wizard. I'm so glad I finally did, because this game is a delight. The characters are all charming, the dialogue is engaging and funny, the gameplay is a perfect fresh take on classic RPG components, and the way the story is set up is genuinely very unique, even if it is a very common plotline. I beat the game in a little under 22 hours, but my Steam playtime clocks in at 37 total. There's a fair bit of idle time here, and a few areas where I died and had to restart my progress in game, but honestly a significant chunk of the ~10 hour discrepancy is me deliberately going back and replaying certain scenes and zones because I enjoyed them so much, or I wanted to make sure that character said what I thought they did. For $5, this game is beyond worth the price, it's a steal - if I could pay more for it, I genuinely would.

People I would recommend this game to: RPG maker fantasy fans, Aveyond fans, fantasy/adventure fans who like romance to play a central part in the story. If multiple of those sound like you, it goes double or triple.

Full review:

I have my criticisms - one character dynamic in particular felt like they were going for cheap laughs rather than legitimate development (I could never really tell what was up with Thyme and Grayson), some jokes were not particularly funny to me and overstayed their welcome, awful same face, and there was some REALLY cool world-building potential that wasn't explored as thoroughly as I wanted - but across the whole expanse of the game and how much I enjoyed it, they're honestly few and far between. Stargazer was a wild, wonderful ride, and I genuinely enjoyed every moment of it, even parts I took issue with.

Aura and Zach's relationship is sweet, compelling, and feels very real, if a little cheesy and overenthusiastic young love. The way their bonding over the stars drives the plot for the bulk of the game, not the quest the player can see rumbling in the background, is unique from the games I'm used to and how they prioritize stories. It was refreshing, and helped add depth to the leads.

The other characters are all a ball to be around, too. I may not understand what's going on with Thyme and Grayson, but I found their dialogue hilarious and their personalities, individually, very likable and fun. Grayson is probably my favorite character of the bunch - a fiercely committed, stern ex-soldier with an environmentalist streak who really just likes being part of a team. Other highlights include Scarbeck, an enthusiastic and confident detective who drives some very fun sidequests, and Kala, a late game party member who rides a giant Firewing bird named Mila.

The gameplay was fantastic. If you've played the Aveyond series, it uses the same battle style as Aveyond 4, which is my favorite battle system of all time. If you're unfamiliar, it's a variation on RPG Maker's default battle system that replaces attacks and skills with actions unique to each party member. It requires more strategy than most conventional takes on the RPG Maker battle system without requiring the player memorize a bunch of element match-ups and feels far more fluid to me. It also helps characterizing party members by reflecting their personalities in what they're capable of doing. And in Stargazer, it allows for a world where magic has largely disappeared, while still giving the bulk of the party interesting skillsets.

The maps were also great. They emphasized elevation in a way that both made for a really fun exploration experience, and mimicked the game's focus on summits really well. Despite these tilesets being really common in the RPG Maker XP community, I feel like this is a fresh take on them that I've never seen before. There are times when you get to interact with the map in unique ways, slowly learning new ways to explore an area, which are some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Do yourself a favor and play Stargazer!

I did finished the game. There is a video of gameplay in my youtube channel if you curious about the game.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlCSaIQsfZRcwhnyqLinVPYny-uzMkfQH
Overall, I'm pleased with the game especially with the characters personality. i'm quiet disappoint with the gameplay mechanic as I will explain about it further.

What I like about the game:
1) The characters has a personality
- I'm definitely love the character personality in this game. You will remember the character just by their way of talking. Grayson a straightforward person, Thyme likes to tease, Scarbeck the geek, Aura a childish woman, Zach a daydream person, Amelia the smarty pants, and lastly Kala is kinda like a combination of Grayson and Kala. Overall, a witty characters.
2) The graphic design
-For the genre of "Obscure RPG maker", the character design and place is fine with me. But it still use the same NPC characters similar to aveyond and ect.
3) The soundtrack
The soundtrack is to be expected which is mellow, and ambient.
Meh

1)The story line
-The story line in Stargazer is to me a similar "Your the chosen one" kind of story. It is not necessarily bad because the journey towards the main quest is fun.

What I hate
1)Barebone Game mechanics
-Now this one I hate the most, leveling does not do anything besides raising your HP (except for Aura which she gets new spell from meteor, and Kala leveling specific to learn 3 new more spells). I prefer the character learn new spells as the leveling up. This may seems like a pros to people as it could make the game easy to play, but I don't see people complaint with their characters learning new skills and develop their strategy instead of using dominant strategy.

Found two bugs in the game that does not allow me go further. As is played a lot I'll no start over.

I'd like to continue playing but I'm not gonna waste time in a game that I'm not able to finish...

Loved the game and characters. A few points of frustration meant I nearly gave up, but was enjoying it enough to persevere. I don't play many games of this type so I found it original and engaging, but your perspective might be different if you play this genre frequently.

Things to note before you start -

1) make a map of every area with all named characters and items marked on it. At any one point you have several quests in your journal, and often you either haven't yet encountered the solution to a quest or you encountered it some time ago but can't remember where! The journal record of each quest is quite simplistic and gives almost no clues. If you don't want to spend hours retracing your steps, you need either a map or a phenomenally good memory.

2) don't try to move heaven and earth to solve a particular quest, because as mentioned it may not yet be possible. At one point I thought I'd encountered a game-breaking bug because an area was inaccessible... but it turned out I just had to go and continue a completely unrelated quest which opened that area up.

3) it's very, very difficult to find walkthroughs and solutions online. There is an official guide but all the links I could find were dead. For solutions, I could only find copies of old forum posts where the threads themselves had been deleted. Only some very imaginative and lucky keyword search combinations saved the day. That makes it even more crucial to have mapped every area so you're not stuck without a solution.

All in all, a charming story with satisfying gameplay. One negative was the lack of any health bar on enemies, making it difficult to fight tactically. At some points, the amount of walking back and forth gets a bit silly, but sometimes the designers counterbalance this by giving you new quests on re-entering old areas.

You'll enjoy it if...
- you prefer fetch quests to bosses
- you've got the patience to keep notes
- you're a sap for happy endings!

Don't be fooled by the slow start to STARGAZER. You might at first think that you've purchased a kids' game but just keep going, those first few "quests" will provide vital information for the last portion of the game.
I was surprised to find myself playing for several hours each day, rather than the 2-3 hours I would normally spend playing similar RPGs. STARGAZER is a rather fun RPG with a good story line, some decent humor and very quirky characters.
A few of the things that I really liked:
1- the quests are an integral part of gameplay, as opposed to being mere time-fillers, and must be completed to advance the story;
2- there are only a handful of potions and restoratives, and not the dozens required in similar games;
3- fairly straight-forward gameplay (as long as you pay attention to what the NPCs are saying);
4- a good bit of plain silliness;
5- PUZZLE CAVES!
It wasn't all goodness and light though Two things that bugged me were:
1- the info provided in the quest journal is somewhat skimpy so I frequently had to go back to the NPCs for reminders;
2- there is no 'dash' option so be prepared to walk everywhere.
All in all I found this to be a very enjoyable game, and a welcome addition to my STEAM library!

I've only played a few hours of the game, but here are a few points I've gathered from just that.

Pros:
* Colorful world with non-default tiles
* Portraits and nice art
* An interesting premise
* The ability to choose the color of the main character's dress is nice
* The areas were very nicely designed and I had fun exploring them
* The combat system is pretty sweet
* You can choose which combat path you want to go with the main character

Cons:
* The writing is pretty bland and I had trouble believing the characters
* The balancing in this game is terrible; I went from the first area into the second and was being demolished by the enemies
* Not enough stuff to find on the maps, they seem too empty to me

Basically, this game had a lot of potential, but fell short of it. The characters as a whole felt pretty bland and terrible. The MC felt like she had as much personality as a can of beans. I know I'm not enjoying a game when I start feeling bored while playing it. I love RPGs, and a good one makes you absolutely adore the characters. They are the driving force of the story, after all. The main heros are suppose to face great peril in order to progress in their goals, and I just can't root for a ragtag group of expressionless dolls. A big part of being able to relate to the characters is identifying their facial expressions and emotions, and this game makes the characters emotions very vague.

I bought this game while it was on sale, I don't remember the price but it was pretty cheap. I don't think I'd have bought this game for $5.

I'll go back and play the rest of the game to see if I find anything else I like about it.

This is an interesting little RPGMaker game. Based around the return of magic to the world, which occurs after the crash landing of Aura, a girl from the stars... who might have been piloting a spaceship... Anyway, the story is both interesting, and comedic. The gameplay is... standard for RPGMaker, but not too annoying.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND : 90% Excellent Quest System, Game design encourage detail exploration.

Stargazer is an excellent RPG Maker game made by John Wizard. I have played a few of his games and they are of very high quality. Furthermore at Halloween, I got his games for only 49 cents, which is way below its value. I put in at least 40 hours of enjoyment on a single playthrough of Stargazer alone.

The most enjoyable feature of this game is the excellent Quest system. There are more than 200 quests that you have to complete in order to finish the game. Unlike most other games there is no distinction between main quests and side quests in Stargazers. Almost all the 200 quests are intricately connected, and you have to finished all of them to get to the final boss confrontation. You will be surrounded by quests anywhere you go, and so you get this non-linear feel because you can choose to do many of the quests in any order that you like. However, many of the quests will also unlock further quests, unlock new areas or new team members. The best feature of the quests system is that you cannot "mess up" the quest system at all. You will be able to do all 200 quests, as the quests do not expire, and are not locked out even if you advance from chapter 1 to chapter 7. When I play the game, I get the pleasant feeling that the developer is trying his best to allow you to do every quests and making sure that your quest will not fail no matter what. At one point in the game, there are 2 oppossing guilds that you can choose to join, and these guilds are fighting against each other. For a while, I was worried that doing certain quests on one side may disable some other quests on the other side. However, the ending of these quests have a weird and surprising twist that enable you to do ALL the quests from both sides. Excellent.

In Stargazer, the main heroine can cast extremely powerful spells, but her mana pool and spell abilities does not increase when she levels. You have to find various meteorite that are scattered in the game world, and each of these meteorite will increase her mana and spell repertoire. Such a design encourage exploration and discourages grinding. In fact it encourages me to look carefully at every nook and cranny in the game world, and even jump for joy when I find one of the meteorite in some hard-to-find places. I love it.

The game world is extremely huge, but initially you have to walk almost everywhere by foot. In mid game you will be able to sail between various game continents by ship. All this time, there are bird statues that you can unlock in places that you visited, but nothing spectualar seems to happen as you unlock these bird statues. It is only at late game, when the game world is just too huge to travel either by foot or ship, that you get the ability to fly on a huge bird. That is where everything fall in place. If you have been spending time to unlock all the bird statues in your travel, then you can fly to all these locations once you acquire the ability to fly. So, here is another example of how careful and detailed exploration of the game world reaps benefits later.

For a 49 cent game, I enjoyed more than 40 hours of high quality, bug-free gameplay. I would highly recommend this game.

One of the few RPG-maker games I've bought and actually really enjoyed.

+ Excellent soundtrack
+ Great sense of humor most of the time
+ Every character has a different set of abilities that utilise different items/resources
+ Relatively fun story
+ A bunch of variety between main quests, from collecting stuff, looking for stuff, battling and even solving puzzles

- Controls are quite clunky
- Area-to-area difficulty spikes are quite a nuisance
- A ton of backtracking
- It's sometimes very confusing where you can and can't go

* Non-story NPC's are a bit one-sided, but that's to be expected
* Combat with the same units gets a bit stale after a while
* NPC's may block your path to certain areas at times

Stargazer is a well made, turn based oldschool RPG.
I enjoyed the game quite a lot, so I would recommend it to any oldschool player. If you liked the classics from the old SNES, you will probably like this game, too.
It has lots of content (I'd say 20h+), many side quests, puzzles and is well balanced. It offers visible encounters and three diffculties, so anyone should be fine. There's also a tiny bit of romance in it, which I found nice and lighthearted. The story is well written, and you don't have to go through massiv text walls.

Considered the price the game asks for, I can't think of any reason not to buy it. The game has also trading cards (but no achievements).

Stargazer presents us with the life changing story of Aura, a girl from the stars. Zach a local dreamer, take her in and protect her from the mean curiosity surrounding the event. But Aura is strong and smart enough to start a journey to save the world while finding the truth about herself. To help in this quest we meet new and interesting characters.Aura brings back the magic to a world who lost its sparkle of fantasy, and while she doesn't remember where she came from, friendship will make her feel right at home!
If there is something that I appreciate in an RPG Maker game is the storytelling, and I'm not disappointed. Of course the game takes influences from other works, but it still provides to deliver new things and fresh dialogues. It's far from dull and boring, all our friends have a very distinct personality that shines in charismatic situations, with plenty of humor.

John Wizard, the developer, did a fantastic job creating a game with the ability to keep one playing just for the storyline. But that's not the only reason why you should play Stargazer! When using this game engine, design is extremely important, and in this case, it's spot-on.
Characters are exclusive designs and not free ones available, giving a whole new spirit to the works. The same goes with pretty much everything else.
I felt some areas were just too big and wide. Any player will easily feel lost without a map. Frequently I was just wishing for that, a map to make things easier. Although once you go through every and each area, everything becomes easier. like everything in life. Nonetheless, large and small areas are detailed alike, never giving a feeling of emptiness or wasted space. Overall the design is very well organized, with a great choice of colours to go with.
Each place is strictly distinct, from very bright cities to gloomy woods, the game gives the right moods thanks to the amazing atmosphere portrayed by the level construction and object placement. Feels completed, but not overwhelmed.Some major details were given to the scenarios, with all sorts of materials, and I really appreciate it. It's a major asset to anyone using RPG Maker! To focus on such a thing, shows a tremendous passion for the creative team.
Creativity comes in many forms, and one of them is the ability to create interesting quests, that are both amusing, unexpected, and not repetitive. I won't dare to go into any sort of detail to avoid spoilers, but rare are the games who create quests as fun as Stargazer.

Stargazer uses classic battle systems with EXP points to be earned and skills to unlock. As part of the plot, Aura discover several meteors scattered around the world, which she can use to unlock new abilities, or improve ones previously unlocked. These are her main magic abilities, and defines the path to take, not story-wise, but how much powerful Aura can become! As for every other character, they can use standard weapons and improve their base abilities, and in some special cases, gadgets can be used to further make encounters much more random.
Stargazer doesn't push the farming too hard, and most of the times I was fighting for gold and not EXP. The game gives the players the choice from Easy - Normal and Hard. Nothing much changes if you have gold enough to upgrade armour and weapons, but it's still challenging if you're in the mood for it.
Fighting monsters and beasts are not the only way to progress though, as puzzles are also available, and some are actually quite difficult and well designed. Moving rocks, jumping on mushrooms, it's all there waiting for your skills.

Stargazer is a very friendly RPG filled with humour and great emotions to explore with a pleasant soundtrack to go with. Each scene is appropriately accompanied with your typical RPG wave of classic, thrilled and sometimes even emotional tracks.
Not a game to take extremely seriously, although there are still important issues at hand, such love and friendship. Not every RPG can make you feel involved as a part of the gang, and I'm glad had the chance to discover this small, but amazing world.

You've got cat mail!
7/10

Unlike many other negative reviews, I don't see the fact that this an RPGMaker game as something negative in itself. I've played many good/decent RPGMaker games, so the issue is not the medium in itself, but the story, visuals and mechanics that you try to implement. And sadly, Stargazer either underachieves or outright messes those up.

Although the graphics were fairly nice and the premise is kinda cute, that's as far as it goes. Despite the premise, there is apparently nothing too different about the story so far. The game involves a bunch of annoying fetch quests that make you go back and forth collecting stuff for silly reasons, such as a girl's club that wants you to help them steal or a beautification club that wants you to hunt butterflies. Combat is okay, but it's a little annoying that you can't see how much mana you have and how much health your enemies have. Doesn't really help you manage your moves.

There was also a RIDICULOUS gap in difficulty between the enemies in the first and the second area. We go from foxes that would die in 2 hits and cause 5 damage at most to badgers that take much more and can cause 20+ damage. You also don't get much money for each kill, so you need to farm A LOT to save up for new armor. This + the fetch quests make the game become more of a chore, and there is little to no actual story between all of that walking around.

Furthermore, although I said the visuals are nice, I was talking about the pixel graphics. Character sprites and design are pretty flawed though. If you check the trading cards, you'll see that most female characters have the same face, and LITERALLY ALL OF THEM have pale skin and eyes the same shade of blue. (Meanwhile, some faceless NPCs' pixel sprites have neon blue hair. I don't understand how any artist couldve thought that making all relevant characters a bunch of same-faced people with the same colour palette was a remotely creative idea.)

Anyway. As much as I tried, Stargazer has probably been the only game to ever make me ragequit out of boredom. As I said, it feels more like a chore to the point it gets frustrating. I may try and give it another chance, but I don't know when that will happen. Can't bring myself to recommend it, unfortunately.

OK, I love RPG maker games. I really do. I've been playing a ton of them lately. BUt here is my issue with this one. I am constantly receiving "hung script" errors with the game crashing instantly. Typically after I have completed a step in a quest. Another user reported the same problem in 2015. He never got a response. So, while I love the story and the game play, it is constantly being interrupted and I am forced to retrace steps I JUST DID. I cannot in good conscious recommend this game until this is addressed and a fix given.

My playtime: 21:31:48 based on internal clock (i think it's a 100% save), normal difficulty.

Note that i buy this when it's on 90% sale and the price is... around $0.5.

Stargazer is a RPG Maker game with beautiful graphics and tons of quests. Although i said that it's a RPG Maker game, it's quite different from other RPG Maker games. Most of the systems are customized, and surprisingly, you can play it with a mouse (although i rarely use it).

Story

Music

Graphics

Battle

Quests

Puzzles

Conclusion

Should you buy this game?

Fun game, very entertaining. The puzzles are good, and some of them are quite difficult. The storyline isn't surprising, but a lot of the dialogue is very funny. A nicely executed JRPG, all in all, well worth the price, since it gives you over 10 hours of gametime, even if you rush through and only play once.

Worth the money , I did it in more than 34h cos of time solving puzzles in more.

You’re Aura, a falling star who’ll be hosted by Zach a star gazer. He talks like a prince charming to Aura “you radiate”., but their conversations are felt with love then.

- a bit of current history about wars, the chancellor’s profit and Aura’s role.
- a lot of fun stuff: the lazy bear watchers, scientists become stupid, bird matchmaker, pirates throw you a bomb, a nonsense clubs guerilla. .. You’ll laugh at the cat mail!
- captivating inquiries with the inspector: greed, envy, lust
- ghosts quests on fame and “redemption”
- love matters like prepare a date and giving back faith in love to someone
- characterization: Thyme, a pretty dark-hair archer who complains a lot, and Grayson a retired soldier who’s bitter and wise
- 2 weddings
I loved most places: Oakhaven and the lost arrows, Red Paw village, Hilgarth mist is well done! Pirate island, dark love island. The bird to travel fast selecting the direction is practical.
- Puzzles are a “stand-by” to solve but must be done for meteors and stars
- Battle mode: portraits of the party with smile to making a face

It’s the best Aveyond game to my mind, not counting the next ones!