Orphan’s Treasure – Review
Follow Genre: Adventure, Indie, RPG
Developer: Forthright Casual Games
Publisher: Forthright Entertainment, LLC
Platform: PC (Steam)
Tested on: PC (Steam)

Orphan’s Treasure – Review

Site Score
8.0
Good: Captivating story
Bad: Some minor flaws
User Score
10.0
(3 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (3 votes cast)

A story based RPG that has an intriguing story and teaches you not to judge other people too fast that is exactly what Orphan’s Treasure is.  You learn that everyone has inner demons that they have to fight, only this time it’s quite literally. As if being an orphan isn’t easy enough, this boy has to deal with the demon inside of him. This is the first episode of Orphan’s Treasure and it already captivates you with its interesting concept.

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Story

You play as an orphan or rather “the” orphan as everyone in the game calls you by this nickname. The orphan is struggling with himself and is literally fighting his inner demon. This demon has been put inside his body by priests who worshipped the sun God and wanted to offer both the orphan and the demon to that God. The orphan and his demon seem obsessed with obtaining treasure, so much that they are willing to do almost anything for it. Violence and murder are how the demon wants to achieve their common goal of getting treasure but the orphan doesn’t agree with that attitude.  His inner demon causes him to have a split personality as he changes completely when the demon takes over. Even though the orphan tries his hardest to fight the demon he isn’t quite strong enough to be the boss of his own body.

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The earl of the village where the orphan lives close to had tasked the orphan with killing the troll that guarded the bridge nearby in exchange for treasure. When the orphan came to claim his treasure the Earl went back on his word. He claimed that it was a task that was so easy that even his son could have done it. Of course, this angers the orphan and his inner demon pops out. As he threatens the earl, guards try to overpower him but he pulls a bone sword out of the many runes that are on his body. He easily overpowers the guards and the earl calls out to his son to help him as a last resort. His son jumps in front of him and engages in battle with the orphan.

This game is mostly story based and has some real mystery surrounding the orphan and his demon. The story also seems to deal with the taboo of mental health as the orphan is literally struggling with an inner demon and the loss of his family. There are still some holes in the story but those might be filled up in later episodes. As you continue the story more pieces get revealed that start to complete the puzzle that is this story.

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Graphics

The graphics are in a 16-bit style and are more “old school”. It’s sometimes confusing as to which tiles are walkable and which tiles are not. You can even walk through some trees, rocks and other objects while others of the same objects block your path. The water and river tiles move slightly as to represent waves but the blue part that represents water isn’t the only thing that moves. The green edge parts of the water tiles move as well which is a bit strange to look at.

As characters have conversations you get to see a more detailed and enlarged picture of the person speaking. These still images are quite detailed and give a more dramatic feel as the images show emotions and some actions. There was one point in-game that the image suddenly floated to the top of the screen as if the character jumped even though this was probably a glitch it did have some dramatic effect.

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 Sound

There is no voice acting present in Orphan’s Treasure. The music in the game does suit it as it goes along with the feeling and drama that plays out in the game. Sound effects are pretty basic in the game and are mostly present in the “fights” and the menus.

Gameplay

Orphan’s Treasure is an Indie, Adventure RPG game that’s mostly story based. The game also has a sort of visual novel feel to it as most of the game is conversation. When you start the game for the first time you get thrown right into the story. Sadly, there is no tutorial present and no explanation for the controls. Luckily the controls aren’t that hard to figure out.  Like any other RPG, there are the typical combat moments but the orphan is invincible so these aren’t hard and are more to aid the story. Since this is the first episode this might change later on if they bring in harder enemies. You have three options on the combat screen; attack, guard or magic. Magic gives two sub-options: heal and darkness. Since you are pretty much invincible this episode, healing is pretty useless.

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A few times the orphan’s demon wants to fight or kill someone/something but the orphan resists this urge to kill and wants to be more peaceful. There are however no options to choose what to do or to just run away from the fight. This might have been a missed opportunity to give players the choice about what to do. Since there are no choices you have to follow the sometimes cruel decisions of the demon. A couple mazes are also present in the game but only one is necessary for continuing the story. This maze has flames or maybe spirits moving around in it. When you touch a flame you get teleported back to a previous checkpoint. There are save points in this maze depicted by blue flames in a pillar but strangely these don’t always count as checkpoints. This means there is no way to know when you passed a checkpoint and even when you teleport back to a checkpoint they sometimes glitch and send you even further back. Which is quite annoying when you’re almost out of the maze and get teleported to the beginning.

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Although you can look around some areas quite a bit there isn’t really anything to discover. There aren’t that many objects that you can interact with. Even though there are some chests hidden around the game, these only contain a bit of extra story in the form of a poem. These poems don’t get saved anywhere and although they seem linked together there is no way to check this unless you write them down. The first episode of the game ended with a cliff-hanger but strangely the end screen was a game over screen. This might get updated when episode 2 releases but right now it could be confusing. There is also no mention of episodes in the game itself which would be handy to have for the people that don’t always thoroughly read the store page.

Conclusion

Orphan’s Treasure has a captivating story that makes you want to know more. It needs some minor fixes but other than that it’s quite fun. If you like to skip conversations between characters in games than this game really isn’t for you. If you like reading a compelling story with a minimum of gameplay elements, then this is the game for you. Since the first episode ended in a cliff-hanger, a second episode hopefully won’t be that far away.

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VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (3 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)
Orphan's Treasure - Review, 10.0 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Theotakutem


The one and only slowqueen! -student multimedia-

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