It began with a single quote from Joe DeVader on our web site Slack:

“The Fata Morgana builders are releasing a spin-off the place they reuse characters and belongings to inform a narrative about an indie large and its followers getting isekai of their fantasy sport ‘was not on my bingo card”

This idea sounded completely ridiculous, however contemplating my emotions concerning the Home in Fata Morgana, I needed to take the chance and acquired the Seventh Lair. Just a few hours later, I used to be in tears, reaching for the antidepressants I used to get previous Persona 3 Moveable and questioning put my ideas on paper for this sport.

As Joe casually places it, Seventh Lair recklessly reuses Fata Morgana’s character fashions and backgrounds for a model new story. That is talked about on the sport’s eShop web page, and FM characters are actually named by identify within the credit, in order that they’re trustworthy about it. The character “You” performs a Paris-based sport developer below the pseudonym Darkish†Knight, who creates some small indie publications on his web site “Royaume Heaven*”. After a little bit of a binge from the creator, he broadcasts a brand new launch for April Idiot’s Day, however loses consciousness as the sport goes reside and wakes up in a JRPG that’s clearly impressed by Dragon Quest because the hero character. Common members of the boards on his web site start to look as different get together members and even – in a single instance – NPCs, and the get together should progress till the tip of the sport utilizing solely recollections of Darkish†Knight’s planning notes for the sport. After a sequence of breaks that may put the Tremendous Metroid speedrunner to disgrace, the endgame reveals the rationale the characters had been introduced into the fantasy world, which included (amongst different issues) suicidal discussions that shook me extremely.

Seventh Lair, not like its predecessor, is a brief journey; I used to be in a position to recover from it in just a few hours. There are no selections within the story, and other than a brief post-credits “quick story”, that is what you get in the principle plot. Sadly, the plot of the story itself is a bit tough, as there are extra typos/missed phrases on this quick journey than in the entire of Fata Morgana. I might need wished accountable the writer, particularly because it’s their first effort on Change, however MangaGamer has launched the unique English model of Fata Morgana, primarily based on console variations (launched by Restricted Run Video games or its predecessor). Hopefully the textual content might be cleared later.

Given the reuse of open belongings, they’ve performed an excellent job adapting the characters and environments right into a “fantasy RPG” world. There’s even a cause the principle character has extremely lengthy hair all through the universe, which is the eye to element that I appreciated. The soundtrack maintains its development in direction of haunting tunes together with the songs. “One Cut Deeper”, “Land of Nowhere”and particularly “Voice of the Fairy” to be the highlights. (The final of those is definitely used as a part of the plot as effectively.)

I do not remorse taking just a few hours to learn Seventh Lair, however I wanted a couple of minutes to gather myself on the finish of the story. With some cleaned up textual content, it could possibly be an important visible quick novel of all time – however for now, it is a stable e book with some issues price discussing.