Preview – SeaRing [Demo] PC
SeaRing is a charming little action puzzler that clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Undertale in terms of its aesthetic and humour. However, in lieu of the turn-based fights, navigating the world and its dangers is much more action-focused as you need to dodge incoming attacks and use wizardry to manipulate objects and creatures, block incoming strikes, and even hit back when absolutely necessary. Sent on a mission to recover the lost Crown of Water by her late mother, it’s up to our determined protagonist to cross the perilous Fire Kingdom and return as Queen, proclaimed as thus by donning said magical artefact. With naught but a little sorcery up her sleeve, allowing her to cast a weak ring of water around her waist, and some sort of seeing mirror used to communicate with her father, it’ll take swift reactions and a knack for problem solving to make it through.
It’s not all brain burning and gallantry, though. In fact, most of your time will be spent interacting with the world and all manner of crazy-looking creatures that inhabit it. Learning about the history of the universe, the kingdoms, and even how babies are made (with a ‘minibang’ apparently, which I don’t doubt). Much like other titles of this kind, the player is only really going to enjoy it if they click with the silliness, enjoy the absurdity, and find this particular style of comedy entertaining. If you’re one to snarl at a pun, or dislike the surreal and nonsensical, it’s not going to be for you. On the other hand, if that is your cup of lasagna, you might just want to pop this one on the ol’ wishlist.
Although the demo didn’t ever truly challenge me, of course being the first part of the game, I did feel it start to take a turn by the end. The finale of the demo, which happens to be a boss fight after dodging your way through a conveyor system full of gunmen guncrabs, is hopefully indicative of the trials to come in the full release. I’m always happy to see more head-scratchers, secrets, and battles that push me to try my best, so I only wish for SeaRing to provide. As for the unlockable ‘findings’ in the demo, I wasn’t too happy to find out that they seem to be uncovered by triggering every event and/or piece of dialogue available. And so, after three runs through the game and getting pretty close, I gave up, lest I move on to inspecting every square space of every available area. I only hope they aren’t too important to the experience and that if they are, the complete version doesn’t expect the same grindy behaviour.