Beloved Rapture PAX Impressions - A vibrant and gorgeous pixel art RPG
Sometimes, it can be just as exciting to see a game do something correctly as it is to see it do something different. Enter Beloved Rapture, a classic JRPG-inspired indie RPG by Rapturous Studio, and published by 2 Left Thumbs (Picayune Dreams, Tower of Kalemonvo), a slice of which I got to experience at PAX East.
And I say “a slice” rather than “a demo” because, as I soon came to understand after playing for what must have been at least half an hour with no clear end in sight, it wasn’t a demo at all — it was just the game — and players could stop playing whenever they felt so inclined (or in my case, once enough time passed that my nervousness upon checking a clock finally outweighed my potential embarrassment from asking the person in charge of the booth how long the demo is). The full game, I soon came to learn, has been available on Steam since October.
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Still, despite its shortcomings, I see a lot of potential with Beloved Rapture. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor does it even seem like it wants to. Instead, it’s content to do what it’s doing, and doing it well — which is to say, bringing back that retro RPG experience in full, gloriously pixelated force. While I wish there was a dedicated public demo, and ideally one that gave you a better feel for the game’s story and who the main characters are, the first section of the game that I played nonetheless left me feeling impressed from a technical standpoint (even if I was underwhelmed from a storytelling standpoint), and curious to check out more of what this game has to offer. Luckily, as mentioned earlier, it’s already out, so there’s no wait for this one required.
