GAMES FROM THE FROG'S BOX #1

(This is a series where I'll dig up the obscure media I've played/experienced and gush about it in an attempt to convince anyone else to play it. Updates whenever.)

GAMES FROM THE FROG'S BOX:
8 COLORS STAR GUARDIANS PLUS

For the first installment of Games From The Frog’s Box, it’s 8 Colors Star Guardians Plus, by Andrea Demetrio. Starting as a game jam project, Star Guardians was later expanded into a full release on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

I played it after Exploding Judo Federation, one of the dev’s other games, where this game was referenced a fair bit, and I needed to know what the context was. Needless to say, I was not disappointed in the least.

CHAPTER 1- ALL MEAT, NO FAT
Basically, this game is like your average turn-based RPG, but with just the hits and none of the usual chaff. Nothing but a series of increasingly difficult boss fights, which honestly feel more like puzzles than typical boss fights half the time.
Not that that’s a bad thing. Instead of pages and pages of abilities, each technique has a specific use case, and I found myself getting plenty of work out of all of them over the course of the battles.
The entire game just has a really nice flow to it, where no battle takes too long for its own good, and forces you to think on your feet and strategize or get stomped.

The game's split up into two distinct chapters. In Chapter 1, you have eight bosses to choose from, and can pick them in any order. After you beat one, you get a new ability for one of the five Guardians from it, which you can use to try and knock down some of the other bosses.
The twist comes from the fact that you can only have three Guardians in your party at once, so you have to think about what party makeup would be the best in any given situation. Thankfully, it’s not JUST trial and error.
If you lose a boss, or flee early, you get goofy little conversations that give you hints on how to beat the boss effectively. Not only are they useful, they’re also hilarious and build up the characters a lot.
(So, needless to say, i found myself throwing every initial attempt at a boss fight just so I could see them all.)

CHAPTER 2- BASICALLY THE REAL GAME
Chapter 2, meanwhile, is where everything gets kicked up quite a few notches. You always have all five party members available (there are a couple exceptions but I'll get to that later), and all the bosses are fought in a set order.
Most of the fights are against combinations of old bosses. Their stats aren’t changed, but having way more to deal with makes stuff a lot tougher.  It really feels like the first half of the game was studying for a test, and the second half IS that test. You can push the abilities of the Guardians to your limits, and see how well they can synergize.
Like, for example, the first boss in Chapter 2- a combination of the two easiest bosses, Bramba and Kchko. Brahma is a bigger priority, they're constantly tossing out disabling attacks that'll leave you open for Kchko's moves. But Kchko is harder to kill, so you need to focus on the shark instead.
Neither are all that threatening on their own, but together they pose significantly more of a threat, and that logic keeps ascending through the rest of the combo bosses.
That’s not to say there aren’t some new fights in here- Oh, there are. And they are the best fights in the game, and also the hardest.

USER INTERFACE
Side note, there’s a lot of little things that smooth the experience significantly that add up. If there’s only one enemy, you’ll auto-target them, saving you a button press. Same for if you’re reviving a party member when only one’s KO’d. It’s a little thing that tightens the pace of the combat a lot- I wish more RPGs did things like this!
In addition, the UI is some of the clearest and most readable at a glance I’ve ever seen. The stats of all party members and enemies are visible at all times, all status effects cycle through periodically if there’s more than one, it’s all a masterclass in functional UI design that serves the game’s snappy pacing.

8 COLORS IS ALL YOU NEED
As the title implies, the entire game has only 8 colors in its palette. An exercise in minimalism, to be sure- but limitations breed creativity, and this game has it in spades.
I can’t get enough of the goofy little poses the Guardians do when idling, they’re adorable. And the attack animations are nice and flashy despite their simpleness. The monster sprites, too, are SO charming. Shoutouts to Bramba, the best shark… thing.
The rare moments of full artwork for the cutscenes are also super adorable- or menacing, in the case of anything involving Barion's final boss forms.

TUNES TO BEAT UP GOOFY MONSTERS TO
Like its graphics, this game has quite a minimalist soundtrack- only six songs. But when all of them are this rockin’, that’s all that’s really needed.
“GO! GO! GO!”, the main battle theme, is one of the most pumpin' battle themes I’ve ever heard in general, it’s been stuck in my head ever since I played this. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to punch goons in the face.
The song for the final bosses (and a couple others), “Golden Stigma”, uses some of its leitmotifs in a far more dramatic flavor, and is even better for it.
“Collapse/Relapse” is a perfect song during the plot’s rare moments of seriousness. Some might find it distracting, but nothing gets me invested in a storyline faster than lovable goofballs being hit with the pathos stick.
But my favorite is Pyromaniaholic, the song for the penultimate boss. That song is stuck in my head for AGES afterwards. Really sells the aura of "you're so close to the finale, don't stop now!"

THE STORY OF FIVE DYSFUNCTIONAL GIRLFAILURES
You'd think a game like this wouldn't have much of a story, but Star Guardians puts a LOT of effort into its characters. Five utterly dysfunctional messy girlfailures, and I could read their quips and nonsense for hours. The conversations never last too long, but they're JUST long enough to make me fall in love with them.

Rhea the cool team mom type, Bree the weird pyromaniac, V’iri the slightly oblivious alien princess, Juni the party girl, Dua the spirit medium with way more plot relevance than she seems. (You’ll find out in a minute.)
They’re not especially deep characters for the most part, but they don’t need to be for a game like this. Well, at least until Chapter 2.

Special mention has to go to Barion Entelechia, the game’s big bad. Despite only really appearing in the final boss fight, he’s such a slimy bastard that it’s impossible not to appreciate him. And his ultimate fate, after BOTH final boss fights with him, is richly satisfying. (Doubly so if you’ve played ExploJudo and seen his arcade mode ending.)

NOTE:
If you want to play the game for yourself, feel free to skip the spoiler sections.

THE WHITE GUARDIAN (SPOILERS)
Early on in Chapter 2, you get confronted by another Star Guardian in a white uniform- because every story like this needs a Sixth Ranger. But this isn’t your typical ‘heroic figure turned evil’ plot- it’s immediately obvious that something is wrong beyond that.
I tell you, finding out Zareh was party of V’iri’s previous party, then having her summon illusory copies of her friends to beat you down, that hit me in the feels like immediately. I’m always a huge fan of “disastrously awry previous hero adventures” in media, so having that plot point come up here had me giggling.
Plus, Dua’s catgirl infatuation was adorable.

THE “REAL WORLD” (SPOILERS!)
Near the end of the game, the Memorian machine that’s generating all the bosses in Chapter 2 goes haywire, and forces Dua into a solo fight with a mysterious entity named Echo.
(I have to say, I played Exploding Judo Federation first, where this thing first appeared, and I was LOSING IT when I finally got some context for it.)
You can’t beat it. Or at least, I don’t think you can since you only have one party member. And when you lose, you get kicked into some place completely different, with everyone saying the aliens and junk are a hallucination. Hell, even the title screen changes with the start button being replaced with “WAKE UP”.

Needless to say, all of this had me floored. Not JUST because I’d played Schwarzerblitz and actually understood all the namedrops, but because of how well the tone shift was handled in spite of how jarring it could’ve been.
Some other games would simply force you into an exposition dump where it’s revealed the entire game is all in your head, which is fine for some.
Not this one, though. This game knows its greatest strength- its pacing- and instead of bogging down the runtime with too much dialogue, instead it tosses you into more battles to try and figure out this whole mess. With the “real world” equivalents of the party having entirely different movesets, as well! These ones aren’t as well-rounded as their normal abilities, but they don’t need to be, for a brief setpiece like this. It’s a great break from the rest of the game, one last gut punch before the finale.

THE BEST BOSSES (SPOILERS)
There aren’t any bad bosses in this game, but a few obviously stand out above the rest. Again, if you want to play this game, 

The Drgt fight, both versions. First version only has two heads, one of which will revive the other. But the second has THREE, forcing you to pay twice as much attention to killing
For some reason, this one stood out to me, it’s a great way to use multiple foes in one boss fight.

Barion in chapter 1 is the first real test of your abilities, with it being the first fight to involve all 5 party members. And it makes you work for that victory, being a real endurance test to grind down Barion’s health while keeping everyone alive.

The Evolobster fight is a real kick in the teeth, with multiple gimmicks all intersecting at once. He can pin a party member, preventing them from being revived until he does a different attack to release their corpse. Not threatening on its own- but then there’s the referee there, who will deliver an instakill attack if he counts up to three!
Of course, you can just kill him to delay that, but he’ll get back up, so you can’t be too careless.
The entire time, you have the commentators hyping up the match like it’s the most important thing in the world- and, as somebody who has played Schwarzerblitz to completion, it deserves that billing. Of course, you don’t have to beat it if it’s too hard for you, but you get a cool costume for beating it.

The White Guardian. Fights against player equivalents are always awesome, and she lives up to that hype, what with her shield that blocks all attacks until you remove it. Especially the second one, where she summons illusory copies of the rest of HER Guardian party that you have to deal with! It’s a great moment of sadness to illustrate how far gone she’s become, AND a great setpiece fight.

The Dr. Zojimbo fight in the “Real World” Segment had me stumped at first- but once the solution popped up, I was laughing my ass off. Just keep kicking the guards down until the bad doctor runs out of SP- and then he just has a fucking heart attack and dies. Perfect.

The proper Echo fight at the end of the Real World has one of the craziest gimmicks in the game, with her Deaf and Blind status effects actually MUTING THE MUSIC/CUTTING OUT THE VISUALS. One of the craziest fourth wall breaks i've seen in a while, it really came out of nowhere.

Pyrom is the penultimate boss, and he’s a real barn-burner. (Get it, cause he's on fire...) Usually the logic in bosses with endlessly respawning minions is to kill them immediately when they show up.
Not here. If you do that, Pyrom will just absorb SP from them all and unleash a guaranteed party-wipe. Instead, you only kill one. AND use the Invert skill to make Pyrom kill one of them by accident whenever he tries to respawn more. That way, his attacks will never be strong enough to wipe you, since he can never use his strongest move.
It’s not difficult when you get the trick, but it’s one of the most clever gimmicks in the game.

And then, Final Barion. The absolute final challenge. How does it top the final boss of chapter 1?
Oh, you just GET THE WHITE GUARDIAN ON YOUR TEAM, that’s how. And she’s not just a setpiece with one ability, she has an entirely fleshed out moveset, including all the moves she used in her boss fight- one of which is MANDATORY to dodge Final Barion’s sweeping instakill attack.
Even outside of that, Barion’s no slouch the second time around, with constantly respawning minions and a litany of attacks that can RUIN your day if you’re not prepared. It’s a game of playing conservatively, grinding him down in a battle of attrition, until you finally whittle him down to nothing.

EXTRA STUFF
Schwarzerblitz, also by Andrea Demetrio, has an 8 Colors Star Guardians costume set and a free stage, which is all well and good.
But the real fun comes from Exploding Judo Federation, where Barion himself is a playable character who breaks the entire ruleset of the game in half. His Arcade Ending in there will be even more hilarious- and kind of sad- if you’ve played this.
(Also, shoutouts to Duels of Fortune, another indie fighting game, having several Star Guardians costumes as well.)
And if you STILL want more, the Tales from Schwarzerblitz short stories by the dev have some mentions of Star Guardians in it too, following up on the events of the "Real World" segment. For loreheads like me, it's always a treat to get more depth like this.

FINAL THOUGHTS
8 Colors Star Guardians is the epitome of the phrase “Short but Sweet.” The gameplay is snappy and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The presentation’s infectiously charming, and the story and characters have got flavor and personality to spare.
For five dollars, you really can’t go wrong with this. Play it!!!

Game link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2483150/8Colors_Star_Guardians/
Soundtrack by toby manblast: https://blast-harbour.bandcamp.com/album/8-colors-star-guardians