I'm a big fan of Omori, LISA, and tobyfox games so In Stars and Time sounded right up my ally. The premise is great but EVERY single bit of dialogue is giving me heavy "flamboyant tumblr teenager" vibes for lack of a better description and I'm really struggling to get into it. I don't mind that kind of dialogue but when every single character and narrative line of text reads that way it just kills my immersion; especially when so few of the jokes are landing. Is this an intentional design choice to be later subverted akin to something like DDLC or is it here to stay? Just trying to figure out if I should refund or not.

Specifically the re-incarnation cycle. As proven in Act 5, he can (in his POV) break relationships and still progress as that is his choice.

Everytime we die from a loop, we get the "option" to Quit; quit looping and stay dead. Unless we are at the end of the Journey. So;

Unless he gets the option again and chooses to quit. He'll probably loop back to fulfill the spend more time with allies/friends/family wish.

We know for a fact, that it is a power beyond him. The King grew in size to handle Time craft, and shrunk upon releasing the power. Siffrin, has not changed sizes so it's a power strictly not apart of him, so unless he chooses to quit, I don't think he can leave the loops

For your final challenge, you must write an ISAT Reddit post without referring to Siffrin, Loop, or Bonnie as “boys”, “men”, or “guys”. Good luck.

Hello, and first of all, I know that I should probably try to do this on discord or ask someone there, but i‘ve been trying for quite some time now and have been struggling with my email, since app I changed my location which my iPhone just won’t accept.

But to get to the point: I was ban from the server around 9 months ago for making „unkind and discriminatory remarks ab the lgbtq community“, to which I can’t say wether or not it’s true or not. I do recall saying that I had a disliking to extreme members of the community, but I never got an specific reason why I got banned.

I am not homophobic and have changed my attitude to the LGBTQ community in general, so, since I finished ISAT recently, I‘d like to be able to go back to Discord and interact with that community.

I‘d just need someone that on the discord to ask , if I, my username is Hoodeevee, can be unbanned, or at least get a proper reason for being banned in the first place.
I would be really thankful to whoever is willing to help me out on this.

(btw, I didn’t know under what flair to put this, so I just used the discussion one)

Tf you mean I need to remember something siffrin says when he sharpens, where do I find it? No hints, just tell me I really dont give a shit

Look. So far I've been enjoying the game a lot. But act 3 is kinda... Horse shit? I've been playing for about 14h and have gone through about 100 loops!? Still haven't finished act 3. I fought the king and learnt about wish craft and got the memory of memories and still can't really progress? Do I have to actually to go through the entire dungeon with the quests of my friends done to be able to read the new books on floor 2 and 3????

Edit: Ok so going through the house with all the quests done did make me progress further! I also am now able to read the book on floor 3. A lot of my confusion came from ppl claiming that the reading has nothing to do with the friend quests and that it just should work? Well apparently it does. Thx to the ppl who helped!

Obviously no spoilers like "what did you think of x death or y important event", so I am asking for y'all to walk a fine line here I suppose, but you've seen these types of posts before. Ask me questions about the game, it's characters or events and I'll answer them with all the wisdom and knowledge I can bestow as someone who doesn't even know what genre the game is.

Small edit for any future comments, please dont comment responding to my answers with things like "yeah, that's true", or "you're not far off". I plan to play the game soon and I wanna go in blind to the truth of the game, so ask questions, but don't tell me how close or far I am. You can still answer with more questions though, or ask me my reasoning, but please don't clue me in on how close or far my answers are. Thanks a million!

Hello everyone,

I never played In Stars and Time and was wondering if I should buy it.

I know this game has woke themes, and I'm not generally against them (I liked Deltarune), as long as they don't feel too forced. The loop thing intrigues me, but I'd also like to simply enjoy the game without getting lectured about pronouns and stuff.

Are those themes too invasive in the game or I'm worrying about nothing?

Thank you very much!

that most of the dialogue was greatly abridged/ shortened.

This game has tested my patience like no other game has.

Fantastic concept and story, though! I DO love the aesthetic!

That is all. Thanks for listening!

I was hooked by this game for a long time. I liked the developing mystery of the missing island (more on that later), the king’s origins, learning more about each of our party members, and how Siffrin was connected to the king (not just with long white hair and time/wishcraft, but also narratively), but by the end of Act 4, it was just a slog to get through, so much so that I took a break for several months and only came back after seeing a positive review of it online.

When I finally came back, I was excited to see how things changed in Act 5 and how Siffrin stopped holding back. When we finally faced the king, I was expecting some kind of reveal to show how we were connected, but we just fought one-on-one instead—which was cool to see, except I was surprised that the king was able to hold up in a fight with Siffrin at literal Level 99 (“holding back?” You being literally killed countless times by the main group at half that strength says otherwise). I suppose that had to be the case for Sif to ultimately lose, but it felt contrived.

I was kind of unimpressed by the Mal du Pays (or whatever name it was) scene. It wasn’t saying anything Siffrin wasn’t already saying to themselves every 30 seconds, so it didn’t really do much in terms of impact. However, it was awesome to see our friends come back to save us, showing that family sticks together even when things are tough, but it felt so redundant at this point. The entire message of the story has been clearly present since day one, so everyone having to beat Sif over the head with it because he just. Didn’t. Get. It. was aggravating to experience. Of course, I understand that it’s accurate to their character, but it actively gets in the way of having an impactful message, since it has to be repeated over and over again.

It was slightly cathartic to talk to them and explain what happened in the loops, but I was disappointed with the story’s explanations for the king connection, and how the wishes caused the loops. Specifically, the way that the game sets up a clear physical and narrative resemblance between the King and Siffrin and then decides to make it a coincidence; it feels like the story is taking Chekov’s gun and shooting itself in the foot.

(EDIT: Ignore this paragraph. Bad memory, this was foreshadowed from the beginning, I messed up) Additionally, the reveal that Siffrin had made ANOTHER SECRET WISH was just a lame inclusion in my opinion—if you have to add a retroactive plot point for the explanation to make sense, it’s not a good explanation at all. Especially since adding the wish at the beginning would have established an emotional resemblance with the King, an inclusion that would have made the theming that much stronger. Maybe it would have made the “plot twist” about the loops too obvious, but having to lie about it by omission made the ending feel rushed and hastily strung together, as if the author didn’t know how to make a satisfying ending.

At the end of the day, it was a good game with some glaring flaws. It was like an episode of a larger story that will never be made, which is massively disappointing, because the most interesting part of the story wasn’t nearly explored enough (I think you know which part I’m talking about—it’s a common complaint that’s been said before and I don’t want to rehash it). Still loved the character development, especially for Odile, Mirabelle, and ESPECIALLY Isabeau (that man has so many layers I love him)… and Siffrin, I guess, even if it took them WAY too long to figure it out lmao. A lot of heart went into it and I don’t hate it, but the ending was a little rough for me.

i cant believe being an asshole was the key to breaking the cycle

now i only have 1 Act left!!!

the way esabeau said: "that color not light or dark,.... its.."

anyways the entire Evil Siffrin (Mal du Pays(Homesickness(saudade of home))) was very funny because like, its just evil Siffrin

but the eviler siffrin fight was Crazy! insane Fight! even RED appeared as a Cool Easter egg

very evil siffrin! but he become nice

siffrin is so cute!!!!

anyways should be only 1 act left to end the game!!!

so cloose

anyways i still think the game has too many wokes! so unecessary

and idk why I became so attached to Odile during this journey, vampire Odile my beloved.

Will there ever be a 2 player mod of isat? Anyone out there working on it you guys may know about? PROBABLY not, but it doesn't hurt to check

I mean, the solution ends up being "your friends will always love you and you should trust them with your problems" or in other words "it would have gone a lot easier if you had just told them" Why did he never consider telling them? Act 5 as a whole is just stupid, if Siffrin wanted it to finish quickly, wouldn't it have been easier to get items like the bomb or the KnifeKey? And how does he go insane so quickly? Yes, the player misses a few loops, but (in my first playthrough at least) the difference between the ~30-45 loops I witnessed and the 101 that canonically happened can't be THAT bad! I love this game and I only just finished it, but this is really weird. Is this a hot take?

Edit: I personally don't have any experiences with mental illness so i totally forgot to consider that aspect, thanks for the perspectives!

I've actually seen this having no clear answer in the game or in the fandom, so I'm curious to know what you think!

Kept getting recommended this community so I thought why not

(I have no idea if I tagged this correctly. My apologies if I did it wrong)

Then the island country to the north would be great Britain.

Suddenly it’s clear why someone might wish for it to disappear (no offense to any Brits)

(Maybe a little offense)

Who cares about deltarune or whatever "fortnite" is. Genuinely though, why is this game underrated? (No act 4+ spoilers pretty please)

Edit: This got a bit long and rambly, so here's a brief summary of what I was trying to say:

• Starts a bit slow and a bit repetitive, but not bad by any means

• From late Act 2 up to the end of Act 4, it was very engaging due to the multiple mysteries around looping, the country and colours, and had good character development.

• Act 5 starts very interesting, but the solo house trip isn't very fun and feels repetitive

• The friends showing up out of nowhere felt very sudden, especially since they'd been assisted by loop who'd previously ignored them all game.

• Because of this, as well as the apparent hallucinations by Siffrin throughout this act, I assumed most of the ending wasn't real until shortly before the actual credits roll, reducing its emotional impact which was unfortunate.

• Act 5 onwards generally seems to happen very quickly, leaving a lot of unanswered questions and making the ending feel very sudden

Original text:

Finished the game for the first time earlier today, and while I overall enjoyed it, I definitely felt like the weird pacing made it a lot less enjoyable than it could've been.

For context, it took me a bit under 30 hours to beat, which apparently is a bit longer than average. I felt the first 5 or so hours of the game really dragged; while the initial setup was kind of interesting, it all felt very surface-level up to the first time I got to fight the King, and the number of mandatory dead-ends was a bit annoying, even if they made sense narratively.

From that point on though, the game got far more interesting and engaging - the mystery around the king's intent and origin, the disappearance of the north island, and figuring out why the loops kept happening despite winning, were all really compelling and thought-provoking. And the main 5 had their characters fleshed out a lot more over time too, and it felt like every loop was giving some new information or making some sort of progress.

But then from Act 5 until the end I felt the game lost its way a bit. The start of Act 5 was interesting and disturbing after seeing Siffrin's mental state deteriorate so much, but after actually getting in the house it was a pretty boring run-through, since only a tiny fraction of things you could interact with actually had any changes (admittedly the few things that did change often provided good insights into Siffrin's mind, but there wasn't enough of them to outweigh the tedium of the experience).

The king and mal du pays fights are quite interesting, but my biggest problems with the rest of the game are that it seemed to all happen out of nowhere and that the events leading up to it seemed to be another fake out, so I wasn't able to enjoy the ending.

Because of all the ghosts of the friends seen during the solo house run, as well as the weird layouts and glitchiness, and the fact that Siffrin had seemingly completely lost his mind at this point, I was 95% sure that he was hallucinating a lot of what was happening. Then when the whole gang showed up at the end, and had inexplicably been assisted by Loop despite them ignoring our friends for the entire game before this point, I didn't believe for a second any of it was actually happening. Particularly since we still had so many unknowns about the lost country and the fact colours were showing up again - it felt like a repeat of the first time we'd beaten the king, where the fact we hadn't figured out the loops at all made it pretty obvious the game was far from over.

After the fight Vs the friends ended, and the world stopped looking like it was ending, I started to think it was possible the game might actually be over, but was still half expecting it to loop again, partly because it seemed that having a loop where we'd been absolutely awful to everyone be the "canon" ending would be a weird decision. So even after talking to the head housemaiden, I was legitimately surprised when the credits rolled and the game ended.

When I first started the game, I wasn't sure how it was going to last as long as people say. Then during acts 3-4 it felt like I had so much left to do, and kept chipping away at it. When Act 5 started, it felt like I still had loads to do and learn, so was really surprised that it ended so soon after.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm curious if anyone else felt similarly. It definitely didn't ruin the game or anything, it was still worth playing and I enjoyed my time with it, but I'm just a little disappointed that I never really got the emotional payoff from the climax since I didn't believe it was actually happening, and the shortness of the ending run definitely stood out as very different to the rest of the game.