On A Journey, a new turn-based RPG currently being developed by Mowlo Silk, is set in a world that has elements of the medieval era combined with lashings of steampunk. On A Journey’s demo – available now as part of the Steam Turn-Based RPG Fest – drops you right in the middle of the story with a small group of revolutionaries on a mission to destroy cargo on a train, and derail it before it reaches the Capital City. The reason for this is twofold. First, it is to stop the transportation of Emerald Wood, a magic infused wood that helps prop up the power of the Queen, and second to destroy a prototype enemy mech weapon.
We joing Uther and Tristan as they jump on to the target train from a bridge as it heads towards the city. The scenario begins with you controlling Tristan as he makes his way across the carriage rooftops, a sequence that leads up to QTEs for certain actions. Failing a QTE can dump you into a bad situation, for example, mistiming the button press to push a couple of enemy Ya’al knights out of a train carriage ended up in a combat scenario instead.
Combat is a classic turn-based system with an ATB bar filling up for each character until it’s their turn to act. In addition to the standard weapon attacks and magic abilities, there’s also a fury bar, which grants a special attack to deal high damage with – Uther’s Fury is a storm which fires a lot of icicles at enemies, for example. Some enemies are weak to certain types of magic, which you’ll want to learn to exploit. Uther also has an additional Summon option, costing 200 MP and 50 Fury points, but it is worth it as it brings in a giant rabbit called Roger that rolls towards enemies causing area damage.
Building a well-rounded party to cover the various magic elements will be a key to success, and exploring the character menus shows that Mowlo Silk has plans for a lot of magic and Fury powers in the final game. You’ll also be able to augment them with accessories that can provide bonuses and buffs.
As you explore you will come across other interactive elements in the world, an exclamation mark appearing over your character’s head as you find them, giving you the chance to speak to characters, find collectables and more. On some of these, a struggle bar is a variation on the QTE theme, needing to be filled by pressing the correct buttons to do so, and sometimes with a timer to avoid failure.
On A Journey’s sound and visual design is a bit of a mixed bag right now. Character models come across as disproportionate due to their large heads, approaching chibi-style proportions, but not quite. Those are the main ones you’ll see as you explore the world, but battles switch to more properly proportioned characters with a lot more detail from their clothing to expressions. There’s an anime look about them which makes sense since the cutscenes are in an anime style.
The stage designs are very good with each having lots of details within them – passengers in the train carriages all looked unique, for example – and hopefully that amount of detail and variety will continue throughout On A Journey. Whether you will meet any of these characters again is unknown, since the mission you were tasked with at the start was to derail the train. That could be setting up an overarching theme of whether the ends justify the means, or I could be reading too much into it.
The main part of the demo ends with a boss fight against the mech prototype, with the outcome of the characters unknown after the battle concludes. The real end of the demo takes us back to before the events of the train, and to Sturdy Oaks village, which is famous for its lumber and baking. We find ourselves as a teenager names Lance, being woken up by his mum as he is supposed to go hunting with his dad. Uther, it turns out, is Lance’s dad, and Lance will no doubt head out on a quest to find out what happened on the train.
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·