Indie Dev Spotlight: insertdisc5

Bazir’s most successful game to date has been 2023’s In Stars and Time, a monochromatic turn-based RPG following Siffrin (he/they) as they’re trapped in a time loop at the end of an RPG adventure. He’s the only one aware of the time loop, which he sees as an opportunity to help his friends and fix any mistakes he makes along the journey to defeat the final boss. After all, an infinite time loop means infinite re-tries until they do it right, doesn’t it?

The game’s strongest aspect is its phenomenal writing, from the charming characters that quickly endear themselves to you, to the heartfelt dialogue and the deeply emotional story. This is helped by the wonderful music by Studio Thumpy Puppy, with eerie themes for the final dungeon’s floors and cheerful ones for Siffrin spending time with and interacting with his party members. Its art, drawn by Bazir themselves, does a fantastic job of accentuating the emotions of the writing, allowing the characters to be even more expressive in their dialogue. The gameplay, while simplistic, includes many quality-of-life mechanics while also including some ludonarrative harmony.

In Stars and Time continues from and expands upon its prototype, Start Again: A Prologue, which in turn was an expansion of a short series of comics. Bazir has said that Start Again: A Prologue was deliberately smaller than the ideas she had for the game, citing common advice for indie devs to not make large-scale projects the first time they make a game. Where In Stars and Time opens before the time loops start and spends more time showing the relationships between the main cast, Start Again: A Prologue begins with Siffrin already well into the time loops. The prologue also features fewer areas than are present in In Stars and Time, and much simpler mechanics.

Behind the Scenes

Both 2021’s Start Again: A Prologue and 2023’s In Stars and Time have official art books, which include early concept sketches. In addition, Bazir has spoken on multiple occasions about the inspiration between the games and the comics they were based on. The inspiration was a combination of reading time loop fanfiction online, as well as the isolation and endless-seeming repetition of the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, Bazir has also acknowledged the time loop in In Stars and Time as a metaphor for depression, which is reflected in Siffrin’s mental state as the loops continue.

In the art books for In Stars and Time and its prologue, Bazir talks about using the comics as a design bible, as well as comparing the comics’ art to the concept art drawn during the prologue’s development. The In Stars and Time art book, in particular, outlines scrapped concepts for the game’s story, ranging from ideas that were briefly considered before being discarded to ideas that had art drawn for them before being removed. It also includes layout sketches for the dungeon that the party is working their way through.

Something else that the art book for In Stars and Time talks about is Bazir’s uncertainty with writing Siffrin in the earlier portions of the game. By the beginning of Start Again: A Prologue, Siffrin has already gone through an unsaid (but implied to be very large) number of loops, which led his mental state to spiral into one of severe depression. Conversely, Siffrin doesn’t start In Stars and Time in that state, which meant that Bazir had to spend time figuring out how a pre-depression Siffrin would act and feel.

Community Feedback

In Stars and Time and Start Again: A Prologue have earned a dedicated and quickly-growing fanbase, enough that official plushes have been created of the main cast, with promises of more in the future. They’ve seen a large amount of popularity on Tumblr, with almost 2,300 works for the games on the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own. In Stars and Time is rated Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, with the prologue being rated Very Positive, earning 5,400 and 440 reviews respectively. Both games have also been nominated for many awards, as well as being showcased in events dedicated to game writing.

The success of In Stars and Time has led to a quickly growing interest in Bazir’s next game, Truth Scrapper. Any place that mentions Truth Scrapper, from the page for the Six One Indie Showcase tomorrow to the social media accounts created to promote the game, also mentions that the upcoming game is from the creator of In Stars and Time. 

Final Thoughts

One of the best things about games from indie devs is that the games themselves feel much more like a labor of love. When playing them, you can almost feel how much these games mattered to the people creating them, and that really makes a difference compared to games that were clearly made just to make a company’s profits go up. Bazir is one such indie dev, whose work thrives on being unapologetically earnest and on being the story she wants to tell rather than what would be the most commercially successful. That approach was certainly successful with In Stars and Time, with an ending that has moved many of its players to tears.

With the world premiere of Truth Scrapper coming tomorrow alongside other indie dev titles, stay tuned for coverage of the Six One Indie Showcase and everything revealed during the 75-minute show. We’ll also have another Indie Dev Showcase next week, so stay tuned for that as well!