Review: OMEGA 6 THE TRIANGLE STARS gets lost on planet nostalgia

Omega 6 The Triangle Stars on paper sounds like a slam dunk for an indie game publisher. A nostalgic point and click adventure rendered to approximate the evoke memories of playing a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Designs and story based on a manga from an iconic video game art director. Yet Omega 6 The Triangle Stars, based on an upcoming manga from illustrator Takaya Imamura, is another game from a veteran creator trapped by its own sense of nostalgia.

Combat by rock, paper, scissors!

Players follow the characters of Thunder and Kyla, two genetically engineered humans, as they try to find a new home for humanity. Luckily they found a suitable new one! The problem is that they took out a terrible loan on it and need to find a way to pay it off. Enter planet Imposter, supposedly the home of a fabulous treasure that might be able to pay off this loan. 

The big draw for Omega 6 The Triangle Stars is illustrator Imamura. The illustrator is best known for creating the casts for classic 16-bit games like F-Zero (famously he created Captain Falcon). But it’s the cast of Star Fox, the classic 3D space shooter, that this game shares visual DNA. There’s anthropomorphic characters (including a bad guy who looks vaguely like Star Wolf), costuming that evokes vintage sci-fi anime like Space Battleship Yamato, and bright colors that bring back memories of playing on either a cathode ray tv or massive PC systems. The game is a lot of fun to look at.   

Don’t get into an argument with this guy.

Meanwhile the story of two survivors of a human race looking for a new home after humanity slowly dies off and becoming victims of galactic capitalism feels relevant given the current state of the world. There is a lot of possibility in that story. However, everything else in Omega 6 though comes across as stuck in the late 80s and early 90s. This is a turn based point and click game that brings all of the frustrations of those games. It can gets very frustrating when you want to go somewhere and can’t because you haven’t had the right conversation with a character. Or just want to breeze through a lengthy conversation.

Just like in a real life, you can tend to plants.

The game at least has an air of playfulness to it that can help make that easier to swallow. You can cultivate a bonsai to get supplies and power ups. It’s filled with a sense of humor that is reminiscent of those games. Sometimes though that can comes across as too much of a wink to players. The battle system being based on rock paper scissors seems almost too silly. Meanwhile characters can get too cutesy like a head less robot character cleverly named Headless or fall into familiar anime tropes like the bickering antagonists Digun and Ramda.

Excellent bug Flavo and indispensable(?) robot Prop in quieter times

Nostalgia is big money in video games. There exists a huge market for games that emulate older modes of gaming. Getting a legend of sci-fi gaming like Takaya Imamura to make a game like this definitely has an appeal. An audience for point and click adventure games like this definitely exists. Omega 6 The Triangle Stars does have its charms. But most of those charms might be lost on anyone who is not seems to exist only for the most hardcore of those gamers.  

OMEGA 6 THE TRIANGLE STARS is now available through Steam or available to play on Switch.