AURORA REQUIEM: The Lullaby of Calvaris

Year 41 without the sun.

Calvaris is a city built inside the bones of a sea creature so large its ribs are districts and its skull is a neighborhood for the rich. There is no sun here, only lighthouses — and the lighthouses don't burn oil. They burn memories. Every family pays its tribute to the Lighthouse Intendancy, one memory at a time, so the lamps stay lit and the dark stays out.

Down in Spina, in the shadow of the iron Plate, a mechanic named Zero Solace takes a job he says is "just for the money": help a rebel crew called Undertow slip a bomb into the heart of a lighthouse before the countdown hits zero.

He's cocky. He's warm. He's stubborn. He never breaks a promise — "Mechanic's honor."

And he remembers a trip into the sealed Nadir Lighthouse that nobody else in Calvaris seems to remember at all.

A new adventure with an old soul

AURORA REQUIEM is an original JRPG built to feel like the ones you played on a CRT at the end of the 90s: fixed cameras over pre-rendered backgrounds, chunky polygon heroes with big heads on the field, blue menu windows, a 3D world map, grainy "pre-rendered" cutscenes and a MIDI-orchestra soundtrack. Every character, story beat, graphic, song and sound effect is original.

It's also a game that knows what it is. It comes on three discs. It has a seahorse you can ride and breed. It has an amusement park inside a pearl. And at some point you will do push-ups against a gym champion to earn part of a costume.

The party

• Zero Solace — Lighthouse Mechanic. Cocky, big-hearted, carries an impact wrench taller than he is. "Nothing's broken for good."

• Seren — runs the Lantern bar and has kept Zero in line since they were kids. Fights with fists and kicks, and doesn't let him get away with anything.

• Talen — a courier who forgets everything and sews notes into his clothes so he won't.

• Omi — a former Archive clerk: dry, protective, and very good at forging memories.

• Kaia — a seahorse rider who is never late for a wave.

• Vesper — an old lightkeeper who has tended the same lighthouse for forty years.

• Selk — a four-hundred-year-old sea being kept in a tank as a specimen. Speaks rarely. Every word counts.

• …and two secret party members you'll only find if you go looking.

Standing against them: Intendant Aurel, who never lets a hair fall out of place; the Umbra Brigade — Rhys, Vex and Pix, a trio of Intendancy agents who are as funny as they are dangerous; and Caelum, the First Keeper, the legendary hero who lit Calvaris's lighthouses forty years ago, went down into the Nadir Lighthouse… and never came back.

Battles with a gauge, a plan and a lot of personality

• Time-gauge combat with Active and Wait modes and adjustable battle speed. Three party members in battle, nine playable characters in total.

• Resolve: take hits, fill the bar, unleash each character's special moves — four levels per character, the last one locked behind a secret manual.

• Orbs in five types (technique, support, attribute, command and summon) that slot into weapons with linked slots. Level them up; master one and a brand-new copy is born.

• Stolen Echo: learn techniques from the enemies that hit you, and track them in a bestiary. Plus Double Strike, Steal, Mimic, Counterattack and more.

• Ambushes, preemptive strikes, and status effects with their own look — yes, one of them turns your hero into a tiny crab.

• Gigantic summons, including Mother of Calvaris, a full-song summon that cannot be skipped, and The Thirteen Lighthouses, where thirteen lighthouse spirits strike one after another (there's a setting to shorten long summons, if you must).

Features

• A story across three discs — with a playable prologue, a chapter where the party must carry on without its leader, and a finale where you split the party into three teams.

• A final boss with its own opera: organ, percussion and a synthesized choir. The main theme returns throughout the adventure in sad, heroic and world-map arrangements — more than 40 tracks in all.

• A 3D world map of a creature's skeleton lying in a night sea: ride Opal the seahorse, dive in the bathyscaphe "Bubble" and take to the skies in the airship "Winged Rib".

• Breed seahorses in green, blue, black and gold to reach mountains, currents and islands no one else can.

• Three colossal Custodians roam the world map. One can only be reached by air.

• Mirabel, a never-closing fair inside a pearl the size of a neighborhood: seahorse races with betting, the Jellyfish Basket, Arm Wrestling against the Strongman, Spine Surfing, the "Spine" roller-coaster shooting gallery, a Ferris wheel date that depends on who you've grown closest to, the Colosseum with its handicap roulette, and prize tokens called Aster.

• Calvaris Cards, a three-lane card game with rivals all over the world — and a champion, Madame Scales, waiting at the top.

• Story minigames: a high-speed chase on seahorse-back against steam bikes, a downhill run on a lantern lid, a submarine battle against the Gray Leviathan, a rail-shooter escape by funicular, and a push-up duel at the Bone Gym.

• A catwalk in Aurea: shop at Ottoline's Furniture & Fashion, walk in the High Tide parade and, with the perfect outfit, get crowned High Tide Queen. Zero wears it with pride.

• The Nadir Lighthouse: an optional 50-floor dungeon with guardians every ten floors — and at the very bottom, Tenebra, a superboss with 1,000,000 HP.

• Ultimate weapons for every character, each tied to its own challenge.

• Loose memories hidden around the world, side quests, and an extended ending for those who find them all.

• A main story of around 5 hours, plus all the optional content on top.

• Fully playable in English, Spanish and Japanese.

That 32-bit look — on purpose

• Rendered at 320×240 with pixel-snapped "wobbly" vertices, per-vertex lighting and dithered 15-bit color.

• Real pre-rendered backgrounds: every shot is baked when you enter an area and scrolls with the player, with animated layers on top.

• Three model scales, just like back then: big-headed on the field, proportioned in battle, detailed in cutscenes.

• Fake "FMV" recorded with the engine itself and played back with macroblocks, subsampled chroma and slightly out-of-sync sound. Sepia flashbacks come with film scratches.

Please insert Disc 2

Somewhere under Calvaris, something is listening to the lullaby. Grab the wrench.

Nothing's broken for good.