High school is about to end, and the future seems uncertain for leading character Pinn. His girlfriend Kani plans on breaking up with him before her move to college, and he just tries to cope by hanging out with his friend Geo. The next day, though, things get weird. Pinn finds himself in a strange otherworld where time is frozen, where the setting’s local card game makes itself manifest. Coming together with his friends and gathering cards, they aim to defeat the Wardens maintaining the world and escape…

Silver Daze is a game by Gem Games, led by Sawyer Friend. I previously played a bit of the game the last time I checked out Steam Next Fest stuff, and I got an early copy of the game to play through. And again, full disclosure, but Sawyer’s a colleague of mine and I actually supported the game’s Kickstarter. That said, I still got some honest criticisms to share with my compliments.

The changed world is the result of someone trying to keep the world from changing. A quality of this world is that people in the world can remake memories they feel strongly about. Besides never allowing the future to pass, the world has dioramas of good times in the past that people can cling to. Well, the boss monsters accompanying the strong memories are a bit of a damper on things, but that’s just the price to pay to never move on – the miasma and its monsters in the outer world are definitely a testament to that. And of course, the Wardens are the strong bosses maintaining the world in general.

Pinn is a goofy guy that aims to be somewhat of a hero, but part of him sees the changed world as a blessing. Kani promised to stay with him for another month, but now that month can never end. Besides that, he has the potential to look into dioramas of good times he spent with her and others. He recognizes that he needs to help save the world… but the new world is tempting. Kani doesn’t mean to break up with Pinn out of cruelty. In fact, they have a lot of sweet moments to show they truly care about each other in spite of everything. Unfortunately, Silver Daze takes place in a time when the internet isn’t big, so a long-distance relationship isn’t feasible. Kani aims to focus on improving herself at college, and as disappointed as Pinn is, he doesn’t want to get in the way of that and tries to plan for a future where they could be together. Of course, there’s a more selfish solution to his problems…

Funnily enough, Kani’s conflict of wanting to prioritize her own work over personal relationships parallels a conflict in Exander, the man responsible for the changed world. Addressing Exander some more would be a spoiler, but he and Kani are good foils.

In general, Pinn has a lot of hang-ups about the future beyond his relationship with Kani. In a way, he mirrors Exander and Griffin, another guy that was dragged into the world. Exander is a guy that could be read to be stuck in the past with the set up of the world. Griffin embraces the game’s world and becomes a recurring miniboss Joker, as he feels that he’s in a dead end in the real world. Those two absolutely embrace isekai fantasy… and will Pinn be the same?

A notable force standing against all this nonsense is Wink. Wink is actually a Warden who is explicitly based on an in-universe fictional character, and getting to know your fictional faves is the isekai fantasy, right? Well, while Wink cares about Exander, she wants Exander’s escape to end. She cares enough to recognize that the escape is unhealthy for him. Even if it’d ultimately end in her death, Wink happily aligns herself with the heroes and tries to guide things as best as she can.

While Pinn, Kani and Wink lead the story, everyone else is kinda… eh?

Now, it’s justified in Geo’s case. Geo isn’t a high achiever and firmly upholds his role as the bass player of the team – he isn’t a leading man. He does get points in that while he prefers to take a backseat, he isn’t completely passive, as he bites back at a late game plot development. He’s also Wink’s biggest supporter when the others are initially unsure about her. In a sense, he’s a backing force that tries to keep the team together, even though he’s not a leader.

Also, I’ll be honest: the shipper in me kinda wanted Pinn to throuple up with him and Kani. Geo’s such a good friend to Pinn and he kinda makes me wish for more. Griffin even calls them gay and while he totally meant it in a homophobic way… well…

Shay, Jeff and Liza though don’t feel like they factor as much? They aren’t exactly non-characters because they talk a lot and have their own diorama scenes. It’s just that they don’t really factor much in the main story. Shay saying “I’m here too!” just before a big fight kinda cements how I feel about these characters narrative wise. I actually think Liza’s the worst example, since she isn’t even a member of the friend group, just a journalism student that was incidentally pulled into things like Griffin. And speaking of Griffin, I don’t know if there was optional stuff involving him, but he just kinda disappears entirely after his arc wraps up.

The banter the party members offer can be fun at least. Well, Jeff is a cartoon sometimes, but everyone else kinda makes fun of him for that, so I guess it’s fine? Still, I wish that there was way more done with characters outside of Pinn, Kani, Geo, Wink and Exander.

Stepping away from character writing, I did enjoy Silver Daze‘s story. I liked the game’s overall messaging on escapism and clinging to the past. I specifically point at a late-game idea that I don’t see a lot with stories about nostalgia: bad things happen in the past along with the good times, and you can’t just pretend those bad moments never happened. And if you truly moved past those bad times, you surely can move on to the future.

Overall, I say that I liked Silver Daze‘s story, and I think the good parts of its writing outweighs the bad parts. It seems by the books for a bit… until you reach Wink’s land. As you can imagine, SOMETHING happens since you have Wink on your side. The stuff that happens there shakes up the story and character dynamics a bit in a way that I appreciate and kept me locked in… buuut what happens is a huge spoiler.

So instead, let’s talk about gameplay!

Silver Daze is a turn-based RPG where everyone equips cards to fight. Playing cards spends EP, which leads to the game’s unique mechanic of EP management. Along with the cards, everyone has a special move that’s more effective the closer the bar is to its center. You may think you should just spam your strongest cards since EP bars automatically refill outside of battle, but it may be better to bust out a special. Unless you have moves that refill EP, using specials also refills EP a bit regardless of how effective they are, so you may as well use specials in a smart way. You don’t get items to use in-battle, so fights are about switching between cards and specials to effectively get through thing. Besides juggling the EP bar, you also need to juggle aggro; you’d hate for the healer to eat shit for being too good at healing.

A character can equip up to four cards, as well as an MP3 that gives stat boosts and a passive ability. The EP cost of cards are halved if you equip them to whoever’s color matches them, and a card ability is improved if you equip multiples of the same card. Personally, I didn’t do too much of that because I like having a bit of flexibility, though I absolutely gave Shane multiples of his default heal to make him excel at his healing job. Speaking of which…

While you could theoretically build anyone toward specific roles, their specials define niches. Pinn’s special makes him out as a specialist in single-target physical attacks, while Kani’s encourages group physical attacks and Wink covers magic. As for everyone else, they have good supportive niches. Shay’s special makes him a dedicated healer and he was a mainstay the moment he was introduced to me, while Liza’s a tank and I sometimes switched Shay out for her because she’s actually pretty dang good at tanking. Meanwhile, Jeff buffs the effectiveness of moves, making him a good fit for any party. Finally, embodying his role as the guy keeping the gang together, Geo’s special refills people’s EP bars and thus grants better control in managing everyone’s move usage.

Silver Daze‘s gameplay started clicking for me as more party members joined. I felt encouraged to test out characters, especially when some enemy encounters feel like they were built to counter certain strategies. For a long time I just used Kani as a group murder machine until I started running into guys that actively nullified or countered that nonsense, so I poked into using Wink and Jeff more, and dang, they’re pretty good at killing things, actually. Part of me wishes that you could save equipment load-outs since I used specific stuff for boss battles, but otherwise? Good party building action.

You get ranked based on battle performance and get card drops based on that. There’s also a chance to get foil cards, whose cost is half off no matter who they’re equipped to. Your chance of getting foils improves the more you fight battles instead of running away, and, uhhhh I only got foil drops twice. I don’t fully understand how chances stack and I ain’t about the gacha life anymore, so after I was sufficiently leveled, I decided to just run from fights.

I think gameplay is the strongest part of Silver Daze. I’m not normally too into party building stuff with lots of equipment, but I enjoyed playing this. If I had a wish, I’d like the game to challenge you to experiment more. A certain set of challenges for certain spoiler-y things encourages you to play in specific ways, but that’s largely optional.

The art style of Silver Daze is great, and each area has its own unique look to fit the Warden that leads the land. Though, while I like the designs of the maps, I thought some maps are overdecorated and somewhat hard to parse. Honestly, I’d say my least favorite place is the world where you recruit Shay and Wink. There’s a good in-story reason for why it was the way it was, but it honestly hurt my eyes playing through the area.

But one thing I definitely loved was the music. There’s a whole lot of music and there’s a lot of bangers in here. Though, the songs I liked the most was the stuff that played in the game’s final stretch. They rightfully make the last moments feel climactic, and I’d like to say something more specific about a certain track, but ehhhh I don’t want to ruin the moment. But that moment with that song playing may be one of my favorite scenes in the game.

Overall, while I definitely think Silver Daze needed to do more with some characters, I think it’s a pretty good game! I’m happy that I finally played something by Sawyer. I feel bad to admit that I haven’t found the time to play his Axial games (and he references my own stuff in them, dang it), but I’ll happily put them up on my next bingo card, because Silver Daze left me with a really good first impression.