No One Lives in Heaven

The German developer and publisher team SuR ENTERTAINMENT released their first game on 6/11/2020, it is called "No one lives in heaven", RPG-Maker fans should definitely take a look at it. In my review I tell from my experience with the game and note directly that there is also a free demo, which you can use to see the game for yourself.

Story and plot

After the great era of the late 90's, RPG maker games became more and more rare and faded into the background. Meanwhile many years have passed and the poor NPCs were simply forgotten. Until the day you enter the game and give hope to the forgotten NPCs in "No one lives in heaven". As the only human it is your task to help the NPCs by completing main tasks and side quests to advance the story. In five different continents you have to face a lot of dangers and make decisions that affect the Story.

Play as you like

In "No one lives in heaven" there is no particular order you have to follow, you can first devote yourself to the many side quests and solve puzzles, debate like Socrates, collect mushrooms, wood and other things, or you concentrate on the main missions and explore the five continents to find out why you landed in "No one lives in heaven", where you have to show your skills again and again in Arenas in order to get certain items to complete your quest.

Fighting only secondary

Most RPG Maker games are pretty grind heavy, you have to fight a lot to level up to complete the next mission and defeat the countless bosses and enemies to get ahead in the game. In "No one lives in heaven" it's different, of course there are fights like the arena fights and soldiers we have to defeat, but everything else is optional and even with a lot of the soldiers, we always have the choice to deal with them differently than with violence. Everywhere in the game world we encounter dogs, cats, or chickens that we can catch, these animals can be used in fights like companions, they fight at our side for one round, but alternatively we can also use a magic spell to summon a rat, similar to the Guardian Forces (GF) in Final Fantasy 8. All companions only fight with us for one round and then disappear, no matter if they have enough life left or not. So it's advisable to collect as many as possible, because the monsters are pretty strong in "No one lives in heaven". Tthe rat on the other hand can be summoned anytime as long as we have enough mana.

Save at any time

A very important and useful feature is that you can save your progress at any time and have over 20 slots available for this purpose. Saving is also possible during mini games (e.g. Spacerace). At the beginning of the game you will also be asked if you want to activate Auto-Save or not. If you answered "yes", the game will automatically save your progress at important points. Nevertheless I recommend you to save as often as possible, because you never know where the next death is waiting. But also for quests it can be very helpful, for example if you have made a decision you don't like anymore after you have seen or read the consequence.

Long motivating game fun with high replay value

I love side quests and if I'm honest, for most RPGs that's my main activity before continuing the main quests. And that's exactly where "No one lives in heaven" has a lot to offer, because even though it has really extremely many side quests, they don't feel boring and repetitive. They are fun and some quests are really hilarious, for example we can play pranks with a certain NPC or knock on stores and run away. But also the writing is really good and interesting, just like the characters themselves. You can easily spend more than 20-30 hours only with side quests.

Much love for detail and gameplay

An incredible amount of love has been put into the game, which you can see not only in the dialogues, the quests and the beautiful characters, but also in the level design. The maps are quite small but you see so many different places and smaller cities, nothing is crowded and you don't have the feeling as if you always see the same houses with the same furnishings, everything is varied with many small different details. Even the bathroom is completely usable. Hardly any object in the game was simply clapped, if you click on a tree, for example, a text that is so true appears. Sometimes I have the feeling that the game was written and programmed just for me. I also like the communication of the developers, who really care a lot about bugs and problems and also respond to feedback from the community or help with tips.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, the game is really very nicely designed, especially if you travel further to the continents. Really good day/night lighting. But you have to like pixel-art and RPG-Maker games, if you are looking for AAA graphics here, you are in the wrong place in this genre. Musically the game is accompanied very well, the sound is not obtrusive and adapts well to the situations, also the sound effects are well done, all in all very harmonious.