In Stars and Time follows the traveler Siffrin with his companions: Mirabelle, Odile, Isabeau, and Bonnie. They have been traveling through the country of Vaugarde on a quest to defeat the King. The game starts with Siffrin waking up in a field in the city of Dormont, and you learn the nature of Siffrin’s party members and the situation at hand, with the King freezing time for all of Vaugarde. The game proceeds as a simple RPG, where you talk with the NPCs around town and spend time with Siffrin’s party members the day before you enter the House where the King is. The game truly starts once Siffrin dies for the first time and finds themselves in a time loop. From there you meet Loop, a seemingly omnipotent being who knows a surprising amount about the loops.

The main gimmick for this game is that Siffrin is in a time loop which allows them to loop back when they die or cannot progress. You learn more as you go through the House about his party members, the culture of Vaugarde, and even about other countries in the world. The many dialogues and interactions throughout the House make the game feel fun and realistic. The gameplay consists of a simple RPG Maker game with turn-based tactics. I believe most people who enjoy story based RPG’s would enjoy this game a lot.

The main aspect that makes this time loop game stand out is the little details and moments that happen with Siffrin. As you play more and more of the game, you get to feel the strain and pressure of reliving the same days over and over. This is reflected both by the loops themselves and the dialogue changes in certain rooms.

When you loop, you get a choice of where you want to loop back to, whether that be back in Dormont or on one of the floors of the House. One fun detail that aids the time looping of In Stars and Time is that when you loop, you are shown the number of which loop you are on. For the first couple of acts it goes in order:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12…

After you have completed more story beats the loops start to get a bit blurry:

14, 18, 19, 20, 23, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 39, 41, 44, 46, 47, 52, 54, 56, 58, 62, 67, 72, 74, 75

The story comes in acts, so when you enter later acts your loops will start to skip by 1-3, and when you complete more acts do they start to skip by 1-5. It adds a fun element which makes the player feel like they are missing details alongside Siffrin when they are not remembering entire loops because of being stuck. It provides ambience without being the main thing to focus on in the game. Another little detail is that in some of the loops where a major story beat happens, Siffrin always remembers the next loop. This is one of the few times where the game is scripted to not randomly increase the loops.

The rooms are always the same in In Stars and Time, but there are some rooms that provide new dialogue each time you enter the room. The main room I’ll be focusing on is the kitchen. In this room, there is an island that Siffrin has to pass to get to half of the room and when Siffrin passes it they always bump their hip. The interaction is simple the first time Siffrin does this: