🟢[3.5/5]︱Fairune Review
Before I start with the review, it's highly recommended that you read my review of KAMIKO as I'm going to be referencing some points from said review throughout my analysis of Fairune. That being said....
※ Preamble
if there's one thing that The Legend of Dark Witch told me, it would have to be that there are such things as indie games created from Japan. I always thought that people from that country had thought of going to the likes of Nintendo or any other AAA, AA, or any other kind of company to make games, but within the realms of people in the game dev space, there's quite a few that just want to have full control of their games. One of the more popular examples of a Japanese Indie dev that've made successful indie titles is the Team Shanghai Alice, more referred to a as ZUN, the creator of the Touhou franchise. In fact, indie games in Japan are mostly referred to as doujin soft games.
Through it's origins on the PC-98 series of PCs as an Arkanoid-like to the genre-defining Bullet Hell vertical shmups inspired by the likes of Aleste and DoDonPachi, the Touhou series is one heck of a cluture-enduced franchise spanning a bunch of iconic characters, vast deep storytelling, and the open-nature of the Intellectual Property as a whole. In fact, I think that Touhou might be one of the best IPs to make a fangame out of cause not only you're able to use the characters and environment that come within the game, you're able to get money out of doing such. Games such as Touhou Luna Nights, Touhou Genso Wanderer, Touhou Spell Bubble (a Touhou fangame made by the same people behind the Puzzle Bobble series Taito), and Touhou Mystia's Izakaya are all notable games I personally know that make wonderful use of the Touhou IP, with INSIDE SYSTEM, the developer behind the Legend of Dark Witch also making some doujin games of his own. As impactful as Touhou is though, the topic isn't necessarily about this, but how there can be some Japanese doujin devs that can cook well. This is where I'll take the topic down to Skipmore, another one person developer that's known for... Quite a few things.
The lead person behind Skipmore refers to themselves Yuumi Kimura and the games they're known for is Transiruby, Kamiko, and Fairune. As I've discussed in my review of KAMIKO, in the midst of these more popular games, Skipmore specializes in short and sweet games that they've made on flash and mobile phones back in the mid-late 200s and the 2010s, Fairune originally being a flash game in 2009, and had a remake on iOS and later Android that would eventually be polished for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, and would be seen again in 2018 in the Fairune Collection along with its 2016 sequel, Fairune 2, a spinoff vertical shmup made for the collection called Fairune Blast, and a remake of the flash game under Fairune Origins. As for the development behind Fairune, it mostly was just an expansion of the mobile port outside of it adding sections to the tower, an item to kill the bit enemies inside of the secret rooms, a map to make navigating through the game a bit easier, and a tweak towards the final boss to accommodate for the size of the 3DS.
Now for the most important question about Fairune and Skipmore: How do I know about this seires let alone getting into this game again? Well.... It didn't start off with this game but rather the second game in the series back in January of 2017, way before I knew anything about The Legend of Dark Witch other than the small experience I had with the first game with my brother back in 2015. The reason I gotten the second game but not the first was simply cause I simply through the second game looked better, and cause I didn't know how cryptic this game was at the time, it wasn't too long after I purchased it before I shelved it, and as time goes, I still have yet to finish the game to the point at my brother took over my save file at some point, and continued progress up until the ice level before he shelved it. Fast forward to 2026, as I explored the contents of KAMIKO, it gotten me thinking about Fairune again, and after a bit of hesitation, I dumped my 3DS copy of both Fairune games, and gave them a shot, and I have to say that they were pretty fun! enough for me to talk about the game a little bit, detailing my thoughts about each aspects of the game, as you would've expect. So without any further ago, here is my review of the 2013 3DS game, Fairune.
※ Story (2/5)
To begin the game, the player is greeted to The Ancient Codex gives a short story of Fairune where its illusions are a reality, where three Spirit Icons have gone to some places within the World of Fairune causing immediate chaos and asks the chosen hero Liana (formerly known as Hope Girl) to find them and seal the ancient evil scrouge and restore peace to Fairune.
That's all.
While this expansion remains true to the original, elevating an incredibly minimalist plot is quite a daunting task, at least to my knowledge and understanding. Further expanding it is essential to drive engagement and deepen the narrative, and luckily Fairune 2 does a good job at bringing more to what this and origin had left behind.
※ Gameplay (3.5/5)
The best way I can explain Fairune's gameplay is that it's a direct upgrade to what's been done with Fairune Origins. With that game, you directed Liana around the world finding items that interact with other parts of the world, with progression being based on this and defeating enemies by walking to them. 3DS Fairune sought to include light RPG elements to this by incorporating a simple level up mechanic where for every enemy you defeat that you can kill without dying immediately, you can get XP to level yourself up. The Ancient Codex, also new to this game, even is kind enough to remind you of the next reccomended enemy to fight. Note on the recommended, because while you're able to defeat stronger foes, it'll take more of your HP, and there's even some like the soldiers in the tower or stage hazards that can hurt you without giving you XP. The Codex alone also helps with one of the major downsides about the gameplay of Origins: how it's very cryptic. The game gave you a barebones story and that's about it: The way you had to progress was through analyzing your surroundings to your fullest because there are some areas that you may think it's unpassable, but a specific part of the floor can be the main giveaway to what's actually passable. Fairune continues to keep this sense of finding your way throughout the world, and I'm honestly not a big fan of this concept alone. I can tell Zelda was primarily this game's inspiration, but I do have to mention that I haven't played much of the 2D ones other than Four Swords (Anniversary and Adventures), and Minish Cap so I can't make a proper judgement on the other games in the series, but when comparing Zelda to Fairune, at least the former can give a clear and concise way to go with a bit of critical thinking here and there, but for the latter? It's not only Critical Thinking, but paying close attention to your surroundings which, in my opinion, is a gameplay concept that I don't appreciate a lot. I mean, if it's a mechanic that doesn't drag through the entire game, then it's a bit fine with that, but until the final boss of Fairune which changes the genre to top down action adventure to a simple vertical shmup (shoot -em up), the entire gameplay is about paying close attention to your surroundings.
At least on the QoL side of things that were built upon Origins, there's also a world map to at least shown the places that you might've not seen, which is a huge game changer. It might not seem like much, but pairing this with the Codex, it makes going through the stuff I've mentioned more bearable than ever. When figuring out the next enemy that I have to fight, it can provoke me to find out the unexplored parts of the map, and when I do, it actually shows the next enemies that the Codex tells me that I have to fight and whatnot. Another thing that the game includes that wasn't present in Origins is the addition of hidden skills to empower Liana furthermore: One that reduces damage taken from enemies, one that doubles XP, and one that increases the change of rare enemies, although I do think the last one is pointless considering they don't give you anything special other than a place on the bestiary; they don't even give you more XP upon finding and defeating them.
In terms of the areas that you go through, I think they're okay. They're nothing too special, and they're mostly just an expansion on what you got to do in the grasslands. You got yourself that, a magma area, the sky, the admin tower, and the ruins where the final boss is located. I think if there was one thing that could've been improved here, it would have to extend these smaller places to be in their own realms of their kind because here it seems that the mentioned places are just there to not keep the entire game to be just mere grasslands like how Origins was borderline.
And last but not least is the final boss, which like I said, changed the game into a shmup. Of course, being a huge fan of the genre, this part of the game alone made me rate it a bit higher, but it had a lot left to be desired. You got three phases, each with varying difficulty. It took a few tries for me to actually defeat this (getting the defense skill helped with survivabillity), and after enough of those, I was stuck at the place where the final boss was in critical condition, but I didn't know what to do next. I kid you not, I thought that this was how the game ended, and I was trying my best to figure out what else to do, and all that it took to actually finish... Was a mere touch screen input to turn off the machine. Why was this the only touch screen input in the entire game? I don't know, but stuff like this makes me wonder why there could've been more in terms of utilizing the touch screen but honestly, having the game be more focused on the gameplay itself is better on it's own. I hope the sequel doesn't have anything like that.
※ Replay Value (1/5)
Keeping it simple, there's nothing special to be made towards the replay value of this game. After finishing this game, the game shows you how many items you've collected, the enemies you've slaughtered as well as the maps with the pieces that you've discovered, and some achievements. As for why they're shown to the player after you finish this game is odd, but I guess it's to provoke them to do another playthrough following the achievements on mind. I didn't want to do this since I would be doing this with the issues I've mentioned (as well as one of them being to beat the game without dying which... yeah), and I think that I should put more of my thoughts towards this game's sequel, since that's the one I actually started first before this game, fun fact.
※ Graphics (3.5/5)
Continuing on what I've said in my review of KAMIKO, I think that the graphics for this game look absolutely amazing. While they might look pale compared to most other pixel-based indie games out there, this one sought to keep a light 8-bit like aesthetic going for it reminiscent of NES or MSX games but with a bit of lighting enhancements to it. Another thing that makes me appreciate the art more is that the lighting is also pixelized and not a simple lighting filter that doesn't fit with it, so you can see that some of the reflections have square-like reflections and not non-square like ones, fitting more into the enhanced classic aesthetic that most of Skipmore's games are gone through.
Along with the lighting, this game is very, very vibrant: The colors have a fixed color pallete which stays true to the style, and all of them are light and colorful. One thing I did wish for a change was for the background of the tower to not be a simple gradient as I think it's a tad boring. They should've done something similar to the sky area from '09 where the ground was still visible but under the bottom most layer or something similar instead of a gradient.
※ Soundtrack (3.5/5)
I do miss the more "MSX"-like soundtrack style of the original Fairune Origins, but the soundtrack for 3DS Fairune isn't all that bad. They have more of an NES-style to them, and songs such as the field, tower, and the lava segments of the field are my favorite songs. I would've gave this section a bit of a lower rating due to the limited selection of music, but I think most, if not all of the music in this game are a pleasant to listen to. The songs I mentioned i like to listen as background music sometimes.
※ Verdict/Other Thoughts (3.5/5)
Just after the completion of Yamato's route in KAMIKO, and for the few minutes of playing as Uzurme before shelving it and finishing Fairune '09, I immediately had the mindset of switching over to the other games I had set to play and review in the future because the game had left an impression that the issues I would've had with other Skipmore games would be carried on from the issues I had with KAMIKO. I know it's pretty specific to the game in question, but it's not without mentioning how the past Skipmore games I've played had their fair share of issues as well, the games in question are Drancia Saga and Planet Bom Bom. Drancia Saga wasn't that much of a headache, but the game was incredibly barebones and except for the plentiful characters that you could've played as, almost all of them played mostly the same as each other, with replay value only being expanded by the miniscule enhancements that some characters have other the other as well as the additional benefits of what you could unlock at the shop for true NG+ gameplay. But other than that, to quote my own words, Drancia is the type of game that I'll "play [it] for a little bit only for me to get quickly bored and to not touch it for a while." (my review of Drancia Saga) As for Planet Bom Bom, you drag the character to meteors, and your goal is to not miss them otherwise they hit earth.
One thing I wished for Fairune 2 is for it to leave a good impression at the end of my playthrough since I really want for Skipmore to really lock in. And this is without mentioning that I had the sequel to this one, Fragment Isles on my Wishlist. I can already tell that this game is going to be great just by seeing Liana finally swing a sword, and having more than the grey haired girl in 2 working with her. While Fragment Isles is still after 2, it does make me think that they're going above and beyond the lore for the series, and I'm already losing more words to say, so I'm going to end it off by saying that this game is better than KAMIKO, but it does have a bit of issues that I wish for the sequel to be better at improving upon.
Thanks for Reading!