Hi #PortfolioDayI'm Hui Qing, and I love telling stories through colour and characters! Enjoy working most with fantasy, fiction, and nature themes, from book art to animation ✨
🕸️ https://t.co/alYKlDe9Xd
✉️ [email protected]
I still remember when Kejora first showed up on my timeline about a year ago 🌠
“Oh my God, this game looks so good???” was my first thought.
“Wait… this was made by a fellow Indonesian?!?!?!” was the second.
So of course, once that realization settled in, I did what I always do when I discover a game made by a fellow Indonesian.
I made it everyone’s business to know about it 😇✨
And well... I may have been a little bit feral about it too, but I refuse to elaborate on that part 🙏
Anyway, now that I’ve finished the game and got all of the Steam achievements, I feel like I should be ready to talk about it.
In theory.
In reality, this post has been sitting on the stove (or more accurately, my draft) for about a week, because I keep typing a sentence, deleting it, immediately doubting everything I’ve ever written, and then repeating the whole process all over again.
But maybe let’s start with one thing we can all agree on. Or at least… something I’m very confident most of us would agree on.
First of all, the game looks really, really good 👌
It’s fully hand-drawn, and honestly… it just looks beautiful.
It manages to capture the comfort of an Indonesian household living room, the beauty of a small village, and those wide rows of rice fields with mountains in the distance, along with the very specific experience of seeing a banana tree in a game as an Indonesian, where I feel a brief moment of shock and horror before it’s immediately replaced by a sense of pride because of how realistic it looks.
And as a bit of a scaredy cat myself, those beautiful views were a big part of why I managed to finish the game.
I mean, there were moments where I was like, “I’m scared… I’m scared…” and then suddenly, I’d see something that looked amazing and go, “OHHH wow…” and immediately forget what I was scared of.
Which, now that I think about it, is probably not a very good survival instinct, but it did get me to finish the game, so I’ll count that as a win.
And I think this is also why I don’t really mind the game only letting us carry one item at a time, because it gives me an excuse to slow down, take in the view, and do a bit of sightseeing.
Along the way, I also came across various items that I could interact with, and this actually ended up being my favorite part of the game, because it feels like the developer of this game, @berangincreativ always takes the chance to include little details related to Indonesia, whether through these items or the world itself, often delivered through small conversations between Kejora, Jaka, and Guntur or other characters in the game.
You opportunist, Berangin Creative.
And I mean that in the most loving way possible.
However, maybe it’s just because I’ve been corrupted by Dark, a very amazing series on Netflix that you absolutely must watch and I absolutely did not get sponsored to talk about (but I still will), I did feel like the ending was a bit rushed, with several things left in the dark.
I did not mean that as a pun, by the way.
Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how to talk about this without accidentally spoiling the story, so hats off to reviewers who can do that without spoiling anything, because I genuinely don’t know how you do it, but I did feel like there were parts of the ending that didn’t quite fit, along with several things that weren’t clearly explained.
I do wonder if Berangin Creative might be gearing up for a sequel, because there are still quite a few things left unexplained, especially how my heart got stolen and broken by a man I know almost nothing about, which feels a little unfair, if I’m being honest.
And I know that for some of you, your heart got broken within just 2–4 hours (big group hug if you know what I mean), but for me, it took over 50 hours, which feels less like a game and more like a long-term emotional commitment.
Overall though, if you’re not thinking too deeply about the story and just looking for something that’s sometimes cozy, sometimes a bit scary, and sometimes a little more sneaky-sneaky, Kejora definitely delivers, although I wouldn’t expect it to take you as long to finish as it did for me.
But if you’re curious to see how I ended up spending over 50 hours in this game, I’ve got my playthrough of Kejora in the replies, kindly sponsored by @SSourcePublish ✨
Just… look up the average playtime first, then look at my video length, and maybe take a moment to process that information.
You have been warned 🫰
@b3havi0ur My shortcut for this if I don't have time is to add "archive" to all my searches! Either historical plates or insane enthusiast blogs tend to come up
I rarely draw historical decades that have movies already but that's such a good idea
@DamienOkaf87526 As someone else mentioned, kinda, with its own nuances 😬 It was a very dark time in SEA. Some older generations refuse to eat sushi/Japanese food or buy Japanese products till today, but many youngsters are into Japanese food and pop culture now