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Omega 6: The Triangle Stars makes a big point of its connection with former Nintendo artist Takaya Imamura, best known as the character designer who gave the casts of F-Zero and Star Fox their distinctive looks, but this isn't a follow-up to those adrenaline-pumping classics. Instead, Omega 6 draws inspiration from classic Japanese adventure games like The Portopia Serial Murder Case and Famicom Detective Club, games whose importance has only become clear to English-speaking gamers in recent years.
With those influences in mind, it's no surprise that Omega 6 is genuinely old-school right down to its 16-bit visuals and 4:3 aspect ratio. You'll find some wrinkles that weren't in those Famicom classics – like a rock-paper-scissors RPG battle system – but much of your time will be spent wandering from screen to screen, investigating suspicious pieces of background scenery, and engaging in dialogue with a massive cast of characters while seeking out the next story trigger.
I love old-school adventure games, but after a few hours with a preview build of Omega 6 I find myself torn. The world and aesthetics are a delight, and finding the right path forward is just challenging enough to keep the game interesting without bogging it all down in pixel-hunting tedium. But up to this point, I just haven't managed to find the narrative hook that I need to propel me through a game like this.
Foxin around the stars
The Triangle Stars is set in the world of Takaya Imamura's 2022 manga, Omega 6, which chronicles a future where humans have become exceptionally long-lived and alien migrants have come to live on Earth. But that's left the Earth overcrowded, and it's up to our protagonists – the humanoid androids Thunder and Kyla – to find a new planet for humans to settle on. Here, they've gotten embroiled in a very silly debt and are taking the only reasonable step to pay it off: getting involved in a massive race to locate a mysterious treasure.
Much of the time spent seeking out that treasure will be doing traditional adventure game stuff, like looking for useful items and chatting with people for clues on what to do next. The opening area I explored felt fairly large, but not overwhelmingly so, as there are just enough screens to make the world feel expansive without overwhelming you with too many options when you're looking for the path forward.
The highlight is undoubtedly the massive cast of alien characters you'll meet, each of which is uniquely quirky in a way that feels pulled straight from a good comedic sci-fi anime like Space Dandy or Redline. They all have a distinct look, and many of them aren't directly tied to the story, instead cropping up as optional bounty targets you can hunt for additional cash. Every time you meet one of these characters, they get added to a big checklist gallery, which adds a bit of that Pokemon-style "gotta catch 'em all" bug to tracking everyone down.
But, unlike Mr. Detective Club, here you'll sometimes have to throw hands. You'll need to take down the more aggressive characters in combat, which turns the game into a turn-based RPG with cards. You and your opponent each have a hand of cards representing rock, paper, or scissors, and you're able to see how many cards of one of those three suits your foe has ready to deploy. If you see three rocks, for example, you know there's a pretty good chance your scissors card will be countered. It's a fun little system that adds a little more educated gambling to what would otherwise be a game of random chance, though the extended health bars do make the fights drag on a bit. Thankfully, there's a host of items you can use to turn – or accelerate – the tide of battle.
Omega 6: The Triangle Stars has a lot going for it, from its expansion on the game systems you'd traditionally expect from an old-school adventure game to its extensive cast of wacky characters. But as I alluded to earlier, its early hours haven't provided me the narrative hook I need to really feel invested. For now, it's a fitting tribute to those classic Famicom adventures, but I'm left to hope the game's later stages can do more to match – or exceed – its inspirations.
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