Flawed Crystal is a Steven Universe fangame made by our very own member of the hivemind, Guest Reviewer Roarke Mini-Farla St. Elmo’s Fire. You can find it here. I finally got around to playing the game, and figured I’d share my thoughts with this blog.

Before I begin, it should be noted that this is very much a fangame in a sense that it doesn’t explain concepts or introduce characters featured in the show. If you aren’t already familiar with the cartoon, it’s impossible to engage with this game. It’s not a flaw per se, one of the greatest strengths of fanfiction is that the core elements were already established for you, so you can skip exposition and focus on things you actually want to talk about. It is, however, something to keep in mind if you think about checking out this game.

With that out of the way, let’s begin.

The basic premise is that the Crystal gems devise a plan to shatter the Diamonds, finally winning their war against the Homeworld. Steven objects on the grounds that he wants to try talking and reasoning with the Diamonds one last time before resorting to murder, which obviously would go well with zero complications. So the Crystal Gems leave him and Connie behind and fly away in the night. That turned out to maybe not be their best decision as the week later they come back turned into corrupted monsters, promptly get to the warp pad and scatter across the world.

Now Steven and Connie (fused into Stevonnie) must go to various locations, find the gems and somehow fix them.

Fortunately, in their absence, Steven was working on a way to restore corrupted gems to their former… form, and during the tutorial he manages to succeed in healing Jasper. Or, well, partially succeed, anyway, as she loses her memories and get stuck in a half-corrupted but pretty friendly form. Jaspers joins them on their mission.

So, the plot is fairly simple: go to a gimmicky dungeon, find the relevant gem, win a boss fight, go into a mindscape to hopefully unfuck the gems, then repeat it all over again. There isn’t any greater scope villain or encroaching threat or anything like that here, but it works to the story’s benefit.

Healing the gems from corruption involves going into their minds and directly confronting their flaws and insecurities, which in this version is what feeds the corruption and prevents the gems from restoring their forms. It allows the story to focus very directly on characters, closely examine their troubles and propose solutions that generally don’t solve those troubles entirely here and now, but pave a way towards a better future.

The writing is very solid throughout, with many heartwarming and heartwrenching scenes that deliver on the unfulfilled promises of canon.

There is also a lot of wrong options you can pick when attempting to address gems’ problems, many of which play on canon!Steven’s less admirable traits. I… honestly didn’t bother with them much since it’s usually easy to figure out the correct approach (asking for more info is always the right way to go), but it is obvious that the author put a lot of effort into it, and I appreciate the attention to detail, even if I personally didn’t engage with this aspect of the game.

I do have some critique, however:

I found Garnet’s sequence the weakest overall. In her mind, Ruby and Sapphire are divided, both thinking themselves unworthy of another. The solution is to simply ask them what’s wrong and relay their feelings to one another. At this point they reconcile, and their corruption ends.

Compared to other mindscape sequences, this is a surprisingly brief and simple scene that doesn’t really require you to think about your approach much, and doesn’t build a strong case for there being a problem between Ruby and Sapphire. Reading the artist’s statement, this seems to be intentional, as he perceives their relationship as fundamentally healthy, with troubles they experience and fights they get into being transient, subject to swift resolution.

Which does make sense, but leaves us with a sequence that loses to others.

I wish Garnet’s sequence was about her leadership and insecurities surrounding it, which seems like a reacher ground for character exploration.

I think the game could use more interactions with Jasper. The game involves a sort of hub you visit between missions where all of the rescued gems and some other characters are present. You can interact with them, but after two interactions, it’s just repeating itself. I get that it would be awkward to include a lot of dialogue for most characters: the game is non-linear, you can rescue gems in any order, so you would either lock yourself out of dialogue with gems you rescued later, or you’d unlock a novella worth of dialogue at once, which could have easily snuffed the flow of the game.

Jasper, however, is with you from start to end and is intended to be the heart of the game. Adding more stuff you could do with her would have helped drive it across.

One other thing about the plot is that I find the build-up towards the ending somewhat rushed. The ending itself is very satisfying if you have the same problems with SU canon ending as we do, but the road here could have been smoother. I guess it makes more sense if you roleplayed rather than metagamed. I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil too much, but yeah, I think it could have been done better.

Now, gameplay-wise, Flawed Crystals is a combination of text adventure and traditional JRPG. It works for the most part. As I’ve said, the writing is pretty strong, including location establishing and descriptions of weird surreal body horror-y monsters you encounter. The battles are obviously crafted with a lot of thought put into them: each gem has unique mechanics associated with them*, each boss battle requires individual approach, and as your party grows, the tactics change considerably. All in all, it’s fairly enjoyable even if I don’t have much to say about specifics.

*Stevonnie in particular is remarkable as you can lean on parts of their personality: Steven gives you defensive and healing abilities, Connie grants active defense and various offensive abilities, while remaining as Stevonnie locks you out of ultimate moves but leaves the rest open, allowing you to easily adjust to circumstances.

However, the system can be rough around the edges. Navigating the locations can be hard as I would sometimes lose track over where I am in relation to everything else. Some kind of simple map with a marker of your location would be very much appreciated.

Random monsters were also consistently in this awkward place where they were weak enough that my victory was never in doubt while also being beefy enough that actually taking them down was a chore. An option to reduce their HP by a third or so would be much appreciated. I kinda want to play again and make all of the wrong choices, all of them, but the need to get through annoying monsters stops me.

The difficulty curve on boss fights also feels uneven. I did Peridot first, which was pretty easy (partially because she mostly lacks a gimmick, a fight with her is more of an endurance check). Then came Pearl, who kicked my ass several times before I gave up, bought some damage items and lasered her to death. Part of her difficulty, I think, is that she has a very annoying gimmick of having two protectors with her whom you can’t kill because she just summons them again and who are comparable to your party members in stats and abilities. After that, however, the boss fights became progressively easier. Garnet was troublesome but beatable, Amethyst was actually refreshing after very annoying monsters with counterattack on the way to her, and Bismuth was kinda trivial. The endgame bosses were even easier (granted, partly because I’ve embraced strategic suicide bombing by then: it doesn’t matter if you lose a gem so long as she brought enemy’s HP low enough to finish the fight in a turn or two. Especially if she were to be kinda useless for the next two-three turns, Peridot).

I think the game either underestimates just how much having an additional party member matters, or how much various tactical abilities (like bubble, which protects you from the next attack) matter more than raw damage. Either way, the game could use some rebalancing.

Despite the flaws, the game remains an impressive accomplishment for a fan project, and I sincerely recommend to check it out if you like SU and especially if you’re dissatisfied with the canon ending.