Heaven Saga (2021 video game)
Developer: Ages Team
Publisher: @Papichi05, @Wolfi-Girl128
Director: Diasy; a.k.a. @Wolfi-Girl128
Series: N/A
Platform(s): Scratch, Gamejolt, Cocrea
Release: May 15th, 2020
Genre(s): Platform
Heaven Saga is a 2021 religious Sonic fan game developed and published by the Ages Team, exclusively build for TurboWarp. It is the first ever Sonic fan game to be associated with the Christianity Religion and as a protest against other hellish games. The game was primary developed with TurboWarp and then published to GameJolt to have more advanced GUI features such as 60FPS interpolation, removed fencing, Warp Timer, and JavaScript compiler. The game follows Sonic after his successful victory in a fierce battle with demons, which causes the demons to become intensively enraged and plans out an aggressive revenge against Sonic.
Development began shortly after Kevin & Friends - Video Game 2, and after Daisy (Also known as Wolfi-Girl128) getting upset after discovering a hellish Sonic ROM hack developed by Red Miso Studios, Hellfire Saga. Daisy said that she will not let Sonic suffer in hell and wanted him to rest in peace at Heaven. She also wants the game to target primarily at the same Christain believers and encourage them to stay in touch with the religion.
Heaven Saga received mixed reviews. It was praised for its artwork, plot, visual design, music, and its gameplay length, but it was criticized for its level designs, platformer engine, general story, and complete lack of enemies.
Plot
After a fierce battle with demons, Sonic got exhausted from all of the fighting. Sonic escapes from the dark realm and rests at an empty green bliss in California. Shortly afterwards, a Guardian Angel, Lailah, flies down from Heaven to invite Sonic for a temporary eternal peacefulness. Sonic accepts, feeling less exhausted. Meanwhile, Sonic's successful victory in a fierce battle with demons causes them to become intensively enraged and plans out an aggressive revenge against Sonic. At the bliss hill of California, the demon warriors merges outside of the dark realm to attack Sonic, but Sonic once again defeated them.
A few hours later, the sun came down, becoming a night, Sonic still continues to run around the bliss hill and starts to feel a bit nervous. Just in time, Lailah came down then takes Sonic's hand to magically lift him upwards, entering Heaven. Sonic surprisingly thanks Lailah, then lays down at an open spot for eternal resting.
2 weeks later, the main demon mastermind, Gloam, manages to enter Heaven and threatens Sonic to suffer once again for "violating the souls' code of conduct". Sonic angrily denies the violation, but Gloam refuses, and flies away, causing Sonic to chase him. When Sonic confronts Gloam once again, Gloam attempts to attack Sonic, but just in time, Lailah stops Gloam and tells Sonic to enter the Castle of Safety Department.
As she chases Gloam away, Sonic was dragged by an invisible force which leads him to Sin City Zone, a cruel, dark, and lawless dimension. After Sonic wakes up, he was warned by Trixie that he must escape as Sin City is a dangerous place to stay for a normal entity. After defeating more demon warriors, Lailah teleports to Sin City and reunites with Sonic, claiming that she had "defeated" Gload, which apparently backfired. Shortly afterwards, Gloam kidnaps Lailah, and Sonic angrily chases them to another dimension, Domain of Souls, where all souls in the universe was stored in a magic stopwatch. While running, Sonic was interrupted by a Soulkeeper, Dontavious. Dontavious encourages Sonic to fly to Japan to find and achieve the Secret Eternal Sword of Japan, which contains very powerful elements. Sonic agrees then proceeds his journey.
After defeating more demon warriors, Sonic encounters Lailah, who is being trapped inside a glass as Gloam sends her away into the overworld. In the overworld, Gloam proceeds to absorbs identity and power elements from Lailah. Afterwards, Gloam becomes a demon-like Lailah with dark skin and deadly bat wings.
As Gloam threatens Sonic death and flies away, Sonic continues his journey on finding the Secret Eternal Sword of Japan and Angels picks Lailah up to bring her back to Heaven for healing.
Reception
Reception for Heaven Saga was mixed. It was praised for its artwork, plot, visual design, music, and its gameplay length, but it was criticized for its level designs, platformer engine, general story, and complete lack of enemies.
NotPTBP criticized the engine for being sluggish or bad in general.
Ex-Demon claims the game as “one of the better Sonic games on Scratch”.
2023 New Build Release
As of November 2022, the Ages Team announced that they are restarting the entire project over from scratch and make completely new assets for the game. They also said that the reason why they are restarting the project over is due to program disorganization and lack of emotion.
As of August 16th, 2023, Ages Team has successfully got the project completely redone and released the new build on exclusively on GameJolt and itch.io.