Ciel Fledge is a daughter raising simulator for PC and Nintendo Switch. Made by a 2-piece game studio from Indonesia called Studio Namaapa. Ciel Fledge has been in the making for about 4 years and had some beta versions released in the past. As of 2020, the game looks finished enough to be commercially released.
A distant future
Ciel Fledge takes place in the distant future where the earth has long been abandoned and the people live in flying arks above the surface. Aliens have been a constant menace and have now destroyed Ark-5. Luckily some people were saved from the destruction and amongst them is a small girl named Ciel who seems to have no recollection as to what happened before her timely rescue. As an inhabitant of Ark-3, you are tasked to take this girl in and raise her to the best of your abilities. As the story progresses, you’ll discover the potential Ciel has to be capable of great things. Being capable is one thing but it’s your task to bring out the best in Ciel through daily guidance.
Schedule wisely
The main part of Ciel Fledge is the schedule. Use the schedule to plot each day of the week. Do this as efficiently as possible to get the most out of Ciel. Start out with planning your own approach. Spoiling Ciel might boost her mood but also lowers her discipline. Working hard might offer more financial help but also lowers the affection with your newly adopted daughter. Next is deciding what meal plan to give Ciel. Go for the lavish option to boost Ciel’s growth but make sure you have enough money to back up that choice. With 7 days to plan, you better make the best of your chooses. Pushing Ciel to great heights will require hard work but pushing too hard will prove disastrous. When Ciel runs out of stamina she faints which means a whole sort of penalties to her growth. Not to mention a visit from the stern social worker who threatens to jail you if you keep neglecting Ciel’s wellbeing.
Unlock skill trees
Each different activity you plan grants Ciel stat boosts. In the beginning, not many activities are available. You need to unlock these by clearing “nodes” in the skill tree. Checking all the different terms to unlock the next path in the skill tree in combination with the schedule will become a constant throughout the game. Giving Ciel more options as you go along will have the potential to boost her stats much more effectively. When Ciel goes out to her classes and chores, she’ll meet all sorts of different people. Having her spend time with each of these will also prove useful as the game progresses. While you will spend most of your time “crunching numbers and planning ahead”, there is a story unfolding through cutscenes. Sadly they are just very static scenes with scrolling text.
Match 3
Stats will get boosted each time you do a certain activity but bonus stats can be earned when successfully completing an encounter. As you go from one activity to another, you’ll randomly stumble on encounters. When you accept a whole new part of the game comes in play. You are presented with a “battle” in which you gave a 3 by 3 grid filled with colored cards. Matching 3 of the same color to maximize your chances of completing the encounter successfully. There are different kinds of encounters that ask for a different approach. Quiz battles make you focus on making a certain amount of sets. Score battles have you reach a certain score before a timer runs out. Focussing on the green sets will give you more points. Enemy battles make you focus on scoring red sets more as they do more damage.
Scoring sets of all colors will eventually grant you the chance to use an ability. These abilities grant great bonuses and make all the difference in defeat of success. In the beginning, you only have 3 available abilities but as the game unfolds, more of these will become available giving you more strategic options. Making a lot of friends and investing time in these friends will prove useful during these battles. Some of your friends will actually help during the encounters with a specific ability of their own. With a time limit, speed is of the essence. Matching sets as quick as you can is the main bulk of the battles but choosing a timely ability or the help of a friend might make a huge difference.
Long build-up
The game takes 10 months to really start which is a long time spent scheduling with no apparent goal. In the first week of the 11th month, you’ll finally be allowed to go to the surface and explore the desolate earth. Here the game finally gets a sense of purpose. On the surface, you’ll encounter a lot of battles and really see a reason to unlock certain abilities. Up until that 11th month, the game really got boring. If I wasn’t reviewing this I’m pretty sure I would stop playing the game even before I reached the 11th month. To make things worse, each month your hard-earned stats decrease for no apparent reason. On twitter, I found out that this is to prevent being too overpowered once you get to the surface. With no explanation, it felt very unrewarding and didn’t motivate me to go on at all. I felt the game was deciding the outcome and my best efforts were obsolete.
Lost in translation
Ciel Fledge suffers from translation issues. The conversations you have during Ciel’s daily routine all sound a bit off. The nuance seems to be lost in translation making things sound odd and/or weird at times. Raising Ciel takes 10 years and a lot of scheduling which gets a bit monotonous after a while. The story unfolding was the only thing that kept me going but being weirded out kept me from getting invested deep enough. To make things even worse, the battles weren’t explained all that well. It was through trial and error I discovered that when a score battle asked for a “quiet fight” it meant I couldn’t use any abilities. Kudos to the team for already releasing an update to address some of these problems. I still feel though like many things are left unexplained to make for a nice experience.
Touchscreen
Ciel Fledge is best played on PC in my opinion. Playing it on the Nintendo Switch felt way harder than it should’ve been. Playing with the joy-cons does work but is highly unadvised. Ciel Fledge on Nintendo Switch should be played with the touchscreen options only to make it playable. The screen felt a bit to small to get all the info on it. Selecting the right things proofed to be harder than needed. Eventually I started using a stylus which made a lot of difference. So If you plan on playing Ciel Fledge on the Nintendo Switch be warned.
Conclusion
Unlocking skill trees and seeing the stats rise is fun in the beginning but starts to get old a bit too fast. The game feels way too repetitive and frankly said, dull to keep me going. The addition of a battle system should be applauded but the way it was executed (and explained poorly) leaves way too much room for improvement. One playthrough takes about 20 hours. Multiple endings are available to chase but it won’t be for me. I found the idea of the game great but the execution leaves much room for improvement.
