Heya! I got your game for the Secret Santa review! What I did was I wrote down my thoughts and notes as I played the game to give you "real time" feedback as I experienced what you created. Hopefully it will be of some use to you!
Here it goes:
I enjoyed the logo intro with the cool music! It was perhaps a tad long though to sit through. Maybe think about shortening it by a few seconds?
The next music though, the intro to the game, definitely clashes with the previous music. Overall though, well-done. I like that you also made it optional to skip, a handy feature for anyone who has to close the game and re-open it.
I really dig the difficulty settings. It is more than just altering the stats on mobs. Very cool.
Interesting and unique graphic style. I dig it.
I also like that at first my hand is being held as I get oriented in the game. I am not being inundated by a large mass of information. Very good!
One thing that would be neat – when you select to go to the Adventurer’s Guild (or anywhere I suppose), if the graphic in the background changed to match.
Hmm… My first roadblock. The Adventurer’s Guild tells me to bugger off until I am more of an adventurer. I see that the Town Hall offers missions, they tell me to bugger off until I join the Adventurer’s Guild. I go to the Tavern and am told to bugger off because I am too young… Well, if this is a rejection simulator, fantastic work!
Checking the Temple… Nope, told to bugger off because they don’t need adventurers! At least they somewhat acknowledge my role as a possible adventurer.
And the Item shop, at least I now have a direction! To the Inn!
Ok, time for the first dungeon! Checking out the cellar. I really like that you can interact with the environment for flavor text. I also like that each flavor text is different, it is a nice touch.
Got the scroll. The Escape Rope is a nice feature.
I think it’s kind of funny that in order to prove that you have what it takes to be an adventurer, you to simply pick up an object from a basement in town that has zero threats.
Ok, all registered as an adventurer. That guild master is sure a surly one.
Here’s one place that could use a little explanation – the class choices. What’s the difference between them aside from stats? I think the interface looks nice, but definitely could use a bit of guidance/explanation.
I like recruiting party members, the variety of offerings is well balanced.
Still kind of funny… Got what it takes to be an adventurer? Go pick up this scroll. You can do that?! Great! Now go murder that mine full of goblins!
I still like that this is a guided experience, I am not too often left confused as to what to do. This is well-paced thus far.
Ok, so the battles… the battles are kind of the weak spot here. There are no combat animations, the choice selection menu is ridiculously tiny and hard to read, and the overall pace is too slow. Also kind of funny that when you enter the mines you are told to go level up in the cellar, but the monsters in the mine do 0 damage to a knight.
Random encounters happen WAY too frequently. Also, spamming attack seems to be the best method of winning so far. Also, why are the enemy battlers so tiny? There is soooo much wasted screen space!
I think there might be TOO MUCH gear being dropped by enemies. Every fight drops more gear that I need to look through to see if it’s any good, and with the large number of random encounters, it starts to get monotonous.
This game suffers from the same thing almost all RPG Maker games do that don’t directly address it – everyone misses in combat way too often.
Not only are random encounters so frequent, you double down on them by adding non-avoidable invisible battles in hallways as well. This would be far less of an issue if combat was more interesting and fun.
Looking at my items list in combat, I am not understanding this… Why do I have multiple piles of varying quantities of the same items? Like I have 2 piles of Heal 1’s, one pile has 2 in it, the other pile has 1 in it.
I’m beginning to hate the mines. The layout is just a confusing mess, no real direction where to go, or even a hint. Random battles every 5 steps.
Oh, I think I found out the strange items thing – I am assuming 60 is the max quantity of ALL items. That is a bit confusing. Would’ve been much easier to understand if somewhere at the top you just had a something like X/60 items and left it at that.
Woo, finished in the mines! That was grueling, but not in a particularly fun way. Way more fine-tuning is needed to make that combat experience better.
Oh, and that’s it! Well, that is a pretty short and sweet game.
Final thoughts:
So, I overall really enjoyed playing this. I would have normally passed over this game due to the RTP graphics, but I am glad that this was selected for my Secret Santa review.
The custom town graphic is very nice, I kind of wished there were more of them! Perhaps as you expand your game, you might consider adding custom backgrounds for each point of interest in the town.
I like the Escape Rope, it gives players the option to quickly get out of a dungeon which is always nice because backtracking endlessly sucks.
The writing was good, I did not notice any grammatical errors or anything that distracted me. The characters in the town didn’t have a ton of personality, but then again neither did the siblings. I am guessing this is at least somewhat intentional though, since the point of the game seems to be dungeon-crawling, and not necessarily telling some epic story. What is there is serviceable to this end.
The music choices are fitting and ambient, not much else to say about that. Good choices.
Where the game falters in my opinion, and this is crucial because of how important it is to the core of the gameplay, is the combat and the dungeon layout. Combat happened every 5 steps it felt like. Not only that, but combat lacked any real strategy. You just mashed attack until everything died since attacks did the same damage as spells (I had a warrior, a wizard, a knight, and a priest in my party). The priest, by far, was the most useless. The Knight would just taunt, things would do zero damage to him, and the warrior and wizard mopped up. Repeat ad-nauseum until the end of the game. Attacks swinging and missing was an all-too frequent occurrence. There were no combat animations or anything else to help spice up the visual aspect of combat either. There is also no indication as to what most of the status effects on the monsters do. The layout of the mines is just… uhg. It was confusing, it was not particularly interesting, there were no puzzle elements or anything… it was just a maze filled with both random encounters and invisible unavoidable encounters. Please don’t do this!
So with that grip out of the way, I think this game has a ton of potential for expansion into a big, full-fledged game. The combat would really need to be tuned up nicely to carry it, but the premise is fun and well-executed.
Hey PVGames! Thanks for the very detailed review. It certainly helps me to polish the game further.
I probably should add more options to the introduction slogfest (proving your worth) as it is really railroaded right now. Your point on the ridiculous quest stands, but I have to note that the dungeons are planned to be displayed in first person 3D view, so finding that scroll might not be that straightforward in the future. The fact that the cellars are safe is intentional, novices (starting class) aren't supposed to be able to fight.
Speaking of fighting... I admit that the battle balance is a mess. Sorry about that. That's probably one of the first things I'm going to fix after the contest. And those combat choice windows. I'm eventually going to scrap the tiny text and replace them with icons, but my first few attempts resulted in errors (I may have to take another course in JavaScript) but rest assured, they won't stay for long. As for what comes to the loot dropping, I admit I went overboard with the drop rates. Eventually monsters will stop dropping money and drop materials for unlockable items in the shop instead. (That is, you trade your drops to the blacksmith, a new item unlocks in the shop and you get a freebie). But that's something for the future.
Also concerning encounter rate... I might lessen the rate somewhat, but during my own tests they weren't that much of an issue. I think it was about on par with the default RPG Maker MV's encounter rate, but considering it was evented completely, it isn't hard to fix. I will also implement items to increase or to decrease encounter rates for a number of steps, but I didn't have the time to fit it in this version.
The mines are somewhat difficult to navigate in, but that too will (hopefully) be fixed when I implement a minimap function in the future. The game draws much inspiration from the Etrian Odyssey series on the Nintendo DS and 3DS, but unlike those games I won't be implementing a map drawing function. Instead the game will map the visited spots in the dungeons automatically.
I'm happy to hear that there were no real grammatical errors. Much of the dialogue was written in the latter half of the month, and although revised several times, errors can happen.
Finally, concerning the custom art... Well I'm planning to bugger Punamaagi for custom pictures for building interiors in the future.
I'm planning to build far more onto this game, but it takes time. Maybe I can ask you for another review at a later date when these issues are sorted out? I'd really like it.
Once again, thank you very much for your review. Best of luck to you in the contest as well. Zelgadis85
Okay, I played through the game on normal difficulty. I made my main hero(EEEEE)a Warrior, and his sister(YYYYY)a Priest. Third and 4th members were a thief and a tank.
Did you know the warrior is actually super overpowered? I did normal attack hits for around 250, while the rest did around.. 100? I thought the thief was the one dealing the big numbers, but even with it's backstabs, he felt so.. well. Weak?
I mean, doesn't really matter for now, since it's just the early parts of the game, I'm sure he'll grow in power?
The mines were a tad laggy. Mostly the transitions between area's. I also feel the encounter rate is a bit too high(it gets repetitive quickly).
It's nice though. I love the Etrian Odyssey style :)
Also, if you manage to get it done: busts when talking to townsfolk would be really amazing :D
I'm aware the balance is pretty messed up right now. It's probably one of the first things I'll be working on after a few days' worth of rest. I basically worked around 16 hours each day for the last week trying to create the game up to a point I'd feel comfortable releasing. Just one week ago the game ended abruptly when you register at the guild and that's like, 5 minutes of gameplay? I had (foolishly) put off creation of the enemies at that point and since I tried to crave them in at the last minute, well... I guess it shows.
You'll probably want to try a thief in the future versions, too. They will have some very useful (and even required, at points) utility skills such as "Find Secret Doors" that will allow you to reach areas in dungeons you won't otherwise be able to enter.
As what comes for the mines being laggy, it's probably because of lots of events here and there. I might consider using a preloader to see if that helps it anyhow.
The busts will be done by Punamaagi sometime in the future, I'm also considering to add some pictures for town inside areas (like the guildhouse or town hall), just like Etrian Odyssey. Gives you lots of immersion, I'd say.
I'll be sure to try your entry some day, too. I'm just going to have a few days' rest before returning to RPG Maker MV.
So the thief is more of a supportive character? Wouldn't it be awesome if it has more of a supportive role in battles as well? I imagine a sneaky thief sporting a dirty playstyle, actively blinding enemies or crippling them, so others have an easier time sustaining their attacks or something(think single target debuffer).
I look forward to a further release of the game :)
Hi there! As the game's would-be artist (and general helper person), I can confirm that busts were planned for this version, but due to time constraints they couldn't be finished in time. My apologies for that; if my real-life schedules permit me, I might try to finish the busts before the end of the year (or whenever the post-IGMC version is released).
Below is a direct copy from my post at RPG Maker Forums on what features are and what aren't implemented.
What is done for the IGMC18 version
The town menu is working finely. It is about the first thing the player sees (after the introduction of course) so I took some extra care in it.
Some town NPCs may have generic dialogue, I'll be tweaking it up to the last minute though.
The first two dungeons are done, but not in 3D as I originally envisioned. I had some problems doing it naturally in Pixi.JS projection plugin, so I'm leaving that for the future. Punamaagi helped me by adding some final decorations on those dungeons, too. That sort of "filler content" isn't my forte, but I recognize it being important sometimes.
The game comes in three difficulty settings. Casual mode is for newbies in the genre, basically what you'd call "Story Mode". There's Normal (that is still easier than dungeon crawlers usually are) and then there's Veteran which plays by the normal rules.
The player can select from five different classes for the two main characters. They have their own skills, which should work as intended.
You can recruit more characters in the Adventurer's Guild after completing the first main quest. These adventurers are male and female variants of each class, and they have randomly generated (proper English, too) names!
The game has 25 music tracks, most not so commonly used (except for two, they're all from paid DLC packs)
What will be done after judging
I'm going to revise the class selection screens. Right now they don't show classes innate abilities (the Thief class, for example, gets a bonus to critical hit chance and has a lower chance of being targeted). I'm also going to remove a few details that I find insignificant. They're in embedded pictures, so fixing them takes some time.
I had planned (and somewhat mapped, too) a third dungeon. It was the first multi-level dungeon in the game, too. Too bad it didn't fit in because of time constraints.
I'm going to continue the main quest.
The skills use stock battle animations, I'm going to fix that sometime.
I'm not happy with the current battle flow, so I'm going to spend some time tweaking it further. One thing I want to do is to change the commands to use icons instead of text, and add help windows for them.
Battle balance. Cramming the last few days for combat wasn't the best of ideas, but...
Once the game gets more content, it will eventually need more music as well. I still have loads of music from DLC packs, so I'm going to dig some good ones for the game.
A custom Title Screen would be nice.
Finally get rid of the default game font and use my own. This means, of course, that I have to go through all dialogue and descriptions... again. But it will be worth it, I hope.
More equipment will be added. I have two slots for accessories for each character, but not that many accessories to speak of! That will be fixed.
I'm going to re-organize the common events and database in general some day. Doing it now would only mean that the game would be broken right away, so I'm leaving that for the judging period (where we can't upload new versions of the game anyway)
More classes, maybe? I've set up the system for a total of 15 classes, maybe I won't be using them all but I'll probably create more than the current five.
What will be done sometime in the future
Proper 3D dungeons. Whether it will be by implementing FPLE plugin or by my own coding, we will see.
Minimap for said dungeons. Because once the dungeons become bigger and more complex, getting lost might happen far easier than right now.
A system for upgrading weapons. I'm thinking of a system similar to a game I recently played where you randomly gain upgraded versions of gear you have equipped. I hope I can manage that with the plugins I'm currently using.
More dungeons, of course! What's a dungeon crawler without dungeons...
More main quests.
Side quests in form of Guildhouse quests which give onetime bonuses (in form of titles, which I will probably add as an unequippable item that is forced on the heroes) and then there's the common Tasks (think of them as repeatable quests, basically another way to grind XP and money).
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Heya! I got your game for the Secret Santa review! What I did was I wrote down my thoughts and notes as I played the game to give you "real time" feedback as I experienced what you created. Hopefully it will be of some use to you!
Here it goes:
I enjoyed the logo intro with the cool music! It was perhaps a tad long though to sit through. Maybe think about shortening it by a few seconds?
The next music though, the intro to the game, definitely clashes with the previous music. Overall though, well-done. I like that you also made it optional to skip, a handy feature for anyone who has to close the game and re-open it.
I really dig the difficulty settings. It is more than just altering the stats on mobs. Very cool.
Interesting and unique graphic style. I dig it.
I also like that at first my hand is being held as I get oriented in the game. I am not being inundated by a large mass of information. Very good!
One thing that would be neat – when you select to go to the Adventurer’s Guild (or anywhere I suppose), if the graphic in the background changed to match.
Hmm… My first roadblock. The Adventurer’s Guild tells me to bugger off until I am more of an adventurer. I see that the Town Hall offers missions, they tell me to bugger off until I join the Adventurer’s Guild. I go to the Tavern and am told to bugger off because I am too young… Well, if this is a rejection simulator, fantastic work!
Checking the Temple… Nope, told to bugger off because they don’t need adventurers! At least they somewhat acknowledge my role as a possible adventurer.
And the Item shop, at least I now have a direction! To the Inn!
Ok, time for the first dungeon! Checking out the cellar. I really like that you can interact with the environment for flavor text. I also like that each flavor text is different, it is a nice touch.
Got the scroll. The Escape Rope is a nice feature.
I think it’s kind of funny that in order to prove that you have what it takes to be an adventurer, you to simply pick up an object from a basement in town that has zero threats.
Ok, all registered as an adventurer. That guild master is sure a surly one.
Here’s one place that could use a little explanation – the class choices. What’s the difference between them aside from stats? I think the interface looks nice, but definitely could use a bit of guidance/explanation.
I like recruiting party members, the variety of offerings is well balanced.
Still kind of funny… Got what it takes to be an adventurer? Go pick up this scroll. You can do that?! Great! Now go murder that mine full of goblins!
I still like that this is a guided experience, I am not too often left confused as to what to do. This is well-paced thus far.
Ok, so the battles… the battles are kind of the weak spot here. There are no combat animations, the choice selection menu is ridiculously tiny and hard to read, and the overall pace is too slow. Also kind of funny that when you enter the mines you are told to go level up in the cellar, but the monsters in the mine do 0 damage to a knight.
Random encounters happen WAY too frequently. Also, spamming attack seems to be the best method of winning so far. Also, why are the enemy battlers so tiny? There is soooo much wasted screen space!
I think there might be TOO MUCH gear being dropped by enemies. Every fight drops more gear that I need to look through to see if it’s any good, and with the large number of random encounters, it starts to get monotonous.
This game suffers from the same thing almost all RPG Maker games do that don’t directly address it – everyone misses in combat way too often.
Not only are random encounters so frequent, you double down on them by adding non-avoidable invisible battles in hallways as well. This would be far less of an issue if combat was more interesting and fun.
Looking at my items list in combat, I am not understanding this… Why do I have multiple piles of varying quantities of the same items? Like I have 2 piles of Heal 1’s, one pile has 2 in it, the other pile has 1 in it.
I’m beginning to hate the mines. The layout is just a confusing mess, no real direction where to go, or even a hint. Random battles every 5 steps.
Oh, I think I found out the strange items thing – I am assuming 60 is the max quantity of ALL items. That is a bit confusing. Would’ve been much easier to understand if somewhere at the top you just had a something like X/60 items and left it at that.
Woo, finished in the mines! That was grueling, but not in a particularly fun way. Way more fine-tuning is needed to make that combat experience better.
Oh, and that’s it! Well, that is a pretty short and sweet game.
Final thoughts:
So, I overall really enjoyed playing this. I would have normally passed over this game due to the RTP graphics, but I am glad that this was selected for my Secret Santa review.
The custom town graphic is very nice, I kind of wished there were more of them! Perhaps as you expand your game, you might consider adding custom backgrounds for each point of interest in the town.
I like the Escape Rope, it gives players the option to quickly get out of a dungeon which is always nice because backtracking endlessly sucks.
The writing was good, I did not notice any grammatical errors or anything that distracted me. The characters in the town didn’t have a ton of personality, but then again neither did the siblings. I am guessing this is at least somewhat intentional though, since the point of the game seems to be dungeon-crawling, and not necessarily telling some epic story. What is there is serviceable to this end.
The music choices are fitting and ambient, not much else to say about that. Good choices.
Where the game falters in my opinion, and this is crucial because of how important it is to the core of the gameplay, is the combat and the dungeon layout. Combat happened every 5 steps it felt like. Not only that, but combat lacked any real strategy. You just mashed attack until everything died since attacks did the same damage as spells (I had a warrior, a wizard, a knight, and a priest in my party). The priest, by far, was the most useless. The Knight would just taunt, things would do zero damage to him, and the warrior and wizard mopped up. Repeat ad-nauseum until the end of the game. Attacks swinging and missing was an all-too frequent occurrence. There were no combat animations or anything else to help spice up the visual aspect of combat either. There is also no indication as to what most of the status effects on the monsters do. The layout of the mines is just… uhg. It was confusing, it was not particularly interesting, there were no puzzle elements or anything… it was just a maze filled with both random encounters and invisible unavoidable encounters. Please don’t do this!
So with that grip out of the way, I think this game has a ton of potential for expansion into a big, full-fledged game. The combat would really need to be tuned up nicely to carry it, but the premise is fun and well-executed.
Great job!
Hey PVGames! Thanks for the very detailed review. It certainly helps me to polish the game further.
I probably should add more options to the introduction slogfest (proving your worth) as it is really railroaded right now. Your point on the ridiculous quest stands, but I have to note that the dungeons are planned to be displayed in first person 3D view, so finding that scroll might not be that straightforward in the future. The fact that the cellars are safe is intentional, novices (starting class) aren't supposed to be able to fight.
Speaking of fighting... I admit that the battle balance is a mess. Sorry about that. That's probably one of the first things I'm going to fix after the contest. And those combat choice windows. I'm eventually going to scrap the tiny text and replace them with icons, but my first few attempts resulted in errors (I may have to take another course in JavaScript) but rest assured, they won't stay for long. As for what comes to the loot dropping, I admit I went overboard with the drop rates. Eventually monsters will stop dropping money and drop materials for unlockable items in the shop instead. (That is, you trade your drops to the blacksmith, a new item unlocks in the shop and you get a freebie). But that's something for the future.
Also concerning encounter rate... I might lessen the rate somewhat, but during my own tests they weren't that much of an issue. I think it was about on par with the default RPG Maker MV's encounter rate, but considering it was evented completely, it isn't hard to fix. I will also implement items to increase or to decrease encounter rates for a number of steps, but I didn't have the time to fit it in this version.
The mines are somewhat difficult to navigate in, but that too will (hopefully) be fixed when I implement a minimap function in the future. The game draws much inspiration from the Etrian Odyssey series on the Nintendo DS and 3DS, but unlike those games I won't be implementing a map drawing function. Instead the game will map the visited spots in the dungeons automatically.
I'm happy to hear that there were no real grammatical errors. Much of the dialogue was written in the latter half of the month, and although revised several times, errors can happen.
Finally, concerning the custom art... Well I'm planning to bugger Punamaagi for custom pictures for building interiors in the future.
I'm planning to build far more onto this game, but it takes time. Maybe I can ask you for another review at a later date when these issues are sorted out? I'd really like it.
Once again, thank you very much for your review. Best of luck to you in the contest as well.
Zelgadis85
Okay, I played through the game on normal difficulty. I made my main hero(EEEEE)a Warrior, and his sister(YYYYY)a Priest. Third and 4th members were a thief and a tank.
Did you know the warrior is actually super overpowered? I did normal attack hits for around 250, while the rest did around.. 100? I thought the thief was the one dealing the big numbers, but even with it's backstabs, he felt so.. well. Weak?
I mean, doesn't really matter for now, since it's just the early parts of the game, I'm sure he'll grow in power?
The mines were a tad laggy. Mostly the transitions between area's. I also feel the encounter rate is a bit too high(it gets repetitive quickly).
It's nice though. I love the Etrian Odyssey style :)
Also, if you manage to get it done: busts when talking to townsfolk would be really amazing :D
Thanks for trying out Our Adventure (prototype)!
I'm aware the balance is pretty messed up right now. It's probably one of the first things I'll be working on after a few days' worth of rest. I basically worked around 16 hours each day for the last week trying to create the game up to a point I'd feel comfortable releasing. Just one week ago the game ended abruptly when you register at the guild and that's like, 5 minutes of gameplay? I had (foolishly) put off creation of the enemies at that point and since I tried to crave them in at the last minute, well... I guess it shows.
You'll probably want to try a thief in the future versions, too. They will have some very useful (and even required, at points) utility skills such as "Find Secret Doors" that will allow you to reach areas in dungeons you won't otherwise be able to enter.
As what comes for the mines being laggy, it's probably because of lots of events here and there. I might consider using a preloader to see if that helps it anyhow.
The busts will be done by Punamaagi sometime in the future, I'm also considering to add some pictures for town inside areas (like the guildhouse or town hall), just like Etrian Odyssey. Gives you lots of immersion, I'd say.
I'll be sure to try your entry some day, too. I'm just going to have a few days' rest before returning to RPG Maker MV.
So the thief is more of a supportive character? Wouldn't it be awesome if it has more of a supportive role in battles as well? I imagine a sneaky thief sporting a dirty playstyle, actively blinding enemies or crippling them, so others have an easier time sustaining their attacks or something(think single target debuffer).
I look forward to a further release of the game :)
Hi there! As the game's would-be artist (and general helper person), I can confirm that busts were planned for this version, but due to time constraints they couldn't be finished in time. My apologies for that; if my real-life schedules permit me, I might try to finish the busts before the end of the year (or whenever the post-IGMC version is released).
Below is a direct copy from my post at RPG Maker Forums on what features are and what aren't implemented.
What is done for the IGMC18 version
What will be done after judging
What will be done sometime in the future