MZ - Bluebird of Happiness and the Condemned Witch

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Started by sakanamemori 5 posts View original ↗
  1. Bluebird of Happiness and the Condemned Witch
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    About the game:

    The gameplay and story is very straight forward. You can interact with objects and people to progress time. Different days will have different dialogues.

    Playtime is about 30 minutes to an hour.

    About the story:
    The Witch had resigned to her fate. Until a certain Bluebird came crashing into her life. Literally.

    DOWNLOAD LINK!!
    You can download the game here!

    https://sakanamemori.itch.io/bluebird-of-happiness-and-the-condemned-witch

    Warnings:

    • There are some unsettling scenes and implied things. Please play at your own risk.
    • While missing some dialogues won't affect the ending, some scenes might be a bit weird if you missed them.
    Misc:

    This is my first RPG Maker game (my first game in general to be fair) so any feedback, criticism and comments are very welcome! I am planning to make this a series if I have the time so I want to know what
    I could've done better to improve!
  2. Played it a bit now and want to share my impressions.

    The idea is great! Really like it. But it has some odd bugs. Like I didn't talk to Hazel but the dialogue came one day where they where talking to each other and Hazel just wasn't visible. But I got him/her to follow me after that, but than it was to late I guess. Then I had the same issue with Coco later.

    At the moment I'm actually stuck.
    spoiler
    I ate the maggot, after that I went and talked to Hazel and Coco, went to sleep a couple of times, the maggots disappeared and not it seems like nothing is happening anymore. Is this supposed to be the ending?

    I would recommend to a little mini-questsystem. Just put a text somewhere like "Talk to the animals" and only make the day progress whenever the player got to a certain point. Nothing fancy, just so the player knows and it doesn't get weird.

    Overall I also like that you made your own graphics. As far as I can tell you used custom graphics for everything and that's really cool. The only tile I don't like is the ground tile in the woods. It has this vertical little line. Looks a bit out of place.

    The Busts and the Images look really nice, good work! Else it would be nice if you do some bugfixing but overall I think you made pretty good first game. Congrats!
  3. Trudel said:
    Played it a bit now and want to share my impressions.

    The idea is great! Really like it. But it has some odd bugs. Like I didn't talk to Hazel but the dialogue came one day where they where talking to each other and Hazel just wasn't visible. But I got him/her to follow me after that, but than it was to late I guess. Then I had the same issue with Coco later.

    At the moment I'm actually stuck.
    spoiler
    I ate the maggot, after that I went and talked to Hazel and Coco, went to sleep a couple of times, the maggots disappeared and not it seems like nothing is happening anymore. Is this supposed to be the ending?

    I would recommend to a little mini-questsystem. Just put a text somewhere like "Talk to the animals" and only make the day progress whenever the player got to a certain point. Nothing fancy, just so the player knows and it doesn't get weird.

    Overall I also like that you made your own graphics. As far as I can tell you used custom graphics for everything and that's really cool. The only tile I don't like is the ground tile in the woods. It has this vertical little line. Looks a bit out of place.

    The Busts and the Images look really nice, good work! Else it would be nice if you do some bugfixing but overall I think you made pretty good first game. Congrats!
    Thank you for playing the game! It means a lot to me~

    I really am sorry for the bugs! I'll try to fix the bugs and implement your suggestion but probably not as soon as possible. I'll be starting a very hectic job soon but I'll try to find the time to fix them (or remake the whole game because that's also some thing I'm considering). I'll talk more under spoilers!

    Spoilers
    I made the game with a time progression mechanic but forgot to lock some conversations out if certain criterias didn't meet, my mistake! That would certainly confuse people since some of those events would be out of the blue. But hopefully you understood most of the general plot.

    For the ending, that's supposed to be it. The maggots disappeared because the body had rotten, I wanted to convey (which I failed sorry...) to players that the bluebird ended up staying and waiting for her despite so much time has passed, not understanding that she is dead. But I kinda rushed the ending (I feel really bad about it) because I wanted many more events to happen (interactions with other animals etc) and days passed to show how her body deteriorated.

    I actually am curious on what players thought about the story. Since I made the story, I generally know the flow and nuances of the story. I wonder if the story is understood or not so I'll be happy to hear your thoughts and understanding. No pressure though!

    About the tileset, I'm also sorry for that. I put off fixing it to the point I got so used to it that I eventually forgot. I'm happy that you pointed that out though! It's good to know what mistakes I made and shouldn't be repeat again in the future.

    I'm really happy for your feedback. Hopefully with the experience of making my first game would help me lessen the bugs and mistakes in my future projects.

    Again, thank you!
  4. Don't be sorry! Take your time and polish it whenever you are in the mood for it :)
    I really think you had a great idea and actually made a good game out of it.

    I think the story would work better if you would add some indicators, as mentioned. So players don't feel lost. On the other hand it conveys pretty good how clueless the little bird is. And thanks for the explanation. I already suspected that this was the ending, but I was not sure.

    Anyways, wish you all the best and good luck with your new job. Don't stress about the game until your personal/work life calms a bit down :D
  5. I played the game, here's some thoughs:

    The story was a nice sad story, but the presentation was lessened by grammar and spelling mistakes. At times the writing also felt like it was translated from another language. Also, in the scenes when the guards appeared, I think there was too much repetitive swearing (I don't mind swearing at all, but using f*** in three sentences a row sounded a bit silly). [Note: the game doesn't contain a lot of swearing, it's just some particular scenes]

    The graphics fit the sad themes. I liked the bird sprite, though hopping around when outside looked a bit strange. The bird sprite also had an extra pixel flashing when moving in the up direction. There were some passability errors on the maps. You could stand on top of the wall where a crack is in the witch's room. You could also stand on top of some treetops and also at the lake you could walk on top of one tree and from there the water (at the southern corner).

    Some people would be turned off when you use the default(?) theme when starting the game. Also just changing the font and the windowskin would add an extra touch away from the default that's easy to implement. I would also change the menu to remove all the unnecessary commands like 'equip' etc.

    The gameplay mechanic of advancing time could be implemented better. Like you had to interact with stuff almost ten times(?) to advance through the day, but the witch maybe said 1-2 things and at times the text from the hole changed, but other than that you had to interact with objects that just said "bucket of water" or "empty" repeatedly. There was also times when an interaction was 10+ text boxes that you had to skip through again if you tried checking if the witch had something more/new to say. Personally I would add more interactable objects inside the room that would add text about the witch and/or the history of the events or something.

    When the credits rolled there was quite a bit of black screen time before the game continued (someone might have thought that the game just ended and/or crashed and closed the game).

    You could also miss some important information if you advanced the time before talking to the creatures outside, like suddenly there was an injured squirrel inside even though I hadn't interacted with it outside for a second time (it was in perfect health when I talked to it earlier). Also after the prince visited and before you ran into the guard outside there was some problem with the interactions with the witch sprite disappearing when talking to her a couple of times and then reappearing when interacting with other objects.

    I'm also not 100% certain if I managed to reach the end of the game. I reached the spot when you were healed with magic and could go through the hole to speak with some strange creature that gave you info about the game. Didn't find any way to advance after that.

    Here's some spelling and grammar mistakes that I caught (there are others as well):

    In the intro there's one 'it's' when it should be 'its'
    "The little bluebirdS chirps to hear her voice..."
    (which doesn't do much)"...eat and drinks..."
    "...Maybe us can't understand each other is better."
    "...move your wings around to avoid it getting stiff."
    "...I doubt you understand at all what I've just but hopefully you won't worsen your wings."
    "My throat is sore what all those singing."
    "The witch sounded more sadder..."
    "My selfishness have robbed so many..."
    (squirrel) "I just heared bird sounds."
    "...the witch already forgotten how it felt..." // "As if those suffering are now just a distant memory."