IGM Game Book of Shadows

Alright, I played through maybe an hour to an hour and a half of the game, using what I think was the original contest version (the folder says 'June' if that's any indication). In a way that's appropriate since I'm giving you a review for winning the IGMC Betting thread, but I wanted to let you know, in case some of the issues I mention have already been fixed.

Story and Writing

With a relatively interesting description for your game, the Intro kind of disappointed me, as it's more of an info dump than anything else. It's fine to include this kind of expository early, but start with something like an intense action scene, or establish the characters or mood without worrying about plot. The first few minutes need to be eye-opening, impactful, punchy.

This scene would be better if you concentrate on showing, rather than telling. I know this is a K-12 English teacher's bromide, but the intro provides a great example. "After hitting the ground, you look around"... this could be done with some simple eventing! Show the man fighting with Eric over the book in the bookshop! There are a lot of places like this in the hour and a half or so that I played that could use this kind of treatment.

Almost as much as in books or movies, it's important in games to focus on impact and value in your dialogue. The more subtext and personality comes across, and the fewer words used, the better. For example: "I know that! However, my friend Rachel is still in town, and she specializes in the dark arts. She should be able to help us figure out what this book is." 31 words, 3 sentences, and no clear indication of tone or personality. How about something more like "Yeah, but Rachel's still around, and she knows the dark arts like the back of her hand!" It gets rid of a lot of the unnecessary factual-sounding connecting words, and gives the player the benefit of the doubt in assuming they'd understand that someone who understands dark arts could help you figure out the mystery behind a book with a dark aura.

Similarly, John's line: "We couldn't have done it if you hadn't hurt him first, making him unable to cast spells for a while." The first half of the line isn't so bad, but the second half makes it a disaster. No one speaks like that, explaining things in such a factual manner. The player already understands that this is why the necromancer couldn't cast spells. Go for something like "We'd have been goners if you hadn't whacked him first, Laura." Or, if you want to go for even more flavor, "It's all thanks to you... and your little shot to his man region." I know this seems like a little nitpick, but it really goes so far towards getting someone immersed in your game and its story. Persona 4 is one of the best examples I've seen of taking a relatively simple story and immersing the player in it through great character dialogue - give it a run if you haven't already.

You definitely have the ability to do this, as proven by your snarky little gems like "Go Orc Go" and "19 going on 13" - they sound more like they're coming from real personalities than the rest of your writing. If you can impart this amount of personality to your characters consistently (without it always being snarky), the experience will be a ton better for it!

When clumsy writing didn't get in the way, I found most of the characters to be interesting and likable. They acted like cartoon versions of people I know might be expected to act in the situations they found themselves in, which is something I always like in games like this. Laura was personally my favorite. Sarah was interesting too. Eric himself seemed really boring from what I played. You kind of poisoned John's likability by having Sarah (the only character that gets irritated by him) introduce him, so watch out for doing things like that, but with a little more time I feel I would have warmed up to him.

One touch that I loved was being able to select one party member to chat with at certain points. The two that I saw were both fairly interesting, enough so to invest me more in the characters. The need to select only one friend to talk to not only improves the game's replayability, but also keeps these scenes quick and snappy; it never feels like I'm forcing myself to talk to everyone because I don't want to miss something.

There's one more thing you have to examine, and from what I played, it's not clear whether that thing is the game's pacing or its sense of "purpose" (i.e. besides the player's innate sympathy for the characters, why should they care about the plot?) More than half an hour in, I experienced the whole sequence with Rachel, the storm, and then the pool scene. It was cute, and had lots of personality. But at this point there STILL hasn't been anything exciting or eye-opening taking place, so over a half-hour in, I'm still kind of wondering what there is to this game. And I'm not sure if that's just bad pacing (nothing really exciting or epic for these nice character moments to punctuate), or whether the "stakes" of the plot aren't big or interesting enough.

With all that said, there were times the characters, dialogue, and even events did win me over. It's just that overall I feel it was hamstrung by low-impact writing and a lack of excitement in the plot.

Presentation

The presentation was perhaps the weakest element of your game (trust me, I know how that is - I'm not good at most of this stuff either!), and was about what I'd expect from someone going up against a tight deadline in an early attempt with RPG Maker.

Interiors and rooms are WAY too big - Laura's foyer area alone (entryway to the house) would scale to about 100 x 100 feet of empty space! The bed in her parents' room is just dwarfed by the size of the room. Make them as compact as possible for a better look and feel. It's a problem I've had when I design interiors, too, by the way. Do you remember Telos and Lyra's home in timeblazer? That's one that Redeye made for me - I would have never made the rooms that small, but the map was strictly better for it. Aim for that kind of size and level of clutter!

One other complaint about the graphics - I think your Passability mapping for the B-E sets probably needs work. I managed to walk on top of the wooden signs in the Elmwood Flower Patch, the snowmen in Elmwood, etc. I couldn't walk directly behind the trees (as if they were large squares on the ground). I could walk on a bookshelf, but not the book lying on the ground next to it. These are just a few of the objects that didn't conform to expected passability behavior.

On the audio side, the music choices themselves are pretty good for each scene, but hey don't flow well into each other. It's distracting when the atmosphere set by the music isn't consistent. Choose similarly-instrumented pieces when changing music mid-scene, use fades with a few seconds of silence before starting a new track, etc., in order to improve the flow.

Playability

There were a couple times I got lost looking for something, and it would be nice to have some way to know where to go next or at least what to look for. But besides this, I think Book of Shadows has some really nice touches that improve its playability by streamlining out some of the annoyances that most RPGs have. For example, I like how running is "automatic" and you press Shift to walk.

Similarly, you showed off smart design by giving the player the option to check out the house or just continue the game. This shows respect for the player and allows them to dictate whether they want something more detailed or more fast-paced.

RRGHGHRRRGHFGHP!!!

After being told "don't get closer to the stairwell than we are currently", I moved all the way up, then attempted to cross it. That's not closer to the stairwell than we were. Yet, I was immediately spotted, and, annoyingly, given an unwinnable battle and then a Game Over. Thankfully I'd saved right beforehand, or that would have been the end of my play with the game. I do see why I was spotted for that, but it wasn't immediately clear, and essentially giving the player a one-shot Game Over for that is too punishing.

(I also made the "suicide run" out the front door at one point when I had forgotten the correct path, but I guess that one's on me.)

Battle Design

I'm of two minds about the quality of your battle system, because while I think most of it was well-done, there are some flaws that ultimately made the experience more frustrating than fun. Hopefully you can fix some of these going forward...

I like the variety of the weapons and items, and some of their descriptions are very clever, by the way. But when I was trying to buy equipment, it looked like they were not balanced against each other well. Why use Golf Club (+4, -1), for example, when you can use Baseball Bat (+5, +0) for 50 gold less? Does Golf Club have some kind of special effect? If so, make sure you say so in the description.

I really appreciate what you were trying to attempt by adding some semblance of strategy to the battles with skills like Distraction/Create Apple, but Distraction only seemed to disable the enemy sometimes (or maybe it just wasn't real clear what it was supposed to do), and often my best move once I ran out of MP (and even, sometimes, while I still had MP) was to just keep mashing Attack and pray that my attacks would hit (because misses were not uncommon). It was more like rolling dice than playing a JRPG battle - not fun.

The creative design within battles, on the other hand, such as the injured Necromancer that gradually recovers and gains power, were very welcome. I think this kind of thing was the strongest part of your battle system, and was relatively well-realized. You can make it even better if you allow several different strategies for effectively dealing with a "battle scenario".

Additionally, battle balance seems pretty poor between characters. Eric is useless early on, and John's the only one dishing out real damage.

The biggest problem I encountered, though, is that miss rates in battle are way too high, and seem to be stacked against the player. In one battle, my characters missed a spider ten times in a row! These kind of unlucky streaks were not uncommon. At best, you're simply wasting a player's time with misses in battle. At worst... well, I actually got the 'worst'. See, the extreme miss rates ended up causing me to lose the battle to the giant spider (about about ten minutes). Maybe it was the Wooden Blocks I had equipped; maybe it was doing something wrong that I was doing; maybe it was just a bad RNG... but either way, I think allowing such high miss rates to cause someone to lose a battle without being able to do anything about it is just bad design. After failing this battle twice, and feeling like there was nothing I could have done differently to win it, I stopped playing. It really wasn't worth going through further frustration just to try to beat it and see what would happen next.

Bugs

At one point I saw Eric get a status effect (Sickness Wave, I think?) whose symbol was the number 31. I think it was after Sickness Wave and this seems like it was unintentional. A few turns later, it looked like the number 26. I believe this is the number of turns he'd be sick for, but more important than showing the remaining duration is to make sure that the icon itself is clear, so we know what status he's afflicted with.

I went back to the fireplace in Laura's parents' room once I had saved Laura and gotten the party together... and the entire cycle repeated!

You need to restrict player movement during scripted events (e.g. when you arrive at Laura's house) to prevent the player from freezing the game by obstructing an NPC during one of their movements.

Other Random Thoughts

Other thoughts that I thought you might find useful, but couldn't think of other categories to categorize them into. I think.

Add periods to the end of every sentence, even casual information. Example: "You quickly introduce yourself to the others" needs a period at the end.

I loved the little touch with the little "Sarah: KEEP OUT!" chest... with nothing in it! Also enjoyed the "dead rats" gag a few moments later.

There are lots of misspellings throughout the (Contest version of the) game. Maybe it happened because you were in a rush to finish in time, but clean those up!

Speaking of 'cleaning up', I'm not sure Sarah is aware of what kind of water is flowing through a sewer when she dives in! ;) Also, why did the screen tone change from night to day in a sewer? What kind of sewer is this?! XD

Overall

Overall I felt like there was some fun stuff going on with the characters, and just for that I would have liked to continue and see how things played out and what kind of interesting situations they'd find themselves in. But the weak presentation and the amateurish mistakes made it hard to ever get completely immersed, and a few design decisions in the battle system made the experience more painful than it was fun. It felt like a slightly rushed, untested, first game from someone who has a fair bit of talent for storytelling, world-building and streamlining... but was just learning the mechanics of RPG Maker as they built the game. And it's really not bad for a first effort, but I think you still need some practice with balancing battles properly and with presenting the story in a visual medium.