Wow, a lot of feedback today! Thanks, everyone!
Awl:
Spoiler
-Yep, I composed the music. I used Reason--I think I have the version right before the current one, but I can't imagine they would ditch the sound bank.
-Keeping the difficulty lower is definitely a concern for the future.
-I was originally going to go 100 percent original art, but I ran into difficulty when making grass and water, so I figured it would be smarter to just make that an optional thing after I'd finished everything else, and I ended up finishing pretty close to the deadline, so that ended up on the chopping block. It's definitely been a common point of criticism, though, so I'll be sure not to do that in the future.
-I think you'd probably like Mara a lot better after seeing the ending, but, yeah, I know that last fight is a doozy. Hopefully at some point someone will do a let's play of this so you can catch the ending!
-I know the old "grind to win" mechanic's been abandoned in this game, but that was to make the battles function more like puzzles. I think the next game I make will have a difficulty option so I can satisfy everyone.
-You should be able to alt+enter to fullscreen, but RPG Maker puts a black border around it. Maybe there's a way to allow you to do that from an in-game menu; I'll make sure to keep that in mind in the future.
I'm glad you liked it, though! The difficulty's really a bugger to get right. I kind of painted myself in the corner; since I was trying to keep everything like a puzzle, I wanted the last boss to really provide a challenge, and that probably ended up backfiring on me, haha. Thanks so much for your feedback!
Spoiler
GIRaka:
-I really hate in-game tutorials, so I tried to design the battles around teaching skills in each section, e.g. the first section's all about elemental swapping, the second is mainly about squawking, and the third is mainly about stealing. The idea was that you would need to swap elements so you'd read the elemental shift descriptions from curiosity rather than from a text box telling you to do it. The first battles can be a bit much, though, since you have so many skills right at the beginning, so, yeah, I probably should have given a quick tutorial to cover that at least.
-I probably should have given Bud an elemental attack property when shifted. My roommate's girlfriend thought he should be able to do that as well, and, since she's clueless about RPGs, I should have taken that as valuable advice that I wasn't being intuitive.
-Giving squawk a cooldown is a good idea. I tried to make its high MP cost a limiting factor, and cranking up his MP is a reward for getting the treasures (or you could boost attack as an alternative). I haven't really explored using cooldowns in an RPG, and it's something that I'd like to play with in the future for sure.
-Percival's little picture story was meant to be drawn crudely, like a child had drawn it, in order to undercut his message about the power of friendship since he's full of ; the pretentious piano music under it was more of his perception of his tale. How quickly they fall apart in the final fight should have underscored that, but if that wasn't conveyed well, it wasn't conveyed well.
-You wouldn't know that stealing the coinpurse or the skull would change their behaviors necessarily, but, in the cut scene I just talked about, you can see Scrum stealing Percival's coinpurse and Thulak Khan showing off his skull, so I was hoping that these would act as triggers to the player, and stealing is pretty important elsewhere in the game. When Scrum's exposed, Percival just makes himself invincible since he's selfish and Thualk Khan abandons Christianity and attacks rather than heals (this is reinforced in the post-battle dialogue if you ever get a chance to see it). I tried to make that battle function in a storytelling way like that, so I guess the player wouldn't know that their behaviors would change, but I was hoping to make them curious about those items and know that something interesting would happen if you took them.
-I was trying to make the battles pretty fine-tuned, but the difficulty's been one of the complaints I've been getting, so, for my next game, I'm definitely going to design around long-term progression rather than fixed, high-tuned fights.
Anyway, glad you enjoyed it at least more than you hated it. You're right about the file size: when you export a game from VX Ace, it forces you to include all of the rtp, which is about 200mb because of all of the audio files, mainly. You can export without the rtp, but the players have to have the rtp installed--most people don't. It takes a little bit of effort to modify your game so that it only includes what you used from the rtp--not a LOT of effort, but I think a lot of first timers don't realize how to do this. My "contest games" folder is looking pretty beefy after downloading over a hundred of these bastards.
Oh, and I'm not sure if you know this, but I actually played and reviewed Tess in my review thread. You can find the review in the second half of the master list in my second post in that thread. In short, though, it was one of the better games I played in this contest. My main complaints centered around the story/characters, but I liked the little puzzle elements mixed into the run and gun formula.
Reason 6! WOOT! :^D
And yeah, sorry I couldn't get around to the ending, but I definitely tried! It felt like a sharp difficulty spike in an already hard game. I've beaten final bosses in mainstream games that were far easier than those unlikely antagonists! [if it's any consolation, I actually did google for the ending in the dim hope I'd find a streamer who happened to beat it.] You said you were inspired by 90's games, and it shows. Maybe just not in the best way, at least not for "average" players. Though, masogamers would surely embrace this game with open arms!
I definitely felt the battles were puzzles (and thank Odin's beard they weren't random,) and I thought the puzzle-battles were part of the game's charm. More treasures would definitely help though. You have a good system for juggling inventory, so with more powerful items an additional layer of strategy could easily be implemented much like the "elemental shift" assessment in-battle. Hide the most valuable items behind tough but reasonable enemies and you're golden!
As far as difficulty goes, I'd keep the challenge, but reserve it for very late in the game. Like 3/4 late at the earliest. This is a very lighthearted game, so its difficultly from the get-go is pretty jarring.
As far as the final boss goes, I did not pick up that adorable cutscene was actually a massive and intricately-thought-out final boss hint. I know that feeling though. My advice is to "grandma" your game---when you're playtesting, pretend you know nothing outside of everything explicitly made clear inside the game. Remove the abstract mind completely, it should lessen the Guide-Dang-It moments considerably!
For full-screen, I think RPG Maker has an option somewhere to enable it. Though I did not know about the alt-F4, thanks for the tip!
And you're welcome! :^D It was quite good for a month's effort. I look forward to what you have to say about my entry!
