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5th Annual Driftwood Jam

Hosted by Tea, Drifty · #5ADJ

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A jam submission

Caede's PendantView game page

Submitted by RetroKiwiDad (@excellentretro)

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Caede's Pendant's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Writing/Story	#8	3.625	3.625
Overall	#10	3.563	3.563
Gameplay	#11	3.250	3.250
Creativity	#11	3.813	3.813

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

Hey there :). Not the best game i've played, but not the worst too. I liked both two main character, the writing is nice. The combat system is a bit boring for me, i have to say that i'm not a huge fan of the default one of MV, i find it too slow. I also struggled to open the door with the silver key... why the main character would keep saying "the key must be somewhere here" when it's in his inventory ? You should fix that ;). Some description of skills made me laugh too. :) Great job and thanks for your submission, cya :) Drag
I liked how you had some players use AI that's very creative! I also like how dying doesn't set you back.

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Comments

LicroSubmitted4 years ago (2 edits)

After the stream I was finally able to finish the game XD

Here some stuff I want to tell you about:

- I liked the characters and story but sometimes the dialogs were unclickable like at the end before the final boss I tried pressing "A" but it didnt work so I probably accidentally skipped an important part of a plot.

- When you pick up the blessing cross it tells you that you can use the shortcut "B" to activate items but it doesnt tell you that you can do it to use items on the objects on map, thats what left so many players confused later on.

- Ester's healing spell is weaker than potions and you can only use it on one ally so its pretty useless

- BGM when you talk to the final boss is so chill (I think it was "Scene1"). And you also used "Castle1" in a dungeon... Why? Most of the time your BGM is out of place, background music is supposed to add up to the atmosphere of the game. Now this dungeon feels like a usual visit to a friendly castle where you chill with a friendly serpent lady while sipping some english tea.

Submitted

StudioBlueJam Judge4 years ago(+1)

Hey there! We did a high level review of your entry this weekend and would like you to see it on our channel. You can find the exact time to skip to in the description:

Boos4054 years ago(+1)

Hello there, I played through this and really liked it. Everything was simple yet had creativity and came together quite well. The combat is a bit more on the easy side and I didn't need to hire anyone to get through it, though still otherwise well balanced for a party of 2. I prefer a game to be easy than to difficult.

It felt creative and I enjoyed the written dialogue humour and appreciate the comedy feel the game had. I liked how you used plugins and common events to do simple things here and there to enchant the experience, it worked well and like one comment below said the timer respawning was very nice

I read you plan to expand it in future, it certainly looks like a game that can be expanded and I'll be interested in watching to see what you do next as well as wish you the best of luck on that. : )

RetroKiwiDadDeveloper4 years ago

Thank you very much for giving it a play and for your feedback. I did end up erring on the side of easy for balance, initially it was a lot harder but with a 30 minute time limit I figured it would be better to go easy. I'm glad you were able to get through it, I know there is a few bugs I need to work out.

Nowis-337Submitted4 years ago(+1)

Capitalism Ho! I really like the idea of all your upgrades depends on money. Of course I had to keep the pendant at the end :P Apart from the small confusion of using key items, very well done!

Submitted

Mana-Tech Armor Simulator

RetroKiwiDadDeveloper4 years ago

Thank you for trying it and your kind words. Keeping the pendant is the canon ending lol, it will play into the sequel/full game I am working on.

PikaMewSubmitted4 years ago(+2)

Hello! You know what they say: "money is the senews of war". And this game is the very definition of it. You have no level: everything is money. Want better stats? Pay! Want more skills? Pay! Want more party members? Pay! This is an interesting way to go through in an RPG and it allows you to have some control over your characters' growth.

- I really like how you've done your on-map encounters. The starting of the fight depending on the position of your main character. If you're attacked from the back, the enemy have the advantage. If you attack from their back, you are advantaged. This invites you to strategize your position on the map, and that's excellent.

- OMG! The monster respawns on TIMER! I never saw that before in a RPG Maker game, that's amazing!

- Past a moment gathering optimal equipment, I ended up with Caede receiving no damage from most monsters in the game...

- I don't get the difference between the different monsters on the map, they doesn't seem to be any different upon contact. It could have been nice if each monster sprite represented a different monster group or another series of monster group on the overworld.

- Ester cannot learn Wind Sickles because the game pretends to she already know the move. I suspect it might be a side effect of Caede having learned Punching Pennies, because before that the event works "properly" (as long as Caede doesn't learn Punching Pennies you can keep wasting golds learning Ester a spell she already have). If that's so, I strongly invite you to double check ALL your conditions to prevent such things from happening in the future.

- Recruiting the necromancer at the mercenary's guild softlocks the game. PSA for anyone willing to try the game out: do not recruit the girl with the black hair or you will get stuck.

- WAIT! I SWEAR THIS CHEST WAS GREEN BEFORE I OPENED IT, OFFICER!

- OH SHIT, I CAN GET UP THERE? Something tells me I shouldn't be able to...

- There is no Formation option in the menu. If you recruit more than two mercenaries at a time, you will find yourself with unusable party members. Hopefully, they can join you once the contract of the previous ones will be over.

- So... I'm lost. Sorry, I didn't managed to finish your game. I did find a Silver Key, but none of the locked door would open, I tried to recruit every mercenary I could (except the necromancer, obvs) and I have no idea what to do next. Guess, I'm too stupid to figure out. XD

Actually, this game impressed me at first, but the more I played the more I realized the flaws your game had. Wait... Did I said "flaw"? No, that's not accurate. The best way to talk about these is... "oversights". And it's perfectly fine, even me I wouldn't be surprise there is oversights in my game too. This game is nice overall, but the bugs ended up making it less enjoyable than it could have been.

With that said, I wish you good luck for the Game Jam and, also, good luck for your future projects! ^^

Submitted

RetroKiwiDadDeveloper4 years ago(+1)

Thanks for playing it, your feedback was helpful. I did not even know about the bug that lets you get up on the wall, or the one with Ester's skills. I had thought I had tested those out, so I'm not sure what I changed after it that broke it. As far as the mercs, there is a check that should prevent you from hiring more than 2, which worked in testing but must be something else I missed.

A lot of people seemed to forget about the key item menu when it came to using the...key...item...yeah I guess it is not something people are accustomed to having to do because it happened on several playthroughs.

PikaMewSubmitted4 years ago (1 edit)

You're welcome! I enjoyed the ride while it lasted! ^^

Actually, the key is greyed out in the menu, hence unusable. So... I don't exactly know how I'm supposed to use it if even the doors themselves doesn't react to it.

RetroKiwiDadDeveloper4 years ago

That is very strange, it worked on the last playthrough I saw....grrr :(

PikaMewSubmitted4 years ago(+1)

Alright, GOOD NEWS! I figured that if you press B on the keyboard, you access a menu from where you CAN use the Orb and the Key! Now, I wonder why I can't use them from the inventory? I always managed to use the Blessed Icon from the inventory, I never had to use the B button, why would I do for the Orb and the Key? Also, being the dumbass I am, of course, I missed the tutorial explaining the utility of the B button (I started a new game up to that point just to be sure).

*sigh*

Anyway, finished the game, blown the final boss' ass (Shopping Spree is broken), got the best ending. And I like how it turned out. Soooo... Good job on that. That doesn't solve the softlock and other problems, but I had fun with your game overall.

Good job with it!

KBGaming&&Music4 years ago

This is a decent game premise, for what is there.

RetroKiwiDadDeveloper4 years ago(+1)

This is a backup as I accidentally deleted it originally. I had found a bug that freezes the game and wanted to fix the original, did not know that it would also affect this. On that note, do not hire the black haired merc, she is buggy. :(

LicroSubmitted4 years ago (2 edits)

Did you make it easier to open that metal door in the dungeon? I still haven't figured it out -_-

And how did you even resubmited the project is this even allowed?

RetroKiwiDadDeveloper4 years ago

I did not, this was after the game was already submitted so I made no changes. All you need to do is use the key from your key item menu. I spoke with tea to get it uploaded, nothing was changed it was simply accidentally deleted.