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The Elemental Ruins's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall enjoyment | #12 | 2.087 | 2.556 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- This is a well rounded game. A nice bite sized portion of what could be a bigger story, well done!
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Comments
My thoughts while playing the game.
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
* = Neutral/suggestion
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- Scrolling text opening. While not the worst offender in terms of content to read, I had a problem with the fact that the text was scrolling over a fairly busy background. It's usually better to let the player read at their own pace and place the text in a part of the display that won't compete with the scenery.
+ Nice character portraits
- I wish there were HP bars on the enemies or something to indicate their health.
- Seeing default skills, classes, and stats with front-view battle doesn't sit well with me. Feels low-effort.
+ I do like the choices of background music.
- There's nothing visually distinguishing the bosses from their mob counterparts. Not even a recolor.
- Enemies don't give any rewards for fighting them, not even experience. There's no point in fighting them.
+ I'm glad that we start off with some (admittedly default) items.
- Beatrice is almost useless. She can't do damage to bosses with spells unless her Magic Attack is very boosted (and sometimes not even then), enemies occasionally reflect her magic, and her standard attack is weak.
- End boss evaded Jacques' ultimate attack. Considering how much of an investment that move is, it should be a Certain Hit.
- And there's not even a resolution after the last battle? Just credits?
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Summary
It's a fine game for testing out how RPG Maker works and the map isn't overly complicated, but the thing that undercuts the game the most is the lack of effort on the battles. Everything is default, and while that means it's playable, it's not very enjoyable. Sure, most battles are balanced such that they don't go on for very long, but that's about the only good thing about them. The story is generic and has little development. It doesn't even tell us what the result of defeating the end boss was. So again, it's a fine early RPG Maker project, but you're going to have to try harder if you want to turn heads.
Well, while technically you're right about almost everything, I would like to give my answers as to why things were as they were. Also, this reply of yours perfectly illustrates just what seems to be wrong with rpgmaker in general.
1. My notion to show a worldmap instead of just a black screen or something was precisely to put the game into a larger context, showing the outside of the temple and where they may have come from. Though also the point of the opening text was to force the listener to listen to the music instead of skipping past it. But I will take this under advisement for the future.
2. Yeah, Popular Character Pack goes hard, but nobody's free to screenshot. :p
3. I hate plugins, all my homies hate plugins. But I concede I might have to concede on the matter, so, advisement etc.
4. Joel Steudler's music goes hard, too.
5. Yes, you're absolutely right about this, an embarassing oversight on my part.
6. That was by design. It's not a 'get treasure and level up' game, it's more like a ttrpg 'one shot' adventure where you don't even get to keep your stuff after. The whole point was the adventure in itself. Now, in a more involved game, there will be ways of advancement, but that was not the point of this one, which would not even have the capability of being 'involved' unless I made some dungeon randomizer thing.
7. That was more of a concession for the game jam, than anything. Though it does stand to reason that they would have brought stuff with them when sent out to do it.
8. This is inaccurate, in at least one respect. For the Fall boss, I actually designed it to be strong to melee but weak to magic, as well as specifically setting it to be weaker to fire magic. So, that was her time to shine there. Winter and Balance had the issue though of me setting them to reflect magic.
9. Honestly I didn't even think about his 'ultimate attack,' I just set everyone to level 20 as a matter of course for this one shot gamejam game. But I will describe what I intended: The Balance was meant to have a little bit of every boss's power, so regeneration AND magic reflecting. Also made him a little more evasive. However, on the whole, I know that my balancing would be hit or miss, and thus I basically agree that it needs serious improvement.
10. Yeah I guess that was lazy of me.
Also, here's a couple errors you forgot:
1. I used sample maps. My own fault for waiting until literally the last day to throw something together.
2. You could also argue that zero direction about what exactly to do was a fault as well.
EDIT: forgot the thing about the top battler...well, I have reasons for preferring it in most cases, but I'll take that under advisement as well.
Nice game.
Random encounters are kind of useless and I ended up escaping from all of them. The boss of the fall crystal is a bit annoying, the fight can be pretty long since he is almost immune to physical damage and have a passive heal each turn.
The end boss was a pretty good fight, even tho I feel you could have spiced it up a bit in term of difficulty.
Also, having so much skills right at the start of the game is a bit overwhelming.
But anyway, it's just some little thing that I think you could improve, the game overall was fun and I liked it. Well done and stay safe !
Yeah I'm just starting to get a feel for messing around with the balance instead of leaving rtp as is. The fall boss, he's more vulnerable to magic than to martial combat, and I adjusted him so that he wasn't entirely immune to it. As for the random encounters, they actually do serve a purpose, that of giving a hint what their respective boss versions are like. But it is better to just run, really.
This game wasn't really for me. It was a well made game, just not my cup of tea. My only feedback would be get rid of random encounters. They served no purpose except wasting much needed magic points.
Actually, you can run from the random encounters. Only the bosses are necessary.
good game!