I was one of the official judges this year, and now that the results have been made public, and I'm free to do so, here is my score and thoughts on this title:

Overall score: 9.5

Loved this game. The art, the humor, the whole aesthetic. I feel this could easily be a full-length game that I'd buy off Steam or some other store front. I wasn't a huge fan of the big walls of text tutorial bits, but thankfully they weren't too obtrusive. Maybe have them be a little more tied to the stuff they're teaching (I got a few that had nothing to do with anything I did, for instance). Really, REALLY well done game.

Stolen Love and the Forgotten Promise

by Indrah LadyPotato, Fomar0153

Hey there Indrah and Fomar, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I'm Drifty and I was asked to judge your game in round four of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.

There are a good number of game options.

I like the sound effects, music and audio design of the game. 

It's really cool how the story slightly changes here and there based on user input.

The game starts off right in the action of things which I appreciate.

All of the battlers are misaligned by a single pixel. It's not an issue and I'm not bothered by it, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

All of the characters have their own unique set of skills and skill trees. They each have multiple which you can cycle through to customize the build of the party. This is a really cool idea and I enjoyed this mechanic.

The maps were done well and I like the 8-bit tileset. It matches the sprites very well and it all comes together for a very cohesive look.

It was a great idea to spread out all of  the tutorial information over the course of the intro scene instead of dumping all in one show text. Making it all reviewable via a key item is also a good idea in my opinion.

The battle system is fast and fun. The numbers are balanced and overall the combat system feels great to play.

The writing is superb and even all of the NPCs feel like a part of the world.

The maps are filled with interactable events and an eye or sparkle icon appears over them to let you know what they are there for. This is a good way to reward exploration, but not waste your player's time and you've done a great job of being generous with consumables.

I especially love the permanent state immunity buff items that you can get from exploring. It always feels good when you get those permanent boosts.

I appreciate the full heal after every fight in the opening wedding scene. That's a good trick to reduce forced menu time.

Overall I would call this a fantastic game! The progression felt good, the enemies while challenging all had a weakness or strategy to beat them, and the story while a little wordy at times was cohesive and humorous. I really enjoyed this game and personally think that you've got what it takes to make RPGs. Bravo!

-Drifty

Hey there Fomar0153 and Indrah LadyPotato , I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. Y'all made some excellent choices when it came to skill systems and battles, and the artstyle worked well with the story. I wasn't able to finish the game, but did have fun with what I did play.

Battles went quickly once I got the hang of each party member, and choosing different skill trees to focus on was a neat way to give more control to players. The number of items I could find felt around the elevator like too many at first, but once I realized it was helping to keep me from having to trudge back to the rest point over and over I understood what you were going for. All of the cutscenes showing what Ezra was up to while I fought was a great touch, since it really made me want to reach her instead of knowing nothing about her and just trying to save her because the game told me to.

Overall, bravo for making an enjoyable and polished game! I'm sure you wanted to tell a full story, but unfortunately the hour time limit for judging did the game a disservice since I wasn't able to complete it. In the future you may want to tighten up the story and maps just so judges are able to finish, but that doesn't take away from the fact a lot of effort went into this game. :)

Howdy, Indrah! I hope you are ok and doing fine.

I finished this game. As a pr(o)emise I can say, as an Italian speaker to didn’t understand everything 100%, but I managed to understand the story overall, don’t worry about that. Many games are big and unpolished, you took a simple concept and really made a gem. Congratulations!

I liked the graphics, music, combat system and skill trees, the little secrets and lots of items to grab, passive abilities system and…Gigi! The “free night with cutscene” it’s a really good idea. Also, no random encounters and I can say it’s really hard to make a softlock unless you specifically make your life harder in strange ways or save before the boss with nearly dead characters and no money.

What are my nitpicks?

I liked the passive system, but it was confusing at first, like I thought they were skills with the “MP” part, but they aren’t and you needed points with a bar you didn’t use in battle…what are the PPs? So I found them accidentally. Even the DnD-like stats are hard to know effectively what they are and not intuitive. I beated most of the game with the combo “Cleave Berserker”, “Fireball” and “Smite or Holy”. Luckily, the final boss needed more strategy than that :P

So, watch out the balancement for avoiding spam-fests (it was good to see challenging normal enemies for once, even if they can be beaten and then you go to Gigi for resting and repeat) and make this parts more intuitive! I really like this game, it’s hardly to say this was made in one month! Can’t wait to see more games and to learn more from you! Thank you for being an inspiration for fellow developers like me!

This is an incredible game! Every aspect of it was crafted with (non-stolen) love and attention!

It's a complete game with a lot of playtime, an amazing work made in only one month! Usually more content equals less quality, but this isn't the case: every minute you play you find always new and fresh gameplay, something I'm always complaining about in other games. In particular, the dialogues are crafted in way they never feel long and dragged on, with the right amount of humor that I really appreciated.
The theming around the marriage and the two family made scenes and situation fun and very different from other rpgs.
The characters also are really charming, everyone having its personality: I loved everyone, in particular the merchant (the Reaper too)! Maybe I felt the protagonist as the weaker character: they surely have the traits of being a berserker even outside of battle (so getting angry very easily) and their unwavering love for their spouse, but... the protagonist didn't really feel memorable. But I'm getting picky and I'm surely in a personal opinion zone.
Even the battles are really entertaining: with the skill trees the choices and tactics you can employ in battle this system really works! Only in the endgame I felt like fights were getting easier, but it's just because I had loads of money and I choose to search for all power-ups and chests.
Just a note that some status effects against the boss seemed a little op: it seemed like bosses can be 100% stunned with Eva's move making fights waaay easier.

And a suggestion: the title screen is really clean and surely works, but I think need to represent better the game instead of a blue screen with golden decorations. Same thing with the title: it's too straightforward, and the game probably deserves a more recognizable one. Of course this does not in any case affect the game, it's just a suggestion that I think is really important.

After all, an extremely solid game! I can't wait to play your next ones!

Ps: I played it in stream with the author, here's the vod if someone needs (Still has to load)

What an excellent game! This is one of my favourites of this jam that I've played so far, for sure!

I think this game represents a good response to some of the common downfalls of jam games - oftentimes they're very high concept, sometimes technical demos of projects that don't have the length to explore all the ways that their many mechanics intersect - but this game seems to dodge that minefield entirely by providing many of the mechanics that RPG Maker was exactly designed for, polishing it in certain places (instant text speed, varied movesets, on-screen encounters etc.) and fleshing the existing mechanics out by providing them a long-form bed to sit on.

The game is super fun, with gameplay and story zipping by at a cracking pace. The story is well-told, even if I did get confused at the amount of characters and subplots that were happening, I still enjoyed the effervescent nature of the dialogue that seemed to sparkle as I read it. There's very little long-term rumination or moody pauses - the game (after admittedly what I think might be a bit too big of a initial map portion with so many interactable NPCs before I've even started the actual gameplay action, but that's a minor gripe) just sets up an instant clarity of stakes and moves from there.

The dungeon crawling is swift, with reasons for victories/losses (both macro ("game overs") and micro ("inefficiency in battles")) easily portrayed through animations and the like, making me feel like I had a full understanding of what was going on in battles.

Moment-to-Moment Notes

I love the oodles of graphical style, cuteness, and monsters just jumping around and having cool movesets. It's all just fun. Even if the beginning was just a bit too long - I wanted to get right into gameplay, which is a lot more fun. There's some tutorial textdumps, which I didn't read because it was just too much information for me at the time, and most of it didn't need explaining except for the Skill Tree, which was unfortunately tucked away behind the "Skills" menu. I think that it should have been in the Main Menu, maybe replacing "Status", because I don't think I ever looked at "Status" once - most of that info was on the Main Menu screen anyway.

The "Overflow" skill is so COOL! I like the idea of when you attack, then the overflow attack damage gets multiplied to everyone else, which I used a lot initially, but became much harder to use later on in the game, for some reason, because I think I just killed most monsters in 1 or 2 hits anyway. This skill seemed to provide a major source of strategy to the early game.

Plus, I liked how you could see how much HP they had at any moment, so you can judge whether you should use the move or not. It was brilliant. I may have missed some of the other moves that were as genius as "Overflow", but it seemed to be the most original-feeling move in the moveset and I wish there were more like it. Indeed, later on, you'd get the dynamic where each monster was weak to a certain element, then you had to judge which "<Insert Element Here> All" spell you'd use, based on the individual enemies in the troop, but after that point, I did start using my favourite skill over and over again in the late game, and wasn't really punished for it. For me, it was Rowan's Berserker version of "Cleave", Alexander's "<Element> All" of whatever element they're generally weakest to, and Eva's "Shield Bash" unless a "Heal" is required. I didn't use much else after I had these skills, and I generally survived.

Since this isn't the type of RPG where you use "Guard" to regenerate MP or anything like that, there was a lot of using of items to regenerate MP. Thankfully, it didn't seem to fall into the trap where MP potions were too highly priced, and I always managed to get enough to be able to do interesting spells. Some games let you run out of MP fairly quickly and don't give you many ways to regenerate this, so you're stuck not being able to use interesting skills, but I'm glad this game didn't fall into that trap.

Oh, and with the tutorial text - telling me why a character is included, and what use their skills do and so on, is part of the fun of RPGs for me, so when I had that told to me, I didn't want to read it. I'd rather figure that stuff out for myself... it's part of the joy of figuring out "oh! this person heals this person and that person can buff. interesting!" that is one of the most fun aspects of RPGs to me.

But there were so many fun little things! I liked in the begining when you snacked on wedding food to recover, and when eyes appeared above things you can interact with (a neat user experience function!). I also liked "figuring out" that Berserker is just like Skill, but on a random target. Nice! That gives an extra layer of interest to the moveset.

There's lots of cute characters, and everything moves super quick to the beat of BANGER music. Seriously, the music is doing so much for this game. I loved the composition, I loved how it felt. It was really really well-composed music, and fit really well with the game, I felt.

I liked how the main character had a personality that's well-defined; even though we get to choose their gender and name at the beginning, it's not a blank slate. However, in the initial area, there was perhaps just a bit too much to interact with, I felt, and if I didn't know it was going to get interesting after the start, I might have not given it the full chance, because it does spend a lot of the initial part of the game putting story on you. I, however, liked the way the rest of the game was paced, interspersing the dialogue in amongst the gameplay in a really nice way.

I liked the backgrounds and the beautiful hero and enemy sprites and facesets. They are all gorgeous. I liked the tileset, and obviously the way it was used, which is a given since Indrah has always created fantastic maps. I liked how some of the enemies used potions to heal themselves - it was believable and cute. There was some funny joke told by a soldier about how stones are used as some sort of mobile phone technology... I thought that was kind of funny. Some battlers had incorrectly cropped sprite sets, which resulted in rows of horizontal and/or vertical pixels, but it wasn't a major because it didn't really spoil my fun too much. It was just noticeable, is all.

Statuses work well in this game. I understood almost every status that I got, despite them not having names next to them, and doing the "flashing" thing which usually means I don't actually understand how many statuses I have on me (lol). I'd much rather have status icons appear next to each other here, but it's a minor gripe.

In the first dungeon, I'll say it again - Splashback was so cool. I wish I saw more skills like that in other games, where the overflow becomes a stronger "Splashback" on all the other enemies. It's just really fun to try to control.

I attacked every monster encounter. Not sure if this was good or bad for me long term, but I guess it's indicative that I actually wanted to fight, which is good for an RPG.

Minor gripe - on-screen encounters could walk through followers, which exposed the "RPG Maker-ness" of it to me. I know this doesn't only happen in RPG Maker games, but it definitely happens in almost all RPG Maker games, so it exposed that to me. It's a difficult one to solve, but it was still noticeable.

There were other minor gripes - when you go through doors that span two tiles, it looks a little awkward because it looks like you're walking into the side pane of the door. When I rested, it triggered a cutscene, but I didn't really know whether I was supposed to rest at every single shop, and if I didn't would I miss a cutscene? I didn't get the memo, or if I did, my silly ADHD brain missed it. But either way, it did feel a bit weird to only trigger cutscenes (which are inherently "rewards" in my mind) when you "Rest", which isn't necessarily something that only good players do. In fact, some shops I didn't even Rest once.

I only "Rested" maybe 2-4 times in the game, 1-3 times in a single location (the final one) because of the difficult encounters near the end. But I think because of that, I missed out on vital cutscenes? I'm not sure.

One thing that was perhaps a bit of a weird point of this game - it is so easy to forget about the Skill Trees altogether, because it's so tucked away, but also because it doesn't alert you when you unlock the ability to have new Skills. I actually don't know why it didn't automatically unlock new Skills, because if you're activating a certain pathway, you're probably going to buy those skills anyway, so there's no real need to "choose" which ones you should have. I think it should just be an automatic "you learned <Skill>!" popup so you don't have to keep looking at the Skill Tree over and over. Plus, I would have liked it to alert me when I reached the maximum "experience points" reached (or whatever the term was to track the points unlocking the progression of Skills) and then urged me to change Skill Tree branches, because staying on the same one would probably do nothing, unless I was set on that one branch forever. Anyway, it was a great idea, and I think it could be improved with further iterations. As I said earlier, it should have probably been on the main menu as well, because it's likely one of the most accessed menus in the game.

I also wonder if it would have been good to disable "Berserk" skill type if there was only one enemy left? But I don't know... it just seems a little weird to allow the benefit of a "randomised attack" when there's only one enemy. But also, "Berserk" skill type can be applied to moves with a "random target" already, which I took to my advantage, meaning that it would just generally be a stronger move, you'd think. For example, a move like "attack twice at random targets for higher damage" is able to be executed in Berserker mode, which gives MORE damage based on the idea it's... randomising the target? Didn't quite make sense to me, but at least it gave me a bit of a battle edge ;P

The idea of Gigi's Emporium and the way it was portrayed was so, so cute. It's such a brilliant addition to the game, and the way it's fleshed out is one of the most delightful parts of the worldbuilding to me. The shopkeeper is such a cute character, and the trope is played against delightfully.

Also, when it came to distributing items in chests throughout the game, it just felt really well distributed. I seemed to come across the right chests at the right time for my level. It seemed to be a perfect balance, and then when I went to the shop, I seemed to have enough money to buy some of the things, but not ALL the things, which makes the item-buying process a GREAT test of my purchasing skills.

I also liked that the antagonists were also pretty cute and not super super antagonistic in tone, even if some of the things they did were debatably really awful. Their dialogue was a delight to hear.

Conclusion to my Super Long Review

All in all, I really loved this game. I thought it was one of the best games of this jam, and a good contender for my #1. At the moment, I have 3 games out of the 18 I've played that are vying for the #1 spot, but the other 2 cater to my tastes, whereas this one impressed me a lot despite not being in the style I'm usually infatuated with. Fomar said that both he and Indrah thought that this was their best game, and I think it might be my favourite game of theirs that I've played, too! It brings together their strengths in such a way that's cohesive and really solid from front to back. Something to be truly proud of.

Thank you so much for making this game and letting us play it. I truly enjoyed it, and it is a gift to the world.

I just finished the game and I want to leave some of my thoughts here:

- I really loved the pacing of battles. They never took long and were not overly complicated.

- The mapping was extremely well done and had little secrets to pick up everywhere. I loved checking every little nook and cranny.

- The story and characters were varied and were never dull. Every single character had a distinct personality. I enjoyed The Reaper greatly lol.

- The skill tree and passive skills were fun to learn and equip. 

- Very nice retro style. Nothing seemed out of place and everything fit the world.

- Nice choice of music. Every new area set the tone with encouraging themes. Same for battles.

This was a wonderful experience and I hope you do well in this contest.  Your team made something very inspiring in a month! Great job!

I've seen you guys around often in the RM community, but this is surprisingly the first time I played one of your games. (you guys even beat me for the timtams, if I remember correctly) And to start this little feedback review off with, wow, this is clearly my favorite IGMC entry I played yet.

This game is an ode to classic Final Fantasy games, which I love. It somehow packs in an RPG journey within an hour and a half. The mapping is fantastic, the battles are well designed, and the story is flat out fun.

The game starts you off with letting you choose the gender of yourself and your lover, which I found to be a great touch. It is the game starts with wedding trope and villain steals bride, which simply works. It was done in a unique way I quite enjoyed. Classic RPG fun.

The first segment of the game lets you explore a town in unlinear fashion and more or less learn the mechanics of combat in a leisure way. I put animation speed on max and went at it rapidly. (I love it when games let me choose battle speed, I will try my best to incorporate this in my future games.)

The battles are fast paced and you feel powerful, even if the enemies pack a bite sometimes. You feel good fighting. It's not always a math quiz trying to proceed through a battle. You are three badasses who plow through the game.

Music in RPGs is a very important part. The music choice for this game was fantastic. The battle music felt like love letters to classic Romancing Saga games and there were several Castlevania inspired songs as well. It was such a good combination for me.

I played the game on max speed, but I still had about 1:30 hours before beating. Personally, I did not care. It was all so fun. But for an hour limit of contest (which I know doesn't remotely doom a game if it exceeds) I think some parts of it could have been cut or optimized better.

I personally think equipment should have been scrapped and just have the characters get their bonuses through the shrines you encounter exclusively. I also think that for a contest game like this, just having the player heal after each battle would have cut down quite a bit of time.

I am not someone who says all games should be that way. But if you stay damaged after a battle, usually it's for a sense of danger in a dungeon. This game, it was rather easy to walk back and there was never any danger walking back. So it was just added time and nothing else. Nothing beneficial to the gameplay. 

I think some of the flavor text/tutorials were a little too wordy.  I know why it was explained, but at the same time you don't need that much description telling you that "Girl badass, uses magic in battle."

I love skill trees and I did enjoy how it was done, but I think it would have fit better for a longer game in this case. They are also a little hidden in the menu, I don't think most players who aren't well versed into RPG Maker games would have a hard time finding it, even after the tutorial description.

The only actual problem I ran into was that last boss fight. I had defenses up for certain ailments, but the last boss bypassed them with one attack (and it was done a little too often) The fight itself I really enjoyed, but it was a bit trial and error-y. For non hardcore rpg fans, the difficulty spike might have thrown them off.  And it made all the equipment managing for me obsolete (as I did stuff to prevent ailments mostly)

And even though it warns you to save in extra slot, I think just adding a shop option anyway would have been fine there.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game. A lot. I'd love to see a game like this but MUCH longer. The mapping and level design just pleased my soul. The dialogue was all well written. The music choices were perfect. The combat understood exactly what made old Final Fantasys so fun to me. Fantastic entry. I should definitely play more games from you guys.

A very polished retro-styled RPG! I got up to defeating the harpy sisters at the top of the elevator, but seems like there is still a lot more content left.  I thought the skill tree system is really well done and offers some nice customisation to the party. 

The 8-bit art style is really well used too.  Would have loved to hear some 8-bit music and sound effects to push this style even more. 

Excellent entry!

2 hours of enjoyment! I loved it, story and characters are fun.The secret boss was tough but also those Charm spells (self)annihilated my party in 2 rounds. For the rest it was pretty easy and all good. Excellent entry 

This is such a complete experience for being made in a limited time! And not only that, it's practically flawless in its execution as well. I think the two of you have a really winning combination with your team and your strengths work together to create such a well-rounded, incredibly fleshed out game with a developed battle system and an interesting story that keeps the player interested the entire way to the end.

Amazing work! :)

I still have to finish this, I arrived at the cave in around 1 hour, but I can already say that this is one of the best games of the jam (if not one of the best RPG Maker games I've ever played in general). The combat balance is nearly perfect (a little little little little easy, but it's good as it is), the mechanics are really cool (skill trees and stuff), the plot is nice, the pacing is good and I really like the characters and the tone of the game!

I'm a simple man: I see pixel art, I like the game. XD Really nice aesthetics too, seriously. My only nitpick here is that probably you should have used 8-bit music to match the visuals, but it's nothing serious.

EDIT: So, I managed to finish the game. I confirm that the gameplay is really solid, especially for the character-customization part with the 3 skill trees for each character, passive skills and so on. You have many things to adjust to your playstyle and that's the thing that I liked the most. The story is... ok, I guess. It's not the strongest part of the game, but it works nontheless. I'll stick to my thoughts about the music: 8-bit probably had worked better. Great great work, anyway!

PS: I was about to kill the "secret super boss" but I got greedy and he oneshotted my whole party. I guess I'll try again XD

Time flies when you're having fun and 5 hours vanished before my eyes when I played this entry!

• It's polished and professional but still has a lot of heart and personality. 
• I found the progression system and battle mechanics to be top tier rpg fare.  Difficulty was just perfect. 
• Retro graphics are used wonderfully and consistently throughout. 
• Story was paced very well.
• Loved the representation of same sex relationships.

Only minor visual glitches found.  A big contender to win in my eyes.

P.S. LEAVE MY BOY ROWAN ALONE :(

I got this one for judging so thought I'd post my feedback here.

I found this game very enjoyable. The dialogue had me in stitches sometimes, especially the meanwhiles. Battles introduce you to the game at a nice pace too. The 8 bit style was really well used and executed well. 

My only complaint is I can only judge it on the first hour, which means I couldn't finish it. I got to the meanwhile scene in the caves when the timer went off. But I liked everything I played in it to this point, and want to go back and finish it someday, probably after the contest though.

My stopping point was after I cleaned out the courtyard area and talked to most of the NPCs. I had to leave to run errands, so I did not complete the game for reference to this comment.

- Theme was used in story
- I always love the retro aesthetic
- I enjoyed the dialogue. The humor was on point when it was inserted, and I did not feel like I was being drug on with text box after text box. All the small interactions I had with the shop keeper, the dog, dad, and other NPCs was fun.
- I did not get drug down in the battles since the battles were scripted, which also kept a good pace.

Really enjoyed what I had time to play before I left!

Well done and good luck in the jam! :)

This game is REALLY awesome!

First I really like that you can "choose" your wedding, it's a small thing but I want to point that out.  I can't really find a single wrong thing in this game: the aesthetics is incredible, the battle system and all other mechanics like passive and skill tree are on point, the story is lighthearted and funny... It's incredible that you two did this gem in a month, congratulations!

There really is so much in this game! incredible stuff, also Pompom is a good boy :) Really does take me back to playing JRPG's as a kid, but this definitely has that extra layer of polish to it! well done!