Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• PRESENTATION
  

  Graphics were a mixed bag - the assets themselves were a little odd at times (RTP battle backgrounds vs SNES-type pixelled graphics) and mapping was obviously done by someone who is still new to map design. Walls were one tile high when sprites and other tiles were much taller, for example, and there were a lot of maze-like corridors to pad the game out even more.

  The custom assets were nice, though, and added a bit of character, even if the faces clashed very much with the RTP stuff (probably would have been better just to not have faces for anyone who wasn't a hero).

  The story is very fast paced but not in a good way. It jumps from point to point, with no actual showing of story details. Instead your characters tell you what happened on the way, not even in a banter-type manner, just a straight out "Oh, they blew up the car and now we're at a casino" way, which was very jarring.

  Characterisation wasn't really done much - there were a few points where they talked but most of the time it was one person making a plot-based line of dialogue and that was it. We didn't really get to know Johnny at all, and all we knew about Lilac was that she was a lesbian witch who lived in a small podunk town. We got nothing about the main character except that he was happy that he went on a day-long adventure to save the world.

  Sound effects weren't much to write home about. What was there didn't stand out and didn't really add to the atmosphere.

  Music was much the same - it was there and it didn't stick out as bad but it didn't really stand out as anything interesting either.

  
  

  GAMEPLAY
  Gameplay consisted of a few puzzles, some walking and battles. There was a shop with three items. Said items were okay - the healing item could have been a little better but otherwise it did what it said on the label.

  The puzzles were pretty bland standard stuff - hitting all of a bunch of switches to open a door, dodging fast-moving boulders and pushing boxes. They weren't difficult, but they weren't that interesting either. The box pushing was the most interesting and even that was pretty standard, requiring little thought get through.

  There were a few passability issues but no real bugs.

  The battles were a little on the annoying side at times - you fought Mafia goons and they pretty much had the same attacks. The biggest issue was when certain enemies could one hit kill your characters from full health. I died a few times on a boss because of that.

  I liked the last boss and the taxi-waiting boss (basically, last x rounds), but otherwise the battles were pretty standard. The skills were mainly default ones, some had minor edits done to them. They worked. The skill choices were well done, at least, allowing you to build up your allies to deal more damage.

  ENGAGEMENT
  The game didn't really have much of a fun factor. The constant jumping from plot point to plot point, the battles that were rather bland most of the time and the lack of compelling story or characters really made for a game that was okay. It's a decent first game, sure, but overall it's not exactly memorable or fun to play.

  
  

  THEME
  I'm not sure how to talk about this because the theme seemed to be 'save the world' and you do that, I guess, but it wasn't really well handled in any way, shape or form. The game just sort of says "Yeah, let's save the world from something or rather mob boss or something" and you jump around and do it. There was no mechanical or plot-based theming done besides that. Everything worked together, sure, but it's basic RPG Maker systems doing basic RPG Maker things. No real thought seemed to be put into making the mechanics work with the theme beyond "fight some mobsters with a sword".

  30/80