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A jam submission

NPC QuestView game page

Tired of small town life, an NPC goes on an adventure.
Submitted by KellyInPixels — 2 days, 8 hours before the deadline
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NPC Quest's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creativity#13.6673.667
Gameplay#23.6673.667
Overall#23.4173.417
Story#33.6673.667
Presentation#32.6672.667

Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How did you choose to implement the Theme: Evil Empire in your game?
An NPC travels to the Evil Empire to recover stolen treasure.

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Comments

Host (2 edits) (+1)

I got a few chuckles out of it, especially with that Accounting and Finances tower and the explanation as to how the Evil Empire got its name. The balance in enemy encounters is honestly pretty good and the encounter rate was also just right, so good job on that!

One issue I've noticed was that I found the ferry over the impossible gorge immediately, but when I took it to the other side, I couldn't leave the area, because the forest path was blocked by the top of one tree. And I couldn't go back, because the ferry guy would transport me to the exact spot I was standing on. So I had to reload and go through the Gorge.

This is a very nice game, especially when you take into account the difficulties you had making it. Good job, hope to see more from you in the future :)

SPOILERS:

I got the ending, where after the MC learns that the treasure is just some musical instrument with a sentimental value, gets angry and leaves and the ending says he returned to live in his village, finally content with being just an NPC. I wasn't aware this had different endings, is this a good or bad ending?

Submitted(+2)

The gameplay can be a fair bit of a grind fest at times but this was an overall interesting game. Definitely made me laugh and caught me off guard. Really appreciate the creative take on RPG Tropes. The writing is also creatively on the nose and consistent throughout.

Submitted(+2)

==My thoughts recorded during my playthrough==

+ means I liked something

- means I didn't like something

-----

+ Cat is a party member. Nice!

- Steal can be used out of battle. It drains 5 MP and does nothing.

+ Dialog is self-aware and silly.

+ It's consistent, too.

- North Castle first floor is pretty barebones. There are a bunch of rooms that don't really add much to the experience. Not a problem if you plan to build them out later, but not something you'd want to keep in a finished product.


- That's an awful lot of windows. You could easily drop half of them and I think it would look better for it. It's pretty rare to see a building with that many windows so close together.


- I entered the East Tower from below, so when I transferred in to the staging area, I was facing up still. Add "direction: right" to the transfer event to fix that! It's a minor quibble.
- This directional issue is present throughout the game. It's not a major issue, but it would add a little more polish to the presentation if the characters were oriented appropriately when they enter the scene.

- While I think having a staging area before entering the tower itself is a cool idea and presents possibilities for exploration and discovery (a.k.a. treasure hunting), the way it's presented here doesn't really add anything to the experience. I recommend either adding something to the area that makes running around in it worthwhile or just transfer directly into the tower.

+ The high walls and sky parallax background really sell the idea that we are running up a tower.

+ I also appreciate that the enemy encounter rate isn't too high.


- Strknger Attack is stronk like bull. 😆


+ Are you a Pokémon fan, too? 😁


- I can sell items to the vending machine. Not a big deal (especially given the silly nature of the game) but something to watch for in the future. Just check the "Buy-only" checkbox in the event to fix it.

+ Woah, I got teleported to the bottom of the tower when I exited the top floor? While it's a little weird, I won't complain about missing the grind! Not sure if this is a positive or negative, so 🤷‍♂️


- I think "The mysterious tower is north of here" works better. Similar for the next sentence.


- Little visual nitpick: What have you got against doors? None of the buildings have them! And you don't have to go quite so crazy on the windows.

+ Towns are laid out reasonably well. I didn't get lost in them and there's a reasonable amount of space between buildings. Adding the icons over the entryways helps differentiate the buildings.

+ There is a door on the monster mansion. Hooray!


+ This is hilarious. Good job!

- Guy hands over the golden sceptor before he says he has 10 of them (if you want to spell it properly, it's "scepter," but that's your call). I'd swap those commands around if I were you.

+ The "go back to entrance" prompt is a nice touch. Maybe you should incorporate that into the East Tower?

+ I appreciate that Impossible Gorge's winding path isn't hard or too terribly long. While a little bit of challenge and mystery would have been nice, it's not absolutely necessary.

+ Having a ferry to each side is a nice touch too if the player doesn't want to make the trek through the whole area.

- I would have liked a more obvious entry point into the gorge, though. I wandered around for a while before trying to walk into it because it wasn't clear to me that it was a place that I needed to go.


- Impossible Gorge is actually to the west of this area.


The transfer event for the snowy mountains doesn't seem to work on this side. Luckily I was able to run through the poison swamp to proceed.

+ The first floor of the final dungeon has some treasures to grab for those of us who want to explore. Nice touch!

- Final boss says I didn't go through Impossible Gorge, but I did! Guess there aren't enough switches and checks, eh? 😉 I did skip the battle arena, so maybe that's why I'm not getting the best ending?


- Need a space between "a" and "bunch."

+ The final battle is pretty epic. So many forms!

**Battles**

- I highly recommend looking into plugins that provide visible HP bars for enemies. It makes it easier to strategize (or know when to run).

+ That said, I ran into a pack of hornets and was able to deal with them in a reasonable amount of time, so good job on the balancing there!

+ I see there was some effort made to customize the battle animations. Nice!

- I don't think TP is ever used in battle. If this is true, I suggest unchecking "Display TP in battle" in the "System" tab of the Database.

- There isn't much difference between Carl's standard attack and Dual Attack. They both hit twice.

- In fact, most of Carl's skills don't seem worth it. Steal and Mug generally don't come up with anything, and since Dual Attack seems to be about the same as the standard attack, it seems the best strategy for him is to just stick with spamming attack. Triple Attack seems worthwhile, though, as it attacks 3 random enemies.

- Holy doesn't do as much to the final boss as lower-level spells, such as Ice.

==Summary==

Congratulations on making a complete RPG in a month! While there are definitely things to improve and a few issues here-and-there, nothing was game-breaking or too hard - not something I typically see with RPG Maker game jam games. It looks like you made this game without plugins, which I'm sure kept things simple for development, but do detract from the overall presentation. I enjoyed the funny and consistently self-aware story. I enjoyed this game overall. Thanks for entering in this jam!

Developer(+2)

Thanks for reviewing my game!! A lot of suggestions I took to heart and will consider in my next game. A lot of flaws and typos were a result of rushing the project. The TP issue was interesting because I did take it out, but it caused the battles with dialogue to crash. I put it back in and had to completely delete the troops that had dialogue on them and re-create them! I really needed the dialogue for the final (final) boss so I just sacrificed presentation and left it in. The door comment made me laugh because I don't even have doors in my real house!! (It's a long story) I think I really do hate doors haha.

I'm currently playing Divini 2 and I'm really enjoying it! It's a really well thought out and designed game. I'm working up a glowing review!

Submitted(+1)

I'm glad the points were helpful. It's weird that disabling TP makes battles with dialog crash; I did run into a funny issue with dialog not displaying in battle when I was making Divini 2 also, so I guess RM's methods for displaying text are just funky. I look forward to your review of my game! 😃

Host(+1)

I loved reading your reviews, they are a blast to read and provide valuable feedback. I appreciate you making them. Hope to see you in another game jam, there's a couple RPG Maker jams starting soon already, if you feel like attending another one. Anyway, keep up the good work :)

Submitted(+1)

I'll definitely consider joining another jam! I can't do anything this month (already got a full schedule of jamming) but maybe in a future month!