Hi there!

I'm one of the 6 judges for this RPG Maker Game Jam 2025. I was one of the 2 judges assigned to your game, and we have been assigned to rate your games according to each metric highlighted on the game's main jam page, and submit these ratings to the organisers, who will then appropriate what happens with that. Please contact them in the Q&A if you have any further questions about the judging process. The judges will work on different time schedules, so even if I may have finished playing your game, the entire process might not be finished as of yet. Many of these reviews I am posting while still judging.

All that aside, I'd like to share my VOD of me playing your game, which contains up to an hour of gameplay, and some final thoughts at the end! Depending on whether I stopped the VOD early or not, it will also contain many of the thoughts that I say to you below, which may cause repetition. So just be aware of that.

I will also attach a review below this VOD. I will not disclose my ratings for each category as of yet, but those will be revealed in due time. Not all judges are required to post a review or VOD to each game, but many will do so even if it's optional, including myself.

Here's the VOD:

So I think that the tone of this piece is one of the hallmarks that will remain in my memory.

Now to get to the nitty-gritty. I felt the puzzles were actually quite decent in design, even if some of them felt either too slight in detail, or contained too much of a leap of logic. The biggest leap, in my opinion, being the solution where you had to push the bust down the stairs to break it. I found it very difficult to think about that solution naturally, since I didn't have previous clues to put them together, or if I'd been given them, I didn't think about pushing it on a tile. That doesn't usually bring results in the top-down puzzle games I've played like this, so maybe that felt a little unintuitive of a solution to me.

However, I was able to finish most of the puzzles on my own with fair ease, and even if the majority weren't immensely ingeiously designed, they were fairly well set-up and easy enough to follow through (with exception of the one I detailed above.) Plus the battles, while serving the story, felt sometimes slightly unnecessary, and never a true challenge. You could evade them all, and each boss battle simply boiled down to finding and using the correct item. So that only engaged me somewhat.

I felt the story picked up after the 45-minute mark. That's when all the exploration of the memories and the past and such begin to play (at least in my playthrough, that was at that 45-min mark), and we finally get to know the emotional reasons why we're here in this place. Fourth wall breaking also broke immersion occasionally. I felt it didn't need to be there, because the story was strong enough on its own - I felt that you as a writer (the dev) could trust your own abilities because the game is well-written enough to do that.

Sometimes I felt the challenges were tacked-on a little, like a list of chores to do. To do this thing, then do that thing in order, but it did feel sometimes like repetitive chores, which didn't coalesce with my feeling that I'd imagine someone trapped in a mansion might feel. So it took me out a bit.

All that said, I think there is a lot to enjoy about the game. Specifically the complete feeling of it, the atmosphere, and the vibes. I think that's the strongest part of this game. It's hard sometimes to make good gameplay within a scary mansion, because a lot of it just boils down to quite claustrophobic puzzles and such, but games have done it well before, so I believe there is room for interesting gameplay to pop up here.

Either way, keep making games. You are clearly very talented and deserve the chance. Every game is a gift.

Hello, I played this on stream! The atmosphere overall was very well built, with the custom portraits and light effects. 
The story was a little confusing to me, so I didn't know well why I was pushing forward. But floors with a different "leader" helped to give some sort of rhythm to the game.

The boss battles were more like puzzles, I liked them. I can't say the same for the random encounters, since you just have to spam the basic attack at all time. (maybe if the quick time event had different requirements/timing would've been less repetitive).
I also liked the puzzles, even if some of them felt very arbitrary: why would I want to push a statue down the stairs, if I didn't know it has a key piece? (also, I softlocked by pushing it on a wall).

I stopped playing because I got stuck on a puzzle even if I think I tried everything, if you're curious here's the VOD: 

Really cool game! I will start by saying I wasn't able to play through it all. The game would keep freezing and I would have to close and open the game again. I've had this issue with my own games and have found the answer to be a plugin called graphicsrenderfix. I can share it with you if you're interested, I use it in all my games now. That aside I really enjoyed what I played of the game. The art style is awesome and really nice to look at. I liked the bgs that helped to set the atmosphere and the lighting looked really good too. What I played so far of the story made sense to me at least in terms of what the main characters objective was. The full story as to why the characters are in a tower and what their experiments are for I don't fully understand but I also haven't played the whole thing! I got up to the artist level and was enjoying the different tasks. Combat was simple but engaging enough and I liked the enemy designs. It would have been cool if I unlocked some skills as I leveled up, though I only got to level 5. I like that each level and boss had a theme and exploring the levels was a bit like looking into the personality of each boss. A little bug: pushing the bust into a wall or object would cause the game to freeze (I assume it needs the skip movement box ticked). What the two of you have put together is really impressive and the style and atmosphere made this really engaging!

4 stars for theme. 5 stars for gameplay, each floors little puzzles and the combat were great. 5 stars for engagement, I really liked the story and again the tasks were very engaging. 5 stars for presentation, the game looks amazing and the custom ui and the sfx/bgs you picked all add to the presentation. Brilliant game!

A bit confusing but I was really enjoying this game!

I player the game and here it is:

1- The titlescreen is a piece of art! I kept myself watching those flowing sprite for some minutes.

2- Visuals are in fact the most powerful thing in this project. The mapping is awesome! I realized you used a mix of tilesets, but it did not bother me. I think it's charming.

3- I saw some bugs (Collete's door and Roselyn after giving back the hairpin, some sprite changing).

4- The story was not clear for me, maybe I was to much dragged by the beauty of the scenario.

5- I loved the tasks, I've learned some stuff with you now.

6- This game passed me a MadFather vibe, maybe because of the theme.

7- The busts are beautiful! And the battles are very nice to play, the ghosts and the bosses. 

8- The mindtrip thing is a nice plot. Maybe you should explore more in another game!

Congratulations! This project has a lot of potential.