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Neo Malta's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #26 | 4.417 | 4.417 |
| Overall | #71 | 3.438 | 3.438 |
| Engagement | #79 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Theme | #87 | 3.083 | 3.083 |
| Gameplay | #96 | 2.917 | 2.917 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I'm sorry for your unfortunate situation, the game has a lot of charm and I love the drawings of the main character. The concept also is cute, too bad for the problems and bugs that make it hard on the experience. I would've definitely enjoyed the full experience.
As a note though, the idea to make you walk between a minigame and the other to avoid being fatiqued feels very artificial, and would probably become boring walking back and forth between minigames to not die from stress. XD
I streamed the game, if you're interested here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2470506858
Cute little demo, funnily enough this was one of the ones that I found out about on BlueSky! I will be keeping an eye out for the full version!
The presentation of this is awesome and gives late 90's early 2000's anime vibes, which I love to death. The artstyle is adorable and the general vibe of the game feels like something you'd play on the DS. Malta is super adorable and I'd protect her with my life.
Definitely has its bugs, but I understand that's due to the SSD card exploding. It's awesome you were able to get this out in time despite that so major kudos there. The minigames are simple but really fun, I think the flower one is my favorite! I'd love to see more of this in the future!
Great work!
The art and UI were fantastic, I loved the humour... the face plant image in the hurdles mini game... made me chuckle :)
Very sorry to hear about your SSD exploding, not what you want in a game jam.
This is a gorgeous game, with as you say a couple of niggly bits that need fine tuning given enough time, but nothing I would consider game breaking.
Fantastic job, I love it and I'm very envious of your artistic talents.
Such a cute game!
Have some trouble with the cursor moving waaay to fast and not being able to click where i want without wrestling with it.
The art, sound and vibe are 5/5.
My head cannon is that this Zese alien is actually The Ufonaut from my game XD
great submission!!!!!
thank you!! yeah, the jam version had a problem with the game speed quadrupling if you play on a high refresh rate monitor because i had sound files playing in a parallel process event... which is some arcane rpg maker knowledge i was not aware of. embarrassing! it's since been fixed, so i hope you'll give Neo Malta another chance when a complete version releases!!
Great presentation, but like mentioned, the gameplay is not all ready and it lacks polish. Can be really nice little project when ready and finished. I'm not sure why you won't allow movement with arrow keys though? Like it's a bit annoying to have to click and move the character to face the dudes you want to talk to, like you have to go back and forth to face them. At some point in the train "station" I think I also encountered some bug where the use graphic got highlighted and stayed like that and then it didn't seem to register talk etc.
thanks for your feedback!! since the theme of this jam was "beyond expectations", i chose to try to incorporate that theme mechanically and in the story (which i didn't end up having time to finish.......... rip) by trying to create a novel experience in rpg maker. the movement being the way it was was inspired by games like Hey You, Pikachu and Wonder Project J, where there's a kind of disconnect between the character and the player to highlight the role the player is taking in the story! this entire game is more or less an experiment, and i don't blame people for not really liking how the movement works, but i thought it was an interesting idea at least!
as for needing to face the npcs, malta will actually face points of interest automatically! i've since added that into the tutorial, so thank you for helping me clarify things and make the game better!!
and yeah....... that train station interaction thing just doesn't have any strings attached because i messed up because i was rushing. in the jam version, it doesn't have any text strings assigned to it, so it's not exactly a "softlock" or a "locked out of interacting" type situation, the animation displays and then doesn't reset, but the player can still interact normally. in the final game, the bug can be fixed by just not having any situations where interacting results in no text being displayed.
thank you for playing!!
i streamed this game earlier on my twitch! i've been following this project a bit since when i first saw some of your devlogs on bluesky! its very unfortunate with all the problems you encountered that prevented you from getting the game done. but man even with what you have here i am extremely impressed with what you were able to make!
can't really make too much comments cause of the fact its unfinished but im excited to play this again once its fully done!
me and my friends watched it!! thank you so much for streaming my game!! i'm so embarrassed at the state it was in... i couldn't get playtesting done with how much catching up i had to do for this jam, awawawah..... your stream has been really helpful for me to find things to tweak, fix, or otherwise change, since you're one of the only people i've been able to watch play so far. so thank you!!
your game looks awesome!! i bet you're a shoe-in to win, and thank u again for the kind words!!
Just as a heads up for anyone else checking out this game: since it's made in RPG Maker 2k3, you can press F5 and toggle "Allow uneven pixel sizes" to enable pixel stretch widescreen.
I really love the art style and gameplay concept. Unfortunately, that SSD crash you mentioned seemed to prevent as much content and polish from reaching this release, so it's a bit too clunky for much of its gameplay to be enjoyable. I did enjoy the library minigame though!
I would suggest not implementing any reflex-based minigames in the more complete release, since the engine doesn't seem to respond well to those challenges. The running physicality minigame might be better handled as just a dice roll with a nice animation alongside it.
The dialogue is very charming! As someone who is experiencing the misery of dating apps right now, I found a lot of the lines about not getting romance extremely relatable.
I'll also add that I'm very glad to see 2k3 representation in the jam. That's been my go to choice of RPG Maker for a long while, so I'm happy to see its pixel art aesthetic and "Show Picture" command strengths being shown off here.
thank you for playing!! yeah, rpg maker really doesn't handle precise timing well when it comes to events... but since the theme of the jam was "beyond expectations", i was sort of just experimenting with a bunch of different minigames that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in rpg maker. what i was going for was for Neo Malta to be this bite-sized concept game, one that's over quickly and that tries to do a lot of novel design. i definitely agree, the minigames are a little clunky, and i figured that would be the case going in, but the point from my perspective was to attempt it and surprise the player that i even tried, if that makes sense...
i definitely don't think i'd call Neo Malta fun, but i hope people leave feeling like it was at least sort of interesting! again, thanks for playing!
oopsie doopsie!! an invalid event crash from exiting from the northern corridor in the junction that i cannot seem to recreate!! sorry about that!! it doesn't seem to happen every time, at least!!