Please see Teal's play-through video, as well as her review of the game in the video description:
Play game
Stella Viverra Tellus's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #29 | 3.700 | 3.700 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Hey, very cool entry, I made a first impression video with more thoughts if you're bored:
https://youtu.be/UzqGtB_Atdk?t=2146
Submitted
Castle of the Stolen StarsHonestly…
This is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I enjoyed the designing and effort put into it. You can tell that a lot of effort was inputted like it took time from your day.
Some structural criticism:
Make sure to check that there isn’t any bugs that impact the game. You’re a gamer developer so you know what bugs I’m talking about, they can really impact the game.
Overall, I appreciate this game and I will forever remember this game as a great game for a starter. Even though you’re a starter, it seems amazing to me that you did so good.
Best Game I’ve played this minute!!!!
So going to mention some issues:
Ignoring the weird vines here.
If you reenter the hotel, it seems to reset some of the events, such as the letter.
The path to the tower feels a bit odd since you overshoot the tower even though there is a path right in front.
If you choose the leave floor option, but don't actually leave the floor, it resets the flowers anyways.
On leaving a room, the flowers don't reset, but the enemies do.
Consider adding additional clues for color based puzzles so that people who have difficulty with colors can complete the puzzles without guessing.
Also, please double check the wording of the puzzle reset text. It seems a bit odd.
One of the combat skills can be used outside of combat.
Might be nice to be able to use the combination skills outside of combat.
When the one mob revives, so does all the adds for that mob. Seems a little bit weird given that it doesn't seem to revive the adds in combat and other mobs usually only revive when you change rooms.
Ending felt kind of forced, but that is probably just part of the time limit. Don't recall seeing any credits though.
The fights went a bit fast, so it was hard to read some of the effects.
Some of the dialogue seemed a bit long and some of the dialogue seemed.... odd. For example, near instead of 'on' the shelf.
It seems like you have to buy each item then talk to the shopkeeper instead of buying them all at once if you want multiple cookies?
A nicer option would have been:
Set variable [local 1] = 0
Set variable [buyable item variable] = current count (for each item)
Shop
{ (for each buyable item)
Set variable [local 2] = current count of buyable item.
Set variable [local 1] = [local 2 (value after shopping)] - [buyable item (the value before shopping)]
Add [local 1] to [Reserved Cookies].
set [local 1] to 0 (optional)
}
Then, once you talk to the shopkeeper,
Add item [Cookies] + [Reserved Cookies].
Submitted
Time To SeekThanks for bug breaking the game, I hoped you liked it! Also, thanks for giving me the bugs that I needed to fix and suggestions about certain things like the wording of the reset text and to make the battle log a little bit slower. Also, sorry I didn't knew you were colorblind/had any impairments that would make the puzzles harder, I'll try to fix that! To clarify some things, I'm really sorry for the abrupt ending, I was originally going to make the game longer, but due to the time limit on the game jam I had to finish the 10 floors and make that the demo which wasn't exactly where I would have wanted to end things. Also for why the plants don't respawn when you enter a room but do respawn when you change floors, that was the original plan since I didn't want the player to as quickly farm and for the enemy respawning when you enter a room rather than when you change floors, I could change that if it becomes a problem. Lastly, for the shop, the original plan for it was that instead of just shopping at one stall and then getting a cookie after your purchase for that stall, you could get a cookie after each visit and purchase from the shop no matter how many stalls you shopped at, but I couldn't get it working in time since the players could cheat and not buy any items, but still get the cookie. It was easier to take care of this problem if it was with single stalls only, however, if I can't make my original plan happen, your idea for improving the shop system would be really beneficial for me! Thank you once again for finding these bugs!
You can deal with that in another way since you don't allow selling items. Have an autorun event (you'll want a blank autorun event for this)
[local variable 1] = current gold
erase event.
Once you've done that, it will save the current gold and won't run until the next time the player enters.
Then, for the shopkeeper, do
[local variable 2] = current gold.
if [local variable 1] > 0, then if [local variable 2] <= [local variable 1], then +1 cookie and [local variable 1] = 0
What this does is it checks if local variable 1 is 0. If it is 0, then either you came in with no gold (so shopping is impossible) or you already received a cookie. If your gold when talking to the shopkeeper is less than your gold when you entered, then add 1 cookie and set local variable to 0.
If you don't want the bargain bin to give gold, you can then for the bargain bins, you can do:
[local variable 2] = current gold.
Shop
[local variable 3] = current gold
[local 2] -= [local 3]
[local 1] -= [local 2]
What this will do is that it will make it so that it first stores your gold when you are in the bargain bin. Then it will check your gold after shopping, remove the current gold from the previous gold check (so you are left with the difference), then remove that value from local 1, which is the gold you entered with since you don't want that different counting for the cookies.
This would encourage players to just keep leaving and returning to the shop though, which is why it would make more sense to just give them cookies as according to their purchase count or purchase value (say every X gold gives a cookie). So with purchase value if, for example, you want them to get 1 cookie per 20 gold spent, then for the shopkeeper, you would do
[local variable 2] = current gold
[local variable 2] -= [local variable 1]
(optional) [local 1] = [local 2] %=20
[local 2] /= 20
add item [cookies] += [local 2]
[local variable 1] = current gold or (if optional above is set, [local 1] += current gold
So you get the difference in gold, then divide it by 20, then add that to cookies. The optional path would allow them to save any extra spent value if they continue purchasing in that same trip.
There are other ways to do things.
Also, if you have issues in the future, you could try rpgmakerweb or one of the development discords. For RPGMaker related, I'm in the GAB JAM (formerly the IGMC) discord server (it is somewhat inactive, but I do check when someone says something in a game talk channel). There are other discords for developers as well. There are plenty of people that are willing to give some quick advice.
Disquieting story, wonderful custom art (especially those enemies!), lots of creative eventing as well, and a sweet combination mechanic in battle. Game went on a bit long, I'm thinking for a 1 hour jam, a floor or two could be cut, a few rooms, maybe tighten up dialog to communicate what you want as fast as possible.
A little polish on the effekseer animations during combat would help, like getting them placed in the right spot (projectile plugin maybe?), and speeding them up or removing that cast animation altogether. I was a little less inclined to combine novel things because I was too impatient waiting for my turn to come around when it failed.
Amazing that you made such a well thought out story with custom graphics, were able to wrap up the story, and avoided the sort of game crashing bugs that I've seen in a lot of other entries. Very worthwhile entry!
Thanks so much for playing my game! It was my first time using rpgmaker mz and therefore the effeseer animations, so I should probably fix that after the jam. I was originally going to make my own animations, but I ran out of time. I'm also planning to add more content in the future as a side project, so the story's quite not over yet! Thank you once again!
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