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A jam submission

A Mothers Dream (Bugged-Indefinite Hiatus)View game page

A girl and her father have worked for many years to fulfill her mothers dream, not it is almost complete.
Submitted by MsLilly — 26 minutes, 35 seconds before the deadline
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A Mothers Dream (Bugged-Indefinite Hiatus)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fan Favorite#712.5562.800

Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

(+1)

Battles early on felt a little tough, and there were no (as far as I could find) resurrection items. If Myna dies before getting to the town, it's an auto game over. There was an NPC that gave a soft lock in town, and I was unable to continue in the area under the Church as the only path available to me didn't lead anywhere, and I was unable to back track.

Suggestion: Give a resurrection item or two, and don’t ‘hide’ the items in the shack! Either make them visible so the player knows to inspect a location, or have Myna suggest they pack for the trip and auto-add them to the inventory. Also, these initial battles should be a cake walk or of minimal difficulty; they felt VERY difficult for no reason. Lastly, let the player backtrack!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the comment!

Yeah I'm planning on rebalancing the enemies and battles when I have time, and I think there should have been at least one ressurection item in the house, but maybe I added that after submitting the game. I'll add a few more around the various maps.

Thanks for the item suggestion, I'll probably give a few basic healing items at least, and a prompt to maybe go back to the house for more.

Thank you for playing!

(+1)

You're welcome! I look forward to whatever you come up with in the future!

Submitted(+1)

So I believe most of the valid criticism has been said in previous comments so this should be brief. 

Story
The story itself lacks a dynamic feel to it, it's generic to a fault. The scenes playout like one would believe without taking the tropes to the extreme or flipping them on their heads. I thank you for not starting with a flashback or monologue about the world. 

  • The intro is too slow and lack any strong character motivation
    • My suggestion is to show more of the goal of the father and his flight device as it's far more interesting than what was offered. 

Gameplay
Balancing of course but I'll explain what was missing from your balancing. 

  • Enemies have too much health. If they were bosses this would be fine
  • They all have 1 too many skills or said skills are too powerful
  • The party doesn't have enough MP or TP to operate properly in battles. Should increase TP gain when doing damage and taking damage. 

Overall you should vigorously playtest the game and lower your scope. Just a heads up for any game you plan on making, on any engine, playtest and fix out bugs as soon as they come. The game should've just been about finding parts to fix the flying machine. No towns were needed. Just a short story about the father and daughter achieving one or both of their dreams. 

Feel free to reach out to me if you want assistance in this or future projects. 
Find all my socials in this linktree: https://linktr.ee/Starline_Arts
Or reach me on Discord: BlueRiser#0724

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the comment. :)

I could look into the intro to see if I can give some more motivation I guess. (I don't necessarily think you have to take tropes to the extreme of flip them around for a decent story...)

And I was already planning on rebalancing the enemies. I'm not the best at doing battles and enemies in the first place, and they were a kinda sorta late addition.

Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Maybe puzzles should've been the way to go in place of battles but anyway best of luck in your future projects!

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed the game as far as I played it. The characters and storyline were good so far and I loved the custom artwork. There were a lot of bugs, tho, and some of them really detracted from my enjoyment. The worse thing was the battles. They were long and pretty boring. I'm not sure if you went with default spells but the animations didn't seem to match the names at all. Blood suck in particular is very weird, with its lightning ball animation. At any rate, I thought the game was pretty good just with a few things that held it back.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the comment!

Sorry you didn't like the battles... I mostly focused on trying to get them balanced. I may have given the enemies a bit too much hp? I'm not super experienced with making battles and enemies.

I did start out from the default spells, but I changed the numbers and did try to change some of the animations. The blood suck in particular... Well, MZ doesn't have a bite animation (at least not that I could find), and you can't really edit the animations in MZ like you could in the older makers (there's not even a colour slider),  so I couldn't make one from different animations without using effekseer, which I have no experience with. So I just found something that I thought kinda worked. I might look into finding a better animation for it online.

Submitted(+1)

There's also a plugin that lets you use animations you made in MV in MZ. https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/animation-mv-plugin-for-rpg-mak... It wasn't too distracting, but because so many enemies did the blood suck move, I kept watching it over and over going "why is there electric bolts in this animation?" The battles weren't too bad, they just took awhile, but were pretty easy. Random encounters I usually expect to be over in three turns or less, especially if I'm spamming my best attacks. It wasn't too bad - at least the battles weren't super tough - they just kinda dragged a bit.

Submitted(+1)

After the first cave the dad didn't spawn for the cut scene. Other than that the game is wonderfully done.

Developer(+1)

That's one of the bugs I'll work on fixing when the judging is over and I can actually post an update.

Thank you very much for you comment, and for playing my game!

Submitted (3 edits) (+1)

So slim said most of what I have to say. The softlocks were definitely annoying.

Seems a bit odd that the first cutscene doesn't use the name you chose and uses ??? instead (unless that is your chosen name). 

There is no warning that you can't return to previous maps. Would be nice to have a warning when it comes to points of no return.

Dad goes missing/invisible a lot during cutscenes.

The 100 TP skills are basically useless. There is no TP reserve, so there is almost never a reason to use them because the battle is done by then.

During the exit of the first caves right before repairing the bridge, you can see a phantom enemy that disappears a few seconds after you re-enter.

When you enter the city, you can mess up the children's pathing and set off an event saying that you shouldn't be leaving town.

The one mimic chest in the last area can be interacted repeatedly. You can also talk to it to start the fight (gives no rewards), then fight it again by talking to the chest next to it. Afterwards, the mimic stays shut and you can keep interacting with it for potions. At this point the game is done and you can't progress.

During the first pilgrimage cave after you obtain Gale (do a recovery for Gale after he joins or start him off at the starting level via the character database instead), if you immediately turn around, you can walk off the map and grab edge chests.

One of the tiles in the last area is a single directional passthrough. This means you can't return to previous sections of the map.

Developer

Thank you for the comment! :)

And thank you for mentioning the ??? name at the start! I must have forgotten to change that after I decided to let the player name the character. (and it's a super easy thing to fix lol.)

I'll try to look into either putting in no return warnings, or letting you return to previous maps. After doing my best to fix all the bugs probably.

I hope you enjoyed the game despite all the issues, and I hope you have a great day. 

Thank you for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Hi MsLilly, I just played the first 30 minutes of your game. I really love your mapping, especially the town map was gorgeous. And I love how everything felt so alive with all the NPCs and animals. Your cutscenes were so nice to watch and your writing was really good. Meeting Gale was definitely my favourite cutscene, they were so cute together.

Now I did get softlocked at a few points:

  • When I tried to use the light item in the caves, I was returned to darkness.
  • When I interacted with a shopkeeper near Marsha, the game froze after said shopkeeper turned towards me. I tried interacting with her both from the right and from down, but the issue remained.

I also noticed some (small) issues:

  • The name Myna is squashed in the naming sequence. I'm not sure if there's anything you can do about that.
  • Myna's bust in particular looks blurry.
  • The globe is hiding behind the closet.
  • Because you can't walk on the chairs, the only way to interact with the letter is to interact with the apples again.
  • On the outside map of Myna's home right before you transfer to the next map, there's a bit of mountain that's square and not round. I can show a screenshot if you need me to.
  • Your beautiful mountain map looks off with those square shadows. I believe the FSM pack actually comes with round shadow tiles.
  • There's a portrait missing of Dad when you first come across the broken bridge.
  • The small elevation in front of the cave and next to the waterfall can be accessed through several points, namely by walking on the flowers and by walking on a part of the wall as well.
  • The ! icons that the monsters have don't always appear above them, but above nothing. This happens in particular with the first encounter in the caves, as well as the bird/eye thing near the exit.
  • There's a bird/eye monster combo in the caves that don't attack you or do anything. They're on the second map right before the Redcaps.
  • Your father is invisble during the fixed the bridge cutscene.
  • The yellow tile.
  • Missing portraits while interacting with the horses.
  • The cat gets stuck in her moveroute I believe.
  • The text says a long spear was found in the town's chest, but it is actually a Mithril spear.
  • Myna's portrait is missing when you interact with the dog
  • When I enter the crypt, I can actually walk up into the darkness
  • It's kind of weird that Gale starts out without full HP & MP

I'll try and continue my playthrough later.

Developer (4 edits)

Thanks for the comment :D

Yeah I noticed a few of those while playtesting but didn't have time to fix them.

I was playtesting a bit as I worked, mostly for cutscenes, and was gonna do a proper playthrough to test when it was finished, but then I finally finished like, 10-15 minutes before the deadline.

I did put out a development log thingy about the gamebreaking stuff but I guess you didn't see it. (Or downloaded before I posted it the day after the submission period ended)

One of those gamebreakers is a missing move event that would have taken you to the final cutscene.......  So when you reach a set of stairs in a cave that don't work, that's it.

Though if you're curious about how the story ends, after leaving whatever rating you think it deserves of course, I recorded and uploaded it to youtube here: 

Edit: And yeah I made a last minute decision to level up Gale when he joins, so he wasn't lvl1, I didn't consider what that'd do to his health.

Edit2: And also, I think I forgot about those shadow tiles when I was putting together the tilesets, I might see if I can fit them in somewhere to make the maps better.

Submitted(+1)

No sorry, I missed the devlog when I downloaded it.

So I played as the far as the game let me and I have a few more bugs I found. I'm not sure if you've found those already, but I figured I'd list them anyway:

  • The ghostlights in the crypt remain even after defeating them. Same with the mimic chest, while the mimic posts/book did disappear.
  • I can walk on a part of the wall in teh Crypt. It's the part to the right of the big door.
  • I can walk up into darkness when I get to the cave.
  • I got another softlock: I got stuck on a rock tile right next to the mimic and the chest in the cave. I could turn, but I couldn't walk off it.
  • Square shadows in the cave make the cave walls seems square.

I had a suggestion I forgot to mention in my last post, so I'm writing it here: It seems a bit odd to have the left facing portraits on the left side of the screen. It basically feels like they're peering outside of the game. I think it would be nicer if they were on the other side or if you flipped them.

I just watched the video. Nice ending. A shame of the gamebreaking bug, but at the very least it's near the end and not near the start.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

I did know about some monsters staying on some maps. The mimic chests are actually supposed to stay though, you're supposed to be able to loot them after beating them.

I didn't know about the crypt wall, but I figured some walls would be walkable, since I didn't have enough time to go through every walkable and not walkable tile properly. I've already been working on making sure all walls are unwalkable with a plugin, but of course I can't update the game until the judging is over.


The left facing portraits were actually supposed to be on the right side, but doing that was way more complicated that having them as is even with the plugin I used, so I saved even considering doing that for when I had the game completely playable. I'll probably work on it after I get all the bugs fixed.


I'll go through your lists and work on everything you found when I have time.

Thanks for letting me know about everything you found!

And thank you for playing my game! :D

I hope you have a great day!