Hi there, I played your game it has some really cute characters both design wise and personality wise. I just hope you don't mind some critique, this game is done, but hopefully it will help you with future projects. Don't worry, this really stands out, I just hope I'm not overstepping. If I am, please feel free to disregard this.

The presentation was definitely your biggest strength. It's so cute! I was drawn in by your screen shots showcasing your character busts and sprite work. This game also gave me zero trouble running! That's amazing for a first game. Is this your first game? It just runs so cleanly. I hope you continue to make games, with practice I'm sure they will be amazing.

Theme was also pretty good, but I didn't really get any impression of character growth on Maya. She never mentioned actually not feeling confident in the beginning nor was she much more humble by the end. Obviously, the main theme Heir to the Throne was positively nailed, though. I will also say close enough for bonus one, since so many others just thought leaving on a quest they didn't want to do was the same as being forced to run away. I also can see the argument on both sides for it, so the first bonus I would say has been met.  Theme sometimes can feel like there should be an answer, but obviously there is never one answer... Not sure if that made sense...

I felt the the creativity was just okay, but it might be just me not knowing what this was going for exactly. Like if it's supposed to be action/puzzle visual novel, great. The meat of the game featured a bunch of obstacles that required watching and figuring out patterns (puzzle) and crazy hand eye coordination (action) with a cute story (visual novel). I don't see that often with RPG Maker, so I think that's a bit unique. However, if you were going for a puzzle RPG, you would need battles, levels, a world map, etc, and less physical action and reaction by the player. Games like Zelda and Y's are more action and puzzle than a standard role playing game. I'm sure your idea was the action, so this is probably unnecessary, but just in case. I don't want to assume either way.

That said, while the action puzzles are a great concept and work well, the gameplay did lack balance. I thought the flame dodging was extremely difficult and overly punishing. Yes, you can save anywhere, but even visually being sent back to the tippity top of a floor after passing the middle of a long room is moral reducing. Because you can save anywhere, the quickest solution, or the least thinking how to adjust this in other games, is to add a load option to your in game menu. I had to full on go to title and load my save from there every time I messed up. 

The more balancing way is to make it just a little slower and/or easier. I'm not saying to baby it like modern RPGs, I understand the need for challenge in games today, but there must be some kind of compromise to stop people from just giving up and quitting. I for one have rage quit this game several times this week before I could finally beat it.

There also needs to be a reward worthy of the challenge, and unfortunately, the ending of the story was disappointing. This was a cute concept and the characters were well thought out, but the story pacing and closer caused it to fail somewhat in execution. The sad part is if you remove the most interesting parts of the story, like the 'trial by fire' descent and the bloody room, the story would make more sense structurally. 

You left the player wondering many things like: Did what we just do actually happen? She passed out, so does that mean she was just dreaming? Maybe she passed out and dreamed the end and got captured? But, it would make more sense for the danger to be the dream? 

One might think it would lead someone to eagerly wait for a second part, but who's to say there's more? Is the player ready to go through that type of gameplay again to reach maybe an answer? There are a lot of questions one might ask themselves when writing for a game. Now, I'm not saying that it was bad, just incomplete. There needed to be more breadcrumbs left for the player if we're going for the 'you are going to want answers' route in storytelling.

Again, this is merely my opinion, nothing more. I am probably having the exact same storytelling problems in my game too. Every game is a learning experience, especially game jam games. After this, one can either start fresh or improve on the game submitted, and I will guarantee that the next game will be better. I really hope I didn't offend. I wouldn't  have written all this if I didn't think it was good and had amazing potential. Thank you for reading my babble.

Cute art, I really like the protagonists and the dynamic between them. Maya is a super cool main character with attitude! (Although I really don't want to be Spark 😂 but c'mon, she's a child!) I also like the fact that there is no real BBEG (in this demo at least). Would love to see this game finished!

The art was adorable, i really liked it. The characters seemed fun too. I hope you can add more in the future i was really getting into the groove but then it ended. Id love to see more.

This is really good, especially for a first game! The pixel artstyle of the sprites and map are lovely, and the dialogue sprites for the two protagonists are very charming, simple but does the job.

The gameplay is nice, ramping the difficulty up slowly, and it's good that the game keeps touch controls since, honestly, I don't have the hand-eye coordination to navigate that with a directional pad under pressure, haha.

The story is short and sweet but leaves a lot to the imagination; it raises a question at the end (why was the altar room in that state?) but unfortunately the epilogue doesn't really address it. It made me lowkey think there was an alternate ending I missed and didn't discover some sort of truth to the plot.

The character writing/dynamics are nice though - Spark comes off as jaded, someone who does the job they're bound to and has seen it all. Maya is a bit quirky (please do not drink soy sauce like water in real life) and though arrogant, there wasn't exactly anything that challenged that arrogance/pushed her toward character development. With that said, the game is like 10-20 minutes long, so that's fine!

I hope you make more games, this was fun to play.