Neat story! I included it in a compilation video series of all of the games from the ‘So Bad It’s Good’ Jam, if you’d like to take a look :)
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Crystal Captor: Memory Chronicle Finale's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Is the game so bad that it's good? | #1 | 4.001 | 4.111 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
So, I (more or less) finished the game, and while I stick to my initial assessment of a well-made (okay, maybe middling, but decent production values) parody, it was surprisingly fun and I got a good laugh out of it. I didn't get half the references, and the humour isn't normally my style, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
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Ja Wíźàrdmäñ 4Oh forgot to note, the only references in here were it rips off a bit of Tusbasa Reservoir Chronicle with the whole "fragmented soul" thing, it rips off old Final Fantasy games with the whole going to crystal things (except you capture it rather than revive it), technically with the skeleton guy when he goes let's d-d-duel I sorta made fun of Yu-Gi-Oh even though I am not a fan, and Mr. Cabbage lowkey makes fun of the cabbage merchant in Avatar xD
I loved this, initially I almost feared the high production value would make it ill-suited for the jam, but when I saw the first outside map I knew there'd be enough badness in there. :P I liked the story in all of it's silly glory as well as the characters!
Some of my favourite things were:
- Library voice acting and Mr. Cabbages (I think it was the same voice actor?)
- Just the voice acting in general
- Jackass's party buff having a wolf howl sound
- Cabbage tower
- Father's dialogue after the Mona boss fight
- The fact that your party consisted of your family, that seems very unusual
Everything else was great, too, though, and there was certainly enough "badness" that it fits the Jam's theme!
Small note and not really relevant since it fits the theme, but it seems you can enter and exit the bakery right away and advance without ever getting a bread! I restarted the game after I did that, because I wanted to try to see everything there was in the game (though I'm unsure if I managed to). Also there was a "would of" in one dialogue, but maybe that was on purpose because of the Jam theme, I can't be sure!
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Fantnasy GaemHaha "high production value" it's weird as that is a compliment, but considering the jam it may not be, but yes thank you xD
The idea was to give the initial feel of a good game, but not quite reaching its potential, which makes it bad. The cover is to represent when a game has a better cover than its actual game lol.
Very glad you loved the voice work! My mission with all my games for this studio is partial or full voicework, and due to the theme, I told my actors no more than 3 takes each and I would ask for zero retakes lol. Majority of the lines were single takes lol. Glad you love Mr. Cabbage, that guy (and the library people) were done by my brother! And yes, for Jackass I couldn't resist using a wolf howl for his epic buff, lol.
Oh really, well you're not supposed to leave until you get the bread lol. That may or may not get fixed. And as for how the dialogue was, I purposely left some grammar and typo errors, especially relevant near the end of the game when you play Jackass at the pub... I wanted to give a feel of a slightly rushed/poor translation job of a JRPG xD
But yeah, glad you enjoyed it! The girl who played Penelope, when she read the script described the game feeling like a twisted family outing lol she loved it. What's really funny is, as I've worked with these voice overs a lot since they are apart of my team for awhile, seemed to not recognise my voice (I played Amina) lol, not even my own brother! He was like, "So who plays the voice?" and I was like "That's me! Can't you recognise your own sister?!" It was probably the (fail) British accent I put on.
Thank you so much for playing, sorry for the long comment xD
Yeah, this Jam certainly makes rating things really difficult... is high production value a plus or minus? Who knows, but for me it was a plus in this particular case, because there was still enough (intentional) badness that I felt the game fit the Jam theme! I did find the cover to be way too nice for this Jam, but I can see your intention with it! (It's really weird when good things are reversed because the Jam makes us view everything through a different "lens")
I kind of just wrote that "would of" off as intentional bad dialogue, it's just a pet peeve of mine. But with how well written most of what I've seen from you has been, I thought the mistakes were likely on purpose. There's no need to fix the bakery, I think, it all fits the Jam theme after all!
Yeah, I really liked the family dynamic it had, since in most stories parents just get removed from the main plot in some way!
Those anecdotes from your team are quite funny! I noticed in the credits that you voiced Amina yourself, and I thought her voice was quite nice, just like most of the voice acting (and the rather few parts that felt less good felt less good on purpose). I've never worked with voice actors myself and it adds so much to the game! It's amusing your brother didn't recognize your voice, I guess I already just mentioned that, but it's just so fun to imagine!
No worries about the long comment, it's nice to talk to a fellow game developer, that's actually something I haven't done very often yet!
Mmhmm, I also feel what is so bad it's good has many interpretations, so I sort of went with a realistic approach when a game looks promising, it reaches... doesn't quite get there. Though I did kinda like my plot that a sequel nobody wanted might come underway, I even bought the pirate ship tiles today xD
Glad you feel it was well written! I had fun with this story, and it was a nice break as I do typically write fairly more serious stories. I love comedy of course, but another thing I love are dark fantasy and post-apocalyptic. I loved how in this I was able to get dark and dramatic while still not taking itself too seriously everywhere else.
Yeah, I notice that too. I wanted the parents to be more involved, plus come on, Callie is a badass mother and Bobby is so laid back and devoted, Plus the cheesy romance between the two, so precious.
I am glad you liked Amina's voice~ I've always wanted to voice a mysterious damsel in distress that is actually quite powerful when their power is returned lol. One of the "borrowed" (aka ripped off on purpose) elements of this story was the whole fragmented heart thing was from one of my fave CLAMP stories, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and the confusing plot twist is sort of poking fun at Clamp's tendancy to confuse the hell out of you with their heartbreaking reveals. Then the whole crystal thing was a nod to early Final Fantasy, only instead o crystal revival, you take the power lol. But yeah, voice work is so fun and important to me, I feel not enough indie titles (especially free ones) have it, so I intend to change that a little~
Ah that is good, I love talking to fellow devs too! It's a lot of fun and beneficial.
Yeah, it definitely does have many interpretations, as we can see in all the lovely entries the Jam got (though I've only played about 7 of them so far, but they were all very different). It's a nice idea to make the game according to that vision, just a lot more subtle than most of the entries I've seen including my own. Which doesn't mean it's bad at all, in fact I rated your game the highest out of all the ones I played because I enjoyed it the most! I think I'd be up for playing a sequel to the game made in a similar vein, yay for pirate tiles!
I generally prefer happier stories, but I do have some dark concepts as well that may or may not some day become reality. A Jam like this might've been a good opportunity to mess around with themes like that in a not too serious manner indeed! I saw you had a post-apocalyptic game uploaded, but instead went and just played the Otome (I will leave some feedback on the page of that game).
I appreciated it! I really loved almost everything about them, Callie reminded me of Yuki from my own game a bit because of her broom (though I think you didn't reach that part in KDM yet) so that made it fun, and Bobby's ultra relaxed attitude (up to the great dialogue after the Mona bossfight) combined with his voice acting were just great!
That description of Amina reminds me a bit of a certain character I love a lot (who also happens to be my profile icon)! I only read one CLAMP work, X was actually one of my first mangas but it was never finished here. D: It's so long ago that I don't remember if it had any twists of that sort up to the point where the releases stopped. I found the twists upon twists at the end of your game very entertaining regardless, however! I must also admit to my shame, that I've never played any Final Fantasy. When it comes to JRPG, Atelier is my favourite series and one of the only JRPGs I've played a lot of!
Your "voice acting mission" seems like a good one, since I think voice acting in the west should to be brought up to a more respected position like it seems to be in Japan (how some western games don't even seem to credit their voice actors is beyond me). However, I personally wouldn't even know where to get voice actors, I usually try to do everything in my games myself. D: Probably part of the reason why I haven't made super many yet and have not too much confidence in my work!
Mmhmm! This jam really gave me some fire I needed as well, since I've kinda been suffering writer's block, and this theme was perfect to let my juices flow without having to be concerned with plot hole or coherency lol. But yeah, so many neat interpretations of theme breathed life into some really neat titles!
Ah yes, happy stories are good! Even though I like dark themes, in truth I love that in combination with light. Themes I like to highlight is light amidst the darkness, so I guess you could say my favourite theme is hope! Ah, I saw your comment on the otome, I am glad you are enjoying it thus far! Our team has worked hard on that for over a year now, but there is still work to be done! (I think once I finish the current route I am nearly done writing the other 4 routes will be super easy and quicker to write).
Ooh, can't wait to get to that part in KDM! Callie and Bobby's VAs are really good friends and have been with me since we started this silly little studio back in 2012. In fact, the whole entire family (the parents, our hero, and adopted brother) are my loyal veterans--that's why I purposely had them voice a family since we've always felt close like a family!
Ooh, what character is in your avatar? I am curious now! I have actually never read/watched X, though it looks pretty twisted from clips I've seen haha, Haha, no need to feel ashamed, I've only RECENTLY gotten into Final Fantasy myself... we had to be very wise with our choices in games as a kid since we didn't have a lot of money, in fact we mostly could only play PC games. I only got a PS2 like... 2 years ago I think? But now the legends I want to play (majority anyway) are super cheap haha!
Definitely, English voice acting deserves more love~
Ahh, art blocks of any kind suck, but these Jams are really good medicine! Especially if it's something like this one where you're encouraged to "slack off" a bit, in a way! I have procrastinated an RPG project forever now, I hope maybe the Jams I entered finally boosted my confidence to start it. D:
I think hope is a good theme, if something gets too dark I find it hard to care about what happens sometimes, because the default assumption is that everything will stay terrible (or get even more terrible) for all the characters anyway. D: If I even start playing/reading/watching it at all, in the first place!
The Otome is very nice so far, and I hope you reach a point where writing becomes easier again! When I started work on my short visual novel for the TyranoBuilder Jam - which made me find this nice website - I was writer's blocked so much that I wrote 4 lines of text (which were changed later) in the course of about 4 hours initially. D: Good luck continuing your work on the Otome!
Haha, it must have been fun for them to voice a couple in that case, and a cute reason for the way the story turned out!
The character in my avatar is Dizzy from Guilty Gear, since I saw that you found my deviantART you've probably already seen her there, but I can explain why your description reminded me of her if you'd like!
I really can't remember that much about X, I'm not sure how many years ago I read it, and the fact that the ending never got released here made it very anticlimactic. D: Though it doesn't mean I dislike it in any way, maybe I should re-read it some time since it can be fun to revisit things you've read/watched/played in the past!
I've been a PC gamer forever as well and only got my first console rather recently, specifically to play Atelier games and Demon's Souls. It's always kind of interesting to see what games someone grew up on depending on which game systems s/he had available at any given time! Many games seem a lot cheaper now indeed, although I imagine some are hard to get due to availability!
Ahh, I plan to check out your visual novel later as it looks so cute! You have a very soothing art-style that is quite an eye-pleaser!
Yes, jams are the best medicine. Majority of my games under my belt are pretty much born of a jam in some way, some of them were just way too overdue or got too big to make it for the jam (such as my otome, that was meant for the Ren'Py annual 1-month jam NaNoRenO but it... grew... like a lot lol).
I hope to see more RPGs from you! KDM proved to me you're really good at this~ I had a question, though, how did you make it where the dungeon was dark and you had a light surrounding you? I feel that would be a useful feature to implement in one of my dungeons. As well as, how did you make it where you could move a stool around, like in the kitchen? (I love puzzles and would love to practice doing things like that).
Sure, I never got to play Guilty Gear, so I would love to hear how she reminds you!
I hope you will like the VN! It's my first attempt at one, but I had to rush it a bit because I noticed the Jam too late and procrastinated before starting (common theme, eh D:). I'm glad you like my art style, even if it tends to be all over the place and varying wildly - at least it seems that way to me, but some people still say I have a recognizable style? :S
Somehow working under pressure sometimes seems necessary, in the way that Jams enforce due to having a time limit. But it's really cool that you decided to take your Otome further! I think that's better than making it in time for the Jam deadline, in a way!
Ahh thank you for your encouragement! As mentioned I've been procrastinating one I wanted to make for a really long time now, so hopefully there'll be another one to play...
The light in KDM is a "Show Picture" with a black picture with transparent feathered circle in the middle, but I'm not sure how exactly I did the events for it anymore. If you want to I can try to look it up, but I know I did something wrong because the event code for it causes heavy lag on some computers!
I think the stool was just a check whether the player is facing left on interaction and the doing move route 1 left, and either triggering a self switch or incrementing a variable to keep track of how far it's supposed to be pushed. Again, if you want, I can try to look that up as well!
I'll send you a note on dA about Dizzy, since I want to link a video and it'd cause a huge embed here. I already feel a bit bad for spamming so much text on your game page! :P
I am sure I will, it looks quite relaxing and I am curious how you do with VNs as that is where my personally specialty lies~
Very much so, the time crunch sorta kicks your procrastination in the ass and be like LET'S GET A MOVE ON! But yeah, my otome actually was VERY different if it had went for the jam, but when I actually started writing... many elements changed, and the story and backstories, really only Emmet's character and backstory is the one that had little to no changes in comparison to the others. And it just became a bigger project, but I am happy for it as it is one of my favourite writings so far even though Slice-of-Life is normally not my style (I love SoL stories but I do not consider myself a SoL writer).
Oh wow,. sounds like a neat little trick. You can look it up if you want, but I hope it is not too much trouble!
Look forward to the note, and no worries on the spam, I love comments xD
My first impression was of a fairly well made parody game. Then it locked up on me.
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Ja Wíźàrdmäñ 4"Fairly well made parody" haha, I take that as a compliment, though I was kinda going for really bad knock-off...something...lol...well it is somewhat parody-ish too.
How did it lock up and where? I might know a way around it (I tested it and everything was fine on my end, but later I did find 1 event that if you approach and Enter from the left, it'll lock up--so you have to go from behind or on the right side of the person... I forgot to set it to skip if cannot move haha...if it is somewhere else, then I'll look into it).
Huh that is weird, which bread were you taking? The two breads on top I believe I evented to just have dialogue whilst the one below is the stealing scene. I'll definitely look into it. I'd just steal the bread next to the cake, or you can actually buy it from the lady and leave the tent to progress.
At the inn or the pub inn? If you mean at the end where you play Jackass, I am assuming you mean where you approach the white haired girl at the buckets lol. Do not approach her from the left, as I forgot to put "skip if cannot move" as her hitting him makes him step 2 steps back, but from the left he can't move that far lol. But yeah, whether you talk to everyone or not, once you exit the pub, you get the final cutscene before the end credits.
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