Just completed this game in an entire day! Its a great short (around 4 hour) RPG! For this thing being in a game jam it has a lot more than I was expecting!
Here are my positives!
- The art style is great! Especially the character designs, some of them have very cool and interesting ideas that ive never seen before, (talking specifically about the bird and the crab [trying not to spoil it] )
- And the battle backgrounds look professionally made, my favorite one being the lava section battle background.
- The battle balancing is also really good! In most rpgs the fights are easy and the hard ones require grinding to get ahead. But with this one even the early battles are difficult, the first boss was surprisingly hard and the late game enemy's are no joke either despite your level. I actually had to think and strategize what i was gonna do in order to win, I couldn't brute force my way through this one.
- And then there's the story, that felt both goofy, sad, and heartwarming at times. I think the character designs had a lot to do with that but i still felt a connection, especially at the end.
However there is some problems I have with the game.
- The World layout (especially in the first section) is confusing and boring. Every thing seems all over the place with your only incentive to explore is battle items and even trying to collect those feels like a hassle. The entire thing feels like one complicated maze. LATER ON IT DOES EASE UP. but the first area is a real mess. Like there are these geysers that move you around with split paths but instead of letting you jump form geyser to geyser, it instead forces you to return to the start of the geysers trail. (this probably makes more sense if you play it)
- Backtracking is another issue, there are certain items that make you back track to the town and because of the maze like layout it annoying having to travel all the way back just to find out your missing another item and have to go back from when you came get it and then return again to town. A quick travel to the town couldve fixed this issue.
- Then theres the final boss which is decently challenging but if you have the final team attack he basically dies instantly that ruins the fight (for me atleast).
- Then theres the random orb puzzle, which comes out of nowhere and the solution is in another room with no indication of it being connected. I wouldve worked if the reward was some special item, making it less important but still feeling satisfying if you solved it, but since its required to progress the story your just left confused as to why.
- And finally the story which despite my overall praise of it, has some serious pacing and structural problems . The characters are really tropey and there is so much world building that is just told to you with a quick line of dialogue, I wish that theses things couldve been introduced slowley. Like for example once the opening happens your just given a new party member and they say something like "WE NEED TO SAVE THE WORLD LETS GO" i just wish we couldve gotten a smother introduction to this new party member and that we got to know these characters more. (i know this is due to the time limit but its still sad to see something with potential get squandered like this)
- I also would've like a custom end screen but i get it time constraints.
Over all this is a great little RPG that has heart and great ideas and more potential that i think even the developers know... If your bored and have some time to kill this is definitely a good way to do so.