Hi there!
This post might come as a surprise to you but I'm fulfilling my obligation of writing a review for every entry I played in the RPG Maker Game Jam 2025 and haven't had the time and motivation combo until now. Apologies for the wait.
I'm one of the 6 judges for this RPG Maker Game Jam 2025. I was one of the 2 judges assigned to your game, and we have been assigned to rate your games according to each metric highlighted on the game's main jam page, and submit these ratings to the organisers, who will then appropriate what happens with that. Please contact them in the Q&A if you have any further questions about the judging process. The judges will work on different time schedules, so even if I may have finished playing your game, the entire process might not be finished as of yet. Many of these reviews I am posting while still judging.
All that aside, I'd like to share my VOD of me playing your game, which contains up to an hour of gameplay, and some final thoughts at the end! Depending on whether I stopped the VOD early or not, it will also contain many of the thoughts that I say to you below, which may cause repetition. So just be aware of that.
I will also attach a review below this VOD. I will not disclose my ratings for each category as of yet, but those will be revealed in due time. Not all judges are required to post a review or VOD to each game, but many will do so even if it's optional, including myself.
Here's the VOD:
I really quite loved the concept and the presentation of this one, which is why it's a shame to say that the drawbacks are mostly technical, I feel. Despite the mood being set incredibly well, and the overall flow of the game being very interesting and full of interesting ideas, I feel like it would take some work to bring this together into a more coherent gameplay experience. But it has a lot of interesting ideas! So that's why to me it's more of a slightly flawed but very interesting game, that with more polish, would be absolutely winning.Theme
There are certainly expectations that the company has of you, the employee. Your job is to try to meet expectations. I sadly couldn't detect much "beyond expectations" context for the story, however. I was in particular looking for ways in the gameplay to exceed expectations. But maybe your relationship with the person in the breakroom as you play is something that resides outside of expectations? And that's a version of "beyond"? It's a bit of a stretch imo, but it is there, and I think more points would be awarded if it was maybe a bit more central in theme and pushed it a bit more.
Gameplay
Decent systems here. I like the theme - I'm weak to themes of therapy and mind health and stuff - but I do feel as if the systems could be baked a little more, as mentioned earlier. I liked the concept of them, but in process, as you can probably see in the VOD above, I got some unexpected results and sometimes didn't know what was happening or how to progress through a battle. However, I found many of the ideas present very interesting, and certainly I think the dev has a lot of potential to tell more stories in this vein that are very interesting indeed.
Engagement
Conceptually, it has a nice hook. The story has a hook of getting to know someone outside of the therapy sessions. But the way that it ended was quite abrupt, and I would have liked to see the themes explored to their full potential. Maybe if I got the 5/5 ending I could have been informed about the true ending, etc., but the lack of save/load system means it's a bit of a slog to try to get a 5/5 ending because failure is, in my experience, quite likely for at least 1 of the 5 with my current strategy. If I were able to load from a menu, then I might be able to get the 5/5 ending and figure out what the story was about. But that couldn't happen. I think with further polish in this area, there might be a diamond here.
Presentation
Quite nice-looking and well-polished! Has a good visual identity. Generally very competent. I liked the ideas visually, and the dungeon-explore element, and the custom drawings. Very cool all-round.
Polish
Light bug where you are able to repeat the 5th appointment an infinite number of times if you wanted to. This resets the boss appointment availability too.
Overall
I feel as if this was an entry that had a lot of potential if it were polished more and if the gameplay loop were polished a bit more too. If it were made tighter, and the themes delivered maybe a bit more powerfully (for me, at lesat), I think this would be an absolute banger. For now, I am more excited by the promise of what this developer can do if they set their minds to it.
Keep making games. Every game's a gift <3