It's so impressive that you've managed to put together a full-fledged RPG for your entry! Amazing work.
I love the 1-bit style, and you've managed to portray so much character within such strict limitations. The portraits are all wonderful, and the writing is very strong. It really did feel like a little adventure with all the places you visit and the people you meet. You also did a fantastic job of blending comedy with more serious and heartfelt aspects... I didn't expect the game to go where it did, but it tied into the overarching narrative so nicely.
I did get a little lost at points (for some reason, I just didn't clock where the university was) - but it is the moon, so I think the open space is good for properly conveying the setting and atmosphere. By the end of the game, I had a solid grasp on where things were and where I was meant to be headed.
I don't think I engaged with the combat system quite as much as I should have done... I went from grinding to defeat The Conditioner to slicing down all foes with my upgraded Plasma Cutter. That's probably a side-effect of getting lost for a while: I had an overabundance of resources to spend. Balancing an RPG is a tricky task at the best of times, though, let alone when it's for a month-long game jam. Crucially, you managed to make the level-up system super-satisfying. I really appreciated being able to feel an immediate increase in the strength of my attacks.
Viewing post in Bark Side of the Moon jam comments
Thank you so much! Especially for playing it through to the end, I didn't think many people would.
I attribute the speed of development to my numerous failed projects, where I lifted much of the code from, haha. Hopefully the open MFA will help future devs to skip all of that.
Yeah, it was hard to distinguish the buildings in a monochrome style. That's a lesson we've learned about working in that art style.
Balance was by far the hardest thing to get right. I had spreadsheets and kept tweaking the growth formulas. Since I wanted to minimise the dependence on external files for the sake of the mobile compilation, I had to enter those all in manually through the event editor, which was a major pain.
Thanks again for playing it. I look forward to trying your entry soon, it looks awesome. :)