Post by Razuth in Orphanage in the shadows comments

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Razuth11 days ago

For your first game this is quite decent.

PROS +

Creative use of lighting.

Good use of interactive environment.

Nice dialogue and writing.

CONS -

Default SFX/Font and Windowskin break the horror immersion.

Elaborating on the above - The level design along with the use of lighting is decent. You kept the scope small and together with the lighting it melds well to create a good claustrophobic horror playing environment.

I like how you can examine pretty much everything and get contextual feedback - that's a really nice touch.

The writing and dialogue is nicely balanced. Done well, to the point and not overcooked - which is very easily done so good job with that.

The default sounds, font and windowskin are counterproductive to creating a fully fleshed out horror vibe. People often neglect this and IMO it is far more immersion breaking than just using the RTP graphics

To be honest I don't ever mind people using the RTP sprites and tilesets, especially for their first project and when used well (like it is here.)

What bothers me more is just using the pre-set sounds (you can literally just pick from the RTP) better sounding horror game SFX that would better lend to the vibe of the game.

You can also change the color of your windows even if you don't want to download new skins for your UI. Changing your font to something more horror oriented would be great too.

Overall it's a decent game, but it is just lacking it's own personal stamp at the moment to set it apart from other horror games made in MZ.

For your first game this is a really good effort. Interested to see what you cook up next :)

willnoo11 days ago

Thank you for the input. It means a lot. A lot of the default stuff is there because I couldn't figure out how to make it work and by the time I did, I was already half way through lol.

For my next project I'm using custom enemy sprites so it's not just a ghost or a dude. (I'm not too solid on the ones I got atm though.) Sound effects I'm not too sure on how to fix in that regards, I assume you mean just the menus or doors as well? I've yet to figure out how to change the font lol. Especially for the title screen which I think everyone will look at and go. lol. That sucks. (I meant to add in the title through gimp but completely forgot)

When you say rtp though I'm not sure what you mean? Is there a place to get a better collection of noises specifically for rpgmaker? I do think the door sound effects could be better. Though imo they're not too bad? When it comes to sounds for me it's the scary noise sfx I'm using. Slowed down crow only works so far and the footsteps are rough.

I am using quite a few custom sounds (mentioned in the attributions notepad file) but maybe I need better sounds overall? If it's not too much an ask could you provide an example of the sounds you dislike in particular?

But thank you for all the info. I'll put this use immediately. Especially font and windowskins. I'll see if I can find something more horror oriented like you say.

And thank you again for liking the game lol. I was pretty negative on it myself but if you like it then that's good. My next project is going to be a longer more in-depth title (hopefully) with both Lucy and Lizzie as playable characters. Sort of like a corpse party type thing where you get separated etc. This was more of a skill test and a learning lesson. Which did teach me a lot.

Razuth11 days ago

The RTP stands for 'run-time package' and is just basically another term for all the assets preloaded into a new project you create.

The door sounds are OK, I was referring to the default UI sounds (when the player is menu-ing etc). These can easily be changed under the SYSTEM tab. Changing it to pretty much anything suitable would be an improvement over what the project defaults to is a massive plus in my eyes.

Fonts must be 'True Type' fonts. You install them as normal then move the font file in to the Font folder in your RPG Maker game project folder.

Then go into the SYSTEM 2 tab in your project and type the font file name (make sure it's suffixed with .ttf) and it should load the font into your game.

Windowskins you just find free stuff with a quick Google search, then copy/paste it into System folder making sure the filename is 'Window' that will replace the default one.

These are quick guidelines but there are in depth tutorials knocking about if you struggle.

willnoo11 days ago

Thank you. I changed the default save, ok and menu sounds. Changed the font type to a type writer type thing and the ui is just a different colour atm lol.

I'll take a look for custom ones shortly. And yes, the font change is actually huge lmao.

Razuth11 days ago

Awesome - I really think your game will have a much better vibe now.

I will probably give it another whirl when you get an update sorted.

Also you might wanna consider uploading a browser build as well as your download version. It will help with your game's accessibility as some people are concerned with online safety concerning download builds. Just make sure if you do upload one that your ZIP folder's name is different from your download file's name otherwise it will overwrite and replace it. Example - Download version - 'OITS'. Browser version 'OITS BROWSER'.

willnoo11 days ago (1 edit)

Oh sorry I meant for the new title. I could definitely get it on this one as well though. I'll get to it when I have a bit of spare time.

And I'll make sure to add a browser version too. Does itch.io not have a built in virus scanner?
Edit : site says there's too many files in the thing 😭I'll probably just forget about the browser version for now unless there's a fix.