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RPG Maker MZ "You Got It, Now Use It!" Game Jam

Hosted by StudioBlue · #RPGMakerMZGameJam

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A jam submission

CrossingTalesView game page

A *completely* linear epic *fantasy* story. <StudioBlue MZ Game Jam Submission>

Submitted by Rubescen — 2 days, 8 hours before the deadline

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CrossingTales's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Playability & Innovation	#11	2.000	2.000
Fun & Appeal	#11	2.000	2.000
Overall	#12	2.000	2.000

Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

Overly difficult battles and little indication of what one is supposed to do really turned me off to this one. Maps were very disjointed and not very well put together Music changed WAY too often

Game Name
CrossingTales

Developer Name(s)
Rubescen

Genre (especially if not a turn-based RPG)
RPG

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Comments

KV_KingdomSubmitted3 years ago

I, too, agree with the previous comments. The opening was AMAZING with all of its twists, turns, and humor. But as others have pointed out (and you already know), the end boss is the weak point of this game. I played the Windows version and also had problems with the items in the end (it actually looks like they damaged me?).

I may come back to this once you've patched it because there are great things going on in here, like switching between fantasy and sci-fi worlds. I thought the deliberately bad mapping in the south town was genius. It's a really amusing game, and I'm sure it will be thoroughly enjoyable once the end boss has been balanced out.

Submitted

Magical Girl Priscilla

Boos4053 years ago (2 edits)

Hello this was a really fun game from my perspective, although I agree with the comments below. I played the windows version (but I downloaded it at least 6 or more days ago?) and in that version the items in combat don't seem to be working for me. The final boss is also hard, I had the robot form but maybe I missed a skill from his skillset, otherwise I couldn't beat it with the robot at level 7. I agree though that sci-fi ball / orb battle was balanced well. I really enjoyed your puzzle and felt there was a good setting in each of your mapped areas. I enjoyed the secrets and finding them a lot. It did feel creative and though bizarre, I think it worked well here. I also really liked all the names in the game and what they were I felt the mixture of fantasy and sci-fi worked well here with the puzzles. Like I think you said, the cat form and spirit form couldn't really fight that well in combat compared to the robot form. I didn't try the dog form but I tried interacting with everything. And Stephanor Stephanie did make me laugh, enjoyed the humour. I was also glad to see the game continues on instead of giving me a game over, thought that was a good game design choice for this game. Overall it was a fun experience for me. Good luck with where you go from here! If you update or make something else I look forward to hearing about it.

RubescenDeveloper3 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks, glad you had fun! I'm actually in the process of testing an update, which fixes the item bug, adds additional skills for cat/dog/spirit, and improves boss balance, in addition to a few bug/typos fixes. All this feedback has been very helpful. Then I'll get back to working on something more substantial (I'm a bit divided right now between two alpha projects: one a rogue-lite space adventure, the other a narrative heavy cyberpunk story. I'm having a hard time deciding which to commit to haha).

Boos4053 years ago(+1)

That sounds very fun! That would make the end of your game as enjoyable, humorous and fun as the rest of it was. :) They both sound good ideas good luck choosing one. : )

PikaMewSubmitted3 years ago

Oh my, oh my... Do I have a MAJOR problem with this game. The sad thing is... it have a lot of good ideas! I love to be able to change forms! I love to be able to live different stories which are somewhat connected! Stephanie is a cool and fun character (at least outside of battles)! And the boss fight in the sci-fi world was competent! But there is something... Something in this game that ruined all the fun I could have from it... One thing I'm going to talk about in my last point. But first...

- In the sci-fi world, there is at one point a rope the player can climb to. But it blends into the background. Honestly, I just discovered this by accident, I thought it was a bug or an oversight at first. You maybe want that rope to stick out of the background so the player can clearly see it.

- The items... they doesn't work! The apple, the oil, the fish... None of them work! They just make you lose a turn in battle! Why?

- Ok, now I'm going to tackle the biggest problem of this game by far: the final boss. I may be exaggerating here, but this is one of the most unfair bullshit in RPG Maker history. Now, people might be saying "he is just hard" and "I haven't tried enough", but no! There is a difference between being hard and being unfair! To tell you how bullshit this boss is here are some quick math! Assuming I did 32 points of damage to the boss which, if you follow the game, is the kind of damage you should deal to him, you deal very little damage to him. Actually I made a screenshot of his life bar so I can use my image manipulation software to calculate how much it was.

Around 3 %. From there I estimate the boss should have around 1066 HP, that's a loose estimate. So with just that it already sucks. But it's not over! Because one of the signature skills of that boss "My Story!" is a healing skill, healing him above 90 HP. Well, that really sucks... But it's not over! Because his second form have ANOTHER healing skill which heals him for above 270 HP! So how do you win against... this thing? Good question! Actually what you have to do is take the right path with some obscure conditions filled. Among these conditions is being in spirit form. A form that you can only achieve by dying. And once you're there. You grind. For hours. Real-life hours. To give you an idea, you're likely to be at level 13 at this point. I had to grind at level 20 to win. Level. 20. How can balancing a boss go THAT wrong is beyond me. The first time I even thought it was an unwinnable battle and losing will lead me to the rest of the game. It didn't. The game expected you to win against him. And the only way to beat him is mandatory real-life hours worth of grinding and make death something you need to accept. This is stupid and unnecessary. The game would have benefited greatly if the final boss was properly balanced.

Now... What made the sci-fi boss work is that you could use good timing in your damages, buffs and heals to maximize your damage and survivability in order to win. The problem is this is something you cannot do against the final boss because he heals and hurts way too much. He have a permanent buff to his Attack and Defense. And there is little to no counter play to that except overpowering him by grinding. It's no longer strategy, it's a numbers game. The one with the biggest numbers win. And that's not a good boss design. And the fact this is all mandatory doesn't make it more fun.

With that said, I like the ideas you had for the game. The major problem comes only at the final boss and once passed, I liked the ending, it made sense and it was impactful. I hope to play more, better games from you. You have potential.

Best of luck! ^^

Submitted

RubescenDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Thanks for the comments! Your critique is fair. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the final boss is a bit broken as of now. Unfortunately, I ran out of time (based on my schedule not the event), so I had to release with a number of things not implemented. Cat/Dog/Spirit are lacking additional skills that would make the boss more manageable. At present the Robot form is the only way to efficiently beat the boss (i.e. without grinding), since it has a full skill package. (Spoiler the boss has about 1800hp. If you use skills effectively the robot can put out around 2-300+ points per turn, circa level . The spirit form takes half damage from physical attacks (most attacks), but also deal half damage to physical enemies, so that's why you're seeing such low damage. Without the added skills that would certainly require the grind you mention.)

I debated nerfing the boss in my last passthrough, but I preferred the challenging version when robot, and the broken other forms combat for initial release. Perhaps this was the wrong choice. However, I completely understand how this is extremely frustrating when you try to play other ways (which you should be able to).

I do plan to patch in the additional skills and maybe balance the boss a bit more after the event.

As for the items issue, I'm not sure what's going on there. Did you play in Browser or download? I can't replicate the issue, though from other comments, it seems to be an issue with browser play, so I'm looking into it. They should work!

If you want to play a better game from me, I recommend Opal! :D Which is a full game developed over a long time instead of 12 days haha, and much better balanced (though combat is still very challenging, however there is no real way to grind in the game, so it's mostly learning the skill system).

PikaMewSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

You're welcome! Thank you for understanding! :)

About the item issue, I played the browser version. I was trying to use the items, but they wouldn't work. I just tried on the browser, but the items still doesn't work and are just consumed upon "use" without anything else happening.

Thanks a lot for your recommendation. I'll make sure to give it a look after I played the different games of the game jam. I don't mind challenging battles in RPGs at all. Quite the contrary actually, I love tough turn-based RPG battles. ^^

RubescenDeveloper3 years ago

FYI: Windows Download available on the page if you don't want to play in browser:

https://rubescen.itch.io/crossingtales

StarmageSubmitted3 years ago

Stephanor Stephanie is a hilarious character that already got me hooked. xD :D Though we see on the ending twist that he may be more sinister than that. xD I also enjoy how the Sci-fi parts blend it, making it feel like the fantasy parts are some kind of simulation or something. Also, yay for being a Dog/Cat as playable chars! <3 Overall, I love the quirkiness and the way things surrounding the gameplay and story are always refreshing. Great job, Rubescen! ^_^

Submitted

RubescenDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Thanks Starmage! Glad you had fun. Looking forward to giving your game a go, it looks beautiful!

StarmageSubmitted3 years ago

Of course! ^_^ <3 And thanks so much for your kind words! :)

florodude3 years ago

This game is really cool! It's the first I've played so far, but it will be hard to beat. A few things from me.

Pros:

+Very creative

+the concept and design of the game is overall fun to play. You truly cannot guess what will happen next.

+The constantly transforming players and enemies adds a freshness to RPG Maker Games

Cons:

- Combat can be hard, especially near the end (not necessarily a con, but it stopped me from finishing the game)

-Some events (woman in the town that lets you in as a cat) do not have secondary events, so when you activate her over and over she responds as she did the first time and moves over.

-Can sometimes be confusing what I'm doing, understanding that the game is very random at times.

Overall very well done. Smart choice to get all three requirements out of the way in the first minute of the game, as I imagine many who hold themselves to a 30 minute time limit will not complete. It's very impressive how much content you put in two weeks. Your mapping puts mine to shame.

RubescenDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for playing and the review! I'll likely make some tweaks once the jam is finished, so this is very helpful. Combat probably needs a bit of a tone down at the end. The woman is one of a few events missing their follow-up page (the more dire one is an infinite gold event... oops!).

florodude3 years ago

And that was a nitpick review! So seriously I hope you heard that I really enjoyed it. It's one that I may go back and try again sometime

Sidaal3 years ago

This game is amazing. I beat the game, but unfortunately achieved only 1 ending. So many secrets and puzzles and jokes that made me laugh. I'm certain there is more to find in this game, and after I finish my game, I hope to play more. Well done.

RubescenDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Glad you enjoyed it! Good luck finishing your game, look forward to checking it out.
(Few things didn't make this cut, but won't have time after today to work on it, so this'll have to do)

Sidaal3 years ago(+1)

I was trying to see if I could somehow become human if I master the routes of the other characters. I hope you finish the game since I could just see more secrets and puzzles hiding in the game. I missed why the south map changed its world. It was really fascinating. It was like a screwy world turned normal after the restoration of the left map. Secrets galore. I love it.