Thanks everyone that left criticism!

I'd have really liked to see some feedback from all 9 reviewers though. But I'll take the few seconds it likely took to leave their score, as better than nothing. ;)

I've learned a lot from this, and expect to do better.

Thanks again.

I'm going to be totally candid with you -- the general, publicly stated, distaste for the fact that you used RTP for a jam-style contest, coupled with the warning / "dev's note" at the beginning soured my opinion right from the start on this one. As long as it's used correctly / well -- which you have mostly done, but we all have minor issues in short periods of time, so no harm there! -- the RTP is a great placeholder tool for a jam, or honestly, even for a whole game. Your mechanics and narrative can carry a game far further than the graphics style. With the dev's note, if you want to include the info in the future, consider adding it after the game's resolution instead. But, definitely let the game speak for itself, rather than letting the RTP bring you down! :)

That being said, I did power through the game, and I think you have a really solid foundation to build something bigger and better out of. It's very text-heavy, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but definitely consider if you want to stick with that style (and thus, continue developing with more of a visual novel style), or if you want to pare down some of the language parts (which aren't bad by any means) in favor of a little more action and visual effects to get the same information across. I can see this translating well to either experience, but not so much the combination of the two like what's going on currently.

I am glad that I opted to ignore the first impression and give this game a chance, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned that because you don't want to chase players away before they even get a chance to see the cool parts! :D

I got this one for judging so here are my thoughts, posted rapid fire style so fair warning:

-Interesting commentary for the judges. Not really needed though, we do what we can anyways.

-Maybe I read faster but that 20 minutes VN style part at the beginning was 12 minutes for me. But I do read fast.

-Not sure I like having no place to full heal or full restore just in case. I feel a small safety net would be a good idea in case the player is struggling. I didn't need it myself, but would have felt better if it had been there.

-No healing spells? Just regen? Ok potions it is then. Also just regen based healing is not going to work well in random battles as most of them are too fast for the regen to kick in. So something that is not regen based would be nice. 

-Wait, why do I start round 2 of the final battle more wounded than I ended round 1? With no healing spells and I was almost out of potions by then too as well.

-Did pull off the final battle though. Maybe add a way to make the items that do high damage to the plants (forgot the name now as I didn't write it down and played it a couple days ago). While the note to be careful with them as they may be important is nice, a way to make more would be even nicer. 

Overall:

I feel it was a decent game. I do think the maps were a little overcluttered in places, opening them up a little would help. And adding at least one place to full heal the party just in case they get in a bad spot would be really nice. Without it, its likely you can end up in a what is known as the walking dead scenario in your game where you have no way to proceed due to too many items used up and no way to get anymore. But this can all be changed too with more time. 

On a side note: Do you intend to maybe expand this into a longer game someday? 

You specifically asked for feedback on your game page, so I’ll be honest. If you are not up to some annoyed words you might want to skip it though. I streamed the game all the way to the final boss, but I simply did not have the patience to finish it.

•  Mapping is okay, but rough. It can definitely be improved.
• The eventing choreography was ok, with the one exception that I found annoying: the party preparation to talk (close followers > display > move into position) is way too slow. Speed that up.
• The intro really does not need an admission of failure: any extra details can go on the webpage or the after-credits
• Why does the menu keep popping up when I change scenes?
• Main menu: if you have so many commands that you have to scroll through a horizontal menu, you might as well make it a vertical menu on the side and get rid of the scroll. You want your main commands to be clear, not hidden. The balloon style dialog doesn’t really fit with having the text appear in chunks and stops, it would probably be better all at once, or use a regular message box.
• The dialog has WAY too many *descriptions*. If you want to use a descriptive mode, that can be fine, but I’d recommend scrapping the balloon style display and make it a regular textbox at the bottom. In any case, a lot of the descriptors were too on the nose and not needed. This is not meant to be novel. Alternatively, if you DO prefer that style, maybe a Visual Novel type of game would suit you best.
• The combat feels tacked on and forced, on the vibe of “well, I GOTTA have some, right?”. The game could have easily been just talking, walking, gathering and crafting, and polishing that instead.
• The whole popup for safety/random encounters is more of a nuisance than anything, if you really want something like that, make it a small icon or picture that just stays at the corner of the screen and out of the way.
• The writing starts okay and some bits are fun, but it does fall too hard on the side of high school-y teenage stuff…which I’m sure has a public, it’s just not me XD

 Overall: if this is an early or first project: not a bad start! It just falls a bit flat with no strong point to boast of, and the game feels weak for it.

(Here’s the stream, your game start at the 1:47:56 mark)

Always a fan of classical projects like this that show off how much is possible with the standard assets of the RPG Maker :) Plugins were nicely put to use and the writing was pretty good. Although there have been too many of these descriptive messages in my opinion. The battles are fairly easy with the exception of the last boss fight that provided a welcome challenge. Really enjoyed the resource collection part that provided a nice amount of variety. The mapping was the weakest part in my opinion. I get that searching for the right path to the items is supposed to be part of the challenge but the maps were far too convoluted and I rarely managed to find the proper exits on first try. Was the menu supposed to pop up at the beginning and the end of the game? Felt like a bug to me. Also, the game froze when I tried to enter the boss area on the far left side of the map that came before it. Overall, I really enjoyed this one :)