itch.io

This one felt suspiciously normal, and for a while I was wondering when the subversive element was going to drop. I made my way through the dungeon, entering via the cave and exiting via the forest below the town. I didn't even realize the forest entrance was secret because I wasn't paying enough attention to the tiles, but nonetheless, that made me suspect that finding alternate entrances to the dungeon was going to be the key to winning. I explored the upper part of the map and was confused to find absolutely nothing. When I went back to the forest entrance and couldn't find it, that's when everything clicked in a really satisfying way - the seemingly useless upper area, the weird requirement to press the action button to enter caves and stairwells....

After dying to a Hundred Heads, I figured I'd try to guess the location of other entrances on the world map, and my suspicion that there'd be one in the otherwise-empty upper mountainous area proved correct. From there it was pretty straightforward to finish the game - I stumbled upon the Iris Tapestry pretty close to that entrance, and while I took another death to a Hundred Heads due to a lack of resources, I pulled it all together on my next run.

I was surprised to read that there were only two secret entrances. I thought I had just lucked into finding the one right near the treasure.

I already shared some my thoughts with you but I wanted to leave a comment as well. I think this is my favourite combat-focused entry. The battle system is immediately overwhelming but quickly becomes intuitive, despite the lack of explicit tutorialization. You're provided with only 5 healing items but a whole host of clever tricks to delay their use as much as possible. Puzzling out how to get away with taking as little damage as possible, or leave a character out of a fight to let them rest, was constantly challenging and rewarding, and the encounters keep evolving and introducing new snags. The cutscenes and surprise attacks through the tower were fun and expressive. After all of it, my fight against the final boss came down to the wire, and I won just before dying with no healing items remaining. Really beautiful game.

One of my favourite combat-focused entries. The highest difficulty felt very tightly tuned towards forcing me to fight in suboptimal conditions and use items to keep things from getting even worse. I ended up using a strategy that was heavy on Toxic Bombs, but I talked to John afterwards and he said he didn't buy any of those. It's really impressive that it supports multiple playstyles while still feeling incredibly tense throughout the last dungeon (I wasn't even able to fully heal up before the final boss!) The uncontrollable party member made fights feel dynamic, and the elemental weakness system combined with the encounter design kept me guessing about the best approach to the tower's upper floors.

I think this was the most difficult game in the jam for me. It took me around 3 hours to complete, but I chose to restart from the beginning at one point to improve my resource management.

Dealing with each party member's unique mechanics is overwhelming, and the amount of money you get to spend on healing items is so low that you are constantly forced to fight battles in suboptimal conditions (leaving status effects uncured, or leaving characters at low HP or dead) and judiciously spend what I viewed as your "main resource" (the Elemental's MP) to end fights quickly. 

Because the resource management is so strict and battles are so dangerous (and don't award any resources, unless you count Mimic forms), it felt like there was no room to backtrack other than just loading a save, and you really had to plan your route in advance speedrun-style, after learning the structure of the game through trial and error. When I found the character by the tower who wants a Golden Bones on my first run, I felt like no matter what the reward is, it couldn't possibly be worth trying to run back through the cave again (and I don't think I had enough dampeners/stabilizers to make it back with the bones anyways). Instead, after restarting, I planned things out so I could go directly to the tower after my first and only visit to the cave.

On my first playthrough, I didn't realize the pub let you heal characters until after I killed the forest and cave witches, which made the game even more stressful, as it forced me to rely on purchasable items and certain Comedian forms to heal status effects. I made it to the top of the tower and killed the first boss there, but I only had one character alive and died shortly afterwards. I didn't have the resources to safely deal with the devastating status effects from the tower midboss, and I foolishly had only saved after already spending my gold from the cave witch, so that's why I decided to restart. 

On the second playthrough I ended up spending a lot of my money (including the extra Golden Bones cash) on Sound Dampeners to skip all non-optional fights in the tower, as well as Focus Pills so deal with the mass distraction, and I stopped by the forest on the way to get a couple of those anti-curse Fruits. All this planning helped me make it to the final bosses in much better condition. The final bosses went down a bit quicker than I expected, but it was still quite a tense finish (I spent all my money on avoiding encounters, so I had very little healing, and I had no idea what to expect from the last fight). I feel like it makes sense to have the final bosses not be ultra-long or ultra-hard since you'll often be entering those fights in a suboptimal state, especially if you don't restart the game to take a better route like I did.

I imagine there's a lot of room for optimizing your step and encounter routes to e.g. trigger the Comedian form that can cure distract and curse at the right moments, or ensure you have a full-powered Moon Beast for important fights. But I was so overwhelmed already that I mostly ignored this aspect and just tried to complete the objectives as efficiently as possible, hoping that would save me enough resources to get through.

Very cool, tough, overwhelming game filled with unique ideas.

I was delighted by the layered way in which Kaeru unfolds. It has a similar concept to another game in the jam, Alex's Adventure #66, but the two games take it in different directions that both surprised me. If Kaeru was finished, I feel like it would've been one of my favourites. Poking around the other games and being unsure how much was changed and how much was left untouched from the template was an unusual experience. One of the Sparrowsong games (v3 I think?) played around with the map connections in a way that excited me.

A rousing RPG adventure! It was tough to defeat the Dragon, but I saved the world by the skin of my teeth!

peak

Clever, funny, surprising, moving, another Katey banger.

I was impressed by the amount of dungeon crawling you managed to squeeze out of just the tower maps. The atmosphere felt oppressive and I had a number of tense escapes while going after the powerful items in the deepest parts of the dungeon. After I had explored everywhere, I tried fighting the final boss and got stomped in a few turns by powerful AOE magic attacks, so I thought I'd have to do an obscene amount of grinding to win. But it turned out I didn't have to do as much as I thought. I did find a useful exploit to speed up cash grinding that I'm guessing wasn't intended, but I won't tell you what it is. Ha ha ha. 

I was so surprised by this game. Not just the custom battle system but the overall structure. At first, I felt like it was a straightforward but fun puzzle with a few mysteries, but it became more complicated, and I was delighted by how it unfolds.

I completed all the other games in the jam (so far) except this one, so I finally decided to actually play it. It took a billion tries but I got the goblin gold. It requires a lot of luck but the challenge of having to keep the goblin locations in your head (instead of having a marker like in minesweeper) was exciting.

This was delightful, even though I haven't played your past works that are referenced. The hand-drawn sprites are cute, and the whole conceit really tickled me. There are a lot of feelings about game development and personal growth packed into this game that I was able to relate to and connect with my own experiences. The difficulty curve kept me engaged and the last boss was quite tense. Lovely game.

This was a fun navigation puzzle. I love when RPGs give simple directions like "west" or "southeast" and the journey turns out to be longer and more complex than that implies. This gave me a similar feeling. At first it felt like the game was just leading me from town to town, but it was exciting when I reached Soraion after Mezuris and Soraion didn't have a pointer to a new place.

My route was: Faules, Yustepa, Mezuris, Soraion, Balbalap (this seemed just barely possible to reach), Luwoll, Valdivia. Maybe the intent was to go back to Mezuris and sail to Hetra Bheb, but instead I wanted to just go off on my own and see if I could find anything east of Soraion.

I feel like I solved the "final puzzle" by accident. If you follow the directions from Luwoll to the letter, you drown before reaching Valdivia. I guess the intent was to think about what those directions are telling you, and realize that you can take a shortcut by going directly east. I didn't realize this, and just decided to go east on whim, and stumbled on Valdivia, which made things a bit anticlimactic.

I also didn't find any kind of HP-restoring item....

Oh yeah, I forgot to say, I was quite surprised when I noticed the save feature works in this one. I didn't end up using it though.

I got through on my third try. The first time, I almost made it, but I was completely caught off guard by the layout change and ended up dying to a Resurrectoid near the entrance. The second try, I was feeling impatient, so I beelined for the dragon but didn't pick up enough resources along the way to make it out. The third time, I meticulously cleared out the whole dungeon, making use of my accumulated knowledge (mainly that it's cheaper to paralyze Resurrectoids than to spam Thunder).

This felt like there was a lot less uncertainty and ambiguity than your previous sketches, and it's more like a static puzzle. There's some elements of luck (dodges, crits) but they didn't seem to sway things too much. I think the first attempt is the most delightful and exciting because you have to react to the unknown chest contents and surprise layout change, rather than playing around everything using advance knowledge. It felt like it was balanced in a way such that it's reasonable to win on a first attempt, even if I didn't manage it.

I appreciated the difficulty in this one. It took me a lot of tries to win.  Overcoming a hard boss that requires a bit of luck felt good. And the ending played out in a really satisfying way for me, with everyone except Diao going down and Diao barely surviving with something like 2 MP left.

I tried a lot of different strategies. My interpretation of the name "Sacrifice" was that you're supposed to sacrifice Rosia once she runs out of MP for Holy Magic.... It took me a while to realize that her physical attack is useful too. I picked up on the fact that Diao needs to be alive to cast Dark Magic on the angel phase pretty quickly. I ended up having Ultos and Diao defend during the first phase while Rosia and Stanow focused on attacking. I noticed Stanow had the highest speed,  which was useful when I needed a heal to come out before the demon attacks.

I found this strategy of having 2 attackers and 2 defenders somewhat striking, and a little unintuitive. My initial thought was to damage race the boss with 3 attackers and just have Diao defend. But when Ultos joined in the attacking, I seemed to run out of resources too soon. It's possible I just got unlucky in those attempts, but maybe something about the damage numbers works out so that having 2 defenders means you spend less Potions on average to keep everyone topped up. I'm not sure I've fought an RPG boss before where I had to make that kind of calculation.

I loved this one!

I pieced together that the villagers were lying after my second run. When the potion only healed 3 HP, I wasn't sure if it was a bug or a joke or something, but then died to some roosters after missing like 10 attacks in a row. I tried using the default weapon, which worked out much better, and confirmed my suspicions.

After that I deliberately ignored the advice from the villagers and explored on my own. I almost got to Jamestown taking the eastern route, but succumbed to a lack of healing. 

On my winning run, I decided to see what actually happens if you follow the southwest path. I didn't encounter a single Vigilante (I didn't even know they existed until reading your notes) and made it through successfully. It surprised me that I made it through, but I didn't think it was a bug, I just assumed maybe not everyone in the town was bad and you wanted there to be some ambiguity about that.

By the time I first encountered a Griffon, I was already suspicious of the townsfolk, so I did the opposite of their advice and clonked it on the head. I never actually died to a Griffon so I didn't even know they did anything other than increasing their ATK.

The arc of realizing the villagers are tricking you made me feel clever, and then a sort of loneliness set in as I realized I had to find my way around this harsh world on my own with only my wits and 6 crappy overpriced potions to keep me alive. The theme of racism went completely over my head though, I just thought "oh, it's like Simon's Quest or something where the villagers lie to you".... 

This game is huge! It took me a little over 2 hours to finish.

Corris is a cool character who makes me laugh. I've only played Piercing of Darkmoon Tower and Priestess of the Forgotten Hero, so I didn't get all the references to other adventures and characters but I appreciated that they're there.

I found it challenging to defeat the minotaur, and I couldn't do it until I gained several levels by fighting enemies in the field. Even then, the minotaur does so much damage that it was a tense fight. The mine dungeon right after it felt pretty tense too and I had to spend a lot of resources to make it through. The rest of the game after that felt very easy and I found I could mostly get away with mashing attack and occasionally using a heal spell. I used some buffs/debuffs on bosses too but I don't know if I actually needed to or if it just made the fights faster.

The Light Ball mechanic as a replacement for random encounters delighted me, especially when I found a hidden enemy in a certain area. I did get a little annoyed by certain places with unavoidable time-consuming encounters in the second half of the game, since the fighting and resource management had become very simple at that point. But I also appreciated the amount of encounters you could avoid with careful movement once the Light Ball reveals them. I like dodging symbol encounters in RPGs.

I was quite shocked by the romantic subplot between two characters that barely talked to each other. I think I was supposed to imagine them growing closer to each other during the battles and travelling. However, the payoff was very cute. This was a nice game.

I was surprised when it was an action game.  I felt sneaky when I figured out how to avoid the dragon. I'm assuming this is based on John's real memories.

That was really lovely. I beelined for the tower immediately because it was in the title. I realized quickly what the story was going to be about, and it made me smile. After the event at the top, I realized I was probably supposed to explore the other areas first, so I saved and quit and went back to talk to everyone on a new file. Then I switched back and loaded my save, and it was cute seeing everyone's dialogue changes. By the way, if you examine the tablet at the top of the tower a second time, the cutscene happens again, which was pretty funny.

I played this on my phone at 1am because I was hungry for more RPG sketches.

My first try, I found one sheep and then arrived back at the ranch, and the sheep was low on health, so I figured I'd see what happens if you end the game, and got a C rank. I was quite delighted at realizing the sheep joins your party and you have to protect it.

My second try, I scouted out more of the map and found all three sheep. This is when it finally clicked that the tiles have different encounter rates and monsters, and mountains and forests are the most dangerous. The resource management aspect also became more apparent, with spells letting you clear fights safely but eventually running out. A sheep died to me underestimating a group of three Dog Goblins (I tried to just fight them instead of using Blizzard but I missed and they do more damage than I expected). After that I stopped caring and just mashed attack in every fight, and got a game over before making it back home. I found it funny that you can keep going while Waldemar is dead as long as a sheep is alive.

On my third try, I went for the lower left sheep first, then upper left, then upper right, and made it back with 80/100/100 sheep HP to get an A rank. Now that I understood the game, travelling through forests and mountains became tense, but I ended up only taking the one sheep hit from either a Harpie or Goat Eater. I suspected there might be an S rank based on sheep health, and the comments and these notes confirmed it. I didn't feel like getting S rank myself because it seemed like I'd just have to do the same thing but get luckier. Harpies outspeed you and Goat Eaters take two turns to kill, so it seems like there's no guarantee of getting through those fights without damage, and I didn't see a way to completely avoid forests and mountains. Perhaps the luck required isn't that strict though.

Learning how the different biomes worked and being surprised by new enemy types was exciting. I think this was my favourite sketch so far because of how your relationship with the map develops.

On my first try I got killed in the first battle while figuring things out, the second I I think got through 3 battles but got ruined by an elf with high attack. I think maybe I also had low DEF because it was doing like 40 damage or something. 

On the third try I killed 8 elfs. My strategy was to use Correct DEF (I don't remember the real name) right away so that I don't lose health to a high damage hit. Then just attack to try to learn whether it's necessary to correct any other attributes, like ATK or ACC or AGI. And don't let your health get too low without determining whether you need to correct MND to get good heals.

Assess Foe usually felt like a waste of a turn to me, since learning that the enemy excels at something seemed less important than correcting my own flaws ASAP. I felt like I got more information from just attacking (I can see if my damage is unusually low indicating a chance of ATK debuff, or if I miss indicating a chance of an ACC debuff). I didn't really play for high scores though, so maybe it saves MP over guessing Correct skills in the long run, and can help reach higher scores. After the 8th elf in my run I was out of MP so I didn't really have any hope.

The element of ambiguity in trying to figure out your weaknesses was the highlight of the game for me.

I posted my comment directly on the game at first, but I decided to repost it here so I can mention some spoilers.

I won on my first try. My favourite part was figuring out which enemies to fight and which I should just run from. I couldn't tell if it was impossible to run from some enemies, if the chance was just lower, or if I just got unlucky, and because you die so quickly and have limited resources, I had to take my best guess a lot of the time. At first I was fighting the Knife Aficionados, but I realized they take forever to kill and are easy to run from. I never fought a single Knife Knite because they looked scary and I got the run on my first try every time they appeared. 

The MP disparity between Backstep and Deathblow created a fun rise and fall of tension. After you use Backstep once, you basically get 17 more "free" uses before you lose access to another Deathblow, so at first it feels like you can use Backstep carelessly, but then you start to hope you'll be able to conserve it. Then if you're forced to use Backstep the 19th time, the cycle resets. I ended up having 3 Deathblows to use against the boss. I wonder if I got lucky with the amount of times the boss ended up using Corner. Realizing that Corner reduced my healing power was another tense moment and made for an exciting climax. At that point, I just went for an all-out attack, and fortunately the boss kept using Corner a lot instead of hitting me. 

I won on my first try again, but I had a tougher time than with the first sketch. The exploration gave me a sense of mystery and surprise.  My favourite moments were realizing that I can walk on the swamp tiles (which didn't actually turn out to be very useful) and figuring out how to get the key. The combat started out feeling straightforward until I realized how limited my resources are. Right when I was about to run out of MP, I found the Sacred Blood and was saved. After that, exploring the world didn't feel as scary, and I revisited past areas until I found the key. The combat returned to being somewhat straightforward, but there was the added dynamic of having to ensure I kept up my stock of Sacred Blood, which created some tension. The boss felt like it could've gone really badly if I got unlucky, but it missed with Silence at first, and then kept casting Silence even after I was already silenced, so I ended up finishing with a few unused resources.

bu jbj, lbh znl unir zvffrq n jubyr nern va gung pnfr! gur sbhegu (aba-rivy) gerr gryyf lbh nobhg vg bapr lbh qrsrng gur rivy barf, hayrff lbh qvq hfr vg gb ragre gur sberfg ohg qvqa'g ernyvmr vg pna or hfrq ryrrjurer....

Thank you for the kind words, it means a lot coming from an RPG expert!! 

syner'f fhafuvar fxvyy vf qrfpevorq nf "jnxrf fxl hc" ohg vg npghnyyl erivirf ure! gur crevyf bs inthr synibhe grkg

That's really funny, whoops.... I was curious if you can even beat the game without visiting that area, and it turns out you can but it's pretty awkward. Thanks for playing!

Thank you for this comment! It means a lot to me to hear this.

Yay, great job! I tried fighting the final boss a little more to test strategies and it's stricter than I remember, so maybe I got a little lucky in testing. Some further notes in ROT13:

Lbh pna terngyl ybjre gur punapr bs gur obff trggvat gjb nggnpxf va n ebj ntnvafg Fxl ol xrrcvat Pbssrr hc. Rira vs Syner qbrfa'g trg n ghea, hfhnyyl Fxl jvyy trg bar naq pna urny urefrys (be Qrsraq naq yrg Syner qb gur urny). Lbh pna fgvyy ybfr gb onq yhpx fbzrgvzrf gubhtu.... V pna hfhnyyl jva jvguva 2 be 3 gevrf vs V qba'g trg vg ba zl svefg, ohg vs lbh trg gurer jvgu ybj erfbheprf V pna frr vg orvat zber bs na EAT tevaq.

Gur jnl Fbhy Zveebe jbexf vfa'g ernyyl vqrny, V jbhyq unir cersreerq gb znxr vg fb Syner bayl ybfrf vg vs gur obff fcrpvsvpnyyl nggnpxf ure, ohg V qvqa'g xabj ubj. Vs V znqr vg "jrne bss" va gur jnl bgure fgnghf rssrpgf qb, gura Syner jbhyq orpbzr hacbvfbarq, fb vafgrnq gur obffrf unir fcrpvny orunivbhe gung fjvgpurf Syner sebz CbvfSyrp gb Cbvfba nsgre gurl nggnpx.

V'z tynq lbh yvxrq vg rira gubhtu gur raqvat jnf qvfnccbvagvat! Zbfg bs gur tnzr jnf xvaq bs ehfurq orpnhfr V qvqa'g jnag gb fcraq gbb zhpu gvzr jbexvat ba vg. Gb svaq gur Qentba'f Oyrffvat, cunfr guebhtu gur rkvgf va gur Furrc Fubc jvgu Fuvsg.

Thank you so much, I'm glad you found an Aria game you can play.

When I first tried it, I waited 5 minutes or whatever for the loading to finish, and it said something like "Error in map generation" and told me to close the game, so I thought it was a prank until I read the comments.

This was a really meaty crunchy experience. I like the wealth of options you have to experiment with. I think some of the areas were inaccessible in my generated world (forest, parts of the tower) but I still managed to win.

Deadmeat is really cute, I'm so sad. I really liked the mechanics of the fights too.

The puzzle was freaking awesome....

This was beautiful even though I didn't totally understand what was going on. Great vibe.

I finished it! I enjoyed the way the game progresses. The fighting was fun. I liked having to figure out whether it's better to instakill enemies or try to wear them down.

This is an overview of the strategy I use. I'm not sure if you're missing anything big, but it definitely helps for planning to know some internal details of the fight, like how much health it has and when it starts casting spells.

Decode with ROT13 (rot13.com)

V erpbzzraq hfvat gur 4 hfrf bs Zvenpyr Sehvg (NTV+) rirayl orgjrra gur punenpgref, 2 sbe rnpu. Lbh pna fgvyy orng gur obff vs lbh tb nyy va ba bar punenpgre, ohg vg'f uneqre. Sbe gur Crne (ZC+) V erpbzzraq ohzcvat Syner'f ZC gb ng yrnfg 22 fb fur pna pnfg Freranqr gjvpr va n ebj ng gur yngr fgntrf bs gur svtug. V qba'g xabj vs gur qvfgevohgvba bs gur Nccyr (UC+) obbfgf znggref gbb zhpu.

Gur obff fgnegf pnfgvat fcryyf jura vg trgf orybj 50% urnygu. Orsber gung cbvag, V erpbzzraq abg pnfgvat Freranqr ng nyy, naq univat Syner sbphf ba urnyvat naq Pbssrr. Abgr gung Pbssrr jrnef bss nsgre n srj gheaf. Fxl fubhyq sbphf ba xrrcvat Syner nyvir naq pnfgvat Funggre Fgne jura obgu punenpgref ner urnygul.

Gur svefg fcryy gur obff pnfgf jvyy cebonoyl pngpu lbh bss thneq naq qb ovt qnzntr gb obgu punenpgref. Hfr Dhvrg Zrzbel gb erpbire sebz vg (vs lbh pna trg n Freranqr bss jvgu Syner orsber hfvat Dhvrg Zrzbel, gung urycf). 

Nsgre guvf, Fxl fubhyq gel gb xrrc hc Fbhy Zveebe ba Syner nf zhpu nf cbffvoyr gb oybpx gur fcryyf. Vg zvtug or jbegu pnfgvat Pbssrr jvgu Syner fb Fxl pna farnx va fbzr bgure gheaf orgjrra Fbhy Zveebef. Bgurejvfr Syner fubhyq gel gb raq gur svtug dhvpxyl jvgu Freranqr. Gur obff unf fvk uhaqerq naq fvkgl fvk UC, fb nsgre gur unysjnl cbvag, guerr Freranqrf jvyy rvgure xvyy vg be chg vg ba gur iretr bs qrngu.

Vs ehaavat bhg bs ZC jvgu Fxl vf na vffhr, lbh zvtug unir zvffrq n uvqqra Qentba'f Oyrffvat rirag gung tenagf ZC ertra, ohg V'z thrffvat gung'f abg gur znva ceboyrz.

Thank you and good luck!! I think I made it a little too hard. It's probably possible to get stuck in unwinnable situations if you use too many resources, so you sometimes might want to restart or load an earlier save if you learn something that lets you conserve them.

Oh no, I made it too hard! Thanks for playing! That item definitely helps for the final boss (I don't know if I ever actually beat her without it, whoops) I'll see if anyone else can beat it and if not maybe I'll post some hints....

Thank you for the very kind words! It makes me happy that people who connect to this story are still finding it more than a year after I wrote it. And I'm amazed that you took notes while playing :0

Thank you so much! I'm really glad it was meaningful to you.