itch.io

I finally came back to this. I just used every possible combination until it unlocked. It was the next to last possible configuration. I still don't know how it relates to the clues. Cattle shipment to somewhere. One guy's to the south and one is to the west? Anyhoo...this is actually pretty good game.

This is a very nice, pleasant game. I like it!

Cool concept! Wish there was more.

Thank you so much!

When you restored the power: did you get the CAO discovery cutscene or did you return before that? Because if it was after, then something may have just triggered in the wrong order in the common events, or the End Mission event failed to trigger. That shouldn't happen again. If it was before, that makes sense to me because I hadn't paid enough attention to the return trip. I might not have done the return correctly.

I have to agree that this game looks absolutely beautiful and it has the most amazingly oppressive atmosphere.

This was a great story! Shame there isn't more. The actual gameplay was a little cumbersome for me. I think it would have worked better with a mouse plugin.

This game was...I couldn't stop playing. It's a very engaging story, but I pretty quickly wanted to stop playing for reasons I don't really want to talk about. Got the bad ending. Will try to get the good ending another time. Overall, this is a great game. It's just that it flips all of the worst possible switches for me.

Thank you so much! I warn about that walking bug on the main page. I think it corrects after about 30 seconds, but it might have just been me mashing on the keys. Whatever the case, it can be corrected. I'm not sure how to fix it but I think what's happening is that, you know how you have to press 5 or X to stop? When the 8D movement event gets turned off, for some reason, a move action is staying active. So, even though the movement common event is off, pressing 5 might be what stops it, but I haven't had the glitch happen to me since encountering it. I think I'm going to add a command specifically stopping all movement in the End Mission handling common event and then upload that version after the voting period.

Speaking of glitching things, how about itch.io's discussion board, huh? Has trouble uploading screen caps and keeps forgetting where the margins are.

No, events have to already exist. What's happening is that an event that previously existed but has since been removed is being referenced--which, it's absolutely not surprising in the slightest that there's a glitch like this on this map. You should see what went into figuring out how to build this system, all because I decided to make a game that was basically plugging the TTRPG I'm developing--but I can't find anything referencing it. Also, I haven't been able to recreate the glitch myself. If I could just see exactly what's happening, I think I could figure it out.

Yeah, no matter how many times I go through this, I just can't find anything looking for event 25.

All of the enemies in the level just swarm your position so that you're just hitting mobs until they're gone. You can't even move until you've killed everything. Then you've just got an empty stage to go through until you get to the boss, which is fine since they're short stages. It's obviously designed with this in mind, but it's just button mashing. Hit attack until everything's destroyed. It's basically a step up from an idle clicker. In fact, if you tied attack to the left click, I could just turn on my mouse clicker and forget about it.

It's a very pretty game. Nice sounds and music.

I really thought I couldn't get any further. Still my favorite game in the jam.

I haven't had this one come up. It was looking for event 25, which doesn't exist, and I'm not sure what's looking for event 25.

I'm sorry. For RM2k3, the keypad really was my only option for movement.

Oh, man, I was enjoying this. Just a tutorial and one fight. :(

You go in the mansion, you go up the stairs, and it's there. You can't advance because every time you try to move, the screen wiggles, and you're stuck on that square in front of the stairs. Then you can't go back down the stairs.

I don't know about him, but nothing I do seems to work when he's ready to fire the satellite weapon. Select all the squares with cows. Read the terms and conditions. I do all that. I've turned brightness and sound up all the way. I've changed all the settings in every way I can think of and nothing works.

No matter what I did, anxiety went up and the patient freaked out. I just couldn't help. Game's too frustrating for me.

Somehow, this managed to be even harder than Pac-Man! Excellent work!

Thank you so much!

Tip: you can shoot from the hip with missiles. As long as fire on or slightly before an enemy ship when crossing its path, the missile will hit. They're hard to take out with lasers because their shields regenerate and they constantly move, but hitting them with missiles is easy once you get the hang of it.

As for controlling the ship, the reason you can also stop with x and \ keys is because one of my playtesters was having a lot of trouble stopping with the 5, and the 5 on the top row was too awkward because it's not by shift.

No music? Didn't hear that from my playtesters. They're OGGs using the Maniacs Patch. It's the Steam version of 2k3, so it SHOULDN'T be having a compatibility issue.  It's probably something not reading right on your computer.

So far, this one's my favorite. Don't celebrate yet, I've only played a few at this point.

Wow, there seems to be a decent amount of sci-fi in this jam. I'm not used to seeing this much. It makes me happy!

This is fun. I'm enjoying it.

I'm just not good at puzzles. I can't figure this out.

Oh...I needed to try again after I got future me.

Well, now. Don't I feel silly?

This is a neat idea.

I can't figure anything out. I can't get anywhere. I got other me. And that's it. I cannot find a way forward. I can't. I can't go upstairs. I can't go back to the hanger. There's no way to open any of the locked doors. There's nothing that advances the plot in the accessible areas. I give up.

By the way, it's a really bad to place single use items in the first combat slot.

You have a game breaking glitch. When you go upstairs in the mansion, the transfer to go back downstairs is broken or not present. So, you're simply stuck in that spot and have to go back to your last save. Unfortunately, autosave sticks you there.

I've posted an updated version that directs players to the guild. When you enter the town map from the academy exterior, you'll trigger an event that will tell you where the guild is. You can trigger it every time you cross it until you actually find the guild, at which point, the event will switch off. The issues you mention are a bit much to redo. Especially for a jam game. And yes, the freezing bug was fixed last night. I could have probably found a better way to implement what was causing it, but I decided to just delete the event.

NOW, it's up!

I've uploaded a fixed version. Sorry about that!

Ah! A quality of life feature I put in the dungeons decided to suddenly not work. Simple matter to remove it. It's just a QoL feature.

- Okay, this is some interesting flavor for what is basically standard combat.

- So, what you were talking about in the first fight, it would probably better if the main character came with a set of skills that he could use instead of just lecturing them. Ordinarily button mashing risks getting old fast in normal combat, but after giving that intro to combat, it's a lot more disappointing because you don't have any skills to use to get the most out of what you're trying to accomplish with combat.

- I like this character portrait. The art has a lot of personality.

- Whoops! The character portrait doesn't erase if you interact with the book on the desk!

- Nia's character portrait is good too! Shame we only get to see it once and then you keep using the MC's character portrait for all of her conversation!

- Oh, there we go. In the second conversation, the portraits work normally.

- You're forgetting to close character portraits a lot. It's make navigating a little tricky. But now I've got two nice portraits on the screen, so it's got its pros. Should probably fix that, though, lol!

- Note to self: to get the portraits off the screen, check the calendar.

- But...you HAVEN'T explained that you're more than just a scarecrow! Saying you're more than just a scarecrow isn't explaining; it's exclaiming!

- Oh, this section has some promise. Is the garden for crafting, perchance? If so, I am definitely interested in seeing a much less broken version of this.

- Oh, dear. Accessing the garden without inventory for it soft-locks the game, I'm afraid. Let's try this again.

- Back to the scarecrow now. Do NOT interact with the garden yet...

- Oh! He gives you seeds if you don't give him guff! I'll save anyway, just in case it soft-locks me again.

- Indeed, the fact that I have seeds in my inventory doesn't matter; it still soft-locks me. Oh well, at least I saved this time.

- What in the world? Does saving the game not take you to where you saved? Where am I? I thought I was...what? I've never even been there! I've only gone through the upper portion of the main hall! How did you...? How is this save system working??? CAN AN RPG MAKER SAVE SYSTEM EVEN WORK LIKE THIS??? Okay, so...the first playthrough. I didn't save and soft-locked when I interacted with the garden. Second play through, I saved in every room, just in case, and at the garden, it soft-locked even though I had inventory on the second go. So, I reloaded my most recent save...which was in the garden after I got the inventory from the scarecrow. I reloaded it, and for some reason it dropped me in the main hall so I figured that for some reason, it just hadn't read my garden save. So, I go back in the direction of the garden, but I'm in a completely different hall and I walk into a classroom, and so I go back, and I try to go up into the cafeteria, but the walk's way longer, and so, I'm really confused! Yes, I'm in the main hall, but I've never explored it! I've never been here before! Why did the save open here? How is this even working???

- Word of advice; set dash to "always on". It's just a quality of life thing I've learned over the years of let's players yelling at my MV games...

- Okay, navigation in general is screwy. Leaving Whydah's class drops you in the upper left of the main hall. Saving drops you in the lower middle (...how????...). But if you go back the way you came to get to Whydah's class, you end up at the library. To get back to Whydah's class, you go through the lower left, and find yourself in a hall that leads to the workshop, and then to Whydah's class, which is not where you come from when leaving.

- Different colored book cabinets, but interacting with them accomplishes nothing. The library is gaslighting me!

- Customizable quarters! No idea how to customize, though, or if it's even been implemented. Doesn't seem to be.

- The headmaster's office is by the cafeteria! Okay, this definitely needs a map, or a less confusing layout. One of the two!

- So, look. The art everyone's using is really good across this jam, but I got to level with you; you're using my favorite character portraits. I'm seriously loving this art. Are they yours or a pack?

- Well, this took a real dark turn. So, just to be clear, any "Dark wizards" in a society like this aren't the bad guys.

- Oh, now decorator mode is on! This is a good one!

- Divination seeing that students turn evil and deciding the best course of action is to kill them. This is a really awesome story-hook and has a ton of potential. My issue here is the decision makers. A teacher in the scenario is the guide for these students, and knowing their future, has the power to turn them onto a different course without killing them. A teacher would know this. Whydah, the soldier not understanding this is fine. "I'm no teacher" is a pretty consistent dialogue option. The headmaster, however, should absolutely understand this. In this scenario, he's either an incompetent headmaster, or he's an authoritarian, unqualified as a teacher, but asserting himself as a rulemaker. But this seems like an amazing idea to give this choice to the player. Kill the students, ruin your character's life, but save the world? Try turn the students down a better path and succeed? Or fail? Or join the students against a headmaster that by doctrine alone is just as bad of a dark wizard as any he's trying to destroy. Just because he's not twirling his mustache and clearly struggles with the evil he "has to" do, doesn't mean he's not evil.

In case it's not obvious, despite all of the really serious problems this game has, I'm really enjoying this. Now, I've reached a point where nothing new is triggering, so I'll go ahead and call it done and give it a rating.

For anyone that has downloaded this game, the dev put a copy up without an executable. If you have MV, this is easy to deal with. Simply take one of your MV projects, copy the Game.rproject executable from that and drop it into his folder. It'll pull the game right up.

- The game screen is obscured in the app.

- You forgot to turn off the SHIFT fast-text feature for devs. I can't actually see the text because of the screen so it doesn't matter.

- Slimes glitched out of existence. I'm still fighting their shadows, though. Also a bunch of couple image errors in combat: NiaBattler, DorianBattler.

- Yeah, I got stuck on a loading screen after combat.

I'll try again later. I can't rate it like this.

- At the very least, make the combat tutorial playable. Once you get past the opening cutscene, if you keep going into cutscenes, it gets annoying. I really hate it when a game won't let me play.

- I do like the combat system. This is a really good one.

- Oh, you really were pressed for time, weren't you? Pencil sketches as character graphic placeholders. I do really like the sketch art, though. Have you considered making a game in a sketch art style? I'm assuming this is why there were no sound effects in combat.

- I do like these character sprites, though.

- You could definitely stand to do some shift+mapping.

- Found the customizable space, but I have no idea what to do at these lab stations or what they're for.

- I'm really enjoying your character art.

- This font is so big. Not a complaint, btw.

- You got this big red square--I'm assuming it's a carpet--set to star passability. It's huge, and unless it's a carpet, I see no reason for it to be where it is.

I'm sorry, though. I really have no idea what I'm actually supposed to be doing. I did the class lesson, and nothing happened. I'm wandering around and nothing's triggering. I wanted to score gameplay high for combat, but that's all I could really get out of this game, and I have to leave the building to even find combat, and I'm pretty sure that's not what I was supposed to do.

- A goblin protagonist! Why didn't I think of a monster girl protagonist!

- Yeah, cannibals are, indeed, less intimidating if they're not the same species as you.

- Can't be a school without a bully...

- OMG!!! Emotional Support Familiar! I can't even...I love it!

- Aww...Kica really is working through some trauma, huh?

- Encounter rate's a little on the annoying side, but it's not nearly as bad as it could be.

- Aargh! I just realized you rebound the keys for a gaming setup! I thought keyboard controls just weren't working for some reason.

- There are so many interesting and neat characters! I'm really loving this!

- I haven't been able to use any of Bugaboo's special abilities once since the Carnivore Gourd. His TP just doesn't go up enough in regular combat.

- Ah! Yes! Just immediately tell her all about it! Instead of saying, you know, literally anything else! "Yo, I'm in the sewer 'cause Cordelia cramps my style!" How hard is that? Villains too stupid to succeed...

- The sink and mirror is set to O passability.

- School windows are set to O passability.

- Finally got a chance to use Powered Claws.

- Oh...Gourd trauma! 

Well, I don't have time to finish this today, but I have to say, this is shaping up to be an easy favorite.

This is interesting. At first I thought that controlling a sprite this way was going to get old pretty fast, but it didn't. Instead, I got used to it. It's a pretty counterintuitive concept for a puzzle game that strangely works.