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The Escapists's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #17 | 3.063 | 3.063 |
| Writing/Story | #19 | 3.063 | 3.063 |
| Overall | #23 | 3.063 | 3.063 |
| Creativity | #30 | 3.063 | 3.063 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
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- This game was soooo longgggg. It was well done and made sense, which is more than could be said about all of the games, but it was sooooooo lonnnnggggg.
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Hey :).
Puisque tu es français, je ne vais pas m'embêter à écrire mon évaluation en anglais. J'ai trouvé ton jeu plutôt bon, bien qu'il souffre de quelques défauts qui m'ont un peu fait grincer des dents.
Dans l'ensemble, l'histoire est bonne et recherchée, il y a quelques fautes d'anglais, mais c'est compréhensible puisque tu n'est pas anglais, je fais moi-même beaucoup d'erreur de traduction. En revanche, j'ai trouvé le retournement de chemise du héro principal un peu brusque, mal amenée, trop rapide. Pourquoi aiderait-t-il une totale inconnue quitte a se mettre un empire entier à dos ?
Au niveau du mapping, j'ai un avis plus mitigé. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais tes cartes m'ont laissé un peu sur ma faim. De plus, certaines ne sont pas très réalistes, comme celle de la forêt (avoir une rangée d'arbres bien droite en plein milieu pour cacher un coffre au bout... tu vois ce que je veux dire ?)
Enfin, au niveau du système de combat, il y a encore une fois des bons et des mauvais points. J'ai aimé le fait de pouvoir customizer les personnages en choisissant quels stats monter avec les parchemins, choisir qui aura quel skills, et avoir un bon nombre d'armures et armes parmi lesquelles choisir. En revanche, j'ai trouvé les combats en eux-mêmes assez lents et ennuyeux, et certains des boss on des mécaniques assez rageantes, comme Lucius.
Enfin, gros point noir pour moi : le fait de devoir grinder pour pouvoir avancer (j'ai essayé d'aller battre directement Lucius par deux fois sans m'entrainer, et impossible de le battre).
Enfin bref, j'ai tout de même apprécié les 30 min que j'ai passé sur ton jeu, bien joué, et merci pour ta participation !
A la prochaine ! :)
Drag.
Bonsoir Drag !
Studio Blue m'a fait la même remarque : le passage de loyal bon à chaotique bon s'est fait trop brusquement. Donc sur ce point, je suis d'accord avec toi. Il y a pas mal de choses mal amenés dans le scénario de ce jeu et ce retournement de veste en fait partie.
Oui, en effet à première vue la disposition des arbres est un peu étrange. Mon intention était de dessiner une tortue et m'en servir pour concevoir un donjon autour.
Ça m'étonne que tu me parles de la longueur des combats. De mon point de vue, les combats (bien qu'imparfait) sont le point sur lequel je suis le plus satisfait. Donc je suis intéressé d'en discuter.
En me basant sur le gameplay aveugle de Drifty, j'ai noté que les combats de boss étaient toujours terminés en moins de 10 minutes - ce que je trouve très respectable pour un RPG. Cela dit, il n'y a pas de raison que les combats aléatoires durent plus longtemps à moins de le faire exprès. La majorité des ennemis du jeu ont des faiblesses à exploiter. De tous les ennemis du jeu, seul le Horned Snake n'a pas de faiblesses (mais pas de résistances non plus). Simple curiosité : as-tu cherché à exploiter les points faibles des ennemis ?
Quant au combat contre Lucius, je suis très satisfait au contraire. Je trouve même que c'est le boss que j'ai le plus réussi : Lucius a une stratégie (au lieu d'être juste un sac à PV qui fait bobo) et il pose un véritable défi au joueur. Je n'ai jamais fait le combat contre Lucius pour qu'il soit facile à passer. Aussi, il est tout à fait possible de passer Lucius sans grinder à condition de se préparer pour. Mais évidemment, si tu as eu du mal à le passer, il est logique que tu souhaites grinder pour pouvoir le passer plus facilement. Ce n'est pas une honte. ^^
Je suis ravi que tu aies apprécié mon jeu malgré les défauts que tu lui as trouvé. :)
Hey there! We did a high level review of your entry this weekend and would like you to see it on our channel. You can find the exact time to skip to in the description:
Hey! I watched your video and left a comment! Thanks a lot (again)!
"High level", huh? Come on, don't be modest here! X)
I liked this game overall. It has a little bit of everything: story, a flexible and intriguing combat system, and a variety of maps.
However, I felt like for every step this game took forward, it also took a step back. For instance:
Other random observations:
Once again, I thought this was overall a good game. Keep up the good work!
Hello! Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate it! ^^
- The goal of a front-view battle system is to give the feeling you're in the hero's shoes and it gives you plenty of advantages as a developer, notably the use of less resources. At first, I imagined the game having a side-view battle scene as well, but then I thought about the finale of my game and I wanted to make something special. It's after a discussion with Tea (https://itch.io/jam/5adj/topic/691571/clarification-of-rtp), I decided to opt for a front-view scene instead. For the lack of enemy HP bars, some people like it, some doesn't. All Final Fantasy games didn't had such a thing and to go even more back tabletop RPGs doesn't necessarily show how much health the enemies have left. Having decided to not use plugins at all, I should have use outside resources (thus breaking the rules) and invest more time to create enemy HP gauges and copy for every single troops. The lack of HP indicator is contributing to a retro charm. After that, this is a question of taste, and I understand you might have want to see things another way.
- I am French. (Baguette, croissant, haha memes.) Hence my version of RPG Maker MV is in French too. As a result, most of the system messages had to be translated from French to English. However, the rest of the messages are originally in English (based on what I know), but being French I may have screwed up somewhere. If that's the case, I'm sorry for this. Can you give me some examples of the mistakes I've made and how you would have corrected it? So such a thing will be less likely to happen in the future.
- Yes, every sound and music used are from RPG Maker MV RTP only. And thanks for the compliment. ^^;
- And the final bout is the reason why I switched to front-view battle in the first place. ^^;
Thank you again! I'm glad you enjoyed my game! ^^
Some examples of the awkward grammar and phrasing:
- Each type of weapon have their own little gimmick.
Change it to "Each type of weapon has its own gimmick."
- A spear that is made to make easier for its user to secure hits on its target.
This could be a little less wordy, like, "A highly-accurate spear," or "A precision-crafted spear that is highly accurate."
- A small shield planned for duels that increases the strength of the guard.
It's not clear here whether you're just adding flavor (by indicating that this shield is used by guards), or if this has a mechanical impact (increasing the strength of the Guard skill, or increasing the user's Strength stat). Depending on which you mean, one of these examples would work better: "A small shield used by guards in training," or "A small shield used in duels that increases the user's Strength."
- There is people who try to escape the country by Turtle Forest because it is the closest to the border. So the Kingdom send patrols check there often for heretics.
There are many ways to approach this quote. It seems to me the point of this is to build your world while explaining to the player why they are going on this mission. The best way to reword this will depend on how you want this NPC to feel about the situation. Say the NPC is disapproves of people fleeing the country. His text could look like this: "You're here to patrol the Turtle Forest? Great! Those heretics keep stealing my food as they flee the country! Be sure to bring them to justice!" Or maybe he sympathizes with the escapees: "Another king's guard is here to patrol the Turtle Forest? Maybe the king should ask himself why so many of his citizens are trying to flee the kingdom instead!" Both are a little less awkwardly-worded while making the dialog more natural-sounding.
To be fair, I have seen many native-English speakers write some pretty awkward things, too, so you are by no means terrible; I just appreciate it when game designers polish their text so it isn't confusing or clunky.
Thanks a lot for your feedback! I really appreciate it! (Yes, about the shield, it's supposed to increase the the strength of the Guard skill - or to be exact the Guard state - reducing damage further.)
I didn't meant to be confusing, sorry about that. Thanks again for taking the time to tell me. ^^
You're welcome! Gamedev is a journey of continuous improvement.
I wanted to say that the final battle was pretty well done and the story has an interesting concept.
But there are also some drawbacks that slightly worsened my impression of the game. First of all the random encounter system, for most people this mechanic is very annoying and unnecessary wide maps and disabling debuffs only add up to it. Its really better when enemies are visible and chasing you. And about disabling debuffs, there are 4 of them: confusion, sleep, rage and charm. It is good that there are potions that heal them but you can't use them if 2 of your characters are disabled at the same time and you can still get the debuff right after you healed it with a potion. It would be better if those anti ailment potions also gave a short immunity to those debuffs because everytime you use them you miss an opportunity to attack or heal thus making the fight longer. In some cases its easier to just let it be, especially with the sleep state its a lot easier to just let enemy attack you to break the effect.
Equipment gives you stats that you can't see like physical damage resist. I know that you didn't use any plugins so you couldn't use yanlfy's extended status menu plugin but you could at least write the number in description, for example instead of writing "this armor increase your physical damage resistance" you could write "this armor increase your physical damage resistance by 15%" . I can't judge if item is worth buying without seeing the actual numbers. Also descriptions of some items are a bit obscure:
^I don't get what it means at all.^
Also about mapping, I didn't know where to go in that building at the last location. I clicked on those blue carpets and expected them to lead me into a room but nothing happened so I thought its just for decoration.
I made 2 circles around the building while fighting and escaping numerous encounters until I realized that I should click on a wall to enter a room because there were no doors, no gaps in a wall, nothing to indicate that theres a passage here except for small carpets that aren't clickable. And as one wise man once said "always assume that the player is stupid" so make it easier to know where to go.
And also I find it weird that the mc has lvl7 at the start of the game but the girl has only lvl4 which makes her kind of a deadweigth in the battle against Lucius.
That's all I had to say I hope Drifty will like your game (or at least won't be too mad XD). Good luck with your project!
P.s. your poster has 3 characters and we never get to see the third one, I wonder who is it?
Hello, thanks a lot for you review! Let's get down to business!
- I choose to use the random encounter system because I didn't felt like there was anything wrong with it depending on how to use it. Very good games used this system like the early Final Fantasy, Pokémon or Undertale to name a few. Afterwards, this is just a question of preferences. Some tolerate this kind of encounters and others have an aversion for it (and I understand them, some games misuse this system ad nauseum in one way or another). And I must admit seeing the monsters on the map is kinda cool. However, I wanted to give a chance to this encounter system and maybe find a compromise to make it enjoyable to the player. I'm sorry I didn't manage to pull this off for everyone.
- Negative status effects are kind of a double-edge sword on small parties. I wanted to add them to make the monsters feel different from each other. And for a boss fight, it ended up being a full-on strategy used by your opponent to make you less of a threat to him. Like, if you encounter a Flower in the forest and deals you a status effect, when you encounter another Flower, you will suspect another status effect like this, so you know you have to get rid of Flowers fast enough before they get the idea. Besides, I made sure these kind of moves have a low priority, especially in the early game where there is just the main character, so the player doesn't face it unless of a bad luck. However, it is right I could have give better ways for the player to fight against these status effect like equipment granting immunity to some status effect. So... my bad about that.
- I am sorry about the descriptions, I meant to go roleplay with them hoping the players would catch... the drift. ;) Seriously though, that's my bad, I should have compensate the fact there is no plugins with more accurate information.
- The fact you enter the room by "going straight to the wall" instead of just stepping on the carpet comes from Pokémon. The fact there is a carpet is just to indicate you can go to another room there and I didn't see any complications into entering even using the mouse.
- The main character having more experience than the heroine makes sense in context, there is a gap between them: one is a military man and the other is a civilian trying to escape. Hopefully, she doesn't get to be level 1. And it insist on the fact, she must be prepared for what is to come like mentioned by the MC earlier. Four ways you can go to prepare her for Lucius: equipment, spells, Secrets items, grinding. You can also stack these methods if you truly have problems.
- I hope too. Thank you for your encouragement! ^^
- About the PS: actually, you DID encounter that third character. You even mentioned him earlier in your review. However, if you look carefully, you might see a fourth character, you MAY not have encountered.
I thought this was going to be a generic rpg and I was gladly surprised. I like the magic learn system, like you can customize who learns what. I like the final battle switching between Iron Giant and the Girl. Also liked how you reward the player by backtracking .
I suggest making the player grind a bit when the girl joins since i went straight to the Lucius fight and got my ass kicked. Also, the healing on the enemy Iron Giant is a bit frustrating.
I had fun, good job! (I also laughed haaard since I can pick the characters names and well...im not mature in that regard, i hope you dont mind XD)
Glad you enjoyed the game! ^^
Now, it's possible to do that fight without grinding, but it might require some knowledge about how the characters are being prepared for that fight. With that said, I recognize that a "first-timer" might face trouble dealing with that fight. But I didn't intended Lucius to be a breeze. As for the healing, well, I thought it didn't made him recover a lot of HP. Or was the AI straight up just spamming this ability for you? ^^;
Glad you had fun! (Also, the choice of names was... "clean". ^^)
Really love the switching focus with the final battle. Good job!
Thank you! Glad you liked it! ^^
Escape from north korea 10\10
Fantasy North Korea*
This was a nice quick epic tale, the tomes were neat. I feel like they might be living in the modern world but the leaders have everyone secluded and brainwashed.
Hey!
Thank you for the compliment! I'm glad you liked the tome system and the story! It means a lot! ^^