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A jam submission

A Fearsome TaleView game page

A Story-based Adventure and horror RPG.
Submitted by Squiks — 1 day, 1 hour before the deadline
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A Fearsome Tale's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound Design#94.0004.000
Writing#153.2863.286
Creativity#163.9293.929
Overall#173.6253.625
Gameplay#203.2863.286

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

What themes did your game use?
Silent protagonist/Villain, Purple.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Awesome Earthbound vibes, and nice execution of the silent protagonist theme. The escape room had a solid concept behind it, but the way it was done led for a bit of confusion. For example I checked my bed multiple times, but not in the right direction so I did not find the item on the first, second, or third pass. This was a bit frustrating. Having to recheck areas that did not provide items before is a bit rough as well. 

Combat was a bit too long and one dimensional to be good. In fact I think having a single fight or no fights would have improved the overall experience, as the game was too short to have any level progression, and there was no good reason to learn new skills or level up.

I enjoyed the game and thought there was clever design and storytelling here. It felt like the first month of work done on a longer game, instead of a game created for a game jam, and it almost feels like you were stuck in that mindset. If this were created to be a shorter jam game, a few modifications could have helped, like giving a cure skill to start, totally scrapping experience and the skill learning system, reducing fights to 1 or 0, and possible a boss fight (a bigger rat perhaps?), perhaps an story arc that doesn't end too abruptly.

Hope you keep developing it though! Would love to get to the bottom of that strange creature and the MC's sister.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much, Human!

Yeah, I had the game idea a couple of months ago, the Jam was just an excuse to make it. And the theme "silent protagonist" was just perfect for that idea. You got it right.

About the house and stuff I totally agree with you, there is no point on making the evets the way I did, I just didn't think of that cause I rushed that part. I spent basically 3 weeks just making the chars animations, tilesets, and maps. And when I look forward I just say "man why I didn't focus on other things"? haha. I guess I wanted to show what I think its my strongest point, the visual part (maybe I'm wrong). lol

About the fight, yeah I was going to make a boss rat, but ended up not doing it because I won't use the rats in the final project, it was drawn only for the Jam. But I totally agree with you, there should be only the rat in the house maybe and not too strong.

Anyway sorry for the big text. I really appreciate you playing my game, this was the first time I participated on a Jam and I absolutely loved it!!!

Thank you so so much, Human!

Submitted(+1)

Using a jam to start your project is totally legit too! I can tell you put a ton of care into to the visuals, so now make sure you use them in a longer game!

(+1)

This is a  neat entry!! Like the custom art. The semi thriller horror vibe its good. i like the puzzle, not very complicated but not super easy. Time span of the game was perfect and characters and interesting.


Mapping was also a strong point. Battle system was regular but a twist of equippingng skills, not bad at all. (Rats might be too high on hp)

Overall a very pleasant experience. It maaaay be too short for a demo, but for a jam its prefect.


Great Job!

Developer

Thank you so so much VaroClaw!

I'm flattered, really appreciate that.

This prototype of the game jam gave me several ideas and it is certainly a project that I want to take forward.

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

The cartoony art style with fairly modern setting and front-view battle system reminds me of Earthbound. However, there are some design decisions that hold the game back from being successful in my opinion. For example, the first area is like an escape room: you have to solve a puzzle by collecting required items and placing them appropriately. My problem is that while it's possible to access all parts of the house right away, you can't collect certain items before you collect other items. The order is pretty arbitrary; I would rather have had the ability to collect each item in any order.

Similarly, the only way to collect all of the ice crystals in the "outside" part of the game is to collect all of the crystals in the pond area, then exit the area and reenter to grab an additional respawned crystal. Why not just have all of the necessary crystals available from the start? There are plenty of stalagmites to hold all of the required crystals, so the decision to withhold one is just baffling.

I suspect English is not your first language, but there are several spelling errors and some odd text choices that keep the story from having the impact you were going for.

I found the battles needlessly difficult and boring. The skill choices are effectively attack, guard, and slightly stronger attack, and even when using all of these choices as efficiently as possible the battles still took what seemed like too many turns and I ended up close to dead by the end of each battle.

I know that the long walk near the end of the game was supposed to drive home the idea that the player was walking for a long time, but the scenery was boring and pretty meaningless;  it was needlessly long and just pads out the play time. I think going from the transition point on the previous map and cutting to the end cutscene would have been better without losing any impact.

In summary, the game looks good, but I think there are some structural issues that should be addressed before proceeding with development. I hope these criticisms are helpful for the game's future progress.

Developer(+1)

Hi, thank you very much for the feedback!

Your opinion is very important for the development of the game.

We will have several changes in a future update, and the current puzzles will not be the same, and also the story, which is being worked on daily.

In the next update, we will have an improvement in EN-US localization, some polishing in the battle (balancing) and menu UI, also the implementation of a new playable character: Murilo. It will be our "official" non game-jam demo, and must be out in a couple of months.

Once again, thank you very much for the feedback!!!

Submitted(+2)

The graphic is cute, the story and the gameplay are interesting. I had some issues seeing the winter orbs, and it took me 5-10 minutes to figure out that I need to write the password in uppercase. I feel strange about the fact that a child is running around with a knife and kills animals, but the battlegraphics look nice too.

Developer(+1)

Thank yor for playing! 

Yeah, I will just leave the PW to trigger the event for both lower and uppercase in future updates, it'll be better. And I will change the winter orbs effect to make it glow more, (just saw in my other TV that doesn't seem quite visible). Thanks for pointing that. 

Thank you again for your amazing feedback! I'm definitely playing Timmy vs. the evil too when I get some free time, I downloaded it already.

Submitted(+1)

Lovely game so far!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

No problem :)