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The Reaper of the Depths's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #49 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
- Ancient Ruins: The Catacombs as a whole, they're very old and abandoned by humanity.
- Solitude: Not apparent from the start, but near the end of the game, it's touched upon. This isn't the primary theme.
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Comments
I defeated Ulrik, the Paladin, took his Holy Blade and got back home.
The game was fun. I love the tunes, they're super catchy. I like the top down town presentation. The view is good, and so is the movement. You've included some cool dungeon layout and mechanics, the dungeon's pretty good in the context. Combat and overall resource management including money are fun and well balanced, I really like that some enemies take very little damage from physical damage and some other from magical damage, and that enemies as your characters can make real damage, combat is just lethal enough.
I like the limited map, I still mapped most of the game on a paper sheet (did some mistake on the northwestern corner of the second level too).
I wish I could speed up the feedbacks during combat by mashing the button. Also I think I got a bug, I had saved my game first so it was no big deal but I got in a loop where I could not exit the rune buying menu, and even after trying again after reloading it would happen again, when I tried to exit the menu it closed but immediately opened up again.
This is a cool game, thanks for sharing.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it, and it's cool seeing physically-drawn versions of my maps, especially since I can immediately recognize which floors they are just from the layouts. Lol.
As for the shop issue, do you have any idea what could have triggered it? I never ran into that during playtesting, or even while making the planned expansion. I'll see if I can recreate the bug or not and fix it from there.
Not really but I can share you a save file in case it helps : https://www.sendspace.com/file/333a1t
If you enter the rune shop then you can't leave it.
The core gameplay of the game works perfectly. It has all the necessary mechanics of a grid based dungeon crawler game with JRPG elements. I think only thing that is missing is an automap. The dungeons are labyrinthian and you can easily get lost. I hate it when i lose my sense of direction and start going in circles in these games. This is partly the reason why i couldn't play this game until the end.
In terms of visuality, everything is too low res. I know that you went for a 8-bit look and feeling but i played a lot of NES games on the emulator they didn't look like this. Top down view has the 8-bit look, you pretty nailed it there with the color pallette and everything, enemies looks nice too. But in FPS camera, everything is too muddy. You hardly can make out what is what. Wall sprites look too big and ugly. I think this happens due to the fact that the engine you use is a 2D engine and those sprites were made for a topdown game, when you zoom in on them, everything looks muddy. Also i think due to the same reason camera perspective is off. When you turn in the dungeon, the wall is directly in your face.
You managed to capture the 8-bit JRPG vibes with musics, they were nice.
I like your storytelling and the game has an interesting story. You wanted to reverse the typical JRPG stories and make the players play from the enemies perspective, that's a very cool idea.
These are my overall thoughts on your game with pros and cons. My final verdict is: It's a very complete game with a good amount of content for a 9 days game jam. However, the visual quality and gameplay loop didn't make me want to play the game to completion.
Wow, really complete game! Really like the intro and how you tell the story. You manage to give a lot of life in such tiny sprites. I too got lost in first level and couldn't find the second lever (I found one, in the lava room with a knight encounter). I gave up after because I think I would need to map it, and I just didn't start. I might come back armed with paper but more importantly, patience. I wish there would be a way to speed encounters, and to get a save in the dungeon (the kind that destroy itself when you load it), to make my experience more pleasurable.
Thanks for playing!
I probably should have pointed attention at it, but De' Lor has a skill that opens up a limited map if your surroundings (About 10 tiles around you iirc), if that helps any.
As for the "self-destruct save," that is a thing here! In this version, it's tied to the Alt key, tho once the judging period is over it'll be moved to the S key.
Oh damn, didn't know about both. I'll give back a try, it's gonna make the game really easier.
Are there two levers in level one? I for the sake of me cannot find the second...
I will try again later. I guess I am lost.. about a hour of playing and I can comment on the first level only, sadly, for now.
The game is super-small on my screen, but playable. Loved the aestetic of pixel art all around and enjoyed names for enemies that I've met so far. Especially combinations of enemies. Everything is really cute in "the town" too. With little cutscenes too. Sleeping and Ressing felt like a lot of love was put into it.
Personally I would make movement a little bit faster. Its a lot of exploration and moving slow while lost make it a bit of a chore.
Skely had insight about where we are, its was quite nice. Echolocation didn't help me much, because i am terrible at remembering things :D Probably should take pen and draw stuff, but there is one little thing prevents me from doing that (its a baby). But its neat feature too. You able to see part of the map and it can be useful.
Loved that jumping bridges mini puzzle and the way trap hidden door was actually hinted on :)
Music a lot of love. I wonder how hard it was not to make FF victory song? ;D
All in all a very solid game. Would play more, but need to jump rating others too :)
There's two switches on every floor, partially because the floors are randomly shuffled at the start of the game (I'm assuming your BF3 was either the Lava, Electric, or Plant floors since you mention the jumping puzzle).
If I could add an option to run or something, I'd have added it. I've tested it in the past, and the script I used to do the first-person stuff doesn't seem to allow for different movement speeds, unfortunately.
Glad you enjoyed yourself, even if you couldn't find that second lever. Lol.
Another entry with so many well working systems in it. Yeah, the graphics are ultra basic, but thats the charm about it, such a lovely 8bit look. The music was good, too. The battles work well and I enjoyed leveling up and getting new skills. I enjoy the environmental puzzles, like the ice skating (not so much the 10% HP hidden door traps).
At the start the RPG engine told me something about a missing font, but the text was fine in the end, just not the same font as in the screen shots.
And I could not go fullscreen, as the "alt" key brought up a save suspension menu. It was a bit hard to play the game in at tiny window.
Oh, and the story sequences with the top down view were very appreciated!
Really nicely done! I love all of the polish on the town scenes. Dungeons were pretty good, I kept getting lost in the first one and had to pull out some graph paper to map it. Luckily I didn't get as lost in the later ones ^_^. Managed to beat the game, with about 2.25h on the clock, although I'll admit I got a bit bored and speed hacked it to 3x speed when I got to the ice level. Combat was kinda a pushover until right about then too, I would have liked a little more challenge in the middle, I think. The simple graphics look great, it's making me excited for the DCExtra Jam =).
The NES dungeon crawler of my dreams lol! I loved the charming graphics, the switch between first person and overhead like an old final fantasy game was great for the cut scenes and back at the home base. The party based menu combat is great, reminiscent of something like the old nes era Dragon Warrior/Quest games.
I was not sure if it was a bug, but I fought the bandits and hit the switch, but the door kept telling me there might be a switch nearby. After looking around for 20-30 minutes I gave up.
Thank you for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Which floor did you have the issue on? There's two floors out of the possible 6 where the bandits exist. If it's on the poison floor, I could have sworn I'd fixed that... Well that sucks. :/
Guess I'm gonna have to make a v1.0.1 when the judging period is over.
Yeah it was the floor with the purple poison where you fight the bandits on the bridge before that first switch, that I assume opens the door I couldn't get into!
Oh, Itch hadn't updated with your reply, sorry about that. Would have directly responded to this reply. Lol.
Sorry for the second reply, but I can't seem to reproduce this on either floor that has the bandits. Did you find both switches on the floor already? That's the only thing I can think of at this point.
Asking cause the bandit's switch on the poison floor opens the second door.
I'm not sure I'll have to replay and let you know if I can replicate it.
Ok, thank you. It helps a lot.
I started this, and it looks like fun, but it's _super_ tiny on my giant monitor, and if I hit Alt-Enter it goes fullscreen but is apparently choosing a resolution and refresh rate my monitor doesn't support (and, unfortunately, my monitor doesn't tell me what that is -_-). Anyone know a work-around to get this to run in fullscreen at a specific resolution/refresh rate?
Just remembered to respond to this. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there's a way to change the fullscreen resolution with RMXP games. Maybe there is and I just haven't seen it (Since I never used fullscreen in general while playtesting since it just gets a bit blurry), idk. I've tried looking it up but the closest I've seen is a controls setting (Which isn't very close at all).
I guess it makes sense, as XP was originally released in 2005 (2004 in Japan), but still.
Very charming game, lots of content and little cool details. Liked it a lot!
The music are really nice too
love the chunky artstyle! good job
This is a pretty solid entry, with fluid movement and exploration and fun art. Good opening, tight gameplay, nice premise of being on the "other" side of the usual adventuring role. Did quite a bit of the game, but haven't finished yet. I have two critiques on the game, that stem from personal preference:
1. not a fan of encounters that pop up in areas I've already explored. There's going to be some backtracking, especially if you get lost or disoriented now and again or want to go back and check if you missed anything (like I do). Skully was a nice touch on letting you know when your next encounter is going to happen, but still, I'd rather not fight in areas I've already "cleared"
2. Losing 10% hp when checking for secret walls is a bit of a deterrent against checking for secrets. But this isn't such a big deal since I can just heal it back up in combat.
Made it to level 2 but got wrecked by some eyeballs :( I'm not sure if there was a way to recover fallen party members, maybe I missed an item or something, but I ended up going down the stairs with both the main character and the vampire unconscious.
Incredible amount of polish and juice, the music and art is all really cool, a solid narrative as well with that nifty opening cutscene. That jumping puzzle was a fun break from walking the halls. There was also a wide range of skills and enemies, and just a ton of content in general.
Really well made entry!
Late to responding, but thank you for playing my entry (Same to everyone else who has)! And for the kind words. I appreciate it. :)
As for the whole revival thing, there's both an item for it and a place to revive party members in The Depths. You gain the ability to buy the revival item once you hit Lv. 3 or so. Two of the 6 possible floors have one you can find in a chest hidden away.
Out of curiosity, which floor with the jumping puzzle did you have? Three of them have one (I almost always end up making a jumping puzzle like this. Lol).