Wow really an excellent game all around. Also the only game that I nearly rage quit out of annoyance (plains area of course). Amazingly, the one thing this game needed was less. Just too many battles, too many rooms, too much frustrating wandering getting tricked by those dang signs. A little bit less would have made this a pretty concentrated piece of artwork. How it stands though, it is still really impressive stuff.

Loving the graphics and overall music style. Really gives me an indie adventure game vibe. However, some of the music just gets a little jarring when switching between them, and I didn't care for the car-portion music much at all.

This is probably the best game of the jam, but much like Harold in Time and my own Voidskipper I think there is a lot of fat and padding that ended up here.
Mansion could've had half the rooms, I started escaping from the latter half of the forest enemies, and I'm lucky I avoided all avoidable enemies in the car section otherwise I would not meet the 45 minutes.
Despite all that? Loved the game. The visuals, the (strange?) music choices, the very cute and complete story... Congratulations, Lumi, you're great at this 🩵
and yes harold be like me fr fr

Lumi! You are an absolute legend at using RPGM haha the eventing in this was impressive. David was hilarious btw. Great writing. Clean battle system too! For me personally, I think overall it could have done even better with a tad less of each phase, like 2 less maps of driving and 3 less maps of cleaning to just keep the momentum rolling and impact fresh. Super great job, 

There's a lot going on with this.

I'll start by saying the presentation is generally quite good and there's a lot of polish in some areas, though some things are comparatively wonky (like the Transfer events in the driving section that can be skipped, allowing the player to drive infinitely off-screen with a control scheme that is extremely difficult to guide when you can't see what direction the actor is facing).

From a technical perspective there's obviously a very strong command of the engine. It's from a design perspective where I am less sold as there are some good decisions alongside some questionable ones.

Sound design in terms of SE, ME, etc. is solid. But the music choices I did not like whatsoever as they both sounded bad (to me) in a vacuum and also undercut the generally cute vibe of the graphics. Not sure if it's older RM compression or all the music tracks selected had an odd "tinny" sound to them, but it wasn't pleasant.

Visually it's kind of cozy, and Harold is the familiar lovable buffoon with a sort of innocence to him, but the narrator and Marsha have potty mouth issues. The narrative and stylistic clashes may be intentional, but I don't think they particularly land. That said, the art is pretty amazing.

I don't know if there's any way to stop this from happening in 2k2/3 but if you press right during actor battle command input it skips that actor's turn, which is unfortunate because I first thought that it might be some sort of free turn battle only to find it's just a waste of an action. Marsha's skill list is interesting but I'm not sold on her action economy - taking a lot of turns off to forage would make sense if her skills were a bit more impactful. But I guess she's also more flexible, so it's still reasonably balanced in that sense.

I won't harp too much on having random battles in the middle of a puzzle section as it's been covered in other discussions. Being able to run with (that I can tell) 100% success is a semi-mitigating factor, but it's not perfect. The sign puzzle itself is pretty clever and a good use of having a nonverbal visual media direct the player. Same with the wind puzzle and audio cues. The stone puzzle felt like an easier version of the sign puzzle, but it was "fine".

The mansion goes on for quite a while too long and combat doesn't feel great with the overzealous level scaling and slow trickle of new skills not quite offsetting an otherwise perfunctory battle system. Losing occasional turns to the battle command issue is also a drain on patience. Yeah, the entire second floor was unnecessary now that I'm through it. It's super repetitive and doesn't add much of anything. Fights aren't tricky, they're just kind of slow and drain resources. And the only things you get besides new skills are the ability to buy more granola potions - er, bars. It's kind of funny that the characters complained about that episode being a chore, because it sort of was. So I have to award a partial point back for the double meaning, intentional or not.

The final battle was pretty decent and encouraged using a variety of skills. Skills that kept the boss locked down or debuffed had priority, but there was a sense of strategy I didn't really get from most of the other combat. I think fewer, more interesting battles would have been preferred overall. On the plus side, the best fight in the game was the last one, so that ended on a higher note.

The sprite work in the end scene was fantastic.

I can't say the humor did much for me, like some things were amusing but I have a feeling I missed a lot of references and some of the stuff was just weird. Speaking of references, the skill names were a nice touch and many of them seemed on point in terms of what they did.

The best part to me was the story, and largely in the sense that it's an adventure of self-discovery. I liked Harold's personality and dialogue much moreso than Marsha or Alex's as hinted at above, but even with that I think the writing was generally solid for what you were trying to do. I guess I have a slight hang-up about whether or not the entire sequence was just imaginary or real and in the latter case whether Alex used some reality bending powers to wrangle someone into an adventure without their consent. Apart from that, I think it's a clever way to set up Harold's character arc, and I think will resonate with a lot of audiences that have potentially been forced to face uncomfortable questions about self-identity.

I encountered a softlock (drove off the end of a map and it didn't transition) and wasn't able to finish, but I really enjoyed what I played of it!

Highest consistent rating and my first five star review.

Just fantastic.

The random order of areas I got this time was mansion --> driving --> plains which I thought flowed a lot better compared to facing the plains as the first area. The driving mechanic was neat! Fun simple battle system with a interesting foraging mechanic. Looks like resources are now capped so I can't stockpile ingredients anymore ;)

Only got to the first switch in the plains before hitting around 45 minutes. Also had to close the game because I closed and reopened my laptop and the fades stopped working which made battles impossible. Probably a laptop thing, but anyway...

Overall: Probably the most traditionally RPG Maker game I've played in a Harold Jam and a very polished and refined entry. I'll definitely come back to finish this one at some point!

Gameplay: Very snappy combat with some fun mechanics. I especially enjoyed Marsha's Scavenge mechanic; hell, I did it in my own entry! Only thing is I didn't understand what the enemy's states did.

Music: Didn't hate it honestly! Very eclectic selection of tracks that fit the tone of the game. The battle theme in the mansion had huge OFF vibes.

Story: A tiny bit biased since I couldn't complete the story in an hour, but although it's a bit random it's very well written with some great dialogue.

Graphics: Love the handmande graphics combined with photorealism. Very distinct look that, again, has a very classic RPG Maker feel. Love how Harold and Marsha are drawn and the enemy designs are really fun.

Comedy: Dialogue got some laughs out of me, as did the named house plants.

Story: Only got to the end of the woods after nearly an hour. Will play to the end but as we’re judging on 40 minutes, I’ll say it had an intresting set up. Alex character in particular I enjoyed. The narrative set up was decent.

Combat: was fun at first and well put together but through a combination of hitting those 3 switches and most mobs being the same 2 or 3 enemies I eventually just started fleeing everything. Some unique skills.

Gameplay: I enjoyed driving the car and janky movement it came with, I also enjoyed combat till I didn’t as said above. The exploration parts were find. Can’t help but feel I missed out of the best of the gameplay because the forest took so long.

Music: Some decent songs, very Lumi, some of it I found overly distorted and like grating. All in all a good choice that suits the game.

Graphics: This was the highest scoring graphic game so far for me. Great job is such a short time.

Comedy: I think some people will find this really funny but it just wasn’t my thing. Not bad but not for me.

Overall: One of the strongest entries and I think when all is said and done will feature quite near the top. A combination of irritation, fun and all round weirdness.