Play story
Eric and the Fate of Harold's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Therese Award for Strength: Combat | #25 | 1.901 | 2.125 |
| Oldhar Award for Literature: Story | #26 | 2.180 | 2.438 |
| Lucius Award for Laughs: Comedy | #28 | 2.068 | 2.313 |
| Marsha Award for Music: Sound | #32 | 2.124 | 2.375 |
| Harold Award for Excellence | #32 | 1.901 | 2.125 |
| Hrld Award for Graphics: Visuals | #33 | 2.012 | 2.250 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
A neat enough entry, and the mini questlines felt just about right for a jam game. However, a few thoughts:
Got all the way until the final unwinnable battle. It's pretty interesting and refreshing to have Eric as a lead in a Harold jam entry.
I found some of the dialogue to be very wordy and it tired me out quickly. Not sure if I was meant to know who Egli is? She seemed to have come out of nowhere, but I might have missed something.
I would spice up the dungeon maps, as they were very empty and in the case of the forest way too big.
Dr. Egli and the cursed versions of the others appearing without introduction is a result of half the game/plot being skipped.
I would have added more things to do if I'd had the time (or wasn't so slow), that's why parts of the maps were left unutilized. I'm going to expand/properly finish the game eventually (well, all of my games, but I always come up with new stuff).
There were some funny moments and I liked the bits of story told with the missions! Otherwise, the others have covered most of the points.
Just here seconding the remarks about big maps and unwinnable final battle. The battles themselves may have been on the bland side but at least there really were choices, and they didn't drag on too long. In fact, I chose to go to the forest first and that multiple enemies battle was a nail-biter at the end! I also liked how you had some choreographed, humorous cutscenes. They got the point across and weren't too long or boring.
Grammatical nitpick: it's unofficial, not inofficial.
This is a good game jam entry in spite of its flaws. If you use the lessons learned from this jam to refine your technique, I think you'll have a great entry next time.
Not a whole lot to add beyond prior comments except that skipping the Fight/Escape menu for games like this, or disabling Escape entirely, would be a good upgrade.
I accidentally went too fast, forgetting that that menu comes up every turn in vanilla RM, and Escaped from the "multiple waves" battle when I was down to... the last enemy.
I wanted the player to be able to escape (in fact, I made it so that escaping always succeeds) so they could, if they found the battle too difficult, do something else first and learn another skill from that.
But yeah, the battle menus could be streamlined, and I've just noticed and added a plug-in that merges the first two.
There were some fun parts. The plot WAIT A SECOND I GET IT. It's a dead end, right?! It's a dead end!?
If that's the case, kudos. Objectively unfun dead end, but clever.
Anyways, yeah, the game and the missions were kind of fun. Combat was simple but at least there were some skill choices. If the dead end we all experienced was intended, maybe clue in the player eventually? If it wasn't intended, well. . .
Okay, I failed.
The place were Ralph attempted to trap the elf is the dead end I intended.
After rushing to get the entire climax in, it was so close to the deadline that I didn't test the game in its entirety again (as I would normally have done, of course) and failed to realize that a condition was set wrong. As a result, it skips over half the game including the mandatory line of dialogue, and the final battle is apparently unwinnable as you're missing the most powerful attacks. In other words, I pancaked up. :-(
Ah okay well that really clears things up! Such is the nature of jams.
I thought that's part of the dead end lol
Simple entry made with Eric as its focus for the character.
If i had to give a few criticism i would say that the battles were kind of bland and the maps big and uninteresting.
There is a lot of familiar RTP, music and sfx use in the entry and some alternate music would have improved it a bunch.