Rebertha 

by ManaBrent

Hey there ManaBrent, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I'm Drifty and I was asked to judge your game in round four of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.

The intro looks very nice, but I always worry when I see 3D in RPG Maker. The engine wasn't made for it and it doesn't perform as well as I would like.

I understand the premise but most things are not really explained that well.

The switching to a spirit form to solve puzzles mechanic is cool, but it's confusing and a bit difficult.

I don't know what you were thinking with the interiors being a 3D labyrinth. It's a one tile wide maze with a dozen killer attack ostriches roaming through-out it and with the perspective that's given it's hard to see what you're doing, where you're going and where you're supposed to go. Let's not even mention the size of the interior compared to the size of the house on the outside. There's a huge discrepancy here. I found this to be a big issue with the game overall and in my opinion it would be a better game had you not included the the 3D maze mess.

You have some cool ideas but they were not implemented in a way that is easily understandable. Which is fine, but that means you have to make in-game tutorials and do a little hand holding at the beginning to explain how things work.

Overall you put together a decent entry. Great job with making it to the final round of the IGMC 2022! I look forward to seeing your next project.

-Drifty

I got assigned this game for round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! Here are my thoughts.

Overall I felt this was a neat game, with a neat premise. The idea of having to go resurrect all of the villagers definitely fit with the theme. I think my only critique is I wasn't a fan of the 3d sections as they felt a little out of place compared to the rest of the game. But outside of that the game felt well polished and thought out. Well done!

• +Cool title screen! Not too overdone, but nicely animated.
• +The 3d chase sections were a neat addition, in moderation.
• +The music (custom, I think) was fitting and nice.
• +The gloomy environment was well done.
• -Niggle: when resurrecting (or generally spending any resource) it should show your current HP.
• -The hp and key "finds" to open fires are way too close in graphic among themselves AND the particle graphic decor around the map, it took me a while (and the dev outright saying it) to realize they were meant to be different things. A massive improvement if they had distinctive shapes and/or colors.
• -The game doesn't do a very good job explaining how defusing the fires work. It would be better to straight our explain it, or to make the first instance of it a controlled environment with no dangers so the player can process what is happening. As it is, there are ostriches everywhere, making processing what's happening calmly very hard. 
• -Niggle: the display of "People saved" is bugged and resets the graphic to 0 when refreshing the screen, until another person is saved.
• -The ostriches as an obstacle are extremely overdone and become VERY tedious. I go in depth during the stream, but basically there are way too many, they activate from across the map, and they lag the game a lot. 
• -The tone of the game is a bit strange. The game page says its comedic, but the environment is mapped (fairly well) like a tense semi-horror adventure, but then the npcs have a somewhat aimless (i think mostly cameos from the dev's other game) semi-comedy text? You can join those themes if you want, but as it was I don't feel the switch felt natural. 
• -Due to the ostriches being such a pain the HP recovery had to be abused, and it was utterly slow. I'd recommend making each orb restore way more, or place a camp nowhere where you can fill back to max, even at the cost of hauling back there.

Due to the severe lag I had to stop playing (maybe the CPU usage from streaming was the cause), but I did feel l would have enjoyed this game ok if the ostriches were less annoying. AS they are, I felt they got on my ass too much to properly enjoy it.

Hey there ManaBrent, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. The unique mechanics fit the game's story and each puzzle felt good to solve. Add in the well thought-out maps and creepy music, and it made for an enjoyable and polished game.

Sending out Rebertha's spirit to solve puzzles turned the basic idea of saving the villagers into a brain-teasing quest. And having ostriches be the danger instead of a scary shadow monster made me laugh (before they kicked my poor body down to 10 HP...)! The fact that you could dodge around spirit dangers and barriers in the living form and being able to heal meant that I could try a few things before solving the puzzles, which was nice. I did have issues with the interior maps though. It was an interesting use of a 3D plugin, but it was a bit tough for me to see what was going on. Especially in the maze house, the shifting camera turned my understanding of the map upside-down and made me feel annoyed instead of challenged during the chase. 

Overall, you made an interesting puzzle game that had me grinning when I'd come across the funny thoughts and dialogue of all the different villagers. While there were a few points that felt a bit more challenging than they needed to be, the game is a fully formed idea that fans of unusual puzzle mechanics should play.

Interesting concept. Gotta admit, it was more frustrating for me than fun. Not bad tho. Puzzles were mostly easy but maybe I'm missing something, didn't seem like there was any way to avoid taking damage, so you mostly just quickly do what you have to do and then stand around waiting for your energy to refill. Overall a good game, I just didn't like some of the mechanics.

This game is a must-play. The mechanic to project out the spirit is awesome. Really inspiring!

Great use on pixi filters. However it lags alot when I enters the "Astral Form". Played on GTX 1650 4GB and 32GB RAM.