I was one of the official judges this year, and now that the results have been made public, and I'm free to do so, here is my score and thoughts on this title:

Overall score: 8.5

Really dug the art aesthetic, and was really into the story, what little there was. I just wish there was more of it, or that there were ways that the game explored the lore aside from little tidbits here and there. Why was Duncan doing what he was doing? Who was Lalatina? Why didn't the Demon Lord care he got absorbed? Etc, etc...And the game certainly could have used a bit of proofreading. But overall, I really enjoyed it.

Hey there Ramose Tsimbina, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. The mostly black and white artstyle you chose was a great choice, though I wish you had stuck with it in the menu and battle background as well. Leaving just a few things as the color red like Duncan's eye would really make it stand out. The story was mysterious, but gave enough for me to follow along. That said, I do wish more was explained. Maybe the skeletons scattered across the maps could've shared more clues.

Battles worked well, though as an absorber I was hoping to gain strength and skills from being attacked. So only getting new skills at shrines was disappointing, though I'm sure you chose to do it that way due to the contest deadline. Like everyone else, I found the slimes to be annoy to battle. Poison was taking so much of my health each turn that I was better off avoiding as many slimes as possible. If Duncan could learn poison resistance, or if slimes dropped Antidotes, those battles would have felt more worthwhile.

The ancient demon battle was pretty anti-climatic, since I could use Big Smash every other turn to keep him from hurting me and then Toxic Laugh to poison him to cause tons of damage. I'm not sure if you meant for it to be easy, but after fighting for my life against the slimes the ancient demon just felt like a step backwards combat-wise.

The shadowy pasts were where the game really fails in my opinion. I understand what you were going for, but since I never really found out about Duncan's past it felt more like a punishment for those who can't react quickly. I almost got stuck at the same point as bgillisp, but luckily realized the trick to going to one side. Instead of just getting sent back to the start, it would have been interesting if getting hit triggered a cutscene from the past or a battle against your past self (maybe you're supposed to run, but winning would share some more backstory).

Overall, you had some interesting ideas for this game, but it felt like it just needed a bit more development time to really reach its full potential.

I found myself very engaged and interested in this game, despite its seeming simplicity with the limited color palette and relatively basic battle system / enemies. The premise of being an "absorber" as a progression / growth point is really cool -- I'm going to guess you enjoy the blue mage class in traditional jrpgs? -- and I had a good time playing this!

I tried this out but had to give up, too frustrating for me. It was a pity because the banner image was interesting and the portrait very evocative and simple. 

• The visuals are nice, the color palette is cool, tough I feel the sway effect on the combat is a bit hard on the eyes, but that could be me.
• The gameplay in general was just not my thing. It seemed to go too much for either obligatory grinding or for the "I like my games difficult" type, which isn't my thing.
• Poison that does not heal after combat in a game where 1-you cannot save everywhere 2-you are alone in the party 3-the goddamn slimes will actively CHASE YOU and are plentiful; is very nasty and I feel unnecessary.
• I keenly felt the annoyance of not being able to save anywhere...my best guess is that you aimed to make this a somewhat hard style/retro game, which again, not for me.
• I did not even make it to any real story, so I can't comment on that.
• Learning from shrines had no special charm, at least what I saw. There was no choice, no fanfare, nothing, hell not even an animation when you "absorb" them. If there is some lore reasoning, I did not reach it, so it's hard to feel like the whole "absorber" thing had any interest.
• I'm really nota fan of a single member party, especially when the game errs towards difficulty. It was just annoying being pitted against groups and getting wrecked or plagued by statuses. 
• I made it to the slimes room. They kept killing me, and I definitely did not want to be grinding constantly so I gave up there.
• The game felt very aimless and "just wander around", at least up to what I saw.
• I did not feel that there was much in the way of strategy with what I had (3 skills at the time) coupled  with the single-member party, it made combat kind of dull.

TL;DR this does not match my style at all, after all, so feel free to ignore me. It's a pity I could not play more but I felt the game's style was just frustrating with little reward or hook. Maybe there's good bits later on, but I tend to dislike when a game will not make the effort to hook me or at least try. I felt very aimless. If nothing else, great work on the design of the protagonist, he is simple yet very interesting-looking. 

So I got this one for judging, here are my thoughts:

-I like the idea of this game. Having to learn my skills as I play through it by absorbing them is an interesting idea.

-Looks like a little early grinding is needed. No problem, I got this.

-I saved up and bought the Chain mail. Now no goblins can hurt me!

-The slimes poison skill is annoying. At least antidotes are cheap.

-Wait, is this game horror or not? What is with that sudden past scene?

-Ok I'm stuck. I can't get past the don't let your past touch you as they are all perfectly in synch and I got to somehow go 6 tiles while they have a 5 tile zone to patrol. Crossing a 6 x 5 zone with them that in synch is really tough to do, may want to lower that a little. Or put a safe spot in the middle. As it is, I beat my head on that the rest of my judging time and never got past it.

Overall:

Nice idea for a game, may need a small adjustment to some puzzles.

Cute and simplistic. Not bad.

Cool game, simple and short but really interesting unique art style black and white. Simply perfect <3

It's a simple RPG Maker but with a catching graphic style. I have a weak spot for the Vx Ace combat, so I really liked it despite having little to no variety of enemies and combat tactics.

The art style as I said is very simple but awesome, black and white with some red in it leaves quite an impression.

I would suggest you to change font and interface from the default one, but other than that I would love playing other games like this! 

I really loved the art style of this game, as well as the chiptune(?) music it rocked throughout. The look of it gave me massive OFF vibes, whether intentional or not. I was intrigued about the story and what was going on, and I liked how you gained new abilities by finding them out in the wild.
I do wish there were more enemy variants, though. I'm also not sure if there was any poison resistances I could pick up anywhere (if I did I didn't find it, which is on me), but I wound up developing a burning hatred for those poison slimes at one point or another, haha. If there isn't any poison resistances, then I'd suggest lowering the odds of the slimes poisoning you, as I wound up having to backtrack to heal at the shrine quite often because of them.

Also, while playing, I ended up getting an error and had the game crash because of it. I'm not sure why, but I thought I should share it so you were aware. IT read "Script 'RME' line 1364: NoMethodError occurred.

undefined method 'flash' for nil:NilClass.




Overall, this game was quite charming, and I liked the aesthetic that you were going for with it. Well done!