This game definitely deserves a high score and place. It’s so well done and polished. The big problem I have is…somehow it’s not for me. I like game loops and kinda incremental games, but I was…not great at minigames and I feel the exploring of the adventure…a bit slow, and if I press the 8x button I lose my immersion with it.

The tips I can give is:

• Make minigames more forgiving (if you get a “bad score”, give anyway a bunch of values and a bit more if you do good);

• Improve the immersion on the Adventure (not just a slow text which you can control the speed. Less text and more faster speed without the “speed button”);

• Make combat more…controllable? It’s too minimal and without any strategy, an example is adding a technique which use MP, so you have a basic attack, a shield to help you restore MP and a better attack which also consume MP. It’s better than always attack and healing when needed. Maybe even the healing can have an extra effect, like a stat buff…you know.

And that’s all! Have a good day and jam!

The second I opened this game it was apparent that you have a really impressive understanding of the engine. The amount of customization from the title screen on is so refreshing to see, and I enjoyed exploring the novelty of it all. It's astounding that you could accomplish this much in the span of a month. 

The story seemed to be just a method of delivering the novel gameplay, but it had its charming moments. I was a bit confused by some early points. Some may take issue with the story, as there wasn't really dialog or character development or much of a story arc that I could perceive, but it doesn't really detract from the experience for me.

To me, the execution and presentation are crucial for a good jam game. In that sense I think the game hit the mark in many places and offered some real enjoyment, but there were some issues that prevented this game from totally knocking it out of the park.

My main critique is that the gameplay elements were too often frustrating or unpleasant. For example the bag minigame very quickly tired me out. I also found both the crits and the misses to reduce my enjoyment substantially. The feedback of getting a lot of points for clicking fast is the most satisfying part, but the slowdown of misses and crits both made me feel like I was straining myself for nothing. I also noticed the 100% crit potion tended to lower my score due to the slowdown. I eventually avoided this mode altogether due to

The moon howling game felt like it was mostly luck since the moons would fall a bit too fast, especially after the first bounce. They also went way too high, which often meant that 2-3 moons were still in the air when the game timed out, effectively making the last 10 seconds of the game pointless to play. I did notice on occasions the moons didn't bounce too high, so maybe it was a skill thing, but I don't anticipate many people to achieve that mastery if it is more than lucky angles. 

Meditation was fun and decently satisfying. Fast feats was also really fun. My only critique with these is that it felt like too much grinding was necessary to become decently strong (although with my post game understanding of the rebirth mechanic, that may not be the case). Generally in jam games, I feel like something like repetitive random encounters don't value player's time, and it felt this way after 3-4 rounds of even the more enjoyable minigames.

Adventure mode offered some frustrations as well. I would train in a few modes for (in game) hours, then return to adventure mode expecting to mow down some monsters, only to be one-shotted by a crab. I imagine most players will be on 8x after one or two rounds, so the speed of losing just made it feel discouraging after all that training. Eventually I think I figured out that the rebirth mechanic would help with this, but not before throwing my hands up in the air many times in exasperation at some powerful slime wrecking me.

Ultimately I still think this entry deserves a high rating, and I can't help but be impressed by the whole thing. I think finding a way to ensure the gameplay loop is more fun and satisfying could have really made the difference with this one.

Thanks for making this game! I had an interesting experience with this one.

Obviously, one of the greatest things about this game is that it's so technically impressive.

TheUnproPro's technical scripting prowess shows off to great aplomb here, with the game feeling like it wasn't made in RPG Maker at all, with custom windows, smooth animations, and custom fonts. If you had told me this was made in Game Maker or some other engine, I would have 100% believed you.

Another magnificent thing about this game was that it was incredibly on theme. Sometimes, when playing games in this jam, I felt like the theme was an incidental thing, but here it was right smack bang in the centre.

When I entered the meat of the game, I became immediately aware that it was almost like an idle RPG sort of game, except you chose your actions, so I guess it wasn't an idle RPG at all, but in ways it did feel like it was. When you execute actions, stats improve by themselves for the most part, and you can choose from maybe 5 actions to improve your stats, and each of those has a respective minigame.

I found the minigames were technically impressive in the way they were implemented, but perhaps the part where I started to detach from the game was because of the gameplay nature of the minigames.

When going on an Adventure, I was never quite sure what to pick. Oftentimes I'd get totally annihilated by enemies, and I had no idea why, or how to improve. When fighting enemies, you select between 3 options, and I think I knew generally when to use each, but I wasn't sure the best way to improve my character to get further into the dungeon.

I appreciated the ability to speed it up, but because actions in Adventures happened in real time, and they wouldn't pause when I encountered them, speeding it up meant that it would also speed up the danger that was coming towards me to a rate where I felt I couldn't respond in quick time.

With the dance game, this was also super impressive! I don't think I've seen a rhythm game completed in RPG Maker with that high precision - it was very high!... eeeeeeexcept when trying to press two keys at once. For some reason, if I pressed two direction keys at once, it only received one key press, so I was unable to do this minigame in a way that satisfied me because a lot of moves were essentially impossible for me. But I would LOVE to see an entire rhythm game made in RPG Maker on this concept... IF that bug was fixed on my system. I assume it's only on some systems, otherwise the developer would have picked it up in testing.

There's a well-implemented "ball bouncing" minigame to represent howling at the moon, but sadly this got quite irritating quickly, even though it was really impressive. It was high stress on my brain and hands, in a way that wasn't super fun, although with a few tweaks I think it would be a lot more fun. Introducing different concepts like maybe you have to avoid obstacles that fall, pick up power-ups, etc. to make this minigame more fun in general. It feels sad saying this about something so technically impressive, but it's important not to ignore gameplay considerations even if something is technically impressive. If anything, I think that there's a framework that can be built upon and polished into something even more fantastic than what already exists.

All in all, I would say that this game is a very technically impressive feat that has a fantastic premise and concept... that I sort of lost interest after a little while playing, for some reason, which is a sad outcome. Maybe it's the interestingness of the minigames that needs to increase, or the overall balance, but something about it made me check out after a bit. I feel like if it were tightened around the edges, it could become something that would be truly addictive and I would return to again and again, BUT I still will marvel at this amazing technical piece of work that has a LOT of awesome scripting behind it from a promising developer who I will follow now on itch.io because I can't wait to see what comes next.

Thanks for giving us this fantastic gift of a game :)

This was not at all what I was expecting from the title (though the screenshots do give a good idea of the game), and it's a nice break from the norm of the narrative-based / RPG games that were also submitted to the jam. 

I think this is such a technically complex and challenging entry and even though it was a little text-heavy, I still found it to be really enjoyable. I feel like this would be a fantastic mobile game, if you were considering doing anything more for it beyond the contest. 

Nice work and good luck! :)

Great intro and variety, take my stars!

Amazing work. I love all the different games and mechanics used in this, I can only imagine what you could make if you didn't have the Jam Deadline. <3 Keep up the amazing work.

This is not my kind of games but... WOW, you've done a wonderful work, it's amazing! From Skyth the puppy, which is adorable, to having so many smooth mini-games and systems... it's a game I would definitely recommend to anyone who likes the genre! Good job!

Amazing game, so much effort! Good luck!

I had such a fun time playing this game, ended up having to make myself take a break from it haha. After I understood the mechanics a bit better after about 10 minutes, it was smooth sailing from there. I wanna continue my run in the future, but from what I saw so far, it's a really cute and creative concept. Amazing job!

Wow there's so much in this game! did you even sleep during the gamejam window?! 

Really great entry, nice polish to it all and enjoyable game concept/story!

Nice concept! I'll be adding it to my list! :D

It looks BEAUTIFUL! from the beginning you can see it will be something cool. The UI looks so nice and sparkly, the levels up, etc.  I had 2 problems, one is entirely my fault: I didn´t understand very well the system, I know that I can spend time, training, exploring, or meditating or playing and when im tired, rest. I did a lot of meditating, speeds, etc .I saw the levels going up but then i explore and I was killed by a crab 3 times in a row, 2 one-shots.. and then 2 shots killed me. (Before anything, I explored just to see what that was, I encountered a crab and I killed it, without training) So I didnt get it that much.

My second problem is all the text, since everything seems so nice the text pushed me away from the experience, im GLAD you added the speed button haha.

But this was a REALLY an impressive experience. GJ!