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The Story Of Elwa's itch.io pageResults
Ranked 67th with 3 votes
| Criteria | Rank | Votes |
| People's Choice Vote | #67 | 3 |
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
PRESENTATION
Graphics are all custom and they look very nice. They all mesh well together and they really give off a Legend of Zelda vibe, but with their own spark. The only issue is that passability to the grid caused a few issues when moving around - some tiles were set in a way that you'd get caught on their edges which made avoiding some monsters a bit of a pain.
The music is also reminiscent of SNES-era action games, and fit the scenes quite well. Granted, there wasn't much in the way of different tunes but what was there didn't get annoying or jarring.
Sound was used effectively to showcase traps and the like. Some of it was RTP, if I'm not mistaken, but it was all used well and nothing jumped out as odd or strange.
The writing is a bit stilted and doesn't flow well. This is due to some grammatical errors. That said, it works well enough to set the scene.
The characterisation is rather empty but that's pretty standard of action adventure games - there's no real depth to anyone but people aren't interacting with each other much and having a semi-silent protagonist doesn't help on that front.
The story itself is alright. It set the scene fine. I did think it was a bit silly to have a to be continued when it would have been easy to wrap it up at the end of the game and have it be an actual end. It lessened the game a bit to leave it hanging.
There really wasn't much in the way of instruction on how to do anything but since the game was so simple, it wasn't really necessary.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay involves collecting keys and items, interacting with the world and completely puzzles.Most of the puzzles were of the 'avoid x whilst trying to interact with y' and as such were fairly basic. There was one where you had to push a lamp onto a switch whilst avoiding an enemy but it didn't take long to complete and it wasn't a big stretch of the mind to figure it out.
Movement speed was good in comparison to the enemies who wandered around. It was a little annoying that the guards could overtake you but since the aim was to not get seen by them at all, it made sense.
There were a lot of save points which helped alleviate the dreaded game over syndrome that the game had plenty of. Hitting an enemy would kill you. Hitting a trap would kill you. And both moved quite fast or in random ways in order to get you.
A large component of the game was to gather keys and unlock doors.
The game had some lag issues now and then. Sometimes a save would take a while to work. Same with a load. It was an odd issue. The rest of the game ran fine except the initial teleportation into the boss room, which lagged for a while for me.
ENGAGEMENT
This is a cute little game and it was fun, though some areas got a little frustrating due to the on-touch game overs. The large stealth area in particular was a bit of a pain, but I persevered.I do wish that the end of the game was actually the end, because the 'to be continued' thing really just messed with the impact of the story. Having a list of stuff to do that you didn't actually get to do was a bit annoying, especially when were it stopped could easily have been swung to be the end. If more wanted to be added later, a sequel could have been made. It just seemed like a weird choice when it would have felt a lot better complete.
THEME
60/80
The theme was basically survival and with death-on-touch as a mechanic, it certainly worked that theme. It's a pity that other areas let it down (the written areas, for example), but it fit the bill well enough I suppose.Theme
Save your kingdom through sheer reflex problem solving.
Gameplay
The gameplay is like a rage game and some really annoying bugs. There was one section that despite hiding behind a pillar I get shot at. The only time I felt that I was cheated out. What I absolutely hate is whenever I die, it always brings me back to the title screen. Implement a last checkpoint or load so it’s a lot less tedious and save busy players time.
Presentation
For the most part consistent graphics and very well made. Very Zelda-like. There were some repetitive maps that makes sense because of the time but it made me pause for a second and think if I somehow looped back. It's very distracting.
Engagement
I honestly hate games like these since the payoff is not worth it nor do I feel the need to protect Elwa. Or
Total – 64/80
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Comments
Phew... this game sure takes no prisoners! It was fun and challenging, and I only wanted to throw my keyboard at the computer 3 times ;)
A very impressive use of MV. Though there were a few puzzles that ran a little shaky, and it was mostly due to some poor AI chases that I managed to make it through. I apparently finished in 20 minutes, but I'm sure it took double with the amount of times I died.
The art is gorgeous, and if I had one thing to complain about, it was the default font and windowskin. (And a personal pet peeve where the dialogue only takes up 1/3 of the width of the texbox.)
Sometimes I think keys weren't showing up in my inventory, and I'm still not sure what the hammer was for. In a game like this, I think an item HUD would work a little better than a normal list.
There was also a passibility error with this gate right at the end,
Other than that, absolutely stellar! This game could definitely go on a showcase for "things you didn't know could be made in rpg maker". You did a fantastic job!!
(P.s. You might want to clean out your games files. The default tilesets/characters are just taking up space, and you left some .psds in. To protect your work, you should really be encrypting it.)
Wow! Thank you for your kind words and an even bigger thank you for your advice, it helped me a lot. It was down to the last minutes before the contest was over so there were a lot of things I'm sure I didn't finesse. The textbox and font was one of the things I unfortunately had to sacrifice before the deadline but they will get a custom graphic update and I'll try to figure out the text being only on 1/3 of the screen as well.
For some strange reason when I encrypted the game, it didn't run correctly so I had to upload the game as is in a last minute decision. It's ok though because I plan to update the graphics anyways. The HUD is a great idea! I'll try to see if there is a resource for something like that but if you know of any please let me know!
This is probably just the first dungeon in a longer game that I plan on to hopefully finish. Again, thank you for your comments and I hope to get a finished game to you guys soon!
Cheers!
Trouble with encryption is most likely to be from one of your plugins. If you're not able to get a fix for that, and alternative to try is using Enigma Virtual Box to pack everything into a single .exe. As with everything, it's never going to be fully secure, but I think it helps to the download look a little neater too.
You could probably get away with just using show pictures for the items unless you need extra functionality. Sumrndmdde's HUD Maker is easily one of the most powerful HUD tools since you can use javascript evals. If you wanted a different kind of system there's Atelier RGSS's Variable HUD which shows the total number. It's nice since if the player walks under the image, it'll turn semi-transparent, but I'm not convinced that it'd fit from what I've seen in your game.
I hope more people stumble upon this demo! It'll definitely be a hit with people in need of a bit more action in their lives. For me there were definitely some hard times since I'm sloppy. I could have done with some extra lives or maybe a one hit shield XD You probably need to find a way to ensure that always dash is automatically turned on since the game isn't very playable without it, but otherwise I hope that you're really proud of everything you managed to get done with such a short deadline, and I'm sure you'll go on to make something great! Good luck with development!
Thank you so much for all these valuable informations! I will definitely look in to the Enigma Virtual Box if I can't get the encryption to work. Why didn't I think about using show pictures for the HUD? It seems like the way to go for me as I want it to be quite simple.
I was debating on giving extra lives but I kind of wanted it to be sort of a platformer style of gameplay but the one hit shield sounds like a good idea. Again thank you for all the kind words and I hope to stay in touch if I ever get another version out. Good luck to you as well!