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Yternis Magissa Novella's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 4.383 | 4.383 |
| Graphics, Audio, and Polish | #2 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Originality/Creativity | #2 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Engagement/Fun | #2 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Magical Girl Concept | #5 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Theme Interpretation | #6 | 4.083 | 4.083 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the Magical Girl Genre?
The player character gains the ability to transform via a magic artifact and gains magical powers from the transformation.
Which theme(s) do you pick?
Conservation of Energy
How does your game fit the theme(s)?
The magical girl transformation in this game requires energy which must be converted from "soul energy", and can not occur without this (as that would violate the law of conservation of energy). The monsters in this game are also harvesting soul energy.
Are all your graphics assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?
all of them were made during the jam period
Are all your audio assets made by yourself during the duration of the jam?
a good chunk of them were purchased
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Comments
Yternis Magissa Novella is a short but pretty complete game made using the MegaZeux game creation system that showcased the early part of the story about Novella who is tasked to save her village from a group of invading monsters and in the process obtains the power to transform into a magical girl. The game may look like it was made using a really old version of RPGMaker but I was fooled after doing a little reading about the MegaZeux and to my surprise found out that its a game engine from the 90ies that has been updated till this day.
Magical Girl Concept:
Novella at first is just your typical village protector who wields a bow and arrow and is sent through the village to clear out the invading monsters. At one point, she bumps in to a magical talking dog and is given a magical pocket watch that enables Novella to transform into a magical girl equipped with a full suit of armor and fires a powerful magical ball that damages enemies in its path. The transformation can be performed anytime as long as the soul bar is full. Also, she gains a magical companions named Lucy who comes along with on her adventure. In essence, the game is about a magical girl and the concept is pretty much utilized with her being able to wield destructive magical powers and is able to transform whenever possible.
Visual:
The visuals feel very relevant with the retro stylized look of the game and the decorated window edge gives it a classic western RPG sort of look which I'm quite familliar for the era. I like how the sprites have animation for both characters and enemies making the game visually appealing. The effect is simple but effective when keeping the art style relevant for a retro feel.
UI:
As for the UI, the game screen, inventory, player status, and key items are laid out in a single screen and are placed in a clear and organized manner. Its quite rare to see this sort of layout nowadays since a lot of modern RPG game focus on maximizing the game screen area and having minimal overlays that goes over the game screen. The layout really does feel nostalgic especially in the late 80ies or 90ies since I recall a lot of them tend to have highly decorated static overlay that fills about 1/3 of the screen while the remainder area is reserved for the graphical window.
Audio:
Although the game uses the default sound from the MegaZeux PC speaker, it is used in a relevant fashion where it matches the art style the developer intended for. The high tempo chiptune tracks used in the game gives it a very wonderful and adventurous feel when Novella progresses through the game. I recall that each area of the game and during boss fights has its own track.
Theme:
The Conservation of Energy was picked as the theme for this game and I find that it is spot on with how soul energy is treated as a limited resource where using it would require the player to reclaim it back from either drinking soul potions or by killing monsters.
Challenge / Engagement:
The game doesn't have a steep learning curve when it comes to using the controls since the layout is pretty familiar with modern RPGmaker games. In terms of gameplay challenge, I find it challenging when it comes to different enemy types especially in the later half of the game where the enemies can fire projectiles, which adds the need to dodge and utilize the hold direction button. The story is somewhat engaging as it begins with the village being attacked by monsters and not knowing what it is happening. However, the ending is an open ended book as for now since it will be difficult to evaluate without knowing whats further down the road.
Overall:
In terms of gameplay mechanics, the game has a really solid setup with the MegaZeux as the game engine and though I'm not familiar with it but I will definitely check out more about it since I'm am developing toolkits aimed at game creation. I think the story could use a lot of development, since right now, it is bare bones at best but sufficient enough to know the bearings on where the developer could take the story progression towards. I hope to see more development of this type of games especially with a classic game engine that seem to be pretty up to date among the main stream engines.
Note to author: IINM are you one of the admins for the MegaZeux forum?
Fun top-down action in this game! Here's what I liked:
I do have a few criticisms:
I didn't realize that one of the items on the right was actually the key I needed for the door.
In short, I loved playing this game. It nails the nostalgia vibe while abiding by solid game design standards. Way to go!
Wow, I never encountered that bug until after seeing your post. I think what's happening is the key items list gets corrupted when a key is used from the middle of the list (e.g. grabbing the yellow key, then the magenta key, then opening the yellow door in Level 2). The inventory was a rush job and clearly I didn't test it enough...
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
First off, apologies for leaving this one so long.
In general, I enjoyed the gameplay here. The transform mechanic is neat and combat in both normal and transformed forms is satisfying and fun.
There were a few things about the gameplay that I'm not quite sure about. I wouldn't call them flaws necessarily, or even things I didn't like, but more things I was a bit confused about.
Requiring a full soul bar to transform is an interesting tradeoff, but I don't think it really worked out. I only transformed if I felt I really needed to, because I was worried I'd run into a boss or something without a full soul bar and get pasted. Transforming also takes a really long time.
I quickly ended up with more potions around than I could hold. Having to juggle half-full potions and weigh what you want to keep and what you want to ditch could be interesting, but with the current length and balancing felt pretty pointless.
The enemy AI is extremely predictable and exploitable. You can kind of bait enemies out and then stunlock them with arrows. The game does seem to balanced with this in mind, though.
Magissa moves really slow. Fortunately the maps aren't so big as to make this irritating, but it does make dodging quite difficult at times. This might have been deliberate, though.
It's undeniably retro but I'm not sure what it's going for exactly. The title screen mixes crisp text with a low-fi logo, and the only system I know of that can run a split resolution like this is the Amiga. Tracker music, too, is very Amiga-esque. The colour palette and style of the tileset is strongly reminiscent of SNES games while the character sprites are more NES or Game Boy. It also has a very MS DOS exit prompt. On the whole, though, it works well enough, and I'm just a retro nerd nitpicking at this point.
In particular, I really liked the music. I could sit at that title screen all day. The graphics were good but they didn't really stand out to me, it's a decent retro-style sprite game but there are a zillion of those out there.
I think the length of this game is about right for a game jam demo. If it were longer I'd start complaining about saves and pause menus and more breaks in the action, but as it stands it's not a problem and the game flows well.
I'd like to see more story and more background information in particular, but that's probably out of scope and not in line with what this game was going for. I just like games with a lot of story.
In that vein there are definitely places I kinda wished this game was more ambitious in, but you can only make so much, and it does a good job of being a retro-style action game.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. As you have clearly noticed this game was really rough around the edges, especially with regards to timing and mechanics and item drops. When I get to working on an extended version I'll definitely take your input into account.
If you're curious about what's going on with the graphics, the short version is that this game was created with MegaZeux and it is using stacked layers of DOS text mode graphics combined with a graphical hack that allows 4 colors per character. Here are some resources, though the wiki articles are probably much lengthier than necessary:
The 18-bit VGA colors combined with those limitations and it being easier to dither tiles than sprites at this size (12x28 double-width pixels) is probably why the tiles look SNES but the sprites look more NES.
Also, all of the music from this game is available to download here. :)
Gameplay feels solid and I love the aesthetic. It really does feel like a nes era game. The only thing I can point out is that the transformation time feels a bit too long, decreasing the time or extending the animation I think would give it a better feel. It feels awkward when her transformation animation seems finished, but she's still locked in the sprite.
Very nice game! I love the graphic look... kind of an NES look, but if it were a more powerful system. All the elements mesh nicely for a very cohesive look.
The music and SFX seem to be free assets, but they're all great choices that add to the experience.
The gameplay is fun and engaging. It definitely has a Zelda vibe. I enjoyed my time in the levels included in this demo.
My main critique/suggestion would be that the movement speed of the character seemed a little sluggish. I suppose faster movement might change the overall game balance, but there's probably a way to address that.
Overall, I had a great time with this entry! Definitely one of my favs!
Here’s my experience with the game
This game looks great, pretty nostalgic for me, The intro part is pretty engaging (the part before you get the pendant) As far as I can see this game is pretty polished.
I’d say transform mechanic might be interesting, their charge and cost will make me think twice about when to use it.
After defeating the boss it moves onto level 1, I’m a bit surprised it didn’t heal me when I enter the new level though so I’m left with 2 hp, after a while I finally got a life potion so I drink it immediately.
Then after using the key to unlock the gate, level 2 start, and there’s a green goblin that shoots a projectile, that surprise me!, Its projectile is so quick that there’s no way to dodge it, I almost died have to bait it to shoot first before I can safely shoot back at it.
Then I proceed forward and there are even more enemies that can shoot! They shoot right through trees and walls There’s no way I can fight back! the octopus is kind of possible to dodge, but the green goblin is impossible, with 1 hp left I decided to transform into a magical girl, And then realize I can now shoot through the wall too, I can fight back now. I come across a pink door and grey door but I can’t open it, So I go back thinking I missed something, And I did! There’s a part with lots of octopuses, I’m a bit hesitant though, I only have 1 hp left, and I have no life potion but lots of soul potion, these octopuses can shoot through walls but I can’t? that’s not fair. I then use all the soul potion I have and barely have enough soul to transform and kill all octopuses. after that I got the pink key and proceed, turn out the pink door is also there, It turned out the path is connected, But I still can’t open the grey door, So I walk around for a solid minute, kill one pink slime and after some times later I come back to the grey door, This time there’s a key in front of it? where did it come from? after that level 3 starts.
Enter level 3 I still have 1 hp, but wait! the plant thing finally drop a life potion! thank god. I now have 4 hp. The octopuses there drop a lot of life potion what? I guess I’m just very unlucky on the last level, There are some octopuses that shoot fire, I’m playing way more cautiously now so their fast projectile never land on me, and then boss fight, green goblin there give me a bit of trouble but after killed them all, I transform and easily kill the boss with no effort
Conclusion: very fun game, I never play Arkista's Ring so I don’t know how closely this relates to that game but the gameplay does put me on edge all the time. I had fun all the way through,
Thanks for the detailed feedback! The difficulty curve is definitely broken with this game due to how short it ended up being and how rushed the last two levels were. I was worried the slimes might end up causing problems, so I'll probably make junk enemies like pink slimes not count towards the level completion requirements in the future (whenever I finish this game...).
I like this, I get a original Legend Of Zelda vibe from this.
Underrated game with a solid interpretation of the theme and a cohesive style. The AI design is great and makes for some nefarious opponents. Or maybe I'm just really bad, haha. 5/5 would recommend!