Play game
Legend of the Five Sisters's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Audio | #8 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Polish | #11 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
Aesthetics | #11 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
Engagement/Fun | #14 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Overall | #15 | 3.159 | 3.159 |
Magical Girl Concept | #16 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
Theme Interpretation | #16 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
Originality/Creativity | #20 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 9 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?
This game contains not one, but FIVE magical girls: Shaeli wields celestial powers, Jalia commands the powers of nature, Kraena has the power to protect others, Faerin wields the destructive power of the elements, and Ko'reth has mastered the power of darkness itself.
Which theme(s) do you pick?
Sister (and Sadistic if you count how tough the later battles are!)
How does your game fit those theme(s)?
The 5 magical girls are part of a coven of witches who refer to one another as sisters. Hence the title of the game.
Were the assets for your game made during the jam? Elaborate as you see fit.
Sort of, but not really. Since I started this project super late (with only 7 days left) I had to mostly use RPGMaker's stock assets. But I did edit and tweak many of them to fit my needs via recoloring, resizing, cropping/adjusting battle backgrounds, etc. But no, I'm not an artist. Not everyone has that talent.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Didn't have time to play this to the end, but just to say I agree with the other comments here that the combat system feels a bit too complex for a jam game and presenting too much to the player right away. I don't mind the lack of exploration too much since it's a valid choice to make a game more focused on combat missions, but the story did felt a bit too generic and some dialogue between the sisters would've been nice, otherwise they just don't feel much like magical girl sisters. Also complexity aside, the combat felt a bit too slow and I think it would've been better if player and enemies dealt more damage.
Otherwise excellent battle animations, cute characters and the combat system was clearly carefully planned and coded, the UI is also very good presenting the information about what the magic does in a clear way (except for the character's unique abilities on the main menu outside of magic, maybe they should've been put in a "Special" section so they can have tooltips upfront too?).
I'm a fan of the character designs, and it feels like it's pretty easy to tell which role each character plays just from their visuals. I think in general though, the game struggles with the length. The opening crawl felt like it was going on for way too long, and most of it wasn't even about the characters we played as. I was scared to try to speed it up cause I might have skipped the whole thing, which I didn't want to do. The combat felt like there was a lot of complexity and depth, but it also took so long to complete, that when I got wiped after almost beating the second boss, I couldn't bring myself to try again, knowing I'd have to go through the whole other 4 waves again before I had another shot.
I think the character tutorials were a pretty interesting way to get people used to each of the characters as well, especially considering otherwise we'd be thrown into it without a lot of context to the different abilities. I did have a bug though - I did the first wave without the tutorial, then did Shaeli's tutorial, and when I entered the next wave I only had Shaeli in my party.
Aw crud, did you use the newest version? I thought I fixed the missing party members bug for everyone, but maybe I missed her. I should probably just force-reinitialize the party on main quest embark.
As for the intro being super slow, you should be able to fast-forward it with the confirm button, but I should probably speed up the default scroll speed a bit. I just didn’t want it to be too fast for slower readers. :)
I believe so, version 1.21. It might be a good idea to do the reinitialization thing.
That's a good reason. Maybe there could be a little tool tip that has what you can do to fast forward a bit or skip? The main reason I didn't try was because I was worried it was gonna skip the whole thing.
Oh yeah, I (I think anyway) fixed it in 1.22.
And yeah, you’re not the only person who had that concern about skipping the intro story with a button press. I’m definitely going to look into adding a little notification at the bottom to indicate that button presses will fastforward, not skip. :)
I played the initial version, so some of the points here might have already been addressed.
The intro is way, way too long, especially for a jam game. There's too much text and the scroll speed is too slow. There is a way to speed it up by holding spacebar, but I didn't know about that ahead of time and was afraid to push buttons lest I skip the intro entirely. I'd prefer if the backstory was presented differently, like in cutscenes, but time was probably a constraint here.
The story itself was pretty cliched and generic. As an excuse plot for a boss rush it's no big deal. If the game was longer or more story-driven I'd come down harder on it. Depending on where you plan to take this in the future that may or may be something you'll want to address.
I only played one set of battles, but it was pretty fun. It's mostly stock assets (with some custom scripts?) but the effects are pretty, the animations are fluid, and the sound effects have plenty of impact. It had some challenge, but wasn't super difficult. The battles were definitely on the long side, but they didn't get frustrating or repetitive. Both of those things may change in later battles, but I can only comment on what I actually played.
I found myself overwhelmed at the overall complexity. I never even understood what the icons for elements or attack types meant, I had no idea what the default attacks did until I tried them, I still have no idea which element is weak to which, I only discovered what "Lore" meant in the last battle and I never developed a good grasp on which character was good for what. I think in a full game where mechanics and powers are introduced more gradually, this wouldn't be a problem (or at least not as much of a problem) but as it stands the game just throws way too much at you at once.
Part of this is on me for not even looking at the character tutorials. I'm not sure if there's a manual, but if there is, I didn't read that, either. I can't speak for everyone, but for me, learning a whole bunch of complex systems is a bridge too far for a jam game.
I also found it weird that limit break is in the same category as the normal attack. Reading the changelogs, I think that's addressed in a later version?
Overall, I think the core of this game is good. There's lots of complex RPG mechanics that seem to work pretty well, and though the art is mostly stock it works well. The one thing that's sorely missing is progression; it needs to start off a lot simpler and perhaps a bit easier before gradually introducing complex mechanics that the player needs to master to finish the final battles.
Yeah scrolling text is a thing I abuse when I’m running short on deadlines, and this game did screech across the finish line without much wiggle room. If I expand it, I’ll probably go with cutscenes, or at least with a faster scroll speed, note that you can advance it faster with the confirm button, etc.
And yeah, the game is (modified) stock assets with a fair amount of custom code (the plugins are all my own creations–it’s my version of “art” I guess.)
Overwhelming complexity is an ongoing jam problem for me apparently. I hate simplistic rpg battles, so I try to jazz them up and usually end up making something a bit heavy for more casual players and/or those not overly comfortable with rpg mechanics especially. I need to work on that, although its hard when you also want to keep the game short. I’d hoped The slime battles and player tutorials would ease people into that complexity. Hopefully it helped, anyway.
When the limit gauge hits 100, the limit command replaces the normal attack, but the normal attack skill is present in the limit menu just in case the player wants to use it instead of the limit break skill. Normal attack has no cost to it, so they can continue to use it without wasting their limit skill if they choose.
Finally, I did try to start simple (the slime battles are a lot easier than wave sets 2 and especially 3) but I guess I could’ve started the players with stripped-down skilsets, then added those skills by wave set 3. Progression in jam games is hard given the fact that I wanted it to be short.
Anyway thanks for giving it a try. :) The later versions are a lot better and a lot less broken than the initial version, so feel free to give the newer one a try if you want. :)
The game looks great and I like how it looks. I obviously can't give full stars though since it is mainly stock assets.
To me though, the main draw of Turn based RPGs is the adventure and not the battles. While your battle mechanics are very fleshed out and a lot of fun to play with I can't really say that the loop in and of it self is that fun.
Also for some reason I cannot clear the blue girls tutorial. When retrying she only starts with 1 hp and when continuing to the main battle the rest of the party is absent. Maybe also make the text crawl in the beginning skipable.
Overall it's a good entry.
Thanks for trying it out. :D Regarding the 1 hp + missing party: Oof. I though I fixed that on everybody but I guess I missed her branch–time for a quick hotfix when I next sit down with it.
Wish I had roll over sfx. The music is super fun though! Could be mixed a little better. I am finding that the music is masking the sfx and really commands the attention of the player.
Art is really lovely!
The combat is good, but I feel like I'm doing a lot of clicking. I'm not terribly familiar with this style of gameplay, but it was fun. It doe's feel a bit repetitive, but I'm sure if you had more time that would of been addressed.
It took me till wave 4 to figure out how the magic option worked... silly ne.
OMG THE METEOR SOUND. Hahaha so loud! Also hurricane is so loud. Both sfx are redlining or distorting haha.
What you did in 7 days is impressive. I know you said you used a lot of stock assets, but nicely done!
Thanks for giving it a try! There’s a setting to turn down individual volumes (music, sfx, etc) in the options menu, but I admit I had the defaults left a bit high. A lesson for next time, perhaps. :D
Couldn't open a 7z file would it be possible to change file format to zip?
Odd, 7zip is a pretty popular (and free) compression program, but yeah I can add a zip version sometime within the next few hours. Edit: Zip version is up.