Play game
Miracle Girl Chiyoko's itch.io pageRate this game
In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.
Magical Girl Requirement
This game follows the format of a 90s era Magical Girl anime pretty directly. Chiyoko is a normal High School girl who gets a magic crystal from a talking cat. The crystal allows her to fight with a magical staff, sense the forces of evil, and protect her friends. Her magical girl allies Kameko and Haruko have magic crystals as well, with Kameko's powers being more direct and offensive and Haruko's being more analytical and underhanded.
MGGJ & Theme
I used Magical Girl Game Jam 10's themes. I did my best to incorporate them all!
The themes were: Pandora Paradoxxx, Recollect Lines, World Vanquisher, Grievous Lady, Freedom Dive, and Unknown X.
Theme Usage
Pandora Paradox: Due to the villains ability to remove entire planets from the universe's timeline, anyone from those planets who escapes this fate is now a Paradox.
Recollect Lines: A paradoxical character gains the ability to see through her timeline and into others, slowly revealing her own past. (Unfortunately, this did not make it into the demo...)
World Vanquisher: The Devourer Queen exterminates entire planets at once, feeding on the life energy of all sentient beings.
Grievous Lady: The Devourer Queen carries herself as if she were royalty, and brutally punishes those who fail her. She also has four arms, like General Grievous from Star Wars.
Freedom Dive: Some characters escaped their planet being devoured by following the Devourer Queen into her own twisted realm.
Unknown X: A strange magical girl seems to be working for the Devourer Queen, but no one knows who she is, or where she came from...
Asset Disclosure (Art, SFX, Music, etc)
All assets were made by me. Graphics were drawn in Aseprite, and music and sound was all made in Famistudio.
Devlog
https://ayback.itch.io/miracle-girl-chiyoko/devlog/849169/major-update-1211-new-demo-released-browser-version
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This is one of the games I shortlisted to try during MGGJ10, but unfortunately I couldn't get to it then. It's definitely one of the longer entries to that jam, and I played a good chunk of it but didn't finish the whole demo this time.
An 8-bit style feels uncanny in an RPG Maker game- it's hardly the first, but something about knowing what tech stack it's actually running on throws off my strange mind- but it's very well executed here. Weirdly, it feels more like some kinda DOS shareware than a console game, but maybe that's just my own nostalgia talking.
I'm surprised by how much I like the story, because I didn't really think it would be my thing. Usually I like my stories edgy to a fault. But I love the humour and the use of speaker names like "Winston are you sure about this".
I don't love how long it takes to get to any gameplay section. There's Story Skip for people who've played it before, but as a new player it feels like a bandaid, and I wish there was some integration here with some minigames, or introducing some of the mechanics before the story, or something.
It's a long, gently paced game overall, and that's something I have mixed feelings about. It's not a bad thing, and has a depth to it that a shorter game wouldn't, but these days I just don't have the time to dive deep.
Mechanically, it seems pretty conventional in general, but I do like the explanation of where items come from, and the skill tree system.
I lost the first team fight, but it continued as if I won, which was weird. I did see in the devlog that there are concessions to this in the demo version, though.
I never played the original version, but I was kinda surprised to see how many of the things I saw were new additions. It feels polished enough, and I remember the original screenshots looking final enough, that I kinda assumed it was mostly complete from the beginning.
I really like that the devlog has both regular updates (though I didn't keep up with them) and a concluding entry that sums them all up. It talks a lot about what was added, and why, which is great, but I do wish it got into the process more, the challenges in creation, what went well and what didn't.
Thanks for the detailed review. You hit the nail on the head as far as one of my biggest issues with this game and the story I was trying to tell - it takes forever to get to the "game." I wanted to show Chiyoko's life pre-magical girl, just for one day, but it kind of drags since there are few choices and pretty much nothing to do. I've considered some ways to fix it, including trimming it down, or adding more interactivity to school / hanging out / etc, or adding a fight or dungeon during the nightmare sequence. There definitely wasn't time to fix it during this game-jam, but I'm still considering it.
The 8-bit style graphics use the NES color palette but I actually did partially base them off of the MSDOS games I played many years ago. The black backdrop with the ornamental UI frames were inspired by MSDOS KOEI games, though my pixel art doesn't really come close to those.