3 things I liked about this entry:
- Beautiful art! The busts are high quality and the map sprites have a nice retro pixel flair. The fact that you made the enemies and backgrounds yourself means they have a very cohesive style, too.
- Unique situational mechanics that generally aren't seen in RM games. I can't recall the last time I saw a skill that could only be used when the character's MP was 0 and would fully refill their MP, all while dealing massive damage, but it was very satisfying.
- Small maps means no getting lost! There is plenty of detail in them despite their brevity, so they successfully avoid being boring corridors.
3 things I did not like:
- While the story itself is fine, the dialog left something to be desired. It's far from the worst I've seen, but it isn't on the same level of brief, character-rich dialog seen in some of the better entries in the jam, either. My advice would be: try to say more with less.
- Between the short maps and the lack of anything to do on the overworld besides interacting with the save crystal, I don't think there was much value in having an overworld movement component with random battles in the game.
- Continuing that last point, the random battles were fine for testing out my skills but don't really add much beyond that since there is no reward for grinding. While the encounter rate isn't too high and the short maps mean there isn't much opportunity to get caught in many battles, I still was feeling pretty done with the battles toward the end.