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This one was really cool. Definitely one of my favorite entries so far. Audio and visual design were genuinely unnerving compared to what I've come to expect from a lot of RPG Maker horror games.

The fakeout intro scene really stood out to me. You absolutely paid more attention to detail than most people would for something like that. Not just the default assets, but also the corny, self-referential writing worked wonders to sell me on the fact that this was just someone's awkward first project. It was just the right amount of cheese to lull me into a false sense of security before the actual game started. (Also a very good choice of audience; it would go over a lot of people's heads if not specifically submitted to a jam full of RPG Maker devs.)

It's very hard to make RPG Maker games feel unique, so it's super impressive that so many different play styles were pushed into this one experience. None of them feel too similar, even in their simplicity, yet they all still sell the idea of being made for a very old console/computer. The small details like the restricted color palette even across different rooms were also appreciated.

Most of my criticisms are nitpicks, honestly:

If I accidentally passed over tutorial text before reading it, which I did for the first two games, I had no way of getting it back. The second game was pretty self-explanatory, but it took me a while to figure out what I was doing for St. Peter's Cross. The square-pixel font used for some of these tutorials was also very hard on the eyes, so I'm not sure how much I would have processed regardless.

I like the slow pacing, but some of the cutscenes felt just a biiiiiiit too drawn out. With the game "breaking" in the intro, for example, things took so long to visually fall apart that, even after realizing what was happening, I'd assumed the game just actually froze in the middle of the creepy transition. If just a few seconds were shaved off, the anxiety wouldn't have that time to fade away. The same thing happened towards the last scene of the game, though I forget exactly what transition it was.

I get that the Devil's exposition at the end was kind of a necessity for a jam project—I know planning out a non-linear story is a process that can take months in and of itself—but I would have liked the details to be spread out over the course of the game a little more. It was just a bit obvious that the Devil wasn't talking to me as much as the writing itself was, so it felt a little unnatural to get the information that way. The censored Wikipedia screenshot was a really neat hint at what a subtle build-up could have accomplished, and I really liked starting to piece together what RSR was doing and what the screenshot might have had cut out of it. (On that note, it also frustrated me a little to get the full version of the screenshot later. I'd already gathered the general idea, and the last screen sapped the fun out of putting two and two together.)

My criticisms are always long-winded, but seriously, don't take it as a sign that I disliked this at all. Like I said, this is easily one of my favorite entries. I just tend to give verbose feedback to games I really enjoy because of how much potential I see in them; I like to be detailed since I think micro-adjustments are the only improvements to be made at this point. I'm very excited to see what you come up with in the future.

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omg thank you for leaving such a detailed review!! :D

(SPOILERS)

i'm glad you liked the intro sequence! i thought that since the plot was about games-whitin-games already, it'd be cool to screw around with the player in a meta way haha. i tried to mimic how i'd write my first games, where i'd primarily use rtp assets and the writing was a bit corny, and sprinkling everything with jokes i'd actually made in my first projects so it'd feel more realistic. you hit the nail right on the head, i really wanted to capture that "first rpg maker project" vibe lol.  i really liked doing the glitching part too, namely because random screen/game glitches can be super unnerving to me haha.

my goal was pretty much to make the players forget that they were playing an rpg maker game, and i'm happy to read that many people who played it think it's unique :> trying to come up with different gameplay and art styles for each game was tricky (especially since i wanted to make each one implement a bonus challenge), but i'm pretty satisfied with the result, and happy to hear you thought they all still fit together! the restricted colors were honestly pretty cool to work with, it was less "aw man how am i gonna make everything look good with such few colors?" and more "wooo there's less decisions to make!" haha (things like the rooms in his sight having randomly colored backgrounds was inspired by old atari games, where sometimes rooms would be a completely different hue than the previous one).

if you restart the game in the first two minigames the instructions show up again, but i admit it's not really intuitive. and i wanted the tutorials to be as simple as possible to both mimic how old games didn't really explain much about the gameplay (and make you feel satisfied when you found out how to play), and to spook the player when they figured out what the game's deal was haha. i get what you mean with saint peter's cross needing more explanation tho, i definitely suffered from tunnel vision with that one and assumed some concepts would be more intuitive than they actually are. partly the reason why i decided to add a walkthrough and an option to skip each game. regarding the fonts, they're the default ones you can use in pixilart (the website i use to make all my pixelart), and i get what you mean, they're not the mooost readable haha.

timing is one of the things i try to get as right as possible in my games; i think it's one of the most important parts of crafting horror in a horror game. sometimes when i'm playing horror games and something spooky happens i think to myself "man that would've scared me a lot more if the wait lasted a bit longer..." so i tend to make the waits a little long just to keep the player on edge haha. the one after the glitch specifically was done to make you think the game actually broke lol. but i do feel that some parts were a bit too stretched out.

thinking back on it, i definitely should've added more hints to the story, especially in the exorcism aaagh why didn't i think of that XD i did try to craft a sense of build-up to the plot with the dev notes in the last game but that's about it lol. and i definitely get what you mean with the devil's monologue being too heavy on exposition, i wanted to frame that sequence as it toying with you and telling you these things just for fun, but yeah i understand it felt more like the game was telling you these things. and the last wikipedia article was just me worrying that i wouldn't have explained the plot clearly enough, and i wanted it to feel like 'if you didn't get the plot, here's the full explanation of what happened. and if you did get it, at least it's a fun way to do worldbuilding' haha.

thank you so much for the feedback! i'm always trying to improve my game making skills and hearing people's opinions on my projects is a great way to do so. i'm really happy to know that even with all the stuff that could be improved, you liked my game that much :>

thank you for playing!! <3

(btw can't wait to try false fruit, it looks really unique! :D)