Posted as part of the Review The Old Event #1: January 2025
Gameplay - 3/5: Serviceable
The inclusion of the instructions in the 'weird note' is a nice touch!
The amount of detail that goes into the map design definitely helps the world to feel more alive and lived in. However, sometimes it's a little difficult to navigate areas. Maybe making doorways more clear could help with this, such as extended tiles, door frame sprites, highlighted areas, etc. I think maybe this is done by adding sections to the room along the floor and walls. It works, but it's not super intuitive. The easier places to see you can travel to a new area are the stairs, door sprites, or even just holes in the wall. I think probably making entry walls more visible like those examples could help with navigation, or even just making the map bigger so you transition less often.
I was a little surprised by the lack of intractable items put into the maps too. Not that a game needs to have everything be interactable per se, but it felt like the things that were was kind of random. It didn't help with the feeling of blindly interacting to try to figure things out. I think at least for the puzzle where you have to find the right box, even just interacting with a box and Mateo saying "oh no, wrong box!" could help give the player a bit more direction. I wasn't even sure I was in the right room, so it ended up feeling like an accident when I found the supplies
I will say that the fetch quests are kind of tedious, but puzzles like the flower one was a lot more fun.
Presentation - 3/5 Stars: Serviceable
The use of both RTP assets and custom assets are pretty effective at giving the game a more unique feel.
I like the main menu music, though it is more sweet than mysterious or foreboding. I think the music that plays later in the basement and the house is a better fit maybe for getting the player in the right horror/mystery mood for the game. Other than that, I really liked the music in this game! Especially the section after you plant the seed was very creepy.
I think also making better use of sound effects could help the game feel a little better. Specifically, when you're trying to enter a code and you get it wrong, you get a sound effect or maybe some text like "oh wrong code". Just in general it could give a little more life to the game, if that makes sense.
I do have to say that this game suffers really badly with bugs that let you walk on walls, especially in the later parts of the game. They're not game-breaking, but it gets really distracting after a while especially as the story starts getting more intense and they're becoming more not less frequent. There's also some bugs with respawning items, again more in the later part of the game,and possibly some bugs where you can only transition in certain spots, or you might switch back to a previous map just by walking in the wrong direction.
Creativity - 4/5: Good!
Though most of the assets are RTP, the custom assets, music, and story really shown with their own creativity, particularly the story and custom art. I will say that some elements, like the puzzles, were never something too unusual for RPG Horror games. I think a little bit of creativity not only with the art and story, but also getting creative with puzzles and gameplay could have helped to make this a particularly creative game. I liked puzzles like the flower puzzle and the car scene puzzle, but I think I wanted more puzzles like that and less of the more generic or more confusing ones.
Horror - 4/5: Good!
I think the game does a very good job of having a slow build up of dread. Particularly the car crash scene was very unsettling. Like other reviewers have mentioned, the monster has a good design but not a very sophisticated chasing AI, though I didn't mind this since I personally hate chase scenes. I will say that some of the horror was undercut by distracting bugs and some slight confusion about the story.
Story - 4/5: Good!
The game keeps it's focus pretty well on the characters of Mateo, Lysander and Ianthe. I liked the small reminders Mateo got of their time spent together, and how it becomes more foreboding by the absence of those characters. I also have a soft spot for stories about people trapped in houses... well, you could probably tell just by playing any of my games. But especially the way Mateo becomes more and more cut off from the outside world as his own personal horrors grow was a nice touch, I really liked the way the game explored his anxiety.
I will say I think the game could have used a little more context? We know Lysander and Ianthe were Mateo's friends, but for a while I wasn't sure if they were also his siblings, roommates, or even his parents. I also had assumed Mateo had just moved into a new apartment, and this helped the idea that he was more reluctant to leave it. But then later a pile of books says he's "not done packing", implying he's getting ready to move away? I think a couple more details could have helped get us into his headspace and help the story flow a little better.
Overall:
For a first game using RPGMaker, this game was excellently made. It used a mix of RTP assets and customs assets very well, had a good mix of puzzles and gameplay, and even had decent music and an interesting story to boot. However, the game also suffers from some bugs, lack of context, and some trouble with navigation. There's a lot of things this game does right in terms of design and gameplay, I just think I would have preferred to see more of them. More things to interact with, more sound effects, more obvious transitioning areas, etc. If y'all ever make another game in RPGMaker or otherwise, it would be interesting to see what you come up with!
Extra Tips:
Many of the issues in this game are minor, and thankfully have some pretty easy fixes. With the map collisions, probably just a better knowledge of RPGMaker and an eye for detail is needed. When adding custom tiles or creating new tilesets, you really have to keep aware of what the collision is set to for each tile to avoid these kind of bugs (this includes events!).
When I was first starting out with RPGMaker I didn't really like the default look of the menus, especially when it shows health and mana and so on in games that don't use those resources. For MV specifically, mjshi's Non-Combat Menu plugin is a really good solution to this and pretty easy to use (https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/non-combat-menu.56344/). I think adding this to the game would be a nice quality of life update that requires less menu navigation on the player's end and keeps them focused on the story and the horror, rather than wondering what they'll be using their HP for later on.
Another thing I noticed, specifically when opening up notes such as Ianthe's guide is the text box at the bottom of the screen. There should be a way in the editor to make a transparent textbox, and then you can simply put a textbox with a space so it doesn't show up and block the guide or other pictures.
Hope these tips are helpful!