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Well, I misread that as "Elon's Quest" so I'm probably too tired to be reviewing it, but here goes...

Gonna be honest I went in with some trepidation. I loved Magical Girl Priscilla (and I'm kinda disappointed this isn't another game in that series) but couldn't get into Mystic Zealots at all and never tried Divini.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to agree with the other reviewer in general. It's functional, but uninspired. The title screen was really promising; it looks nice and the music has oldschool runescape vibes. The first scene in game, though, almost turned me off entirely, with frankly bad writing and very recognizable music and graphics. As a whole, though, the game falls between those two extremes.

The battles are pretty fun. I think they're a bit on the easy side, but I prefer too easy to too difficult in a jam game. They have a solid feel to them, and they're varied enough that they don't get stale. I think if the game were longer I'd like to see more variation in enemies, maybe elemental advantages, that sort of thing, but here it works.

It has some, but not all, of the typical RPG Maker tropes that irk me. It looks like a bog-standard RPG Maker game, which is never a great impression. It avoids tedious random encounters, but has shaky character writing. The world feels dead, with empty, drab dungeons that seem to exist for the sake of having dungeons.

The rock puzzle was fun once, but wore out its welcome quickly. Puzzles are good, but more variety is desperately needed. If I recall, Magical Girl Priscilla had some pretty good puzzles, so a regression is strange to say the least.

There's also a lack of attention to detail- fine for a jam game but I have to mention it. Elora's transformed form looks less powerful than her normal form. Character sprites appear to have equipment the characters don't actually have. Facial expressions don't match emotions. There are a few visual glitches with the maps.

I think where it really falls flat the most is with story and worldbuilding. At first I was willing to forgive a lot of this. It feels in medias res, presumably it ties into Divini which I haven't played and would make sense if I did. I'd still like to see better introductions to the characters regardless, since they seem to come from nowhere, but the lack of worldbuilding past "generic RPG Maker style fantasy setting" is forgivable if it's done in another game.

That is, I was willing to forgive most of this until the "wait for part 2" at the end. If it's kicking off a series, even a side series, it needs to do a much better job of establishing thing. Maybe you don't have to explain everything that's explained in Divini, but it needs at least an idea of what the world looks like, who these characters are and where they came from. 

Out of curiosity, how did the jam go for you in terms of implementing what you intended versus leaving stuff on the table? I'm wondering if some of these flaws are borne from time constraints rather than design.

Thanks for the feedback. I did not intend this bland presentation, but time was the biggest problem for this game.

When the jam period started I was in the middle of another jam working on Divini 2 (which I will refer to as D2).  I knew the scope of Elora’s Quest was small and didn’t think I needed much time, so I gave D2 all of my time until the end of that jam (which ended a few days into March). I have made a few boss rush games in mere days, so I figured about 2 weeks would be plenty of time to crank out a quality project. However, I did not anticipate a few roadblocks: Working on D2 left me drained, and I was planning on having Elora go through the game with no additional party members. My exhaustion lost me a couple days, and the fact that Elora could be a solo non-magical Warrior the whole game meant that I needed to get creative or a Warrior playthrough would be a boring fare of attack, double attack, etc.

I experimented with some unique battle mechanics but didn’t have enough time to fully develop them, so I ultimately determined that Elora would have to run into new party members during the course of the game. After figuring out how that all would work, I had about 2 days left in the jam. I worked furiously to get things prepared, but I didn’t have enough time to do more than put together an alpha version of the game.

For me, the moral of the story is: don’t do concurrent game jams unless you can use the same game for both of them! I’m also going to try to limit myself to fewer jams; I’ve been jamming constantly for several months and I really need to let myself recharge (plus I need to update these last couple of games like I keep promising). That said, I am looking forward to the next MGGJ!

Thanks again for playing my game and giving a review!

(+1)

I wouldn't even try to do two jams at once. Honestly, with work and everything else I felt super swamped with just one limited scope jam game, and I was putting other stuff aside to work on it.

I think through that lens a lot of the issues make sense. I can see how things would get left by the wayside or done the fastest possible way with a looming deadline approaching. The battle system worked out well; despite the last-minute shift it didn't feel confused, it was balanced and satisfying. The other party members being thrown in last minute explains why they're so thin.