Alright, I took a shot at your game. It was a solid RPG experience, but I have to nitpick on a few things that might or not be just matters of taste and not necessarily design flaws. I'll list my points below, in no particular order:
- I am not really fond of the helper arrows on interactable objects. I personally enjoy exploration and prefer to find out myself if something on the map is a point of interest or not. They are good for things that are crucial for advancing the plot, but I didn't like them elsewhere. If my lack of interaction means I'll lose a few healing items easily gatherable, so be it. I'll grind the coin for it then.
- I liked the non-generic difficulty settings on the beginning, and that you gave us an option to change it mid-game. I did not care for the step counter though; I think it's more of a developer design and should not be changeable by players.
- I adored your underwater mapping. However, some of the maps above water felt a tad generic. Understandable for a month's project though.
- The puzzles were pretty fun, although a bit too easy for my taste. A tad smaller map for the driftwood puzzle would have been nice; quite some time was spent on travelling around.
- I liked the fact that you did not use the default font: many contenders did, mine included. However, the font was not entirely to my tastes, and the naming scenes did not like it either; at first I thought Riya's name was supposed to be Ri ya, because the I letter is shifted to the left. Same with Anwar; the W in his name seems to be too wide for RMMV naming scene. But these are rather easily fixed later on.
- Most of the music I liked, but I had to resist the urge to turn the music off during the introduction scene where Evander is being tended by Riya. That music was definitely for my tastes.
- The combat was pretty good and balanced against Adventure difficulty, which I played on. But I disliked the fact that you had to use Sear everytime you met those oversized slimes because of their regeneration. This basically meant that Evander had to use Sear every time during those fights, or I had to outdamage the healing. A little bit more freedom in our actions would have been nice. Same for those crabs and their barriers, requiring Riya to use Piercing Attack every turn. There also seems to be a mistake with Jump and Fly actions, or how they are shown on the turn bar. Everytime the actor (or enemy) using these had their action finished one turn before their turn actually came.
Despite the "flaws" I mentioned above, I'm going ahead and vote for this entry. I think your effort shows and you should be rewarded for it. Thanks for making this game and please make more games in the future!