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FROM Review:

[Praise]
The monochrome color scheme is quite easy on the eyes. I see realistic drawings as well as plaid (mostly on the trees.)

Character Portraits. They fit so well! I really enjoy them.

Tileset. I love how the buildings look. There is quite a bit of detail in the walls and metallic parts.

Storywise. It feels very whimsical and full of odd-fantasy. And none of that is bad.

[Caveat]
Minor. Moving around the edge while not facing that direction gets you teleported. Perhaps forcibly move the player forward, or have an if-statement for their facing direction.

Minor. The area with the big lake has an invisible wall. Perhaps fill that area in with trees. Same area, black space. Fill in with something impassable and natural.

Minor. The girl randomly follows you and is considered a solid when not in your party; which, she blocked me in at the edge twice so I had to move aside and get teleported to the previous map.

Minor. (Overlap) In the town with the library, I can clip through the large tree and walk up the 1st building's bottom-most wall.

Minor. There is a knife in the girl's hideout, but I cannot pick it up. I had put the fishes in the lake thus far. Not sure if I needed to progress further in the story first.

Minor. (Map) Before the infinite map, perhaps provide a warning? I thought I would only teleport to that map by moving straight forward. So when I went left, I assumed I would go to the small village. An indication to only head south from the prior map would have been quite beneficial.

Potential(?). There was such beautiful music during the intro. And yet, during the first few minutes of gameplay there is silence. Whether that is to reflect the nature of the game or there was some type of error I'm not sure of. Yet, it felt as if it were missing at least soft music playing in the background.

**Rant**
Overall, "From" feels like a relaxing puzzle-exploration game with a deeper story buried beneath its cute art. A few times I got lost during exploration, and as of now I am stuck. Though I know you applied a guide, perhaps in-game hints would also be beneficial. "A door has unlocked somewhere" is a powerful phrase.
I'm going to try to complete the game on my own again later before resorting to the guide.

(1 edit)

Ah! Thanks for the review!

The guide doesn't contain that much spoiler because there is so much distraction in the game that's not entirely progress, it also contains some tips to progress and to reveal more story.

The silence when you first got in is an error, I don't know how to fix this but from some research I found out that it's just RPG Maker taking a long time to load up the music.

There is a shortcut in the town area right at the bottom of the long building because I thought it's a hassle to walk an U path again if you want to get to the other side. But if the error is not this, then please inform me further about it.

And that knife is not supposed to be picked up because it's not a very useful item. (the shear is designed to be found when you are further into the game, I thought the knife can be found too easily and at that point there is not much progress made yet)

Other things are downsides of some decisions made to increase the game's mood, I didn't think it'll be so bad, so sorry about that. If you haven't made it to the end yet, try to explore the maze a bit more. And in this game there is no one straight line of "progress" so you can go back to the places you've visited and might still find something new or interesting, since you can get to the ending in 5 minutes if you follow the guide (it's okay to look at the guide, ways to reach the end is not very obvious).

Finished the game. And, I agree with nalurose, the story seems difficult to understand. I notice its in the "playing God" category of another contest, so I doubt I'll be spoiling anything related to that concept. I just feel like there needed to be a little more text describing the bad ending; or pictures. It seems your guide only benefits from the good ending; at least, that's what I semi-figured out. I wanted to try to get the hinted at "3rd Gate". But, alas, I wanted the good ending. Also, it doesn't seem like the choice at the very end has any real meaning. There's no "New Game+" that I'm aware to take advantage on your decision to the final choice. However; the Good Ending final pictures did help to answer a lot of questions though not all of them, which is still quite intriguing.

If this game does get picked, I am curious as to how it will be fleshed out into a full game for the IGMC 2018 contest. I'll leave my actual review on the download page.