itch.io

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and your observation is not without merit.

Thanks for playing! Sorry that happened to you right at the very end of the game there. My intention was to make it as accessible as possible and as similar to portable RPGs like Pokémon and Great Greed as possible in that you could save anywhere, anytime. Ironic then that without obvious save points or tutorialization, it requires some RPG Maker literacy and therefore becomes less accessible. I will take this into consideration for future projects.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

https://allonbachuth.itch.io/surfacing

I've discovered a problem that I never had in testing. On my Windows XP laptop, and for my playtester on Windows 10, the Buff and Debuff animations don't play the custom sound effects associated with them, but rather some default sound. I cannot replicate it on Windows 7, and everything looks right in the engine. Did anybody else run into any audio weirdness?

Thank you! The encounter rate is a hard thing to balance due to the fact that the counter resets every time you change screens. Since I insisted on designing maps so that there's never any camera scroll, a lower encounter rate may well have led to several consecutive screens without encounters, not getting to see all the enemy types, and/or not getting enough levels to take down the bosses without grinding. All of which were issues my playtester ran into pre-submission.
I figured with the old-school graphics, chiptune music and outdated engine, I could get away with a slightly more old-school encounter rate :)
For what it's worth, the rate does get lowered in the bigger puzzlier rooms, and in my experience the escape command works quite reliably.

I made some very minor text improvements for the NPCs. No need to replay the game just for that if you already have. https://allonbachuth.itch.io/surfacing/devlog/193304/version-101

Thank you so much for the in-depth analysis! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The colors being only black, white, and two shades of blue is explicitly taken from one of the color palettes Game Boy games could have if played on a Game Boy Color. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes#Game_Boy_Color

As for extracting the game, I'm not sure what I could have done to make it easier. It's a single download and extraction, then Setup.exe installs the game, then you click RPG_RT.exe to play it. I don't see where the difficulty comes in. If it's a matter of the installer or the file name of the executable, those are are immutable aspects of RPG Maker 2003 that I unfortunately have no control over.

The improved jumping makes a world of difference! I also appreciate the new control options - The only thing slightly awkward about them is having to use the mouse at all, but at least that's only in the menus. Total time 9:58 Game Overs 15

The piano music is extremely unsettling, and I am here for it. <3

I have a few comments with all due kindness.
I really struggled with the platforming for the first couple of levels because decades of Mario have taught me to jump at the last possible moment to gain the most distance. But here, if half of your sprite is over the edge, you lose the ability to jump at all.
Then I struggled with the frog because the minimum bounce he does while moving is so much bigger than the movement you'd get for the same single tap as the pig. It makes it so hard to get into position to clear a row of spikes. I don't know how many times I died from hitting the sides of them. I spent no less than 15 minutes on marshlands 2 to get a clear time of 1:40.
And while the intro cutscene is wonderful, I wish for the ability to skip it.

I am dreadfully stuck on level 15. I feel like I should have paid more attention in high school physics. Thank goodness for the save feature though! I'm feeling shades of Baba Is You

I'm having a problem where the level you're introduced to the dragging mechanic consistently crashes the game every time I try to pull the first box.
I have no idea how the preceding level is supposed to be beat without it, but I managed. On a repeat attempt, I can drag the boxes in that level just fine.
EDIT: Well, I guess I can just ignore that box and beat the game. Very cute stuff!

Wait, does this end with the rain? I need more! I got so invested in the dialogue system, the atmospheric, and the graphics I'd call Mother 3-like. Overall, delightful.

I think I found some collission error though. Nothing too bad, just I could walk through the basement stair bottom railing and into the wall.

Thank you for the kind words! If by tiling errors you mean the buttons in the warehouse were on white tiles, that was on purpose as I wanted them to stand out more when they were being introduced as a mechanic.

Referring to rule 1. Games must be family friendly (no language, adult content, politics/divisive topics, etc.).

My idea for an RPG Maker story is this;
---
A mermaid that looks like a seal comes into a new town of ocean creatures. Nobody believes they are a mermaid, and question the validity of their mermaidhood. "You're not dressed with clamshells like a mermaid." "You don't have any pearl jewelry like a mermaid." "Can you even sing like a mermaid?"
But a mantis shrimp who is a bit of an outsider hadn't even heard of a mermaid before, and wonders if they might also be a mermaid. So the two of them set off to collect the items that they might become real mermaids in the eyes of the townsfolk.

After collecting the final item, a page of merfolk sheet music, the mermaid that looks like a seal sings the song to the mermaid statue south of town. A hermit crab overhears them and tells them about a colony of mermaids that moved to warmer waters in the south. To get there they have to pass the trecherous abyss.
Before they embark, the mantis shrimp confesses that after thinking it over and trying it out, they are not in fact a mermaid. They're a mantis shrimp. But they still want to journey together. And so they head through the abyss.
Near the other side of the abyss, the mermaid (who looks like a seal) saves the mantis shrimp from danger, and in the process their pearls and shells get all scratched up and dirtied. But they both make it out to the mermaid colony.

The merfolk accept them unconditionally with open arms, and recognize that the mermaid who looks like a seal is in fact a mermaid. The merfolk offer to fix up the shells and pearls, but also state that our heroes are welcome even without them. They further state that all manner of underwater creatures live happily with them, and they hope even more would come join them as there's plenty of room in the ocean. Everybody's happy. The End.
---

I don't think I have to say that it's a pro-inclusivity statement. My take on Confused Animals was to twist it so that on first glance it seems like the protagonist is a confused seal leading a mantis shrimp astray, it is in fact the townsfolk who are confused in thinking they get to decide who is or isn't what they say they are. And the mantis shrimp who is confused about their identity at first comes to clarity on their own terms.

My inspiration and motivation for wanting to make this certainly comes from thinking about identity in terms of gender and sexuality, but no such specific language would be used in the game. I would like to make it broad enough of a positive message that people would be able to think of it in other terms like nationality, ethnicity, or religion if that rings more true for them, but also make it wholesome enough that I could think of it as a children's picture book.

Still, I'm effectively trying to say Trans Rights without actually saying it. Is that too political or divisive to fit the rules of the game jam?