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I think there is potential to the game, but I can definitely tell the engine (Bakin) is still in Early Access. The first scene had such bad flicker that it almost gave me a headache.

When I was in the forest the treetops constantly blocked my view of the area. I was constantly rotating the camera to find an angle that worked.

All of these though I feel is more due to Bakin being in Early Access though, and will probably be fixed eventually.

However, ultimately I couldn't figure out how to get out of the first area sadly so had to end there. Maybe I missed something covered by trees, but all I found was a glowing square that said something then I got kicked back. No idea how to advance so stopped there.

An interesting idea, I would like to see it expanded. It is obvious though that time was a factor as EXP drops felt a little unbalanced. I got 4 EXP for defeating the boss? Almost no EXP for a long battle with a huge slime? All of that though I feel could be adjusted with more time, and would be interested to see where this goes.

So I played this game and here are a few thoughts, in no order

-Holy darkness! I get it is horror but more light than hand in front of face please. Even Resident Evil lets you see more than that.  And do not overlook ambient light, the eyes do adjust and see really well in darkness and pick up any light around it well, a fact way too many horror games forget about.

-In fact it is so dark I didn't see the grate. I only found it by smashing keys. A little more light please.  I get you may be going for realistic, but realism should not block fun. A few too many of your rooms are way too dark that its just not fun to explore them. I'd either make your light area bigger or make all maps in the game brighter.

-Nitpick: You say the lamp is the only source of light, then the character has a light aura. I'd make the lamp light radius light up the room and remove the light around the character. That should be doable in VS lighting script if that is what you are using.

-3rd degree burns? You'd be dead, not just with lower HP, especially with that all over your arm. I think you mean 2nd degree burns.

-Found out how to save. Would be a good idea to tell the player how to save somehow though, maybe a tutorial when in the room when you find a tape recorder?

Hopefully these suggestions help. I ultimately had to give up as it was just too dark for me to see what to do in the game. I do think there is potential though with it, the darkness though was too strong and took away the enjoyment for me in the end. Fix that up and I think  you have a game that you could sell even.

Thanks! I posted my comments earlier on your video too and do hope to add some of your suggestions in the video at some point once the jam is over.

Thanks! Adding an animation skip option to the options menu is something I do hope to add myself. For the endings there is a document on that in the game directory but do hope to add more to that in game as well at some point. Or as has been suggested by another maybe Cynthia returns part way and tells you too.

Thanks KV! Going to a HUD actually is on the list of things I want to do as soon as I can (or faster access of some sorts). I may ask around more on discord when I return to this after the jam.

I got to play this for the finals as a judge. Here are my thoughts:

I feel this game has a lot of potential, but does need another round of polish on the mechanics. For starters, you tell me about the pacifist option to talk mid battle and mid turn, while I got turns already queued that I cannot cancel. So of course I kill it instead as I can't take back those moves and they finish it off. You really should consider telling the player about it earlier as you have a battle first as a tutorial where the option is not there so why would I expect it now in battle 2? 

Emma's TP skill is useless. I missed over 50% of the time with it. If you are going to make me burn a lot of TP on a skill please do not make it miss.

The Air Elemental battle I also got a non-choice on the pacifist route as it paralyzed the only one who can do that and I had no paralyze cure items. By the time it wore off it was not an option anymore so I had to kill it. 

The last two bosses felt way too powerful compared to the rest of the game. They are a huge jump up in difficulty and power compared to anything you face to that point.

Overall I think you have an interesting idea, but need to back up a little and introduce mechanics in a proper order. Maybe make battle 1 introduce the player to the pacifist option? Or tell the player at start of battle 2? Otherwise you've established to the player that there is no such option then suddenly spring it on them. 

I do hope though you do polish this up though someday. And congrats on getting to the finals of the IGMC!

I also played this for the finals, here are my thoughts as well:

This was a nice short game. I did find it a little tough to get used to the battles as there is no tutorial and you got 1 HP so any hit kills you. I died a few times as I came to grips with the system. Some way to train the player would be a nice addition (though make it optional too for the veterans).

I do wish though that when you died you got just kicked back to the start of the map. Having 1 HP early on it feels a lot like a puzzle game instead and having the game return you to start of map instead would I think be a nice addition to this game. Also would reduce the whole let's go load my save, and so on.

The final battle did feel RNG dependent, as I had 2 HP then and it needed 3 hits to KO and I do 1 HP per hit. So I had to hope it missed one attack to survive the battle. It did miss though on my 2nd try so I did pull it off. Still removing the RNG dependency would go a long way there at the end. 

Overall though it was a good well made game, I just have minor quibbles with a couple things. Hope you do continue to work on this and good luck on getting to the finals of the IGMC!

Here are my thoughts about this game too, as I also played it for judging during the finals.

Overall it is an interesting idea, and the game plays like a battle arena type game.  I did find the party a tad odd and I didn't really care for one of the characters in the end in our party. I think it was probably a time limit thing though as you had to make it a one hour game which doesn't really give you a lot of time to get to know them well.

I do feel one battle was a little cheap due to the enemy stun locking you often. I didn't write down which battle it was sadly in my notes. I do wish there was a revive item or a better HP restoring system though as I felt healing was a little limited. Granted heal to full before every battle (well except for one which I will not post due to spoilers) does affect that but a backup way to revive at least would help just in case bad RNG messed up a battle.

I do hope though you expand on this idea at some point. And congrats on getting to the finals of the IGMC!

I also got to play this as a judge, here are my thoughts:

Overall I found this a very enjoyable puzzle game. I do wish you would remove the misses though from the game as I had a series of 3 rounds just go miss miss miss miss miss miss. Maybe it was bad RNG though, but still I think given the puzzle nature of the game removing misses would add to the game. Also I do wish leeches just stayed dead, considering we got limited health and healing items. 

Except for those little suggestions though I have nothing else to suggest. The game was fun to play and I hope you do expand on it. And congrats on getting to the finals of the IGMC!

Here is my feedback for your game too as well.

Overall this was a nice short puzzle game. I do wish I had known what influenced the ending I got though while playing the game. Some way to know that, or even a message about it after you get the ending to clue in the player would help a lot. Also I had a hard time seeing the plants in the fog so I lost more health than I should have.

As for suggestions: I kinda found myself wishing for a way to heal HP occasionally. Could make it rare as you do have the multiple lives too. Could even hide it in a secret. Or...did you and I just never found it? 

Overall though it was nice and short and a pretty enjoyable game, just needed some small improvements here and there. Good job on getting to the finals too in the IGMC!

Here is my feedback from playing this game for the finals as well:

Overall a really enjoyable puzzle game. I liked how DORIS would aid you if you did awful in the puzzles, as I never did get that stealth puzzle at the beginning. I did not care for the 10 second timer to get past some puzzles, but it was a really minor quibble in the end. 

Overall though this was a fun game to play, and I managed to get to the end in under an hour. Good job on making a game that got to the finals for the IGMC!

I got this game to judge as a finalist, here are my thoughts.

Overall I felt you had a solid story and idea here. I was interested in seeing how it went and playing it to the end. I do feel you need a little battle polish though. The first boss suddenly got many many turns in a row with no warning and I got wiped out due to that. If you are going to do a system with that many turns for a boss I'd invest in a true CTB turn order gauge like how FFX does it. That one shows you things like if you are about to go 2x or even 3x, and same with the enemy. That would really add to player experience too instead of what you got for the gauge, which with a party of 1 didn't feel too useful to me.

Also I do feel the ending was a little abrupt as it just...ended. I'd add a little more to that so the player feels like it is properly wrapped up. 

Other than that I do feel  you have a really solid entry here. A little polish on battles and a tune up on the ending and you'd have a really solid short game. Congrats on making it to the finals, and good luck with game making!

I got to play this one as well as a finalist, here are my thoughts.

I think I had some really bad RNG when playing this game, as the first battle felt way too OP for me. They spammed an AOE that did way more damage than I could heal. I only got out of it by the skin of my teeth. First battles are not supposed to be brutally hard. Remember the player is learning the game. It should be a cakewalk to you as a dev as you know the game inside and out, but the player doesn't. I'd suggest maybe removing that AOE myself, or make sure it can't spam it 3x in a row like it did with me.

Unfortunately  I hit another problem. Lag. This game lags badly on my PC, and I only had one other game I had to judge lag. That first big outdoor map lagged at 40 FPS, which meant the action dash into the monster system didn't work too well as it stutter stepped. I saw you used a lot of VS plugins and as such,you do really need to reduce size of maps and number of events if you are going to use fancy weather, fogs, and all of that. Even VS recommends it in their directions. I did finally get the map to go to about 50 FPS by turning off almost all effects, but it was still an awkward experience.

Then I hit the town. Holy fog! That fog was can't see hand in front of my face. Tune that down a little please! It might be realistic, but realism should never take a backseat to player experience. I finally got to see by lowering the setting all the way to 20%. 

Overall I think you have a decent idea with this game but the massive lag issues hurt my experience playing this game. If you tune that up I think you will have something good here though.

I also got to play this game for judging as it was a finalist. Here are my thoughts on the game.

Overall I felt this was a very well done game. It is well polished and plays well. My only gripe is with the time mechanic as I didn't feel it really added anything to the game in the end. I do think if you had a longer game it may have been more evident but a short jam game like this I didn't feel I really got to see all the benefits and disadvantages of it well so it felt a little forced instead.

Outside of that little quibble I had no other suggestions on things to fix. I ran out of time right when I got to the fight with Ouroborus, and that was only because I rushed to it late realizing I had 5 minutes left.

If you didn't see Hawkzombie streamed your game for round 2, and posted it on youtube. That may also be worth checking out?

It might have, but X is the default so there was nothing to tell me to use ESC for it so didn't try it. 

Yeah it wasn't shooting it at all. I tried all clicks, tried moving it elsewhere on the bar, tried all that I could think of in the time I had. I do wonder though, I also didn't choose the class that it first had up and picked another. Maybe that is the cause? I don't remember what the class was now its been a while.

I got assigned this game for round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! Here are my thoughts on the game.

The idea of having the shop and cleaning artifacts was  a neat idea, then searching for clues in the evening. However I feel like it needed more. The town really had 2 people I could interact with that had changes to what they said. The others the dialogue never changed at all that I could see. Also wasn't sure what the point to the shop was given how getting the ending depended on me just being sure to talk to someone every day. Was there another way to win the game based on the shop? If so I missed it. And does G even matter in this game? I never felt like it did except to make sure I had enough to buy the next day's item.

Overall I feel this is a neat idea, and with a little polish to connect the two sides of the story more would make a great game. Good job again on getting to round 3, and hopefully the feedback will help you to improve it and make it even better.

I got assigned this game for judging in round 3. First, congrats on getting to round 3! Here are my thoughts on it.

Overall I felt this was a nice short game. My only quibble was I wished for more time to be gradually introduced to the battle system, but once I got the hang of it, everything was fine. The skill learn system for upgrading skills was a nice touch too, and I do like I had the option to grind.

Overall though I feel this was well done. Again, congrats on getting to round 3!

Actually I have played Fire Emblem. Might be why I did get past rounds 1 and 2 as I was able to figure out the battle system pretty fast from that.

Ha! I am probably the only one who would notice just because in one of my classes we teach math for figuring out tournaments and tournament setups. Mainly wanted to pass it along in case someone else catches it later. 

I got assigned this for round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! 

First, you may want to ditch the installer. I had no idea where the game was installed even and went crazy trying to find it. Also the default directory it uses doesn't work on my system, the game crashed to desktop every time it tried to save. I moved it to another directory and then it worked though. May want to check into that though, as not everyone is tech savy enough to figure out how to change directories. 

Overall it was an interesting game with an interesting idea. I wasn't really sure though what the point of the battles were in the game, as you only need to fight in the first area (and the final boss), and I don't level up that I can tell. Maybe could consider changing it into a system that doesn't have battles? Also the game just kinda...ends. I found myself wondering if this was ever going to resolve and it just ended without resolution. I don't know if that was due to time restrictions and more is coming or not, but I would suggest working on the ending so it at least feels like the game is a complete story in the end.

Still, congrats on getting to round 3! I think with more time you could polish this into a really good game.

I got assigned this game in round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! Here are my thoughts on the game. 

This game was really well done! It was nice and short, and I liked the option to go back and see the other ending too. And the battles were not too difficult either. 

I really have no suggestions to offer for improvement for this one. Well done!

I got assigned this for round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! 

First I should start this off by saying I've never played Pokeman in my life. Pokeman was a thing when I was a teen so I passed by on it and have never played the games. I post that as I feel like you were going for a monster collecting feel here, but as someone who did not play the games I feel some things need to be better explained. 

For instance, the entire system feels too random. You can spend $$$ to buy monsters, get 3 then go to a battle system against others. I managed to win rounds 1 and 2, then got to round 3 where they had monsters that were so fast they went like 4x to my once and one shotted me. As it is, it felt really oddly balanced to go suddenly from hey I'm managing to getting mopped with no chance in one battle. 

I feel you should have an option to slowly introduce the mechanics to the player. I think I may have done better if I had played Pokeman games and such, and kinda feel like this was designed assuming the player has played those games before. Be careful with that as you should never assume that of the audience. 

Small little detail too: The tournament is not round robin, its single elimination. Round robin you play everyone once, so round 3 can't be the final round out of 7 players. Just a side note as I teach math so it stood out to me.

Overall it is a neat idea, but needs to add more to introduce new players to these kind of games. And maybe more gradual balancing so that it doesn't go from round 2 I win to round 3 not a chance.

I got this game for round 3 of the IGMC judging. First, congrats on getting to round 3!

Overall I started out not sure what I was doing except having to find her sister. After I found her I had no idea what to do or why. A little guidance would have been nice. I did eventually get to the end though, so was able to stumble to it in the hour I had.

Also for some reason the bookcase puzzle didn't register the first couple of times I selected it, it wouldn't let me try to arrange the books. No idea why that happened, but it did eventually work.

For some reason though this game made me think of the older adventure game Uninvited. Probably just due to your use of a mansion and such too. 

I do feel a little more direction and better clues would significantly help this game though. It took forever to find the 6 candles. I'm sure with more time that could be added in though. And again, well done on getting to round 3!

I got assigned this game for round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! Here are my thoughts.

Overall I felt this was a neat game, with a neat premise. The idea of having to go resurrect all of the villagers definitely fit with the theme. I think my only critique is I wasn't a fan of the 3d sections as they felt a little out of place compared to the rest of the game. But outside of that the game felt well polished and thought out. Well done!

I got this game as part of round 3 for the IGMC. First, congrats on getting this far in the contest! Here are my thoughts on the game.

Overall it is a neat idea for a game and a neat premise. I've played a few games about society down below ground but it is an idea that is not commonly used. I did lose the person I was supposed to follow a couple of times, maybe have them walk just a little slower so I have enough time to register which way they went? Running through that dungeon once when it is safe was a neat way to show off what kind of puzzles they will have. 

However then I hit a critical problem. You see, the game never told me how to save ever. X didn't work for a menu as you have it assigned to throwing knives. So when things got dangerous, I died, and got kicked back to title. You really need to be sure to tell the player how to save in the game, or consider a system like the first Zelda where on death you can restart at start of dungeon or something. Unfortunately since I never knew how to save in this game I never got past the boss in the hour I had as I had to spend most of my time replaying the same segments over and over. 

With a fix to the save issue, or some kind of autosave though this game would be a really good game I feel. Hopefully you can consider adding that later on.

I got assigned to play this game in round 3 of the IGMC. First congrats on making it this far! Here are my thoughts as I played it. First I'll list the suggestions of things to fix:

-Opening text really hard to read due to being red and blends poorly with the pictures.

-Opening battle probably could be shorter as you have no skills yet.

-Need to tell player its an ff2 type system earlier and not depend on them talking to one random man to learn it (tutorial perhaps?). Some feedback on when skills improve would be nice, I did the entire first dungeon and thought there was no point to battles so I just ran from them all, as I got no feedback that my skills went up.

-Narheim is bugged, can't enter the item shop.

-If you leave the 2nd dungeon the way you come in, you end up on the 1st dungeon's entrance.

Overall: Decent story overall, wish I had more time to play it (ran out of time after getting the root in the 2nd dungeon). Using an ff2 style battle system is different though needs more polish and player feedback. With more time to polish and fix bugs this could turn into a really decent game. Though I imagine most of what I noticed was due to having one month. Overall, nice job!

I got assigned this for round 2 of judging for the IGMC. Overall this was a neat little adventure game. I had fun playing it, but did sadly run out of time to finish it (the hour was up before I got to the end). Maybe I'll return to it once all the rounds are done.

The only suggestion I have is when it came to placing the objects in the room some sort of clue as to what went where would be nice. I have 9 rooms to choose from and am not an expert in 9 eras so some objects I was like where does it go? I was button smashing trying every spot to see if I could figure it out, then the hour was up. 

Other than that little quibble nothing else to suggest here. Well done!

I got assigned to judge this in round 2 of the contest. Sadly it was unplayable on my PC. I don't know why but I think you didn't test against non-QWERTY keyboards and non-standard mice. Not everyone has QWERTY and forcing to WASD means you got to contort the hands on those keyboards. Please make sure the arrow keys are an option in the future.

However the worst was the mouse. I could never do the left click on the crystal after selecting the one item. I dunno if it is because I use a trackball but the system never registered my left click as a left click. I tried all the others to be sure, but failed. In the end I had to mark this as I couldn't play it too far due to being forced in a configuration that just didn't work in the end and being unable to proceed past the opening puzzles.

Hopefully you can fix that for future games.

I got to play this game for round 2 of the IGMC. Here are my thoughts.

Overall I liked the puzzle mechanics of it. Some of the sliding puzzles while trying to keep moving were a little aggravating but were very doable still, so no real issue there. Plus a challenge is needed after all. 

I do wish I had learned more about who she was and why he wanted to not go back. I feel that I didn't really understand that as I played.

That's really all I had to post on this. Overall I felt it was pretty well done, presented well, no major bugs and quite enjoyable. Well done!

Yeah MV with default you'll miss like 10% of the time on average. That's not the exact math but a good estimate.  Still hope the suggestions help on ways to consider fixing it up!

I got this game for round 2 of judging. First, congrats on getting to round 2! Here are my thoughts on it.

The idea of the game and game world is neat. Magical girls who fight off invading aliens and save the population. I feel the story is presented well too. 

However I do feel your battle balance needs an overhaul. I lost the first fight due to a bad miss. I lost the second fight on my first two attempts due to my ultimate ice spell missing both times. Skills that cost me MP should never miss unless I'm inflicted with an ailment or the monster has a buff, neither of which applied here. Also why are there no HP or MP restore items except the one I get to start the game? I was constantly running around with 1 or 2 girls at 1 HP and 0 MP and hoping the rest of the team could carry me forward to the full restore point so I could finally heal. 

As it is I ran out of time as I got one hour to judge it, and the hour was up before I could see this through to the end. I probably would have finished if I hadn't died so often and had to retry battles and hope for good RNG for my attacks to actually land though. I do hope you really consider making it so that skills that cost MP never miss if you are going to have HP/MP restore items so rare, as otherwise bad RNG can put you in a spiral of doom, especially before the first chance to save as there is no way to go back and try to do better in those first three fights.

One other suggestion I do have: The healing regen spell is a nice idea but it doesn't continue after battle so it feels almost useless as I often get it up too late to matter. Maybe either let it carry over after the battle, or make it a straight up healing spell with some regen? 

Overall I feel you have a solid idea for the story, but do need to overhaul the battles especially early game. Remember the player is still figuring out the game. But I do hope you expand on this and fix it up as it could be a really solid game in the end.

I got this game to play in round 2 of judging. First, congrats on getting to round 2! Here are my thoughts on the game as I play it.

This was a neat game with a neat premise. Playthroughs are super short which is nice too, allows for some experimenting. I do feel though the RNG is a little unforgiving and you can easily get into a death spiral if you get too many of those damage to the forest events in a row. I did also find myself wishing for more definites on things like instead of bad events more likely to occur, how much more likely to occur? Granted that is also probably the fact that I deal with numbers a lot in my job so I like to see definite numbers, but adding something on that for player feedback could be worth considering.

I do think this though has potential and would like to see it expanded more and polished up someday!

I got this game for judging in round 2. First, congrats on getting to round 2! Here are my thoughts on this game.

This game tells a solid tale and is well made story wise. My only grip is battle balance felt a little off in the second zone as the sudden jump in difficulty there resulted in a total party wipe for me on the first random battle as I got that battle before even getting to the vending machines to buy the better equipment I needed to survive. I'd suggest maybe using regions to block off the zone up to the machines so the player doesn't get wiped before getting the equipment they need to survive.

Even after getting the equipment though I found random battles just too long and too likely to wipe out my party that I just ran from them all and instead just fought the bosses. I kinda felt like I was expected to grind somewhere before the first boss battle due to the sudden jump in difficulty after defeating it, but with only an hour to judge the entire game I really couldn't stop to grind if I wanted to finish it in time.

Also I do wonder why you had on map encounters in the first area then went to random afterwards? It really took me offguard the first random battle due to that as I was now expecting on map encounters. I'd suggest being consistent here. 

Outside of that though I felt the game was well done. I did beat the final boss with almost no time left in my hour to judge. I hope you do expand on this more and I can tell I need to check out your other games sometime.

I got this game for judging in round 2 for the IGMC. Congrats on making it to round 2! 

I feel you have an interesting premise here. The game plays out more like an adventure game where you have to find the items to complete the quest. At the end there is a choice which decides the endings for you as well. 

Overall this was a nice short game. If I had to suggest anything its that I wanted the game to go longer, but that just shows how good it was. 

I got this game for round 2 of judging, congrats on getting to round 2! Here are my thoughts.

Overall I found this a very enjoyable game. The choices were flat out silly sometimes. I decided to go with the rat circus because why not? Plus...rat pyramid! 

I really couldn't find any negative to the game or suggestions for improvement to mention except I wish I had more time than the time I did to work on the village, though understand why the time limit is as it is due to the story. 

Overall though this was a fun game. I hope you make a longer village management sim someday, as I'd love to play it.

I got this game for judging in round 2, congrats on getting to that round. My thoughts on this:

It is neat that you tried to do D and D in RPGMaker, though I wonder if this is the best system for it? The first battle I lost many times until the dice rolls favored me enough to get past it. Same with the second. I think some of the issue is the fact the battles I'm outnumbered and at the mercy of a few lucky rolls, and am playing a Rogue which is not ideal for this. A Mage would have a better shot as at least then I could put them to Sleep. 

However, I ran into some serious bugs. The game once crashed with no notice and kicked me to desktop. That is probably an artifact of the engine using ACE and ACE and newer PCs have some issues. May need to consider moving engines soon or investigating compatibility fixes.

The other is I can't proceed past the 3rd battle. I fight, one of the sprites doesn't leave the screen, I go forward and it redoes the entire scene but this time it locks up as something is trying to move but can't. Nothing I did in my judging time got me past this battle. 

I did check the project file since  you did include it, and I did find the cause. After that battle is won  you turn on the wrong switch. The event is looking for a different numbered switch than what you turn on.  I'm guessing some other players must have found another way around it, but I never did.

However I'm not allowed to patch it to proceed so have to judge it based on it as it was sent, which means I have to judge it based on being unable to go past the third fight of the game. 

Still bugs aside you do have a neat idea. Hopefully you can improve it and fix the bugs.

I think that's more I was still figuring her out when the game ended more than anything. Probably with more to it I'd have more an opinion.