itch.io

Thanks for your feedback and for taking the time to share your thoughts! I’m glad you liked the concept and execution. It’s great to see RPG Maker being used in new ways.

You’re right about the style being too diverse for its own good. The game was actually supposed to be a group project, but the group disbanded very early on, so I ended up handling everything myself, which explains why there’s such a wild difference in gameplay, haha. Turned out okay, all things considered! I know the slower pace might not be for everyone, but I’m working on improving it and getting more comfortable with faster-paced gameplay for future projects.

I’m glad the old-school vibe came through, I absolutely love the retro vibe!

Thanks again for your input. It’s very helpful for making the game better!

Thanks for your detailed review. I’m glad you enjoyed the atmosphere. I put a lot of effort into making it feel right, and it’s always great to see RPG Maker still surprising people. There’s a lot more I want to explore with it, and I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.

The drone gathering was a big milestone and one of the few features that really captures my original vision. The game was always designed around a boss rush style, where each combat marks a step forward, and the drone system was meant to simplify grinding while rewarding efficiency. That said, I think the travel and gathering mechanics ended up being the more impressive part. I’m not sure if expanding the drone mechanics would improve the experience, but it might just highlight that other areas need more work.

As for the theme, I agree it might be too subtle. The idea was always that you’re an autonomous ship fighting empire forces, with hints in the dialogue that the war has long been over. In reality, you’re just defending a graveyard. The problem is that most players seem to miss these details since the dialogue only appears briefly and during combat. I plan to add more narrative depth in future updates to make the story clearer and flesh it out more.

I really appreciate your honest feedback. It’s really useful to help me refine the game, and I’m excited to keep improving it!

Thank you for playing! I get what you mean. I wanted losses to feel like a setback rather than a full stop, so the game keeps flowing while still giving players a reason to aim for victory. Escape is always guaranteed too, so there’s room to experiment without frustration.

Glad the atmosphere and transitions stood out to you! RPG Maker has a lot of potential, and I love pushing its limits.

I really appreciate you taking the time to play, especially with the language barrier. Your comment means a lot!

Should be fixed now! Thanks again, you rock!

Glad you liked it! I try to capture the feel of old DOS games, so I’m happy to hear that it comes across.

RPG Maker’s JS structure has a lot of potential, and JavaScript is more approachable than it seems, so it’s definitely worth exploring!

Thanks for your comment! I still need to check out your project - been meaning to find time to go through all the downloadable ones.

Nice, I just finished it! You’re off to a solid start. The story feels massive, which is exciting—but don’t feel pressured to cover it all in one project. It’s easy to want to tell everything when inspiration strikes, but breaking it into smaller, connected stories can help avoid the ‘forever project’ trap.

Focusing on a contained, polished experience will make it more manageable and rewarding to complete. I’ve seen a lot of great ideas fizzle out due to scope creep, and I’d love to see yours fully realized. Looking forward to what you do next!

I’m really glad you enjoyed it! This was a short project meant for practice that ended up with quite a few nice features!

We didn’t had a proper playtesting round, so I’m sorry for the ill-placed bug. I’ll have a look and drop a fix soon. Thanks for letting us know!

I missed you at the Pirate Jam, but I’m glad I caught your game here! I loved it-your dialogue has a great sense of humor, and I had a blast reading it.

The puzzles were challenging, especially the locker one! It took me a while to figure it out, but it was so simple in hindsight, haha.

Is this really your first RPG Maker project? You did an amazing job! Everything felt smooth, and I didn’t run into any issues, so kudos on a solid execution.

Overall, I really enjoyed it! The game has a lot of charm and kept me entertained the whole way through. I do wish we got to see more of the alien, though. I would’ve loved more interactions beyond just the puzzles, and maybe some extra artwork to bring things to life even more.

Great work, and thanks for sharing!

Since this is your first RPG Maker demo, I’d say it accomplishes the basics. The story is clear, and the game progresses logically from start to finish. That’s a good foundation to build on.

That said, you need to work on mapping. Right now, it’s not good. The layouts feel empty and unpolished, and that hurts immersion. RPG MZ has some example maps that can help you get a better sense of structure and detail.

The story itself has potential, but the way it’s presented isn’t working. Too much is dumped into dialogue all at once, making NPCs feel more like exposition machines than real characters. Spread the information out more naturally—let the world and events show some of the lore instead of forcing it all into conversations.

If this is your first project, I’d strongly recommend scoping down. RPGs are a ton of work, and focusing on a smaller, polished section—like the first visit to Frostheira—will give you a better chance of making something strong instead of something overwhelming.

There’s potential here, and if you stick with it, you’ll improve. Thanks for sharing your demo, and good luck!

I finished your project. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but you have some very interesting concepts!

It took me a while to understand how it works, but I’m surprised at how creative the system is! I really enjoyed “hunting down” every target, and I liked your clever use of backgrounds and environment. Overall, I really enjoyed your project, and can really see a lot of creativity from you. The combat approach is very “uncommon”, so I’d suggest explaining it somewhere in the page’s description to help players test your game. Great job!

Really fun and short, I liked it! It’s solid and found no issues with it, so, great job! The hardest puzzle by far was the first one, the other two were a lot easier to navigate. The boss fight was fun, too. I say, you should definitely made it more challenging! It has the potential to be a fun puzzle game!

Overall, great game, solidly made, albeit a bit short. Well done!

I finished this one, and I enjoyed the story a lot. It has a very gripping style and the characters did felt well made and characterized. There are some pacing issues, though. I felt like there was a big chunk missing between the “prisoner interview” and the actual story, and it took me a while to get a hold of what was going on, but as mentioned, the story was really great.

Some more interactivity would greatly help this project, as it feels too “straightforward” as is. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot and would love to see a more fleshed out version if you intend to do so. Great work!

I had a chance to play your game. I really liked the artwork and sprites, really nice use of colors too! I always admire devs that make their own stuff. The bedroom scene was great and you used it really well to convey the character without overcomplicating stuff. I’d love to see some more dialogue to flesh out the main villain, as it didn’t really felt menacing, but I understand the time constraints.

I did found quite a few hiccups with the engine use, normal for a short dev period, but that you should really take care of, as they may make it difficult for people to play: The chess pieces freeze the game when colliding with anything. This is most likely due to a checked “Wait for Movement” box in the Move route event. Simply unchecking them should fix it. Also, one of the exit events in the “hands/eyes/etc.” puzzle (right side) yields “wrong” no matter the combination, while the other works as intended.

Overall, a really nice effort with solid storytelling and puzzles. Good job!

Finished playing your project. I really liked the artwork and sprites, they’re simple and work very well. Though towns seem a bit barren, there’s a lot to explore, so I can see where the work went, and that’s OK by me. The army system was interesting, it made searching for the soldiers a nice side-task, and I also liked the clear difference on what each party member brings. I wasn’t following the story very well, though, it felt like I was missing a lot of info to get what’s going on. You could use some exposition here and there! The equipment system was also a bit strange. Everything was so expensive, so I figured it was meant for later. I got bodied hard by the merman though, so I couldn’t progress further!

As a side note: After the emu fight in the cave, collision wasn’t restored on the player! You should check that, though walking over the ocean was funny.

Overall, it seems there’s a lot of content in this game, but it’s being hurt by the uneven balancing! I’d love to come back if you’ve got some pointers on how to get past that damned fish, haha!

Good job, and thanks for sharing this!

Thanks for the heads up! What map did this happen? I ran a few tests, and I did find a potential issue, was it the ‘rainy’ pink one? Most likely the ‘node’ got stuck as ‘in use’, so drones will ignore it, try checking if a different one still works as normal. I’ll work on a hotfix to ensure it doesn’t happen. Let me know if you find more issues!

Thanks for playing it! To exit any window just touch the screen with two fingers! Touch controls may be a bit unintuitive, I’ll add them to the description when I drop the next patch, most likely tomorrow. Hope you check it out!

Thanks for playing! I did remap the Fullscreen button to something more intuitive for the upcoming version. I can’t enable the itch.io Fullscreen button though if that’s what you mean, it gets drawn right on top of the Grid button lol

Thank you for trying it out! I’m always a big fan of the retro sci-fi aesthetic, and I’m glad to hear others enjoy it too.

Regarding the F5 issue, pressing it will just prompt a browser refresh, so the page is actually reloading instead of crashing! You do actually raise a good concern that I haven’t considered; F4 may be a bit cumbersome on some keyboard layouts. It’s an engine hard-coded key for fullscreen, but I think I can change it for the upcoming version, I’ll look into it.

Thanks for letting me know!

Really glad to hear you enjoyed it! Don’t worry about the Help button, it really wasn’t an ideal way to deliver the information on how to play the game, more like, all I had time to add haha.

I’m definitely working on improving the whole experience, and should have something up soon! Thanks for taking the time to comment!

It’s really not an issue, I’m very grateful for the quick response, and now I’ve got two reviews to boot!

A more interactive way to ease players into the game is one of the priorities for the upcoming revision, so that’s definitely a good observation. It’s a relief to see that the very much in-depth planning made it through. I did my best too with the color palette to try and emulate those old fancy computers that had the orange glow further exemplifying that I’m a dinosaur, haha.

Thank you and the rest of you guys, again, for the amazing work you pulled off!

I really appreciate the very detailed review and the very kind words! I wasn’t expecting such an in-depth look; I’m very aware the sheer amount of games to review against the usual “slow cooking” style I always end up doing, but you really went above and beyond!

I will definitely continue to try and flesh out this game, there’s lots of ideas floating around and hopefully just around the corner!

Really appreciate your feedback and taking the time to comment! A better help system and more engaging gathering is indeed on the list of things that are getting a makeover. Hope you give it another go when the update drops!

Thanks for trying it out! You’re actually totally right, the help system is not very intuitive and it will be improved, as will the gathering. too! I’m glad you enjoyed it for the most part, it was indeed a big project to tackle, and hopefully I can improve it soon.

Really appreciate the kind words! The ‘retro pc’ kind of aesthetic is for sure my favorite so I’m glad I was able to make it interesting. There’s certainly a lot of room to add extra content to every aspect; it ended up being quite more “ambitious” than I accounted for. I will definitely try to flesh it out a bit more. Thank you for the suggestion!

I really appreciate the detailed feedback! I was able to catch you live and it was really helpful watching how the game flows. Thanks for taking the time to test the game!

The music, the art, the gameplay and dialogue, all fit really well together, you guys made stellar work! It was really fun seeing all the different dialogues for the NPCs, and the combat was challenging at first, but once you got the hang of it I had a blast bouncing off stuff.

Great job!

Thanks for the kind words! Glad to see that the effort paid off, I really love this engine and love to try weird stuff with it. I do agree with your appreciation; Couldn’t find the resources to allocate more content into the gathering part, so it’s a bit ‘bland’. In any case, I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for trying it out!

Thanks for trying it out! Yeah, selecting a place in the grid sets your course and shows you the “Distance” meter. Once the distance meter is below 500, press the button in the middle that says “Locate Target” and it should show you the target on the screen for you to click! It’s basically the same for every object in the grid. Thanks for letting me know! I’ll make sure it’s better communicated when I update it.

I’m not one for puzzle games, but the absolute polish and quality this game shows makes it impossible to overlook. It’s charming, well made, and really deep. It was a bit weird to get used to it at the start, but once I understood things better, at least I knew why I sucked at it, lol.

This is a really good project, could’ve fool me if I didn’t know this was made for a jam! Stellar work!

Finally managed to beat it! It did look simple at first, but there’s actual strategy behind it. It’s a solid game, definitely would benefit from variety, but I know this must’ve been a lot of work already. Great work!

Really nice stuff, I absolutely love the art, you nailed the retro feel. Pacing was really good, and combat was fun. It did take me several tries to get past the Necromancer, but once I got used to the game it went smoothly. Bow supremacy.

The magic system felt a bit weak. I love that you decided to use single digit MP, but the low power wasn’t worth the investment.

I did manage to beat the game, a good solid two hours, give or take. You certainly put a lot of work in this, and it shows. Great job, awesome game!

The whole stars scene ended up being the bulk of the project, I’d have love to expand on it, but even as is I barely managed to get it done on time! There’s a lot of potential there, definitely. Thanks for trying it out, there’s a lot of polish to be done here.

I always try to avoid flat out giving instructions, but it’s really hard to get to a sweet spot of “intuitive” design, I’m sure I could’ve done better. I’ll definitely try to make things easier to understand once I get more feedback. Thank you for playing it!

Thanks for trying it out! There was a lot of work put into the atmosphere of it all, I’m glad it turned out well.

It may have been developed with the Starfox soundtrack on loop, haha. The text thing is a real shame, I really liked the font, but it was a bit on the unreliable side. I switched for now to a less ‘odd’ one, will revisit when the judging period is over. Thanks for reporting it!

For posterity’s sake, here’s a notice:

First patch is out, and the issues reported below have been corrected!

I’m still preparing the next version, aiming to overhaul the game quite a bit, so any feedback or issues you encounter in this new version, I’d be grateful if you could let me know!

Thanks for the support, it means a lot!

A quick notice for anyone checking this project for the first time:

Patch is out!

Now that submissions are unlocked, a patch has been deployed addressing the issues that have been reported so far, so the game should be playable without issues (hopefully).

Feel free to let me know what you think and any issues you find along the way. The next version, a complete overhaul that will feature most of what was cut, is currently on the works, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for stopping by!

Really appreciate your comment, thank you!

I was a huge fan of Comix Zone, so I was really excited to get that feature working with the “comic” like stripes and squares. Your guess is pretty good, version 1 of the plugin used a parallax screenshot to simulate the effect, but it didn’t work in browsers. The one in-game actually creates a new bitmap overlay with an “empty” square to create the window. It’s still a wip, there’s a lot of bugs to solve, specially on game saving/loading.

I was really bummed with how many issues the game ended up with, but I’m glad to see people enjoying it regardless. I’m definitely working on reworking it and restoring what was cut, and a recipe book is a must!

Thank you again for trying it out!

Thanks for the very kind review! I’m so glad you noticed some of the more ‘invisible’ details that made the project such a hard one to finish!

I’ve been trying to figure out the cutout thing for ages, so I’m glad it looks appealing, I really like it!

I had a blast writing the dialogue and picking the music. Most of them come from music packs, but the credits are buried behind the ending, which as far as I’ve noticed, I doubt someone will manage to see them, haha. I’ll make them more accessible for next revision-

Regarding the “great deals” feature, I was afraid it could break at some point. The whole time system is a bit crude and gets desync easily as I’ve noticed. They’re supposed to be new npcs added to the market for a day that buy specific stuff at crazy prices.

Thank you again for such a detailed review! I think the ARES references are leftover code lol

Yeah, the penalties are too high, it’s a problem. There was a mix of not enough playtesting and some unintended values that made them a lot harder than they should be.

Thanks for playing it and taking the time to comment! I do plan to push a post game-jam patch, so is really helpful having feedback!