itch.io

Nice graphics and overall simple to pick up gameplay; perfect for a browser game session, says I!

SSSHHH!!!

Haha yes I was supposed to implement a failsafe for this kind of thing but the game jam was only three hours and I ran out of tick ticks so I was just hoping nobody would try this :P

I thought the floaty mechanics and controls of the game were nicely done and well refined. Great work!

Really nice graphics and some feel good vibes. Good game!

Thanks and much appreciated!

I wanted to play your game but there is only the lzh file which I can do nothing with without the game Setup app.

When you Create Game Installer for 2k3, it creates a Setup to allow the user to install the game. 

Can you please make a zip file with all this available for download so I can play the game?

Thanks :)

Nice retro experience and the leg loss hit mechanic is a neat touch.

You have now played, 

Longest Path.

I don't know why you did this, but congrats.

Very absorbing route planner game!

I liked how chill and calming the game was; the encounter rate was merciful and the enemies weren't too overwhelming.

I noticed how each enemy leaned into the player tackling them differently and finding an optimized strategy for each on it's own merit. Examples would be not attempting to flee from a Roadrunner or using the vital Hurting Water to get rid of those who can put one in a pain locker.

Great job and on to the next, eh?

After being tortured for near three hours straight, mapping out optimized routes and listing all the treasure in a .txt file whilst praying for RNG favour I did manage to get the Comically Large Diamond Anniversary.

Took me around 20 runs. I had two optimized routes together in black and white after about the 6th run but it was just the roulette wheel favouring the house that was killing me off.

By the end of the first hour I knew no matter how I decided to tackle it exactly where I was and where the treasure was. There was no wastage in overstepping but I was despairing that it would be impossible since after getting the final treasure my agility and HP would be so low that it would be near impossible to run away from ANYTHING before it would kill me.

I started resorting to tricks like two tile stepping at the stairs of the first level to trigger an encounter to reset the count before descending.

I would even dash a few steps, open and close the menu multiple times in the hope that it would somehow not trigger an encounter on the next steps. I don't think this applies to RM2K games but I am sure it was a thing in old 8 and 16 bit JRPGS, though curiously it did seem to work on my victory run since I got to the first floor with 4HP and managed to get back to the stairs without an encounter.

By the end I was a quivering husk who could scarce string a brace of words together. Conceptually, this game is fantastic and the execution is nearly perfect. There are many things I did muse over in how to improve or expand on this but I think sometimes you do have to leave things as they are in their raw state and just appreciate what is actually there for all it's merits (and sometimes it's warts.)

Awesome job and I can't wait to study your next game!

Hello everyone and great to meet you all!

I am Razuth and my passion for creating games stems from playing video games since I was aged 7. 

I have been a creator on itch for around 18 months now and I feel right at home here on this amazing, diverse, supportive and creative platform.

My recent work had me devoting myself to develop and publish a game per day on itch for a whole month and now that is accomplished I have some time for reflection but also I am eager to play other games and see what is outside my own bubble.

I am regular user who not only makes games, but also joins these amazing game jams hosted on itch; playing other games and giving constructive feedback.

At times I like to host game jams myself if I cook up a good idea for a premise or theme!

Currently I have built a small community of 100 followers and I also follow around 100 talented and creative users myself and it's great to see what those guys get up to when my feed turns pink!

If anyone wants me to take a peek at their game or their itch page then please reach out to me and I'll see what I can do.

Looking forward to being a part of your journey :)

I really enjoyed this one and I plan to dive into a few more runs later on (got the Ruby for 40 so far).

On the face of it, this looks and feels little a traditional dungeon crawler but then after figuring out what the game is asking of you it becomes more apparent that it is almost like a route planning simulator.

It's clever that the encounters are a different sort of peril from what the player would naturally be accustomed to. Fighting and defeating them is actually juxtaposed to what is beneficial to the player. It reminds me of another game called 'Hero Run'.

The game's premise and design means that the game offers far more gameplay in terms of it's replay value alone. It really hammers home how much can actually be achieved with very little.

Excellent news!

Fun browser game with some real catchy music.

It's a little rough around the edges in certain places but it definitely has it's own charm and I like that. Good job!

Awesome atmosphere, vibe and a nice change to omit the overdone jumpscare horror mechanics.

Will recommend to anyone who likes psychological horror.

This is really cool and reminds of the great colorful PSX games like Spyro and Gex!

Really enjoyed playing all your games for the jam.

Congrats to onamint for getting first place with 'Night Queen'!

Congrats to AbadonLenus for runner up with 'Guerilla Tag!'

There was so much variety and potential in all the projects. I hope you guys learned something new, are proud of your accomplishments and that the jam was a wholesome experience.

I would welcome and appreciate any feedback here, positive and negative. Also I am considering hosting another 2K/2K3 jam soon (with a larger development timeframe) but I welcome any ideas you guys have.

I will be making a special collection showcasing all your games on my itch page. Thank you everyone :D

I made it to the ice world last night and was well into the grind session there, purchasing all best weapons and armor (for what those are worth) available in the ice town.

I completely forgot how badly 2K and EasyRPG browser build handles saves and I booted it up this morning to a heart sink when 'Continue' was displayed in grey T-T

The start of the game is most interesting in terms of mechanics. Since the pool of Troops extends longer than what would be deemed 'standard', I got slaughtered by Ghosts, Kobolds etc and wiped twice before getting an encounter of Bats so I could level up and give myself some survivability.

I loved how (at least to start with) the game forced me to almost exclusively devote my healer to actually do her intended job rather than whack an enemy for 3 damage because I was in lazy grinding player mode just spamming attack.

Would dearly have enjoyed to finish this but I'll have to put it on ice until I get over my disappointment of Atomos devouring my save.

For the record, off the top of my head:

Playtime: ~2.1 hours

Average party level: ~22

Bosses beat: Dragon

Actually I think this is longer than the original and I thought you gave a very generous time limit to complete the game.

Cool game, I like the little cat sprite.

One thing, I did manage to go out of bounds in the black screen to the far right and then couldn't move but other than that good job with the game.

Holy ripping projects, Batman!

So here we have a game inspired by Live-A-Live, where your main character uses the sprite from Barbarian, set in Zelda II levels using music from L-A-L and Rudra no Hihou.

All in all though, despite a few bugs and being a little rough around the edges, this is a fun and exciting game.

I thought the caveman translations were a quirky and fun touch to add to the game and it set it apart towards breaking out and being it's own thing instead of being cocooned in all it's existing source material.

Though I do love a good grind I do think the game would benefit from extra content rather than just traversing a side on landscape initiating bump encounters. I like the sussy 'whaddaya buyin' type merchant in the dark cloak, that was a cool little feature.

I think (and perhaps suspect) that in the following chapters should you choose to develop the game there would be some more context framed around the world and perhaps some NPC and dialogue to accompany and already installed neat battle system. Good work and congrats!

Clever and well executed game.

I think it was a shrewd design choice on your part to set the game entirely on the overworld.

I have utilized this trick myself before and it saves a massive load of dev time not having to construct walls and separate rooms here, there and everywhere.

I felt like the balance of the encounters could have swayed to being a little more difficult. The enemy design was quite intimidating but I found that I always had a surplus of soldiers left over and so I went from initially fearing these towering grotesqueries to a feeling like I was hunting them down like I was the alpha instead of the other way around.

Of course this is just my personal preference and experience. I am sure I am probably in the minority in that regard and that others thought the difficulty was right on point and more balanced towards the player so I do appreciate that as well; it makes the game more accessible to a wider audience.

This is a cool experience that I encourage everyone to play. Awesome job and thanks for submitting!

Great vibe and aesthetic as ever.

What piqued my interest the most in this game was actually the dynamic between all the characters present and it got me into musing about a great many things.

How did the Queen truly feel about taking the lives of her subjects?

Was the knife the master manipulator using the Queen as a mere pawn to satisfy it's own eldritch bloodlust?

Or was the knife simply an enabler; a tool by which the Queen could amplify and strengthen her own inner demons?

The game evoked some truly deep questions which is highly impressive for a 1 day jam game primarily focused on atmosphere, suspense and a unique progression mechanic.

Felt almost Bloodborne-ish it's execution. Great work!

Although not a game this is really good! Brings back really good memories of the early series in GoT.

You made a really faithful creation here and it looks to follow the original script to the letter.

The timings and suspense are nearly perfect. The whole thing must have taken a lot of time to construct and playtest to make sure all the moving parts are working in order so big respect to get it done in a day.

I think I have seen those horse and rider sprites in another game and the tileset looks like it comes from one of the Suikoden games which always looks great in any early engine RM game so good job with that.

I would advise caution if you do ever consider moving forward to develop it as  a full game. Existing IPs are always a bit dodgy ground to tread upon, especially when money starts coming into the picture (even as donations). But making a free to play fangame I think you would be well within your rights. 

Good job with this and it's one I will keep my eye on for sure.

Congrats on getting your first ever game published!

I am glad you chose my jam to submit it to - I find that making games for jams within their restriction is great for budding developers to practice honing their skills and working towards a manageable and achievable goal.

The advantage you will have is you will get proper feedback on your game so you know what worked well and what needs to be tweaked, expanded upon or improved.

I think this a great jam entry! It has a fun and relaxing vibe to it. The music works good with the variety of monster sprites and is perfect for a quick browser game.

If I were to give some critique I think the gameplay needs an extra dimension added to it to making it feel more engaging to the player.

Also I think the game can easily be beaten by moving to a corner where there are no events currently on the screen as I suspect RM2K stops processing random or move toward player movement events when they off screen.

That said I think this is really cool and you should be proud of what you got finished and complete in a short time :)

After playing this I really think I need to sit down with myself and get some good honest truths back to the surface again.

If not then I am anxious that I am going to be attacked by downscaled memes and low tempo RM2K sound effects in my sleep and I don't think I could cope to be completely honest...

Thanks!

Yeah I wanted to have all the jazz of a dungeon without making one. Just let the player pick a text choice and then let them do the heavy lifting while I chill xD

The stat ups are meant to be saved for endgame ideally but they are there if you need them after a rebirth.

This is why I don't think I could work a white collar job XD

Good game but man it gives my anxiety the heebie-jeebies!

Great effort. 

Game has some good ideas plus there's a lot of scope for potential. 

It will be interesting to see how this develops :)

Challenge accepted. 

I am looking forward to you doing a 29 game-a-day stint and surpassing me.

Game's got good relaxing vibes and a great potential to expand. Solid work!

Got it looking really nice from what I can see!

The premise kind of reminds me of an old RPG Maker 95 game called 'Palette' that dealt with the theme of recovering one's memories by interacting with the environment.

Will be interesting to see how this one develops.

Sounds great, totally down for that. TBH I am not a discord person at all but since itch does not have a dev chat server of it's own for users to communicate then I don't have much choice and decided to try embrace that instead. I sent you a friend request over there :)

Hello guys I am just checking in to see how you are progressing with the project.

Also I came to offer you my services (should they be required) since I am taking a pause in my own game dev journey and I am at a loose end at the moment.

If you think I could help with the project then by all means you can reach out to me. I would love to contribute something to this project!

I would prefer it if itch has it's own private dev chat server of some sort, but it doesn't so I have reluctantly joined Discord and I sent you, BagheadJack a friend request on Discord in case you guys wanted to reach out to me  since sharing stuff on itch about games in development is rather impersonal.

Thanks and good luck :)

Hey thanks for sharing this emotional piece.

I really loved the art and music, it accompanied the somber and deep narrative very well.

Poetry is a powerful medium with which we can express ourselves and I enjoyed this insight into your world :)

It's really impressive as someone who is observing and juggling very similar brands of fire and barbed wire covered balls in terms of balancing encounters in a short time frame project.

In my experience balancing enemy encounters is one of the hardest aspects in RPG Maker games and also one of the most time consuming due to having to actually playtest extensively to a point where it consumes over half the playtest time allocated to a full project.

Sometimes I laugh and I get super tempted just to clear the database out completely. No Skills, no Enemies, no Troops, no Equipment and only quest items.

 It's amazing how quickly and cleanly a project comes together when you wipe the Database but then one is faced with the problem of creating alternative and engaging gameplay that bypasses the built in and (sometimes) convenient turn based combat system.

Also we are faced with the insurmountable obstacle of personal preference. I myself prefer games to lean on the more difficult side and relish in savoring hard earned victories rather than breeze through a game first time. 

This usually results in my alienating my target audience somehow, but I find it goes too much against my creative grain to overcompensate too much the other way.

To sum up though, it's good to keep going and keep learning. We may not get better each and every time. Life is a game of snakes and ladders of ups and downs not rockets to space that just go in one direction. 

Awesome job and I appreciate your efforts!

Seems like we really are travelers treading the same path haha.

As for what I am doing next, I think I am going to take a pause on my own journey and take a look at what's around me - take a pause at the top of the hill and enjoy the view if we are to carry on with the journey metaphor.

What I would like to do now is try find likeminded and talented RPG Maker devs (such as your good self) and offer to contribute my services to larger projects. If you have any bigger projects in the pipeline and think I could be of help then please don't hesitate to reach out - I would love to be a part of someone else's vision for a change!

I am also getting my hand back into hosting game jams again here on itch since I did that last year and found it to be a very rewarding and inspiring experience albeit it only takes passive management and is not enough to fill my time properly.

Thank you so much and I agree 100% with everything you said.

I think at heart what I really like doing is just tinkering with different concepts which if you look at my itch page that will back me up.

I used to start each new project rubbing my hands together with all the ideas I'd spent half the night mulling over and that I was on my first steps to realizing my magnum opus 40 hour playable mega RPG.

I'd spend hours messing around trying to reverse engineer RPG Maker to do something that nobody has thought of yet and I'd usually succeed in that.

Then I would forget that I would get bored making hundreds of maps, tapping out filler dialogue for scores of NPCs, trying to make gameplay engaging and the whole project would go in the trash because I was in over my head.

These little mini projects have allowed me to just wing ideas around and execute a finished project with something I had in mind. Sure a lot of them aren't great but I felt fulfilment that I'd actually accomplished something.

Sorry I didn't mean to bang on so long but I appreciate you get what I was going for here!

Totally understandable and no need to feel glum - you've made 2 games in a short space of time and I am very much looking forward to playing them!

I think in hindsight it may have been more suitable had I run the jam over the weekend (I know everyone is in different time zones) so there would be less chance folks would be having to fit this around their work and so on.

Live and learn I guess but I am glad you had fun and are proud of your accomplishments!

Sweet - I thought it would be too ambiguous but I was right to keep the faith :]