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I Think I’ll Just Stick To Eating The Treats

  • Addit
  • 10/31/2013 06:18 AM
  • 1804 views


A Game Made By: Racheal & MakioKuta
Created Using: RPG Maker VX Ace
It's A: RPG Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 45 Minutes To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


Halloween is finally here and just like the last year, yours truly will be sitting at home watching a scary movie while eating some of the unguarded candy left behind by all those kids who never came to the door (stupid kids). But whatever, Halloween is a time to crossdress as your favorite goblin and cheer on your totally mismanaged football team as they can’t even kick a field goal to even save their own ass.

A-And which I mean – here’s another review, just in time for the occasion.

Now since All Hallows Eve 2013 has just finished wrapping up (and I swear I will try to review one of those suckers if I get the chance), I thought I’d go ahead and review something from last year’s All Hallows Eve, with an entry that was five months late and didn’t even win anything.

(…You gotta be kiddin’ me.)

*sigh* Whatever. Let’s just go, already.

The Story


You mean “today.”


Another Halloween is slowly upon on us and something is amiss! It appears that throughout the town that all the various monsters and spooks have had their precious priced possessions stolen by an unknown group of thieves (who have seemed to have dropped a lot of “carrots” around the areas). Without most of their gear, Halloween cannot continue, as a lot of these creatures of the night NEED their shit to scare all those little children and all those stoner hippies into submission. Agatha, who is a witch who has eerie powers and even had something of her own stolen, has decided to volunteer to find out who stole everybody’s items and return them back to their original owners just before the clock strikes midnight. But she cannot do this alone, so she seeks the help of the two of her closest friends, Delila the vampire and Bobby the ghost, as the trio heads towards an abandoned graveyard where word is that the thieves might have headed there. Can they find out who the culprits are before the stroke of midnight (and can I ever get this caramel sticky goo off my shirt)? Time can only tell.

What’s to say; it’s simple, short and sweet, just what you would expect for a game like this. Seeing how it’s a game that is trying to capture the very essence of Halloween itself, I thought that overall everything worked well for the narrative. The main characters are likeable and so is the rest of the cast of oddballs. There are occasionally a lot of clever jokes thrown in for good measure as well that gave me a bit of a chuckle from time to time. I guess one of my main gripes with this game is how long a lot of these dialogue sequences can go on for. It just seems that there is a bit “too much” talking among characters before anything truly happens in a lot of instances. And although I like the humorous dialogue, I think that some of the scenes can be tuned down a bit to save the player a bit of time. Same thing for the battle sequences; I found that since the battle messages move too fast for me to read any of them that I couldn’t follow a lot of what the enemies were saying to me before the next turn would pop up. Of course this didn’t hinder my experience that much as it does kind of disappoint me a little.

Overall, the story is effective, cute and provides a few laughs here or there. I actually wished that after I finished the game that it was a bit longer and kept on going, but whadda gonna do.

The Gameplay


3-on-3 action – JUST WHAT I WANTED TO SEE!


The objective of your monsterhunt is to track down your stolen possessions while trying to find out the whereabouts of the true thieves who stolen the town’s junk. (Okay, that didn’t sound right.) On the overworld, you basically move and interact with people and that’s about it. Yep. That’s it. There’s nothing to push or pull, solve any mind bending puzzles; it’s just a small map with a couple of monsters on each one to lay the smackdown on. That may be all right for some, but I found the game to be extremely repetitive without much in the way of changing the flow of things. You basically watch and read a long winded cutscene, fight a battle, move around for about 10 seconds on the overworld and then rinse and repeat. I mean, there just isn’t anything else other than that.

But whatever – the battles are the main selling point here! Yeah, like in every RPG there are battles in this game, but not what you might expect. You see, there is a bit of a small “twist” on how the battles are handled in Halloween Flop. You see, you and your team have to go around battling other teams of three. Each monster and spook, including you, has their own set of different abilities and attacks. While the enemy patterns are usually random at times, they generally have most of the same type of setup as you do. Battles are mostly turned based. You will perform your actions in singular order before the enemies do. Your many different attack abilities will cost you Blood Points, and for any Astral enemies (the ones with an A beside their battle portraits and Bobby himself) HP’s. As your Blood Points begin to drain, you need to recharge them. Basically, battles are kind of like a Pokemon battle where you have a team of Pokemon that have a number of moves and they have a Pokemon team with a number of moves too; it’s kind of the same thing. Also, like in Pokemon, each enemy has a different type to them that will affect the amount of damage that you will be able to inflict. Magic Users, like Agatha, can use her magic to cause more harm to Astral enemies, like ghosts. Undeads, like Delila, can cause more damage on Magic Users while Astral enemies have an immunity to all Undead type of attacks. It’s basically rock-paper-scissors all over again with some minor exceptions. This is actually pretty important to remember, as the key to winning a lot of these fights basically come down to what the other enemies are weak against. Some of these battles can get a bit challenging at times, but if you stick to your wits and fight smartly you’ll do just fine.

The Soundtrack


W—What!?


I was actually a bit surprised to find out that most of the music used here was in MIDI form rather than using MP3’s or OGG’s to handle the game’s score. Overall, most of the music you might recognize, as there are themes from The Monster Mash, Ducktales and even Charlie’s Angels to name a few (seriously, Charlie Angels!? WTF, game). For its setting, the music works just fine and doesn’t really take you out of the experience or anything. I actually kind of find it a bit funny when listening to the title theme because of how deeply ominous it is only to be greeted with the complete opposite upon start up. I like the soundtrack. Nothing fancy but nothing to outlandish either. Sound effects are your typical RTP sounds, nothing you haven’t heard from before.

The Aesthetics


Now there’s a confident wolf that I might know.


Artistically speaking, I didn’t really have too many problems with the presentation for this game. Maps are quite simple and have a simplistic style to them. Sprites are pretty detailed as well as the enemy portraits and facesets (although some of them do look kinda goofy, like the three kings). I think the game’s art style works quite well, actually. It’s supposed to be retro and for the most part it works just fine. I really do like the different portraits each person has as they have a nice certain charm to them. I also really like how they handled each monster and how they put in many subtle differences that can be easily recognized for anybody who is a fan of the Halloween genre.

The End Result


I’ll say.


Overall, Halloween Flop was an enjoyable little romp with a couple of issues that prevented me from truly liking my overall experience. The dialogue sequences, while amusing at times, do drag on a little too much. Battles while simplistic and can be a bit of a challenge at times, I never really cared to use too much of my other attacks or special abilities since it really wasn’t necessary. I also found the game to be bit repetitive and really on the short side that doesn’t leave you wanting a reason to play the game again once you’ve finished it. Overall, it’s just a pass. While I really appreciated the humor and the art style, I can’t really see this as something I would want to come back to or something that truly left a memorable impression on me. I suppose it’s not all doom and gloom, as this game did provide me a good forty-five minutes of my time.

I say check this out if you’re looking for a quickie. You might just have a little bit of fun with this one. Just don’t expect a whole lot from it (but the artwork is pretty).

OVERALL GRADE:
2.5 / 5 - C- ~ Passes, But Just Barely.

Posts

Pages: 1
Racheal
7238
11/03/2013 01:05 AM
Yeah, characters who just don't shut up can be a problem for us. We're trying to watch for it, but it's a hard habit to break.

This game was mostly an experiment for us to get better at making battles. As thus, we cut out pretty much everything else but the story. It probably shows that interesting battles aren't really a strong suit for us, but you can only get better with practice, right?

About the only other thing I've got to say is we specifically used MIDIs to match the retro-ness of the game. I think using MP3s would have been like using a full-color title screen.

Thanks for the review. I'm glad you at least got a few chuckles out of the game.
Addit
6394
11/03/2013 10:35 PM
I have the same problem as well when it comes to writing my own characters and their own dialogue sequences; I tend to write out more than I actually should, which is also a problem for me. I have gone back and reduced the writing sequences so it doesn’t drag on as much as it should and I like to think that your game kinda contributed a lot into that decision. So in other words – your failure game helped my games out. ^^

And I didn’t think you guys did that bad of a job when it came to the battle system; it just need a little bit more fine tuning and balancing and it should be just fine.

I’m glad you enjoyed the review.
Pages: 1