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My outfit would be a Jawa!

Team Costume Squad was a replacement entry when Craze's originally planned game didn't come to pass. It was made in three days and with that in mind is an impressive feat.

Story
Five friends get their Halloween costumes from another dimension. But something goes wrong and they end up having to fight their way through a whole other dimension to get those costume. It does the trick of giving us a setting and a motivation. The characters frequently interact but usually only to argue over who gets what gear (really a way to try and highlight to the player which people benefit most from the equipment). My biggest hate in this game was the fairies, they explain something with terrible dialogue then the characters translate it for us. I couldn't tell if it was meant to be funny and/or to really drill home the point but I found it really annoying.

Gameplay
The game's strongest point, Teenage Costume Squad feature heaps of customisability, with multiple options for building each character and respecing is only a click away. Having said that there is only usually two or three really optimal options for each character but that is still plenty. Battles don't have any inherent rewards but most encounters are blocking access to either a skill or a piece of equipment, not all though - some you have to fight for no reason other than they are in the way. There is also no game over feature, if you lose then you are instantly restored and can try again.

Et cetera
While I do recommend giving this game a go I feel the need to warn you that if you wish to see it through to the end then you're in for the long haul, it took me around 6 hours to complete the whole thing. If you just want to experience as many of the Halloween games as possible then I suggest you play the beginning of this game as you'll very quickly get the experience that the game offers and you can always come back to it when you're done with the other entries.

Here's the start of my play through:

I'll turn the rest of the footage into a clip show when I have more time.

Posts

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Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
A bit more about why the game got the score it did would be awesome (I think 3/5 is probably the right score for the game, but I am vain and greatly enjoy reading about what people think of my projects), but you also included a forty minute video so maybe that's good enough ;V

Some (mostly useless) comments after watching the vid:

-The HP thresholds for faceset changes are >90%, >60%, >30%, >0%, and KO'd
-Toxify deals Water-based damage, but you surely knew that after the tutorial fairy in the second dungeon
-I'm sorry you didn't like the fairies very much. :< That's why I included Grant's summaries for each one, though, so hopefully you found those useful
-The series of four battles against Mousies is about two things, one of which you noticed: 1) that Grant has low Speed and Mousies have very high Speed, so he misses them often, thus teaching the player that Speed is actually important, and 2) that AP really is an issue; every move so far except Tundra won't put you at an AP deficit, but Tundra will, and obviously you'll use Tundra that battle because it's your only AoE skill so far. Basically, I wanted people to see Minna's AP bar dwindle severely by the end
-You're correct, Pyre Call has a 100% infliction rate for Burning, and re-inflicting silently refreshes status effect durations, which is why Aries Oracle had Burning on him perpetually

Thanks for the review. =)
author=Craze
A bit more about why the game got the score it did would be awesome (I think 3/5 is probably the right score for the game, but I am vain and greatly enjoy reading about what people think of my projects), but you also included a forty minute video so maybe that's good enough ;V

My gut feeling was that for a gameplay oriented game there wasn't enough development or variation over the whole game, had it been shorter this wouldn't have been an/as much of an issue. The gameplay experience from playing the 2nd hour and the 6th were very much the same. I also didn't really get a great sense of progression from the equipment or the skills I found, some where nice but most weren't that great. Which would be fine if the story was also a motivating factor but it wasn't at least not for me.

When I'm done with all the other games, I'll finish clipping the rest of my play through together into a second video of the boss battles.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
That'd be awesome. I want to see how you dealt with Czarina and Vulcane, haha!

And yeah, that's sort of the odd problem with designing a non-linear game. I tried to have some abilities "level up" (Syringe is arguably a better Shield/Cleanse, Tune-Up is better than Cleanse, Screw You! is better than Overjolt, Twilight Flash + Electrostatic replace Dispel, etc.) but overall... yeah. Especially if you do a harder dungeon early, you'll get awesome equipment making stuff from the factory and shrine look terrible in comparison.

Still, thanks again for playing and reviewing. I still have no idea how I pulled this out in three days, but it obviously would have been a smoother experience with more time. Hopefully I can make it that smoother experience in the future!
author=Craze
That'd be awesome. I want to see how you dealt with Czarina and Vulcane, haha!

Vulcane? He was one of the easier bosses on my play through.

author=Craze
And yeah, that's sort of the odd problem with designing a non-linear game. I tried to have some abilities "level up" (Syringe is arguably a better Shield/Cleanse, Tune-Up is better than Cleanse, Screw You! is better than Overjolt, Twilight Flash + Electrostatic replace Dispel, etc.) but overall... yeah. Especially if you do a harder dungeon early, you'll get awesome equipment making stuff from the factory and shrine look terrible in comparison.

Non-linear games have their challenges and this is one of them, perhaps you could have had a difficulty indicator on the dungeons? Or some token system where you got tokens in place of some of the skills and items and every time you handed in a token you got an item which you knew would be an upgrade.

author=Craze
Still, thanks again for playing and reviewing. I still have no idea how I pulled this out in three days, but it obviously would have been a smoother experience with more time. Hopefully I can make it that smoother experience in the future!

You're welcome and I hope you can as well!
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