Infinite Loop

I actually really enjoyed my time playing this game, but I couldn't bring myself to give it another go to get the proper ending. The suggestion to save in another slot was very much appreciated.... and not properly timed. By that point my save was already locked into the auto-running final boss cutscene; the second save file just let me skip the dialogue. And while I had fun, it wasn't worth another 40 minutes or so of grinding to me.

STORY:
This is probably the darkest, most serious entry of those I've played so far, and I liked that. As my own failure proved, it's difficult to tell a story and have people pay attention to it when that accursed clock is always ticking, but the pacing worked out so that I had enough time to read everything and make it to the last boss without panicking. Well, without too much panicking. It was a bit obvious from the start, there were a few writing errors (mostly crammed into the very beginning), and I felt patronized by all the colorful text, but I still wanted to find out how everything was going to end, and I've played through and told enough jokes already at this point. However, because of my frustration (I have more games to play through and too much real life stuff to deal with at the moment) I don't know how it was supposed to end yet! That's going to bug me for days. (That wrong ending though. That was a surprise. I thought you were just going to leave me like:

)

GAMEPLAY:
A lot of innovative tricks, from using the "approach" setting to actually create a bit of real-time action, to making battles add additional time to the clock, to making me dodge pentagrams while answering logic puzzles on a time limit, you definitely implemented a few things I hadn't seen yet.

For all the creativity though, the individual elements lacked polish. It was easy to trap myself against the first boss while trying to shatter one of the crystals, forcing me to stand there and take a pounding until she decided to teleport. Plus it seemed like for both her and Nightmare the proper method was to stand there and mash A, drink a potion, keep mashing A, win. It was virtually impossible to get an unanswered hit in without wasting a ton of the precious timer.

Outside the bosses, the gargoyles were pretty harsh, and the exp they granted was completely worthless, so essentially it was a matter of trading recovery items for additional time. And those pentagram things! They still followed me while I was reading the questions, and that forced me to just waltz through a few of them because I'd be trapped by the time I chose a button. Finally, Isabelle's rather morbid power-up skill defaults to sacrificing herself and causing a game-over. Which made me rage pretty hard when I was rapidly mashing commands to complete the last boss battle in time, erroneously thinking that was the key to the true ending.

Those things are mostly minor complaints, however they all started to stack up when I considered whether to start all over and get the proper ending. I'll do it eventually, but all the little flaws made it too tedious to justify sacrificing real-life time for.

I only have one major complaint. I didn't realize there was a proper ending without reading the game page. I thought I'd gotten lucky, choosing the correct path at each fork by guessing, but in reality I'd have been better off getting lost so I could avoid the "wrong" ending. Plus the maze was a huge time sink and I'd probably have had to play for like another half hour to get through that 5 minute segment with enough time remaining to beat Nightmare.

GRAPHICS:
Alright, you definitely made everything look nice. Fitting tile and mapping choices for each environment, except for totally-passable-despite-appearances benches and water in the first city. There were a couple issues with what I could and couldn't walk through in that area. I liked your use of animations, and Nightmare's sprite was very fitting for the abilities you gave her. (Your own creation? Or just a different resource pack?) I also liked that Isabelle and Ernest's facial expressions changed. Even if Isabelle's shocked expression was quite derpy.

SOUND:
Sword Art Online's battle theme? I'm not sure if I love or hate that you used that. Good use of sound throughout though. The music changes fit the mood, and the gut-wrenching stab sounds in the opening scene were perfect.

ATMOSPHERE:
I had a little bit of trouble getting immersed in the world with the lore being thrown at me so quickly, but all in all you kept the dark atmosphere and the desperate mood up throughout the game. One issue was the way I couldn't tell if 10 minutes of real life time were supposed to be 10 minutes of Isabelle time. I mean... if we assume the times line up then Isabelle and Ernest have known each other for 30-40 minutes at the end and Ernest's little speech about how Isabelle changed his life and he'll never abandon her just doesn't fit. Everything else fit together nicely, except for some of those colored words and phrases. Like "mass genocide."



All in all a very impressive effort for a week time limit, especially if this was really your first completed game. While the semi-sloppy way your innovations turned out may have compounded until fun ideas became chores for the player, I do recognize that you simply didn't have time to add the needed polish.