World Remade

World Remade was one of the entries for the IGMC (Indie Game Making Contest) for 2014. As one of the judges for the RPG portion of the competition it is my pleasure to share my thoughts on the game. This review will basically just be the notes I took cleaned up. It will be based on the competition version of the game, so certain aspects of the game may have been changed.

Presentation
Graphics are a mix of RTP and custom. There's a bit of style clash between them. The mapping is decent for the most part.

Music fits the scenes and is a mix of custom and RTP. Sound effects are present but nothing special.

Writing is well done and solid. The story is interesting, as is the concept, though intro is a little long-winded with little graphical break-up. Characters are interesting as well, both in their design and the way they interact.

Gameplay
Explore areas and fight battles - it's pretty standard stuff.

Battles are on-map choke area encounters and can be a bit hard if you pick the wrong enemies to go up against at first. You have a set amount of Ability points to use per turn - 3 gained each turn - and you can use them to pick the skills you want to use against the enemies. You can end your turn at any time, saving up points for the next turn. It's fluid and dynamic.

Unfortunately, after a while the battles are downright impossible to get past. The difficulty scales in such a way as to force you to fight enemies beyond your ability.

Treasures are mainly equipment pieces. Items are useful but rare, which is a pity since more items could have helped balance the battles a little more.

The pacing was pretty slow - since battles took quite a while, you didn't progress much and after an hour I was still in the starting town area, which is just sad.

Fun factor
I enjoyed this game. The banter between the characters, filling you in on world lore, was interesting and the battles weren't a chore to get through - at least until a certain point. After that things fell apart a bit and progress was pretty much halted. Thankfully, I only had to play an hour. At least exploration was a bonus.

Overall, decent if a bit bad on the pacing and balance in the latter parts. I gave it a solid 48 out of 60 in the IGMC. On RMN I'm giving it a 3.5.