[REVIVE THE DEAD] GAME DISCUSSION

So, I gave The Old Journal - 13 Pages a go. When I first played it, I got to the looping map where I couldn't tell where the exit was in two "jumps". Rather unlucky of me! There were three other maps that were rather aggravating to navigate, and two of them involved having carpets designate reset-position-points. The other was a map that was totally panorama-based, but the panorama did not indicate where the walls of that area was. Though, if there was one map that pissed me off the most, it was one where you had to walk in a snake pattern. Especially if you get 'ported there after getting the page from that room. I may have went through that room maybe three additional times before I decided that I wanted to save-scum just to avoid that room.

Though, I did I complete this game! It took a bit of doing, though. I was hoping the ending would give me some kind of indication of there being something to collecting all the pages, some kind of point to it all. It was just a credits roll?

@Max McGee: I presume that the "title" file that Tales from the Reaper wants to load is the one in the "Title" directory. However, it's trying to load a parallax background, which is causing it look in the "Panorama" directory, and failing to find it there. Of course, I'm still contending with the "Subscript out of range (6)" error, so I can't say I've gotten too much further than you.

*Edit:

author=unity
Though, I'm pretty sure contest entrees were supposed to work all on their own without needing RTP.

Oh, crap. I'm now seeing that requirement on the event-page. WEEELLLLLLP, I'M DISQUALIFIED! At least from getting a "Reanimation" badge. I guess I could still get the "Readying" badge?

So, I just finished a play of Cave Adventure. The only thing I can really say about this game is that it's battles are not complex at all. I might have used the TP-based skills for the first few fights, but, generally speaking, a player's path to victory lies in mashing Attack.

Still, I kinda like the fact that players don't have to worry about restoration all that much. The game hands out a decent amount of healing items, and I totally abused the free-resting at the outskirts of the cave until I hit level 3-ish. However, whatever grinding I did amounted to nothing. I was expecting a boss fight after that mid-dungeon rest-point!

That aside, and maybe this is just me being crazy, I think I'm sensing something of a kindred spirit with this game?

Mildly irritated that three days after submission, my reviews for two Revive The Dead games have not popped up on the site yet.

Feedback 6 (8): Risen

Well the creator flat out told us a few times that this game is crap, and my personal instinct when I hear someone say that is to want to find a way to disagree/reassure, but you know what, this time he's right, this game is pretty crap. It's not entirely crap, though.

This game is a real mixed bag. Let's start with the aesthetics. Some of the graphics and music could do a really good job of building a dark and spooky mood. The title screen, the faceset and sprite for the main character, the system set, some of the music. But other resources and design decisions obliterate that mood before it can even coalesce. RTP Battle graphics and battle music and victory music that if not is RTP sounds like it well might be. This doesn't quite create dissonance or mood whiplash, because it's all coming at the same time. What it creates is a messy muddle. Of course it's also possible that the game was going for a more "RTP" mood and it's the resources that had a bit of spooky mystique to them that were the ones out of place. Either way it needs more consistency.

Now onto the gameplay, which includes some very fixable problems. First off, the encounter rate is way too high. Like WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY too high. Encounters need to occur at least three times less frequently, and my personal taste would be something closer to ten times less frequently. Of course, on-touch encounters that can be avoided would be even better.

Now high encounter rate is annoying enough on its own, but in this case it's combined with something that makes it way more annoying than usual. See, the manual flat out tells you to go up to virtually every object in the environment and press Enter to find items. So I very much wanted to do that. But the problem is that walking to and from those objects to press enter to try and receive items requires STEPS and STEPS cause encounters and ARRRRRRGH.

Now, about the battles themselves. They kind of suck. They weren't all bad. Actually, the resource management/attrition aspect was balanced almost perfectly. I always felt like I had just enough healing items to survive, and that was really cool. But in a single character game, that character should have more skills, or at the very least, should be able to USE those skills more often. This game really needs the main character to have more MP, to give out more MP restorative items, to have skills cost less MP, or ideally some combination of ALL THREE. I literally exhausted all of my MP in the first battle, not realizing how rare MP restorative items were, and had no option but to spam attack through the remaining 30 something battles before the boss, which was amazingly dull.

I should say I exhausted all my MP during the first battle when I HAD skills. One of the most annoying things about this game is that the encounter start IMMEDIATELY, so you can get in fights before you get a chance to walk up to the chests in the start room and pick up your first skills. Which is especially likely if, like me, you want to go examine all the shelves and stuff in the room first because the game TOLD YOU TO.

I stopped playing when I lost to the boss and realized that the lack of a pre-boss savepoint would make me have to replay through the massive boring room of "walk five steps, fight, walk five steps, fight" again.

It can take up to a week before submission queue is seen to, remember.

A week? That seems like...really kind of a long time. Obviously I don't hold you like, personally accountable, but as far as RMN in general, is there anything that can be done to reduce that time? I feel like having more than one person on the submission queue would really help, if nothing else.

Explanatory note: I am a notoriously impatient person with too much free time so, yeah, I totally admit that I have opened RMN multiple times a day in the last few days to check 'is my review up yet?', 'is my review up yet?'. That probably makes it seem like even longer than it has been.

author=Max McGee

It can take up to a week before submission queue is seen to, remember.

A week? That seems like...really kind of a long time. Obviously I don't hold you like, personally accountable, but as far as RMN in general, is there anything that can be done to reduce that time? I feel like having more than one person on the submission queue would really help, if nothing else.

Explanatory note: I am a notoriously impatient person with too much free time so, yeah, I totally admit that I have opened RMN multiple times a day in the last few days to check 'is my review up yet?', 'is my review up yet?'. That probably makes it seem like even longer than it has been.

I think that was tried at one point and too many people complained about the inconsistency to get things accepted.

Who does the review queue? If I know them well enough to feel comfortable doing it I might pester them directly because I fucking suck at patience.

Ok so the Judging is just that each judge picks their favorite game from the bunch, which cannot be their own game or a game submitted by another judge?

I assumed, as a judge, that my submission was for the fun of it and possibly the badges, and wouldn't be a contender to win anything. I'm still looking forward for feedback and reactions to it. ^_^

EDIT: Wait, didn't Gourdy submit a game, too?

author=Liberty
They can pick a game submitted by another judge, but not their own. That said, I think only one judge managed to submit a game on time so... chances of that, unless it's really, really polished and good, are low. XD

Soli is in charge of reviews but I wouldn't bug him about it. A lot more reviews have been coming through in the past few weeks than games (surprisingly). Remember he has to read each and every one, vetting them for grammar/spelling/etc, so it's not as simple as eye-balling the piece and then ticking 'yes'. He's also on Article duty.

Ah, I didn't realize he still had a function on this site besides SOCIAL JUSTICE RAGE. XD

Thank you, Max.

1) I was hoping to get more information on my balance issues.

2) I have already added save points, I guess about 4 days ago.

3) Now I know my PC isn't quite where I need her to be. I'll get to work on that.

4) I'll see what I have for battle music selection, but I'm not sure I really have anything that quite fits.

5) I have Liberty's random encounter script, but I've never been able to get it to work. Is it a common event, and if it is, how do you call it, or do you have to attach it to each monster encounter?