Name: Elf's Diary

Developer: Starmage

Story: Follow the exploits of Faint! Half-elf, half-fairy, all dip! Faint has started a fighters guild to defend the town from monsters. In addition to defending the town, he and his friends have to deal with bullies. Likewise, he has to contend with classic stereotypes.



Writing: There are a few narrative issues here. Faint is supposed to be a budding warrior starting a warrior's guild with the full support of his parents, yet his existence is so horrifically sheltered, the basic idea is too absurd to be believable. His adoptive brother spends his time getting high, yet Faint has no idea what "high" means. Faint is being portrayed as an absolute innocent, and we're supposed to believe that he's able to simply step into this lifestyle where he doesn't even recognize the toxic behavior of his brother, and yet, he can identify a present threat to the town. I think I get what the writer is trying to do, but the main character's disconnect from basic reality is so extreme, believability is simply unsustainable.

Worse, the game perpetuates some very archaic, misleading, and false stereotypes specifically identifying purity as good and anything else as evil. I'd rather not discuss religion, but it's unavoidable here. Again, we see a narrative trying to teach piety but instead misusing its religious subtext and becoming preachy, though I will say that it isn't done nearly as bad as in most games I've reviewed. This one almost gets it right, except it does on occasion preach at instead of to its audience. It would be fine if it weren't for this game's need to lump everyone that isn't "pure" in with "bad" people. It's a story with no middle ground: you're either pious and pure, or you're a sinful debaucher. The only people who are actually normal and who probably live in the middle aren't important enough for the narrative to care about.

Making a game that preaches to the player is a sure way to burn them! If you want to teach a moral lesson, creating a rigid metric that places the "pure" on top and other people beneath them is the exact opposite of how you want to do it.

Gameplay: The gameplay is interesting, to say the least. It's a standard turn-based RPG except you get turn points instead of basic timed combat. That is to say, you may have four or five members in your party, but if you want, you can have one or two party members take all four or five of those turns, which is really great if you've got an ability you want to spam against enemies. The balance is terrible, but it somehow works. My guess, the dev is going for the big numbers approach, but the game starts out easy, and only two fights in becomes ridiculously hard!



It doesn't get unbeatable, but without knowing exactly how your character abilities work, you're not going to advance. The dev definitely needs to work on his difficulty curve. This game goes from 0 to 11 way too fast and way too hard. Do this in steps, not one huge leap.

Graphics: Enemy battlers look like Milano Cat to me. I always have and always will love those battlers. The windows display, I don't recognize but it's quite pretty and fitting for the game and its theme. The rest is RTP with a few things here and there from resource packs.



Music: There are a few RTP tracks, but most of it, I don't recognize. The game sounds like the standard of what one would expect of a JRPG. The music is disproportionately cheerful throughout.



Glitches: Doors will replay the open animation if you hit enter while facing them after passing through.

Conclusion: This game has a ton of potential. The narrative lacks subtlety: it's possible to make an innocent hero who isn't so disconnected from reality that realistically, he'd be unable to function. In reality, Faint would not be able to function in the situation you've placed him in due to how oblivious you've portrayed him as being. Also, you try to keep your religious subtext in the background, but every time you bring it up, it's a similar effect to beaning your audience in the head with a sledgehammer. There's no need or reason to be this overt. The gameplay is good; better than you usually see in an indie. Now, it's time to fix your balance. It's really skewed. While I do have some obvious issues with this game, it's not bad, and I really quite enjoyed it.