Deymoun: The Traveling Mercenary

Background

This game was created for a one month game jam hosted by opengameart. By the rules of that jam, it needed to use six assets from that site and credit any others. This game ranked 3rd place in the voting on that jam.

First Impressions

Being a game made with Smile RPG builder and unity, it has a PS1 style to it. The fixed camera angle blends the 2D and 3D assets well.
The game has controller support, which suits the free movement.
The Eponymous Deymoun is an elven mercenary, apparently on hard times as he needs to do odd jobs to pay for a stay at the inn. Woken by a noise in the night, he discovers the whole village out looking for a lost boy that has been dragged off into the forest by a monster. Marie, the boy's older sister insists on joining the party.

From here, there's a forest to explore with map encounters and a few key locations before tracking down the monster itself.

Sound and Graphics

The assets chosen go well together despite being created by many different artists. This is a difficult task that the author has done well.
A downside of the fixed camera is there are a few places you can lose your character behind buildings or cliffs.
There's a bit of overlapping text in the menu, but not severe enough to impact legibility.

Characters and Writing

Nothing particularly original, but good enough to tell a simple story.
Gruff fighter and enthusiastic amateur play off each other, but in the normal ways.
Whether by accident or by design, Marie is more useful in combat than Deymoun. This increased my enjoyment of the game as a possible send up of the male lead / female support trope the party looks like.

Systems

Combat is a standard turn based battle, with elemental weaknesses on enemies and party members having magic attacks of various elements. One of the things that makes Marie more effective is having cheaper spells and more elements to choose from.

Fishing is a simple minigame mashing left or right to keep an icon centered until time runs out. You might catch a fish, or you might catch some monsters to fight.

At camp (there is one camping location marked by an unlit campfire): you can talk to companions (I can see this being nice in a longer game, for now there's just the one interaction). You can cook (turning fish into recovery items) - I also had mushrooms in my inventory described as "perfect for cooking", but couldn't cook them, which could be a bug. And you can rest (which restores HP/EP to full). Cooking is simplistic, you just get a prompt to cook each suitable item when interacting with the cauldron.

Levelling up teaches new skills, which will be important. But you'll need to return to camp to heal.

Conclusion

This is a short simple game, but well polished with balanced encounters. There's about 25 minutes of gameplay. Recommend if you're after a fun game that can be finished in one sitting.