Befuddle Quest

''Befuddle Quest'' is the first game of the community puzzle and maze game series of RMN which includes 3 games so far. The 4th one is currently in the making and will appear in a few days, on the 15th February 2009. This first part was released in April 2009, nearly one year before part 4. 7 different people took part in this using ASCII's RPG Maker 2003 and sent in single RTP map quests which were linked together by kentona who ran the show.

Story:
You play the second famous RTP standard hero after Alex, who is usually known as ''Brian'', but in RM2k3 it's ''Zack'', who wakes up in a mysterious tower, because, as you will recognize after beating the game, he has fallen in love with ''Broomhilda'' and got punished for that by a dude called the evil ''Baron von Niddly''. Now Zack has to prove that he is worthy dating the evil Baron's daughter by escaping from the tower and solving all the puzzles, mazes and riddles.

Level 1 - Tower Maze by ''kentona''

Find the exit of the maze which is quite big and complicated designed. Though the graphical style is extremely poor it is a bit challenging but not too hard.
2.5 out of 5 points

Level 2 - Hidden Key by ''ZPE''

This one is an easy ''Talk to A, then you can talk to B''-quest. It is absolutely not challenging since you just have to examine everything and then you will finally reach the exit after putting some 2x4 into holes to climb them up like a ladder. The mapping itself is better than level 1, but I guess it took not more than 5 minutes to design this little map. This is definitely the most easy designed level of the game, but after all it was a good alternative after beating the longer level 1.
2 out of 5 points

Level 3 - Ghostship by ''Blitzen''

This was my favourite. It is one of the most interesting locations although having poor mapping and being a quite easy challenge. You just have to go into the different rooms of the ghost ship and carry the objects right to the cannons. I really liked the sudden appearing of the skeletons though.
3.5 out of 5

Level 4 - Switch Puzzle by ''SavageInventions''

Hit the levers and switches correctly to reach the exit. The maze looks similar to level 1 but is not as big as that, however the riddle is more difficult here and the coding was surely not as easy.
2.5 out of 5 points

Level 5 - Map, Map, Map by ''GreatRedSpirit''

I hated this one, because I had no clue if there were a lot of equal looking maps or only one map using wrapping. I soon found a way to find out about it though. However I either reached the exist in an accident or the riddle itself was very cheap, because I simply ran straight into the same direction and did not stop, and so the exist got opened. The mapping was okay, but the main MS Paint light effect was not really good looking.
2 out of 5 points

Level 6 - Time Loop by ''Fractal Advocate''

This was the first level I had to cheat. You are in a flat or something with different RTP people being able to make them talk to each other. Everytime you go asleep and awake there are changes, sometimes e.g. kids appearing, people/objects disappearing... whatever. After a few days the people transformed into creatures and the riddle restarted. Obviously I was doing it wrong. But I had no clue what to do. The mapping of the room is average again and the transforming people were quite shocking, but after all this was TOO ''befuddling''. But still I guess this one was not easy to write and code.
2 out of 5 points

Level 7 - Riddle Of 3 by ''Liberty''

This was definitely the most well designed level of the game and finally the first one without annoying RTP music and even tile edits. Unfortunately I couldn't beat this riddle either, because the row of questions the statues have for you was unfair. There was no sound or anything which signaled if your answer was correct. Instead you got that information at the end of each row. The author of this really thought about intelligent questions etc., but after all it was too much.
2.5 out of 5 points

Final Rating:
So although graphics and mapping are really poor all in all the gameplay offers you different kind of riddles/quests/mazes. As level 7 proves a puzzle game like this can also have a good mapping structure and appearance. In my opinion the potential of RTP was not even brought near to its limits in this game. RTP music is also quite a no-go for me what made this game's atmosphere kind of annoying. So it's all about the riddles and that's really the only thing this game is focused on, unfortunately. So a lot of potential keeps unused.
So 1 point for the nice riddle ideas of the team members, 1 more point for its uniqueness, and 0.5 points for some nice approaches like in level 7. But that's really the highest possible rating for me. Actually I should have given this less points, but I stretched the rating a lot since it is a community game which is not that easy to organize and to finish by releasing a playable game at the end.