Intro

"Narrow Ways" is a dungeon crawler being developed by Liberty using RPG Maker MZ that was created for an event hosted by Muffle. Sadly the only build of this game that is currently available for play is a slightly updated version from the event that fixed some of the errors contained within the event version of this project.
Sadly there are still some bugs that really need to be worked out in my opinion since it's possible for the current build of the game to screw you so hard that it's impossible to beat the demo. In fact, I got screwed over twice by the random nature of this game, but I suppose I should discuss the story first.

Story
Summary

We play as a nameless, shapeless character whose awoken in the void. A beautiful place where the dead can quickly lose sight of themselves. Though were apparently made of stronger stuff and stumble into a being willing to give us a new body as well as a job class. After making those decisions we begin exploring the void a bit more and run into our first potential party member. You could turn him or her away, but there really isn't a reason to do so in the current build of the game as far as I can tell. After picking up your new ally it's best to equip his or her weapon and then move onto the dungeon's second room which contains more strange glowing glyphs that represent events that can contain anything from lore to treasure. After clearing the second room you'll enter the third and final room where you can pick up one more party member as well as an accessory that boosts TP generation before engaging the demo's first and last boss at the moment. And after defeating said boss we decide to take a portal to another location that hasn't been built yet so the demo just comes to a close.

Strengths/Weaknesses

On the plus side the game does seem to be setting itself up for some potentially interesting world building and lore. On the other hand the demo build leaves the main character as a blank slate which makes it hard to get invested in his struggles. Though apparently this issue is going to be addressed in the final version of this game which will place a bigger emphasize on story events.

Gameplay

At the moment "Narrow Ways" appears to use the default combat system that comes with RPG Maker MV. The real twist here is that the loot you obtain as well as the party members you'll gain access to are meant to be random. A factoid which can really screw you since on two of the three occasions I chose the healer class the first party member that requested to join my party was also a healer. As you can imagine a party comprised of nothing but healers is pretty worthless. In fact, your run is dead if this happens to you since the healer can't hurt certain enemies with his magic stick.



To make matters worse you can't run from fights in this game. So once you've initiated a fight by touching the red glyph your forced to fight until you win or lose. So the random party member assigned to the player could probably use some additional tweaking to make sure you can't end up with just a bunch of characters that part of the same job class.

Another bug I found is that the warrior's buffing skill is rather useless. This is because it costs more MP to cast than the warrior will have access to at the level this skill is acquired.

Graphics & Sound

As far as I'm aware the current build of this game relies almost entirely on the RTP for RPG Maker MZ for both of these aspects. In fact, the most notable non-RTP asset in this game is the image used to represent your portrait in this game which is based on your chosen race.

Conclusion

"Narrow Ways" definitely has some potential in my opinion, but the random nature of your party members can definitely get in your way and even put you in situations where even regular trash mob enemies can defeat you.