Intro

"Super Good Boy" is an action/puzzle video game developed by dwart using RPG Maker VX Ace that I couldn't bring myself to complete. This is due to a combination of bad design choices and game breaking bugs that turned this game into a rather frustrating experience. So much so that I just gave up in the middle of the game's second level and decided to not look back. After all, I really don't want to be a bug tester for this project.

Game Breaking Bugs

The first game breaking bug I found involves one of the cave areas in the second stage. There's a hole you can jump down and for some reason it's possible to then exit the cave while still in the game's underground mode. The issue here is since the game still thinks your underground all of the game's other controls are disabled. So when I wandered into the next area which locks the player in a room until they deal with all of the enemies in said room. I was trapped with no option available to me besides dying or closing the game and reloading my last save file. Either way it's pretty frustrating position to be in. Though I'll admit showcasing this bug in a visual way is difficult since everything looks normal after you exit the cave.

The second game breaking bug is so weird I'm not even sure what caused it. For some reason it's possible to jump out of one the bushes meant to cushion your falls on a certain map. For some reason it acts like a jumping pad which can be utilized to softlock the game by getting the player stuck in a tree.



And yeah, when I encountered the second game breaking bug is when I finally drew my line in the sand and decided to stick to it. It was the straw that finally broke the camel's back as it were.

Story
Summary

The Mushroom Kingdom is once more under attack so Mario and Luigi set out to save it. Unfortunately the evil at the heart of this game is turning everyone into giant marbles with magic. And while Mario is pretty good at dodging and jumping. The villain de jure manages to get the upper hand with his ability to teleport. Thankfully a nearby fairy steps in and saves Mario from being turned into an orb. Unfortunately it appears the posting of wanted posters means Mario is going to have to make his way back to the castle in a disguise and what better disguise could there be then allowing the fairy to turn us into a cute little doggo. Though it appears the task of getting back to the castle is going to require a lot of puzzle solving skills.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

Like a lot of Mario games the plot for this game is pretty basic. Though to be fair that's kind of a staple for that series since those games tend to focus a lot more on the gameplay aspect than on the narrative one. After all, it's a franchise that frequently centers around Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach and Mario having to come along and rescue her. Albeit there are a few exceptions to that such as "Super Princess Peach" where the roles are reversed or the numerous sports spin-offs. Though if this a plus or minus is difficult to decide. After all, I tend to play games where the narrative is a much bigger consideration for the player's enjoyment, but for a game like this one could argue it being narratively heavy would only get in the way of feeling like a Mario game.

Gameplay

On the combat side of things the player is initially presented with a basic attack they can activate by pressing the a key that allows the player to swing Mario's tail in the direction he is facing. On the plus side this attack is pretty good at getting rid of basic enemies. On the more negative side of the scale it can be hard to utilize this attack in tight spaces since you need to move a space to change the direction your facing in RPG Maker games. At least that's the case as far as I'm aware. As a result you can find yourself taking damage in this game just by trying to position yourself correctly in order to attack an enemy.

The puzzles on the other hand are a bit of a mix of block pushing puzzles and logic puzzles centering around using Mario's various dog abilities to access new areas. The game even includes a sliding puzzle at one point as well. Or at least I can only say it includes one since I gave up not to long after solving that one when I encountered a second game breaking bug.

Where the game drops the ball in this area is on two fronts. The first issue is that certain actions you need to perform aren't always intuitive. For example it's obvious in the first area you need to relocate a bird up in a tree, but up to that point every time you've needed to get something out of a tree all you needed to do was attack the base of the tree with your tail attack. In the case of the bird you need to dash at the base of the tree in order to move it. To be fair, this does make sense from the developer's perspective since the bird drops the key needed to enter the second stage and you'll need to perform dashes in order to activate the jump pads in that area. So the developer needs a way to make sure the player has the dash shoes before they leave the first stage. So it might have been a good idea to include a bit of text or visual aids to explain the sorts of things the dash shoes will allow the player to do.

The second issue is a lot more annoying and part of the reason I gave up on this game. In the second area you'll run into dark areas. This alone wouldn't be that bad, but these areas are so dark the only thing you can see is your character and just slightly around them.



And by slightly I mean slightly. To make matters worse these dark caves contain puzzles and enemies as well. As you can imagine this means your likely to screw up the puzzles since you can't see what your doing and will also likely take a hit or two from enemies in these areas for the same reason. And why anyone would think restricting the player's vision this much in an area with puzzles and enemies is beyond me. In fact, the only thing I can even compare this to is the Dark Cave found in Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow back in the day, but that game didn't intend for players to explore the cave in the dark. It expected players to get the HM for flash and stick it on a Pokémon so they can light up the cave and see where they are going. As far as I'm aware we don't have an equivalent for that in this game. As a result the dark areas in this game are super annoying and were almost enough to convince me to throw in the towel on their own.

Graphics

As far as I'm aware the bulk of the assets in this game come from the RTP for RPG Maker VX Ace. As such this game looks a lot like dozens of other games I've seen over the years. Though it does contain a few custom assets that I'm guessing were found online since a lot of people are interested in turning their first project into a fan game. A decision that I usually don't recommend considering how badly most of those projects tend to go.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game definitely pulls some audio files from various official Mario games. This definitely helps add to the feel of the game belonging to that franchise even if the game really doesn't capture the look of that franchise.

Conclusion

"Super Good Boy" is an action/puzzle video game that isn't that fun to ultimately play in my opinion. This is because the game contains at least two game breaking bugs and I'm guessing there are probably more just waiting to be found as well as a design choice that makes the second stage super frustrating to play. After all, who wants to solve puzzles and fight enemies while surrounded by the darkness on all sides that isn't a ninja?