Mythica Stories ver.0.1

Time and time again, games appear on RMN that are poorly thought-out, thrown together with little effort. This comes from a developer being inexperienced.

I think that's what sets this game apart from other games of its type. Mythica Stories by mythicateam is a clear first attempt, or at least one of the first attempts. It is crudely mapped, with weak dialogue and minimal polish. But this is not due to laziness, but inexperience. The actual concepts in the game are great, and once mythicateam gets a better grasp on game-making, it could be polished into something not just playable, but good, fun, even popular.

Gameplay

If there’s one word to describe the gameplay in this game, it’s “inventive”. If there’s another, it’s “flawed”. This game has so many good ideas tied into it, with some poor execution.

The objective of the game, at its core, is to collect crystal balls, earned from chests and killing things. With a certain number of crystal balls, you can complete the level, unlock doors and gain extra treasure and experience. It’s simple, but it’s actually a very good setup.

What really enhances this is all the great ideas in here. Sometimes scrounging up the points can be a bit like a puzzle, with ghosts that can only be found one way and killed with one weapon(although you need to check this out because battles are non-escapable and if you battle the ghosts with the wrong weapon, you auto-lose, which is why I quit), orbs that only appear after getting other orbs, special rewards for getting all the points rather than the necessary amount, skills that affect the undead that also backfire on a certain zombie party member, all things that add up to a worthwhile experience. I was really impressed with the depth of this game. It wasn’t generic first game #786, nor generic polished game number #229. It was a clash of the highs and the lows, rather than just being all in the middle, all good or all bad.

So what was bad exactly? It did get a bit repetitive rather quickly. The enemies only had an attack skill, and really the allies were more interesting than the enemies. Components of it felt a bit rough. But it was actually surprisingly good fun.

3.5/5

Narrative

There was quite a bit of writing in between certain levels, however it was all very bland, and to be honest I didn’t play a great amount of attention to it. My first thought was “Couldn’t this all be shown instead?”. “Show don’t tell” is the magic game-making phrase, and it really applies here. The writing for a few of the scenes with actual dialogue was fairly cheesy. When writing, it is very important that you define characters and their personalities, but that really wasn’t done here. Everyone felt like the same person, with no particular motivation.

On the show don’t tell point, this also applies to gameplay. There were a lot of messages about simple stuff like interacting with objects, that I felt to be a bit too much hand holding. The player may be stupid, but they can draw simple conclusions like “the question mark means it’s important”.

1/5

Audiovisual

This game uses default everything, which was fine. The music was used reasonably, I didn’t notice any odd moments with it.

The mapping was pretty bad however. The maps were very empty. They needed details, rather than just having ground and walls. Other than that, some of the presentation of events appearing and such wasn’t too great. Also, the walls of the caves aren’t correctly made. They are lacking the joining corner pieces, that make the map make sense(mythicateam, if you need me to explain this better, I will).

2/5

Overall

Let me be upfront. This game isn’t very good. But it is full of effort. If this is mythicateam’s first attempt, sign me up for anything he releases after this. Basically, mythicateam has rough talent that, if refined, will lead to some classic titles. Alas, for now, not so much.

2/5