Lucid Awakening

Hello adventurers!
sillypieman is the author of the game I'm going to review now, Lucid Awakening. a classic rpg adventure (party based of course) made in 2008 and re-released in 2015 as an 1.2 version. The game was made using RPG Maker XP, an engine I usually do not like so much, anyway I wanted to try this game because it't not excessively long and it's also complete!

The game starts with a dream, and the dreamer is a boy named Damian Ashling: our protagonist keeps dreaming of a girl he doesn't know so he goes to a cave with his friend Aiden (and they're later joined by Zeke, Damian's little brother) since they used to spend a lot of time there so they believed (for some reason) that the place is linked to the dreams. Here they find a gateway to another world, where an old man says that they can be the only hope to fix the shattered realms... but then they are separated and Damian wakes up all alone, after being found by Princess Liara in the royal garden of the palace of Cornelle. Aaaaand, no she's not the girl of his dreams, it would be too easy! But this is how it will start an epic adventure... about saving not one but two worlds!


A boss battle, aaaaaand... excellent, now our party members are all asleep thanks to a sleep-all ability! Great!

The game is basically a classic rpg with the theme of the dreams: the two worlds are linked by dreaming, and basically Damian is lucid dreaming (hence the ti9tle) when entering this new world, a world that has visited before, but he does not remember.
Concerning story and characters the game could have been a bit better: the front page says "Excellent grammar and spelling" but I found a couple of typos immediately in the first part (like "you're name" instead of "your name"), also characters are pretty dull and not really characterized (for example Zeke is a stereotypical "little kid that wants helping" and nothing else) nor memorable, there are no conflicts among them and all party members happily join the team. A bit too simple and not very detailed nor interesting.

The nice thing is that enemies are visible and sometimes avoidable, so no random battles, luckily! And in this typical "save the world(S)" quest our protagonist will need help from different characters, the classic party members with different skills, and I was pleased to see that there are more than the usual four playable characters, the only problem is that battles aren't particularly challenging, so there isn't need to use particular strategies aside for attacking with all that you've got (why wasting time silencing or blinding the enemies when you can just blast them?). Towards the end the battles, especially against bosses, becomes more and more difficult so don't assume that the game will be too easy from the beginning to the end.

Graphically this is a typical RTPs game, so don't expect anything new or out of the ordinary, anyway being a classic fantasy adventure, it's all pretty good, basic bu good. Mapping is in fact adequate and better than most first projects and rtp games, on the other hand there is nothing really new, memorable or exciting. And music is also ok in my opinion, not bad but also nothing that stands out.


Time for an inspirational speech to our party members! We're near the end of the game... and of this review too!

Final Verdict
Lucid Awakening is an ok rpg game, pretty standard: it's not bad, it has no game breaking or serious flaws, but it's average in every single aspect. So while probably this is not a game I can recommend, it's still a pretty adequate adventure that may be not really engaging, but since we do not have other games from this developer, we can assume it's one of the first if not the first game. In any case it's clear that the developer isn't an expert but still it's also not a beginner. So this was Lucid Awakening, a game.