Moby Housekeeper

Intro

"Moby Housekeeper" was developed by Dragol using RPG Maker 2003 and is a bit of a broken mess in some ways. I suppose I'm not entirely surprised by this considering the game features a rather simple stealth system. So the engine is being used in ways that weren't originally intended through scripting. So the game being in shambles a bit tends to come with the territory. After all, this game is trying to push the boundaries of what is possible. And at least this game isn't a frustrating mess like some games designed to feature an active battle system using this engine are.

Story
Summary

You play as Moby, a mischievous imp, who loves to pull cruel pranks on kids living in an orphanage in New York city. An orphanage that is going to be torn down and replaced with a restaurant if the orphanage doesn't find some cash fast. In fact, the mayor is so cruel that he'll evict the children on Christmas of all days. Sure, Moby might be a jerk that sets up trip wires and steals the kids food on occasion, but even he wouldn't force a bunch of kids onto the cold streets of New York in the middle of winter.

Unfortunately imps really don't make a lot of cash so the only way he can save the orphanage is if he steals money from the more fortunate residents of the city. I suppose becoming the Robin Hood of imps is a bit odd for such a creature, but only he's allowed to inflict cruel pranks on the kids of the orphanage.

Opening Cutscene

Oddly enough my biggest gripe with this game is actually the opening cut scene since it overstays it's welcome and doesn't convey enough information to the player to justify how long it goes on for. You literally spend the first ten minutes of this game wishing the game would actually let you sit down and play it. Instead your forced to watch a long cut scene involving the mayor showing off his new golden statue before cutting to Moby pulling pranks on the kids in the orphanage.

Spelling and Grammar

This game was poorly translated into English from an unspecified language. Though considering the developer lists their location as Russia I'm guessing this game was originally in Russian. As you can imagine the poor nature of the translation means this game includes a lot of grammatical errors. As a result the game's dialogue is very awkward in a lot of places.



Gameplay

You visit various houses and search for valuable items to steal that are indicated by a bright light. And when a ! appears in the bottom right corner of the screen you rush into a shadowy area in order to hide. Unfortunately this doesn't always work since the residents of the city can still see if your hiding in a nearby shadow.



Or at least they can see you under most circumstances if your hanging out in a nearby shadow or the wide open as the case may be. Though, I'd say one of the more annoying parts of the game is that enemies will sometimes spot you when you move out of cover after they've turned off the lights and are looking away from you. This is indicated by the screen in the bottom right corner turning red, but even if they do spot you. They don't actually give chase to the player so you can continue to loot their house.



So apparently this is some sort of weird detection issue. If anything the biggest annoyance in this game is sometimes the indicators that an object can be looted are a bit difficult to see. And the game doesn't place these indicators on certain items like jewelry or cash. So it's possible to wander around a room while needing to hide every now and again for several minutes tying to spot the last couple of items.

Though if you do get caught and are forced to leave a location. It isn't the end of the world since this game doesn't include any sort of hard game over. You'll simply need to recollect all of the loot you had previously taken a second time. So while getting caught does set you back. It isn't going to set you back a ton.

Graphics

The game features a lot of original art assets. As such it does have a bit of a unique flavor to it. Though some of the artwork is a bit cringe at times.



Sound

Sound wise the game borrows music from a lot of sources. On the plus side this means the game does stand out in this area. On the other hand a lot of the music is bit too loud in my opinion. I had the mix master on my computer set the sound to this game at 30% and still sounded at times like it was playing at full volume. And the quality of the song used while the developer was showing off their studio logo was rather questionable.

Conclusion

On one hand this game does feature a rather simple stealth system that gives this game a bit of a unique flavor in comparison to a lot of other games on this site. On the other hand that system is a bit wonky sometimes when it comes to if the player was spotted or not. Though at the same time I'm not familiar enough with scripting for these engines to know if it would be possible to hammer out the bugs in this project. This might be about as polished as things are going to get for all I know. At the same time this isn't a bad way to burn 45 minutes or so. At least if you enjoy stealing from the wealthy in order to give to the poor. Just remember that Moby isn't a particularly nice imp.