• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS
Endorsements

a crazy, unchained game...and one that I would strongly recommend to anyone wanting to try something different for a change.
-ganonfrog's review

I had fun! ... The cut-scenes are very well done...I loved the humor and the quirky characters, not only the party members, but also the other people you will meet, love and hate! ... The Cerebral Symphony is a good game, not too hard and full of humor and diversions, of adequate length. ... Maybe I don't understand this game, but I sure had a lot of fun with it!
-TheRpgMakerAddict's review

Strong writing, clever system, interesting characters, and an engaging plot...this game is unreasonably good. It is probably the single cleverest thing I've played on rmn, and its ability to take itself seriously even while it's not taking itself seriously borders on the supernatural...some really phenomenal world-building and dialogue and mapping in kind of a weird package, and I think the community will dig it
-kumada (tester)

Overall I enjoyed the game because of the story. The dialogue is good, the characters are good.
-Link_2112 (tester)

LP by raikenjenova:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDOLxHMXxfE&list=PLd8tGajquAkEwoRAiZ1Po8F7YgDduApSf

Lowdown

-Begun as the side-project of a bored and depressed fifteen-year old, The Cerebral Symphony has evolved into a claustrophobic, poorly layed-out, passionately-written 2d RPG

-Chapter 1 came out in 2011, Chapter 2 in 2012, Chapter 3 in 2013, Chapter 4 in 2015, the full game came out in 2018!

-About 9 hours play time.

-Please post any feedback to this game page as I am always tweaking and updating the download. If you send me enough, I will list you as a tester.


Story

Brad, a jock, trips one day (at a party, we can only assume), accidentally plunging himself into the hallucinatory world of The Cerebral Symphony where he meets a guy called Ivan, who you might wonder is a human metaphor for repressed teenage angst.

Join the schizophrenic, multiple-personality-disorder afflicted Ivan, whose destiny (and personalities) you can steer through his individual choices as he bumbles his way through his life as a renegade thief into a big war between the underground cyborg Mafia, the omnipresent, all-seeing Corporation and the corrupt, power-crazed Government over the six elemental stones that, when gathered together, bestow ULTIMATE POWER on their holder. Mwahahaha!

On the way you will meet Liz the ADHD werewolf, Jean the insomniac minstrel, Catherine the telepath with a firey temper, Carys the delusional young stage actress, Robert the narcoleptic doctor, Zak the homeostatically-imbalanced fighter-pilot, and Bain the accident prone Gladiator. You will decide whether in the final estimation it is Ivan's more "upbeat" or his "darker" personality that will win control of his mind as they battle with his more balanced, "pensive" side.

Story-driven and choice-based, The Cerebral Symphony is a sci-fi/fantasy/drug trip 2d RPG game with an emphasis on character development and fun, non-random, side-view, Final Fantasy VI style battles, made up of 5 chapters.

Featuring the Fully Completed MULTIPLE PERSONALITY SYSTEM(TM), where Ivan's in-game choices will affect dialogue and plot, alter the screen tint and interface colours and change his battle class and music. You only gain skills in the personality in which you fight! Your choices will affect the story! Enjoy!

Latest Blog

Faenon has started writing a serial JRPGlit webnovel

Hello subscribers to TCS!

Two pieces of news. First of all, Halibabica will shortly be doing a youtube LP of TCS.

Secondly, in UK lockdown I have started uploading a serial fantasy webnovel heavily inspired by JRPGS, especially Final Fantasy IV and VI.

It has twelve heroes with distinct personalities who go on an adventure in order to carry out an epic quest, elemental magic, airships, battles, monsters, and a Cid!



People here are probably in the small subset of people who might enjoy this, so if you want to read it, go here https://www.wattpad.com/story/228098139-saga-of-the-jewels

or here https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32469/saga-of-the-jewels

or here https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13581482/1/Saga-of-the-Jewels

or here https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3346873/1/Saga-of-the-Jewels

Peace out,
Faenon

Posts



I don't know what I did wrong. I selected the dark option, but the game let me take a step before actually switching my personality, and then I got stuck in this event like this.
author=NovemberJoy
I don't know what I did wrong. I selected the dark option, but the game let me take a step before actually switching my personality, and then I got stuck in this event like this.

Sorry about this. Thanks for the bug report. I have a common event that I use to disallow movement in cutscenes, but I must have forgotten to trigger it in that scene. Is that the scene where Ivan is going into the Corporation, after the first mission? I will fix. In the meantime I am afraid you will need to go back to your last save (hopefully not too long ago?) and play back to here, then wait till after all the dialogue and personality changing has finished till you move. Apologies.


FOR THE LOL FAENON, YOU REALLY ROCK ME OUT!! XDDD
Seriously, best thing that I noticed and first game I touched after been in real life for months!!!

More will come, but I might be slowly update it as the time being due to my job and marriage things.

Seriously, I dunno what to say, you're really making my day, brother! Thanks a lot!! :D
author=raikenjenova
FOR THE LOL FAENON, YOU REALLY ROCK ME OUT!! XDDD
Seriously, best thing that I noticed and first game I touched after been in real life for months!!!

More will come, but I might be slowly update it as the time being due to my job and marriage things.

Seriously, I dunno what to say, you're really making my day, brother! Thanks a lot!! :D


Hahaha. Just seen this post, raiken. Your written English is still improving, but I think I get what you are saying! Your post has made my day too bro! Really looking forward to watching this video. Keep on going with your job and marriage things! Many thanks :)
author=raikenjenova
FOR THE LOL FAENON, YOU REALLY ROCK ME OUT!! XDDD
Seriously, best thing that I noticed and first game I touched after been in real life for months!!!

More will come, but I might be slowly update it as the time being due to my job and marriage things.

Seriously, I dunno what to say, you're really making my day, brother! Thanks a lot!! :D


Omgoodness, just watched the video, and I LOVED your reaction to becoming incarnate in the game, raiken, so funny! XD XD
Thanks for a great video, really good :)
Looking forward to the next ones already but no rush! Don't want to mix up real life and videogames too much!
Forgive my Engrish xD but yeah, been awhile since the last time I used English so it might turned a little bit worse :p But i'm still improving it xD

And yup seriously it's totally unexpected for me especially for the first game on laptop I've been played after a while, I feel like suddenly sucked inside to the different world and so xD That's why I really find this more interesting!

Thanks a lot, man! I will continue making it if I have some spare time xDb

nb : sorry abt the mic, tho T_T will figure how to fix the extra noises later.


The second part!
My bad, I tho changing headset will be better, but it just turned worse Q_Q
Gonna try to do something about it later ;-;) sorry about the voices thoo


The Last Part O_Ob
Can't imagine you made a lot of plot twist over there xDD
It's totally awesome as ever!
And thanks a lot for making this game, I am really feeling good now after 2 years fighting with myself irl!
author=raikenjenova
The Last Part O_Ob
Can't imagine you made a lot of plot twist over there xDD
It's totally awesome as ever!
And thanks a lot for making this game, I am really feeling good now after 2 years fighting with myself irl!


Amazing, Raiken! The Let's Play is complete! Thank you so much!

I'm really glad that you enjoyed the game so much.

Lol, you completely demolished both final bosses, wow... In testing they were too hard, so I may have over-compensated. I may need to revisit this. Though it is probably something to do with the fact that you got all of the extra equipment and optimized your create-a-character's party's stats to the max...!

Sorry that the font went weird for you sometimes, that may be because you did not install the fonts in the game folder onto your computer. But I will look into this too.

And just so you know, although my wife and I do play videogames together, she did not really work on this with me, she just made the odd map here and there, and she also tested it :)

Anyway, I hope the ending of this game was epic enough for you :)

If I ever make another game (unlikely right now but who knows what will happen in the future...) I will let you know!

Peace.
author=Faenon
author=raikenjenova
The Last Part O_Ob
Can't imagine you made a lot of plot twist over there xDD
It's totally awesome as ever!
And thanks a lot for making this game, I am really feeling good now after 2 years fighting with myself irl!
Amazing, Raiken! The Let's Play is complete! Thank you so much!

I'm really glad that you enjoyed the game so much.

Lol, you completely demolished both final bosses, wow... In testing they were too hard, so I may have over-compensated. I may need to revisit this. Though it is probably something to do with the fact that you got all of the extra equipment and optimized your create-a-character's party's stats to the max...!

Sorry that the font went weird for you sometimes, that may be because you did not install the fonts in the game folder onto your computer. But I will look into this too.

And just so you know, although my wife and I do play videogames together, she did not really work on this with me, she just made the odd map here and there, and she also tested it :)

Anyway, I hope the ending of this game was epic enough for you :)

If I ever make another game (unlikely right now but who knows what will happen in the future...) I will let you know!

Peace.


I tho all the bosses must be defeated in order to bring all of them to the final place so I did XDD
But I enjoyed the battle while curious of their mind :p (blame Cath) so I did battling all of them. Buahahha :v

I see, but it's interesting to have a wife who is onto gaming life as well, so that makes both of you awesome xD

About the font, I always forgot to put the default font to my laptop, so it was totally my fault T_T

I really enjoy this series xD it really have its own feeling as I played it, feels like my separated live is depending on this XD

Alright, waiting for your next masterpiece, Faenon! Take your time tho brcause I know living in a different world is so hard especially we cannot prioritize one after another after all xDD
I need to play the shit out of this. GAWD I wish there were more hours in the day. I've read a lot of kumada's reviews and it's hard to overstate how highly I value his opinion. If I did not have a game or two of my own that I have neglected for far too long and owe some TLC, I would be playing this right now.
author=StormCrow
I need to play the shit out of this. GAWD I wish there were more hours in the day. I've read a lot of kumada's reviews and it's hard to overstate how highly I value his opinion. If I did not have a game or two of my own that I have neglected for far too long and owe some TLC, I would be playing this right now.


Indeed you do. kumada has actually had quite a lot of input into this game, as he has tested it thoroughly and written me reports not just once but TWICE. In fact I'm still incorporating some of the more general feedback from his latest playthrough into my revisions.

But no worries / no pressure, StormCrow! Games should be for fun, and TCS will be waiting for you whenever you want!

In fact, if you wait a little bit, after the game passes 1000 downloads (which should happen soon) I may release a new update for TCS with some extra bonus content and the latest round of minor bugfixes, including some from the new review that was just posted for it, to celebrate!

And if you'd rather just watch an LP, raikenjeonva has just finished his LP of the entire game (see youtube playlist link on the game profile page) which I think is a bit over 9 hours long. It doesn't show off the latest version of the game with all of the bugfixes (he was testing it for me), but it's another way to enjoy TCS.

Anyway, enjoy working on your own games :)
Hey everyone who's subscribed to this who reads their notices:

Please consider nominating TCS for a misao this year.

As a game creator, the more exposure your game gets, the more people play it, the more rewarding the whole experience is.

It was featured in Liberty's January misao possibilities article (and got a 'banana' medal there for noteworthy games!)

Anyway, why not nominate TCS for

-Excellence in Narrative

and/or

-Trippiest Game

?

Or even Game of the Year??? (unlikely I know)

Cheers,
Faenon
Yo. So I check back on this page from time to time and I've noticed that my downloads and subscribers have been slowly but steadily going up. Anyone playing TCS? Anyone enjoying it?
Hi TCS subscribers!

So this week a game dev contacted me about writing the script for their rpg game which is in early access on steam based on something else I wrote, and I've shown them the page for The Cerebral Symphony as an example of my game writing.

I wonder if anyone else who played TCS and enjoyed it would like to leave it a review to pull up my average score? halibabica's slightly mean review, which seemed to judge it against the standards of professional games rather than something made by a hobbyist working one hour a week, dragged it down a bit.

raikenjenova? Zadok?
author=ShadowDCST99
Where do I get that faceset from?


I made it with a Japanese programme called 'FaceMaker' that used to be on the RMN resource list.