Save The Easter

Intro

"Save the Easter" is a running mini-game developed by DarkGamer using RPG Maker XP that was created for a contest over on Mundo RPGMaker, another old defunct site. Though the only apparent rule of this contest according to nhubi's review is the following:

nhubi
. . . the project has to be at least 7 minutes playable and cannot be more than 30 minutes of play in general.

A rule that is a bit too general in my opinion since it means the people judging the contest left themselves open to judging games of various genres. And while that isn't an issue in a game jam. It does seem like a potential issue when your dealing with a competition where entries will be ranked. Though, I'm guessing there weren't that many entries considering this game managed to earn 3rd place, but I'm biased heavily against this game since I found one aspect of it so annoying that I decided to quit playing the game about half way through, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Story
Summary

You play as a young girl named Lisa whose managed to stumble across the Easter Bunny in his hour of need. Apparently all of his eggs were stolen by Santa whose decided he wants a monopoly on the love of children and will do anything to destroy the Easter Bunny and other holiday mascots.

Odd Note

This plot idea is pretty similar to the one used in Pixi Saves Christmas (2016). In that movie a Christmas genie by the name of Monopolish was stripped of his powers for undermining the other Christmas genies by getting their children to ask him for gifts instead. Which doesn't sound that bad at first, but when kids stop believing in a Christmas genie said genie dies. So Monopolish was basically trying to kill off all of the other Christmas genies in order to create a monopoly on the children's love and belief since this gives a Christmas genie power.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

On the plus side the idea of Santa trying to ruin Easter is pretty original. On the other hand, the game doesn't really do a good job explaining why Santa wants said monopoly on children and their love. Though admittedly the plotline of this game simply exists to give the player some justification for collecting Easter eggs while running through a bunch of stages. And the game contains a few notable spelling errors as well.


I'm pretty sure "throught" should be over.

Gameplay

In "Save the Easter" you run through stages that get increasingly complicated as advance through the numerous stages and their levels. At first the game starts out rather simple with the player merely needing to move left and right in order to avoid stumps. In the second stage you need to press the A button in order to jump over obstacles. In the third stage the game adds dense fog to make spotting the eggs at a distance more difficult, and the fourth stage expands your route options as well as requires the player to jump over swamp water at times. And that's as far as I got before I gave up on this one, but I'd like to talk about the life mechanic before I explain why I gave up.

In this game your given five lives to clear each level. At first glance this seems like more than enough considering most levels can be beaten in under one minute of play. The issue here is if you hit an object your likely to hit it again or be bounced back into another object. As a result you can die pretty quickly if you make a mistake in this game.

As for why I gave up on this game. Every time you play a level your returned to the starting position in stage one of this game. As a result you then need to use the warp stone your spawned next to move to the next stage. And yeah, these stones can only move you forward and backward a single stage. So if you've managed to reach stage three in this game you'll have to use two warp stones and then walk to the next level starting circle to continue the game. A process that just adds a lot of unnecessary padding to the game. And it's not like this padding is to help the game load special effects or anything in the background either. It's just a byproduct of a bad design decision. A design decision that had become to annoying for me to put up with after I had to work my way back to the fourth stage for the second time.

Graphics and Sound

The game relies almost entirely on the RTP for it's graphics and sound. The only noticeable exception to this rule are the Easter Eggs you need to collect which are shaped more like elongated ovals than an egg in my opinion. At any rate the assets being used here aren't bad, but if you've played enough games made with the RTP for RPG Maker XP your probably going to find this game rather boring.

Conclusion

On the plus side "Save the Easter" only takes around 20 minutes or so to complete if you have decent reflexes, but the amount of padding shoved into this game in the name of saving on development time makes this game more annoying than enjoyable in my opinion. As such I recommend giving this one a pass unless your looking for a short game to review.