Length: ~15 minutes

Introduction
I discovered Seer Dell when I created a thread searching for games that were funny or had humour, and I was recommended this one by the woman herself, our lovely moderator and CEO, Liberty. She goes by the respectable title of ~RTP Princess~ and she makes hilarious podcasts with fellow dev and friend Archeia, so I thought I would give it a shot, plus I'd never actually played a Liberty game before and I wanted to see what it was like. It was made in 24 hours for the VX Ace Lite Cook-off, which was an event spanning two weeks where peeps use the free but feature limited version of VX Ace, VX Ace lite. With that in mind, many of the features that have been expanded upon in recent years were only in their infancy at the stage of this game's release, because back then, VX Ace was just a little itty baby.



Story
The game's called Seer Dell: Dragon because it's about a Seer named Dell who visits the altar of the Dragon King. The title ticks all the boxes. You control Dell, an outspoken fourth-wall breaking Seer, and Lise, a mute Samurai who wouldn't do this job if it wasn't for the pay. Don't ask me how I know, OK I read it in the game's bio, AFAIK it wasn't revealed in game. The story's lighthearted, and although I didn't exactly find it a laugh-a-minute, it's bouncy and full of Liberty-ness, if that's the way one can describe it. Although that doesn't stop the game from falling to cliches like "oh my, we all have the similar objectives and yet we don't get along, but let's band together anyway to do this and we'll magically become friends along the way!" This game was made in a short amount of time and it kind of shows. Exposition is all over the place, revealing facts I didn't care about in a messy way, but it's kind of a cute mess because it's made with love and tender care like a mother kissing her little child on the forehead.

Dell's character gave me Okiku vibes. She's a happy-go-lucky shrieker that attracts the hatred of some of her compatriots, being perceived as overly loud and generally obnoxious. A shining example of this is when she finds a chest and demands that the party wait a second to soak the whole moment in, while the background man is marvelling at her strange, apparently psychotic delusions. Expect to hear much "uh, yeah, let's just go OK?" and "right so... leaving?" as excuses to finish a conversation with needless words caused by the apparent irritation of the cast. It reminds me of a game I recently played (ArMaiageddon) where every single NPC would start a conversation with "Hello <name of hero>". In an RPG, there's a trope that assumes that this happens in each conversation, and by at least the 3rd time it becomes repetitive, before you realize that almost every conversation in the game begins this way, and you're trapped with your finger on the space key waiting for it all to stop.

That said I don't feel very nice criticizing a not-for-serious comedy game made in 24 hours on its story and dialogue. I've done this before myself - rush out a game for a badge and makerscore. The characters will appeal to certain people, though. However, for me, when characters are happy-go-lucky in a rebellious kind of way like this, seemingly without reason or depth, my melancholy gets tested. Couple that with an abrupt ending resolution and I was left unsatisfied.

Not everything's grim. The writing's solid, characters stay within their temperament and the story flows along rather briskly. I can see the potential in other Liberty games having effective writing and storyline, but sadly the tale-telling seems a bit more rushed than crafted.

Graphics/Audio
Dungeons are mapped competently, with interesting structure of winding corridors and a clearly themed ice dungeon. Libby also does towns well, having a vibrant Winter Wonderland aesthetic of joy and happiness. It's primarily composed of RTP, but Lib does RTP well. This is expected. Very little qualms on the graphical front. Liberty is a huge proponent of RTP (til she die) so I don't expect her to use many custom resources.

Gameplay
Rather repetitious. Starts off promising with a map showing an optimal route from start to finish, but being blocked by unforeseen obstacles it requires you to traverse another route. Combat is quite simple. I used Attack for every single one of my moves except to heal on occasion. Heal spell can be used outside of battle to recover your entire party with very little mana cost, which makes things unbalanced and unwieldy.

When things get a lot more non-linear I liked being able to use a maze traversal algorithm to look through every part and find every treasure. That's satisfying. But pacing makes some gameplay stall a bit when all you kind of want to do is explore the dungeon and not get a random encounter so often, thanks. The enemies are not that varied, or at least the strategy towards them is not varied at all. It's a predictable cycle: spam attack, use "optimize" to equip, spam more attack. But being super easy is probably the least of offenses a game can make; it's a much better alternative than to be unfair. But it's hard to shake the feeling that there could have been more depth if the game had had more focus. Even on the mapping side, if objects in town had flavour text when you interact with them that explain what this place is, that would make exploring the environment a lot more interesting. It's not cool to have dead ends with nothing to interact with in those spots. There are achievements in this game as well, but that feature felt rather empty. I'd rather be rewarded for my intelligence than arbitrarily congratulated for progression, a kind of saying "hooray, you've got this far!". In spite of that, the achievements are somewhat charming.

Conclusion
I get the impression Seer Dell isn't so much of a game that wants to be taken seriously as much as a quick, quirky, honest love letter to anyone who dares play it, saying "thanks for playing me by supporting this game, here's a character I think is cute, here's a little adventure she and her friends can go on, have fun with whatever this is!" I feel like a bit of a sour sod reviewing this game in the critical lens, because it's just a quick game and it's made for fun with love, and those adventures are always cute to play.

That's my review of Seer Dell: Dragon, a game that's playfulness with flaws, but I mean, come on, it's heartwarming. I give it a C+ grade and a 3 stars out of 5.