Rainbow Ron Saves SpriteTown

Hi!
Uhm I'm a bit confused by this game. Rainbow Ron Saves SpriteTown is a complete game made by snakins with RPG Maker VX Ace in 2013. I was curious to try this game after playing and reviewing Lost in the Woods, a very short and linear horror adventure with some guys facing a bunch of huge spiders.
Now, this Rainbow Ron Saves SpriteTown made me curious due to the 8-bit graphics, but not only the games makes use of 100% original assets, but it also parodies some old games of the past like Donkey Kong, Zelda, Pacman and Space Invaders.

In this game we play as Rainbow Ron, a silent hero dressed with rainbow clothes and with a single power: hit enemies really hard! He is instructed by his friend Masko (that's a floating mask... with exactly zero skills or aspects worth mentioning) to meet the mayor and save the city from an alien invasion. Here they are joined by a third party member, Square Man (Pac Man's ugly cousin?), that has exactly the same ability of Rainbow Ron, and the three have to meet a series of characters (NOT Donkey Kong and two sages) before being able to defeat the aliens once for all using the Missile Command (title of another old 8bit game).


I was totally expecting something like "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this" before handing out an assault rifle, but no, unfortunately this did not happen!

So the game is a sort of lire jrpg (forget equipment, fetch quests or puzzles) where we wander around, talk to someone to unlock a door and repeat until you can find a way to destroy the alien mothership. Clearly aliens will try to stop Ron and friends, and this meand that you will face them in random battles, and the good thing is that they attack one at the time! You can also run away and avoid confrontation, a good choice since it seems there is no use for loot, there is no equipment and no consumables nor shops.

Battles are pretty easy, I mean these aliens from Space Invaders were numerous but weak, and here it's the same, on the other hand just Ron and Square Man have a skill that hurts more than the standard attack, unfortunately it costs MP (that cannot be reintegrated in any way!) and that's where I noticed a bug: MPs are always at maximum on the interface, but that's a LIE! because in the end you will consume all your points. In any case it's not a problem, since opponents are so weak and NO! There is no final battle against a final boss.

Visually the game uses custom mad minimalistic graphics probably as an homage to 8-bit games, since we meet some character clearly inspired to Zelda and Donkey Kong, not to mention Square Man, that's a green and square version of Pac Man. There are a couple of mazes but they're pretty short and simple, and you can finish the game in 10 minutes. Or maybe less. The only music is an 8-bit cover of of "Ode to Joy" aaaaand... well it's ok for a game that wants to mimic the "simpler times".


Enemies are the aliens from Space Invaders. And like in the original game they're boring and without any kind of interesting ability or characteristic despite their different shapes!

Final Verdict
While I can appreciate the idea to homage the old classics and I can understand that this game was made by the author as "an exercise in using switches and such", there are a couple of problems: the first is the lack of directions, you are left alone to figure out where is your next destination (luckily the world is pretty small), since there isn't really a plot or a reason to go around aside to unlock the next zone, the other issue is the MP indication not working. And the game would have also benefitted of a shop, since the enemies drop money and there is no use for them (while some consumables technically would have been useful... well if the game was longer and more difficult, of course!).
In the end I cannot understand if this game is a silly parody or if it must be taken seriously... it's not really bad, just meh.