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Pretty but Skeletal

  • Liberty
  • 04/15/2015 04:53 PM
  • 1374 views
Dust to Dust was one of the entries for the IGMC (Indie Game Making Contest) for 2014. As one of the judges for the RPG portion of the competition it is my pleasure to share my thoughts on the game. This review will basically just be the notes I took cleaned up. It will be based on the competition version of the game, so certain aspects of the game may have been changed.

Presentation
Graphics are custom and fit together very well. The mapping is quite nice though there are areas where parts are a bit odd and not quite as polished as other areas.

Sound is very well used. Music is great and fits the scenes quite well.

There are some minor writing errors, but it's quite solid. The story is interesting and characters are enjoyable. The story is a bit rushed, though, jumping from one place to another, pared down to a frame. It's a pity but them's the breaks when working on a deadline.

Lore was interesting and there were some neat bits of story telling that had nothing to do with the story, like books in shelves.

Gameplay
Battles are mainly story-based, with some on-map optional battles. Battles themselves are quite easy, with low damage from enemies. Even the last battle wasn't much of a challenge.

Skills were learned via equipment. Different weapons gave different skills, bar one - the staff got upgraded with a special item that added extra attacks. Each skill had a specific element. Enemies were given strengths which were shown as icons over their heads in battle. Certain attacks could be boosted by pressing the A button at the right time.

There were special skills that could be used when your TP hit 100 however because enemies never really damaged you that much and because battles were over so fast you never got a chance to use them. Indeed, I only ever got to use one of these skills once and that was on the last battle.

There were on-map skills, apparently, but they didn't really get used much. Indeed, I can think of only three places where they were used and two of those were by one character and necessary for continuing the story. The other was the only optional use and indeed, the only use in the whole game of that skill. Wasted opportunity.

Puzzles... there weren't any. There was one part where you had to try to collect a set amount of money from different NPCs using different ways. You had up to three chances per NPC and various options included stealing, begging and trading.

Items weren't very useful due to the easiness of battles.

Fun factor
While the atmosphere and general concept and lore of the game were all interesting and well done, the rushed feel of the story and the easiness of the battles, coupled with the useless skills made the game feel skeletal. It was a neat concept but needed a little more challenge and interaction to be considered fun. Indeed, the best part for me was trying to raise the money to see a doctor.

It'd be nice to see this expanded on since it's such a pretty skeleton with a lot of promise. I gave it a solid 46 out of 60 for the IGMC and am giving it 4 stars on RMN.

Posts

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Yo! Thanks for the feedback, Liberty!
I agree with you entirely. This wasn't a project I was particularly proud of, and I bit off more than I could chew in one month (especially since I'd never made an rpg before this, hence why the balancing was awful). I've just recently started working on the new version again, after forgetting about it for a while, and hopefully a demo will be out in a couple months that addresses a lot of the issues you mentioned.

The rushed plot is definitely a thing of the past. In fact, it's been reworked to quite a large degree. Field skills have been pretty much removed. Although it wasn't a problem you addressed, player choices will also be of more importance. Of course, I'll be re-balancing the battles too. I had been considering removing battles altogether and making this more of an adventure/drama game, since that is my strength, but I would really like to improve my skills in rpg development.
You could always just have boss battles and eschew the ones inbetween instead. That way you can work on a limited amount of battles and you'd have to balance them very well - a good way to learn more about battles and balancing by honing all your focus on making a few great battles. Either way, glad to hear that you're still working on this and making improvements. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Good luck!
Ah, that seems like a good compromise. I'll definitely consider doing it that way. It's more appealing the more I think about it.
Thanks again!
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