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A Pretty Pity

  • Liberty
  • 03/01/2015 06:03 AM
  • 1990 views
Painted Heart 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 fully custom. There are a few places where the paint veneer comes off and the tiles underneath can be seen, which is a pity, as the custom graphics are very pretty and fits together quite well. That said, the custom art assets are very nice. The menu, battle hud, character graphics and designs are all so nice.

Music is original and fits very well. Sound is there but nothing that stands out.

Writing is solid from a technical point of view. The story itself was pretty simple - restore a painting that tells a tale. It's interesting and the concept is neat but it's a pity that I didn't manage to get far enough to see it all unfold due to the many gameplay issues that stopped progress.

Characters stand out well enough as their own personas but are a bit on the bland side which is a pity because the design of the characters are just really well done and draw you into wanting to know more. Sadly, there's not much to know about them.

Gameplay

Battles were a case of choosing which of three groups of attacks to use, swapping your characters to either the front or back row and choosing which defensive skills you used. You could use items too.

Frankly, battles were a mess. The lack of customisation coupled with the measly damage output/high enemy health, made them a chore to get through. More often than not I died multiple times to the same enemy group. It was very unbalanced.
Thank god they weren't random encounters.

Puzzles were bland and easy to figure out, with minimal thought and effort needed to pass them. It's a pity because there were a lot of great looking assets and maps and so much that could have been done with the idea of painting.

Items were found on the map. They really needed to be more useful, though. The healing items barely covered the damage output of enemies when they were needed which was a major issue.

Encounters, while on-map, were a bit annoying to engage with and often took up choke points to force you to battle them in order to continue. I ended up just not being able to progress at all at a certain point because of this and had to end my playthrough.

Fun factor


While the art assets were lovely, the actual game play made the game a chore to get through, which is a pity because it had some neat ideas. I just didn't have any fun, which is a huge pity because the world of the game was interesting and I would have loved to explore it more. Perhaps if battles were removed and replaced instead with puzzles, the game would be worth playing. As it stands, I definitely don't recommend it.


In the IGMC I rated this game 27/60. On RMN I give it 2 stars.

Posts

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Thank you for writing this review, Liberty! It's very clear and helpful.
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