Ten Days Until Doomsday

Intro

"Ten Days Until Doomsday" is another game that was being developed by Christamoose using RPG Maker VX Ace. While the last project I covered by this developer died during the process of remaking/remastering it. "Ten Days Until Doomsday" appears to have died within days of Christamoose posting the initial demo since Linkis left a comment on the game's summary page pointing out that the demo suffers from an unavoidable and game ending bug within 96 hours of the demo going public.

The most likely cause of this bug is an eventing error. At least I believe that's the main reason the character's begin walking in an endless loop while a white line appears on the map. The sad part is this happens before you even get to recruit your third party member so I'll never know what he or she looks like. Oh well, I suppose it will make covering the story section slightly easier.

Story

Based on the description and opening text crawl this game was going to feature a very standard quest line about saving the world from an evil deity. And along the way the main hero would gain additional allies with special powers that would help them on their journey. A journey that would undoubtedly take them to dangerous locations all over the world in an effort to find a world saving magical MacGuffin.



Unfortunately the roughly ten minutes worth of content the player can access really doesn't flesh out any of the playable cast that much. On the plus side, we do learn that the main character likes sleeping on the floor despite having two beds in his house. And why he needs an extra bed is beyond me. I suppose he thinks hiding stuff under your bed is the ultimate hiding spot. So you might as well have two ultimate hiding spots in your house instead of one.

Gameplay

The game utilizes the standard combat system that comes with RPG Maker VX Ace as far as I can tell. On one hand, I really don't have any serious complaints about the default combat system. After all, I'm a bit of a screwball that enjoys playing turn-based RPGs. On the downside the lack of any meaningful twist on the combat means this project feels like countless other games you can play that are actually finished and will give you actual narrative closure.

Outside of the bog standard combat the game features both touch and random encounters which is really odd in my opinion. I know some games like "Vampire Legends: Power of Three" on the DS feature random encounters when transition between screens and touch encounters on the actual maps. So this isn't an entirely unheard of concept to include both systems in a game, but this game includes random encounters on a screen with touch encounters. Albeit this only pops up in one area, but there are only two areas in this game you can reasonably access and get into a fight. So it's weird that the game has random encounters and touch encounters on the same screen.

Disagreement with Linkis

While I generally agree with most of the statements Linkis made about this game on December 20th, 2014, on the game's summary page. I feel his assessment about the affordability of gear as shown in the quote below is incorrect.

author=Linkis
2. The weapons and armor are too expensive in the home town, probably the way you wanted it I guess.

While I understand how Linkis could reach this conclusion considering the cheapest weapon in the starting town's shop costs 200 coins and the only enemies you can access in the game reward the player with 5 coins upon defeating them. Those same enemies also drop bread worth 125 coins on a regular basis and drop apples worth 350 coins infrequently and in the case of the blue slime they rarely drop blue potions worth 500 coins. So it's actually pretty easy to get enough funds to buy new weapons and armor in this game.

Though if you want to make the sword even easier to buy you should purchase the royal armor first. If you approach the guard whose defending the storage shed while wearing it he will step aside and allow you to plunder the storage shed for all it's worth, but make sure you grad everything on your first visit since he'll never step aside again. He'll merely greet you as a fellow royal guard or ask you why your out of uniform if you take the armor off. And you can easily sell the stuff in the royal storage shed for another 1,000 gold pieces. All and all it takes less than five minutes to properly outfit Gary with the best gear in town. But, I'll admit it's pretty easy to miss this stuff if you like to hoard healing supplies.

Sound

I really don't have that much of an opinion about the game's audio. This is because the game largely relies on songs and sound effects found within the RTP. About the only aspect of this game that is notable in this category is the lack of music when you reach the mountain. Instead your just hit with the RTP sound of wind blowing as your characters begin to endlessly walk in a never ending loop.

Graphics

Graphically the game heavily draws upon the RTP for RPG Maker VX Ace so the game lacks any sort of unique flare. Sadly this is pretty typical of free games in my experience. About the only major complaint I can offer up about this game is that some of the maps feel a bit to bare at times.



It just feels like the developer should have included some plants and water sparkles here to really spruce things up. And considering this is an image from the game's starting town Christamoose could have included a nearby bench for some old NPCs to sit and talk with the player about the good old days. After all, I do enjoy a good lore drop every now and again. And this definitely seems like an area where such a drop could have easily been worked in.

Conclusion

"Ten Days Until Doomsday" is a project that will never be completed, but based on what's here I imagine this would have been an average game at best. And while I normally would still recommend those sorts of games if you've beaten all of the better stuff that is freely available first. The incomplete nature of this game means it's something you should probably just avoid.