In-between

Inbetween is a platformer effort by Ebeth, a.k.a Elizabeth. It's the first usage of a certain platforming script in VX Ace that I've actually seen made into a game. From what I understand the engine is a bit limited, with an in-game editor that allows for sidescroller games in VX Ace to feature precision jumping and other features that are coded into the engine.

The graphics of Inbetween are unique. Very imaginative backgrounds that have a "painterly" feel to it, but not always in a good way, almost like someone put a picture of a painting through Photoshop and clicked the "Oil Painting" filter. It's got these weird kind of synthetic "oil splatches" that make the backgrounds rather indistinct.

The story is that you are a girl who's just died and you meet your dog friend in the afterlife that will teach you and guide you where to go on a short tale. You acquire special feathers that let you travel between parallel universes and undergo a short journey to overcome your grief.

There are only a few enemies in this game, as well as a battle to top it off, but I can say that the overall experience, while not all that bad, was slightly underwhelming. There's two types of enemies - ones that you should jump on, and ones you shouldn't - but I feel like there's not much to expect apart from that. The final cutscene displays a few handdrawn cutscenes and that's about it.



This game has really cute facesets. All the art in this game is rather cute, and especially the hand-drawn art scenes at the end of the game seem to just follow in quick succession, where they could have been used more economically. But it's nice to know that you could use that drawing skill to create cutscenes if you wanted to expand such a game in the future.

The gameplay is platformer-based, but it is rather basic. The game is both too short and too simple to get into the nitty gritty of what makes a platformer fun, which is not just precision jumps (which get rather irksome after a while) but using your navigation of the environment to find your way through, kind of like a little maze. But since the paths are rather straightforward, a lot of this game is, by way of following, straight forward. Given that this is so short, that's to be expected, which is what I'm going to get onto later in the review.

The concept of being able to slip between parallel worlds using feathers is a really nice one, which allows for some interesting possibilities regarding obstacles being insurmountable in one world, but surmountable in the other. It's a pity that switching between such worlds is not a balanced concept right now, and it's only worthwhile being in your body to pick up health items that won't be used anyway. Again, the game is too short for its concepts.

The design decision to show controls screen before the game as a huge text dump isn't that great. It's better to teach the controls as an in-game tutorial. Platformers benefit from having little signs that say "OK now push 'X' to jump" or the such like, and then on the next sign, it says "push DOWN when you're in mid-air to slam dunk the enemy". That way the tutorial can be fed to the audience slower so they can actually digest it, instead of a text dump at the beginning of the game that people are liable to forget really quickly. I did, anyway.

The tutorial screen is also set against a green background with default Arial text. This lacked the kind of polish I'd expect from such a pretty looking game, I'd consider changing it, that is, if the developer wanted to keep the screen still.

I've mentioned twice that the game is too short, and that's the source of a lot of its flaws. The game consists of jumping around a few platforms and then you have a battle at the end, which you haven't been prepared for with any sort of grinding. It's a cute adventure, but I was actually teased to believe that this was going to be a really fun, longer game. I can understand that creating a lot of the art required for the different backgrounds would be a chore, but I sincerely think it would be a fun game.

But that only relies on whether the engine is good for this kind of gameplay. If the current demo has exhausted the limits of the scripted engine that Ebeth used, then it's not really worthy to create much more. But as of what I've played, it does seem like further concepts could be explored.

The ending also makes me think that some text could have accompanied it to wrap up loose ends. Those are pretty pictures, and I think they're a really nice way of portraying cutscenes, but it would be nice to have some animations with the "Move Picture" command too, to really make things vibrant.



Conclusion
In-between was a short adventure but it still feels rather incomplete. Not much was in the way of lasting quality, but at least it was custom graphics, a cute little tale, relatively easy gameplay, but it felt rather short and that the platforming aspect was underutilized.

Nevertheless, it's not terrible to play. It's a light fun adventure but I just wish there was more. This is the kind of thing where length would have actually benefited it. Perhaps a sequel with more platforming challenges and resource management? One that expands with a storyline and characters? That's for Ebeth to decide.

But it was still a good base for a better game. I would ask the developer to consider making another, longer, more satisfactory game based on this engine. What was here so far was very good, but it was very short and inconsequential.

I'm giving the game a B- (3/5).

Things to improve that I (personally) think would make this game super legendary and get closer to that possible 5/5:
* length and maturity of concept that'll come with a fuller fleshed out version
* more depth to the gameplay, to make it more interesting to play (just gameplay wise)
* that is, the maturation of the "platformer" concept by putting further skill tests in there (if the engine provide that chance)
* just *more*. i would like to see more from these characters and/or this kind of universe because it piqued my interest.