Name: The Secret Testament

Developer: TheAwakeJake

Story: The Archangel Zeph is bored with his duties. One Sunday morning, he wastes time getting to his duties, and Lucifer takes advantage, stealing God's halocross, making mayhem in heaven, and now he's going to Earth to learn how to use the halocross to restart the universe. Now, it's up to Zeph, Leila, God, and Jesus to journey the Earth, battle the minions of Lucifer and stop him from doing his dark deeds. No, really, your main party includes God and Jesus.

Writing: What is it with Bible games? Seriously, of all the A grade material that can be found in biblical tradition, Bible games tend to be the preachiest, cringiest, and most...uncomfortable of God's creations, and this is no exception. The cheap, throwaway dialogue isn't so bad. The game is very uncomfortably self-aware, though. Think back to all of the Sunday School movies you had to watch as a kid and see if you can follow along here. Zeph is the naughty boy who didn't want to do his job because it was boring, and now the world is in danger. Leila is his sister, and she's helping him to fix the problem, but never misses a chance to remind him that it's all his fault. God and Jesus come with them, and advise them along the way. Meanwhile, they come to Earth and find everyone suffering, with the minions of Lucifer being behind it all. Come on. You've seen this before and you know where it's going, because your Sunday School teacher and your parents made you sit through this over and over again for most of your childhood. For some reason, nobody wants to make a game about Samson and Delilah, or David and Goliath, or Moses leading the Jews through the wilderness to Israel, or the Tower of Babel--all prime RPG material. I can see that the dev wanted to make original characters with Zeph and Leila, but it wasn't to be, and the problem is that they're paper cutouts of hundreds of other characters we see in hundreds of other stories just like this. New costumes, new names, same story. To be absolutely fair here, I don't mind preachiness. I don't even mind cringiness. What we need to see is something that doesn't just rehash the traditional church PSA.



Gameplay: Bland basic. This is a pass. It uses a few scripts to gussy up the battle system, and makes sure everything's balanced. Standard random encounters with few on screen encounters for story purposes. There wasn't a lot of effort put into designing the combat system. The production uses the existing basic combat system rather well. My complaints about random encounters don't belong here since they're based on personal preference. Cutscenes are well done, though characters tend to be a little too chatty.



Graphics: What is about devs using the character generator and then choosing the creepiest, most demented eyes in the selection boxes? Look at those eyes. Don't you half expect someone looking at you like that to hack you to pieces in your sleep? Do you think maybe you might want to be armed if you're in a room with someone looking at you like that? People, stop using those eyes! You've got a dozen choices! Pick something else! Suffice it to say, this is RTP. Some of the maps are a little strange, particularly in God's Castle, but for the most part, mapping is done well. The character generator facechips mixed with the standard face chips always struck me as a little odd. I've actually used 3/4 angle facechip generators. It's not like VX Ace couldn't make one instead of making you use these often horrific, uncanny valley mugshots.

The biggest thing here is the overall effect the character generated sprites and facechips have on this game. An overly preachy game with with these weird, kind of creepy sprites: it really brings the whole thing together to make the game look like this super-out-of-touch Stepford Wives reminiscent concoction where the world is populated by prefabricated people with those super creepy wide eyes.



Music: So, it's not RTP and I thought I recognized some of it, and the audio folder isn't encrypted so I looked in. It's ripped. Can't tell if all of it's ripped, but definitely some of it. Yeah, bootlegged music in a Bible game. But that's alright. We'll talk about stealing on the next game. Don't even worry about it.

Conclusion: Some people might enjoy this. The game isn't terrible. On the one hand, the only people who are really going to be interested in it are people who are only interested in games that teach the good word. On the other hand, when one takes into account the overly creepy and superficial feel of the game, this could actually come off as an unintentional self-criticism of dogmatic religious control over society. Something to really look at.