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Olli The Apple Muncher

  • Addit
  • 03/02/2016 07:05 PM
  • 2904 views


A Game Made By: Point4
Created Using: RPG Maker 2003
It's A: ADVENTURE Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 10 - 15 Minutes To Complete
And It's A... DEMO VERISON
(As Of January 6th, 2016)


Ah…so we got ourselves an interesting one today! (…’Bout f**king time.)

Ollimio is a RPG Maker 2003 game that was created by Point4 that managed to make its little home on our little slice of net back in the summer of 2015, when forest fires raged rampant and massive droughts swept across the land causing chaos and panic here to the thirsty citizens on the west coast. I know - I was there… And lemme tell you, I never smelt a barbecue so good…

- But enough about my summer, let’s get back to the game, shall we?

So I kind of “vaguely” remember this game being mentioned a little bit back then not too long ago, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to it initially, and I’m not really sure why… Maybe it was because of the strange name, or the art style – or whatever the hell it is was, I just wasn’t that excited for this game at all. It basically came and went for me and got passed off like another finished apple core tossed into that little green garbage bin that we have to put out now.

But after going through the 15 minute demo just a little while ago that was released back in January and giving it the ol’ Addit tries – this might be one game I might have to pay a “little” extra attention to it in the somewhat distant future - it’s that good!

So, let’s get this party started and jump on in, shall we, and give Ollimio’s demo a fair shake.

The Story


Aw…!!!
Stupid cable.


Our story begins with a brief message from Professor Kaster delivered to our main protagonist here (who I actually think is secretly a robot), Olli, that she has to find and locate her two missing sisters in June and Spira and then journey to a mysterious place called “Labyrinth” afterwards and find somebody there named Mio and that everything else will eventually play out in due time. Exactly what that is, I’m not really too sure, as it’s not really explained that much in further detail in this particular demo.

After receiving the message, Olli then awakes in a strange, dimly-litted laboratory, simply known as Helix Labs, as she then goes out to find her missing sisters and escape from this retched place. But she needs to be on constant guard at all times, as there are a lot of strange looking creatures and abominations that want her dead in this place. But luckily for her, though, someone managed to leave behind a nice shiny toy that she can use to deal with these monsters in case they attack her, which is a very nice present.

The story itself in this demo is basically an afterthought throughout. And although there is some minor dialogue here exchanged between a couple of characters with Olli herself in this game, it’s really not anything super plot heavy, as most of the dialogue here is mainly played up just for laughs and general goofiness. Despite the game’s seemingly grim premise it has going for it and all, the game has some interesting characters in it, to say the least, playing off more like an Earthbound / Mother type of approach more than anything else. It’s kind of nice, actually. Although Olli is mainly the silent type throughout the entire game, that really didn’t bother that much, as that’s what makes her stand out. It’s kind of refreshing to have an RPG Maker game where the main protagonist doesn’t say a whole lot and still can be kind of interesting.

The Gameplay


I won’t let you touch my apples!!!


Gameplay-wise, Ollimio is an adventure / RPG hybrid where you must fight various enemies throughout the laboratory, simply by running into them, which eliminates the need for random encounters at all, which is a nice touch, as you must traverse through the mini-dungeon and find two keys in this demo in order to escape.

The battles themselves are your pretty typical standard RPG Maker 2003 battles, where it plays a lot similar to something like Earthbound or the Mother series more than anything else. As you fight and continue to earn more EXP, Olli can learn such moves as the Cross Shot, which allows her to attack multiple enemies on screen, and Defense a, which raises her defence up a little bit. Also, every time that you defeat an enemy here you’ll also pick up an item as well, such as Apples to restore your health or various other items to restore your SP’s, so you’ll almost be guaranteed to pick up something from each fight, which helps a lot, since there are no shops in this game to purchase anything despite you earning money after each battle.

The difficulty curve is actually handled very well in this demo. Although the first fight or two might get you a little in trouble if you don’t play your cards right, by the time that you starting amassing more EXP and item drops, the rest of the way through is actually pretty damn easy and you should have no problems in handling this game at all. It’s a nice introduction to start things off, as I generally like to face off against some of easier enemies first before getting into the real hard stuff. Hook me in first before scaring me away.

The enemies, though, once defeated, don’t respawn back after being killed, so you can’t level grind or farm for items indefinitely here, which is not so much of a big deal because you really don’t need it. I’m not sure in the full version if this is going to change or not, but for now its fine.

The only big issue that I found with the battles themselves is that there is this one glitch if Olli gets defeated that the game basically just says “Don’t lose faith,” or something, and instead of getting the Game Over screen you basically are sent back to the original map that you were on in pitch darkness with 0 HP’s and the game just kind of continues from there. If you try to enter another battle again, the same thing will happen, so I’m guessing that the game over clause doesn’t fully work right, or maybe it’s supposed to send you back to the start, or a previous save point, or something after you die? Either way, it’s a glitch.

Speaking of saving the game, you can only have one save file at a time while playing this, so if you decide to play a new game your old, previous save data will be deleted. This isn’t a big deal for something like this in a demo, but I’m hoping that the full version has more save files in it, because this kind of sucks.

There’s one puzzle in this game as well that requires you to jump around various platforms while using various switches to change the tiles down on the floor to jump to new locations to move on ahead. This is the only puzzle in the game, but I like it! It’s not too hard and it’s a nice indication that the full version’s going to have even more puzzles like this to solve. It’s a nice change of pace.

There is one other glitch that I found, which, actually, is probably the only thing that I really disliked about the gameplay side of things, other than the game over glitch, and that has to do with one particular room and lag.

Once you defeat the game’s boss you’ll have to escape with the two keys that you collected throughout a fiery inferno in order to get to the exit. Everything is fine at first, but the second map as you’re leaving the boss area slows down like a mutherf*ker, and I’m not sure why… There are no pictures being displayed on screen; no auto-start animation effects playing in the background that I know off – so why does this area slow down so much, it’s unbearable! The other maps have the same graphical effects like the second map and work just fine, so I’m not sure why that is, but it’s a little bit of an issue trying to traverse back with all that lag going on. Luckily, it’s the only real blemish on this part, which is a good thing.

The Soundtrack


- Weeeeeeee!!!


Oh man – this music’s actually pretty damn good here, despite all of the music files being in .WAV format, which drives the memory up like crazy. The music here is incredible, and really amps up the experience while playing through it. “A Common Encounter” is an amazing battle theme, which sounds strikingly similar to something like you would hear from Kirby’s Dreamland on the freakin’ Gameboy - but it’s a really good track. The rest of the themes, like “Song For Fleas,” “run!” and “levelup” have a very distinctive Earthboundy type of sound to them, that definitely tickles my nostalgia and sounds quite fitting for the art style used here. There are a couple of other ambient tracks here too…nothing too amazing, but they’re mainly here for effect, and they fit just fine. All in all, a fantastic soundtrack.

Sound effects are all, amazingly, custom and they sound just as good as the music does. They all sound like something straight out of a NES / Earthbound / Mother game; they generally work very well and sound very nice. Some of these sound effects are quite weird – and some of them even have some slight voice-overs in them too, kind of like the ones from the original Star Fox game for the SNES. I really like the overall choices here, and it’s nice to listen to something refreshing that isn’t ripped straight from the RTP in regards to sounds.

I guess my only advice for the future would be to eliminate the .WAV format and turn these songs into either .MP3’s or .OGG files, because the freakin’ memory is going to go up like crazzzzzy if this continues! I remember doing this once way back in 2004 with one of my games and its music, and the damn thing was almost 300 MB’s for just 18 songs in it; it was crazy. Please fix this and make it all .MP3’s or .OGG’s, please?

The Aesthetics


Ew…!
That better be grape juice…


Presentation wise, I absolutely love it! Everything about this game looks great, from the tilesets to even the animated sprites; everything looks great and extremely top notch for a 16 bit game. There’s even animated, scrolling backgrounds for battle backgrounds, similar to Earthbound, and even the enemy sprites in battle look quite nice. This is an extremely looking polished game, and I really don’t have too many complaints about this in this particular field. As long as you can keep this kind of thing up in the future, you won’t see me complaining about it that much. I guess the only thing that I can nitpick about is that maybe the menu’s and the battle H.U.D. could be a bit more touched up to match the same level up detail like the rest of the game??? But that’s about it.

The End Result


Oops.


It’s been a while since I’ve played a demo that left me not just wanting more but showcased itself quite good for what it has going for it. For a game that I really didn’t think too much about going in and basically reviewed it on a whim for a stupid contest - it turned out to be a rather good investment. If the completed version can match, and even surpass, what this demo has brought to the table, then, ladies and gentlemen, we might have ourselves a contender here! Other than a few glitches and some minor issues, this is a great way to start out.



Olli, keep eating all of those apples! We want you to be as big and strong for when the real show begins!

OVERALL GRADE:
4 / 5 - B ~ Pretty Darn Good!!!

Posts

Pages: 1
Point4
415
03/23/2016 04:09 PM
oh man... ...if there IS a way to get rpg2003 to support vorbis, LET ME KNOW Id be all over that 100%

and yeah Id say the major thing that has this project tasseled is the fact that there is no Vorbis support. The reason I've done .WAV for the demo is because that's really the only format that supports seamless looping since it's not reading the file by frames, unlike .mp3 which does exactly that.

I wont even acknowledge midi.
Addit
6394
03/26/2016 07:50 AM
Well, for all my music converting needs, or if I need to do anything else on the side, like looping an MP3 or cut something out and what not, I generally use a free program called Audacity for that. You can loop an MP3 no problem or cut the file size of a song down to hardly anything; it’s absolutely perfect for your music altering needs.

I mean, I guess you could go .WAV the rest of the way through and have seemingly good looping throughout, which is probably just fine if this game’s only going to use around 10 songs or so, but anything more, especially with the larger file size, will definitely scare off some potentials players from playing the full version in the future, hell, even me, lol. I mean...I like the demo – don’t get me wrong – but if the full version’s gonna be around a gigabyte to download in the future I’d probably just pass on that. Hopefully you can find a way. Hell, even if the music doesn’t fully loop properly but the song goes on for about four minutes or so before repeating itself it’s probably just fine.

And, yeah, MIDI’s suck, lol. I know there are a few people around here still who still use MIDI’s for their games, but, seriously - come man, it’s 2016! Time to get with the times. :P
Point4
415
04/01/2016 09:58 PM
Im sure there are plenty of programs that can read a seamless mp3, its just that rpgmaker2003 is not one of those. Im no expert on programming (if I was I wouldnt be using first place aaaa) but I remember when I was helping El-Sato out with his Pikakiri game back in 2011 he also had mentioned that looping was also an issue without using a special .dll written for Game Maker because as it turns out, mp3 is not a nice format to loop, even after tweaking out any silence with Audacity or Goldwave or whatever you use to match the waveform up because its not a problem with the file itself, just how everything else handles that format. Im guessing the 1/2 second silence happens while rpg2003 unloads and loads the song to play again.

Maplestory had this problem, and they since then started using vorbis for their tracks but they did something different beforehand: rather than try to loop the music, ...they simply did not. Instead, after the song ran its 2:22, it would fade out and play the song again, which works FINE and honestly thats what Ive been doing for overworld music because its better to do that instead of have an unreasonable filesize.

I read somewhere that vorbis support might be added to the steam version of rpg2003, but I have seen no evidence beyond that claim
Pages: 1