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Yes, I would like tea with the world destruction.

  • Kylaila
  • 05/15/2016 04:00 PM
  • 5228 views
Dry Fate is a shortish RPG about tea.
Wait, it isn't? Well, it's about the world tree dying, and also tea.
It was made during the swap-in-the-middle-with-you event and thus had two creators working on it, both with their own pet peeves, but working together to make this game shine as one. It turned out alright with its goofy but coherent story-line, but it has some dull passages inbetween (with a lack of tea, too!)

You are a big idiot, and with this subtle introduction, I conveniently named him "Idiot".
It just makes every scene so much better, and it makes dialogue lines like "I'm dumb enough to try!" shine as they are meant to be.
Yes, I also named the damsel in distress encounter girl "Damsel" for the lack of space and original ideas.


You're my boy!

It's one of those games where you don't really care too much about the world or its characters in any way, shape or form, and just tag along as you go through one dungeon to the next and fight a cute cuddley red dragon with too loud boss music inbetween, hoping to get a conversation or two as a reward.

That said, before I dive in more, I feel it's important to point out said pet peeves of the two creators. It is quite apparant that Frogge started out, making a really goofy introduction, fourth wall breaking jokes and a complete lack of investment in it. Piano continued, likely after the dragon fight.
I found the pairing quite interesting as I have found the two to have vastly different approaches to their game design.

As a general idea, Frogge's starting conversations and atmosphere are really fun and funny, but the sheer density of jokes without much else can make it feel shallow quickly. The lack of any real drive or investment in the world or characters (which is also what is poked fun at), makes it difficult to really create suspense or any motivation to continue further.
It just lacks the punch, so to speak. A few breaks and an effort to point out the background or world a little more would make for a good balance to keep both sides interesting.

On the other hand, piano, the continuing creator, usually takes a more serious and story-invested approach to things. And indeed, the game fleshes out the game world and its meaning quite wonderfully. It is kept very concise and without too much fluff or unnecessary information during the short conversations you have - it also really made sense on all ends. For a while it was very dry without too many humorous breaks in it, but he made it a point to continue the running gags (thankfully! : D) and kept the humour with a little bit of that funny undertone and I think he did a great job on that front!


Map and Dungeon Design:

I really love the world map, it is fairly small and has all places you will visit (and some you won't apparant) as you traverse a couple of floating islands. Yes, your world tree stands on a floating island which I found had a nice execution for the little dialogue there was devoted to it.

What's more is that - the simple and concise aesthetic design aside - you also have small dots to show you where you can enter places and where you can't which is a nifty feature.

The dungeons and towns in contrast are kept really simplistic. Dungeons, for the most part, feel more like empty space or just blocks for you to get through. There are a few chests here and there, but there are only very few equipment pieces to find. So instead you will mostly find potions you will barely ever need as you automatically heal after battle.
Battles are moderately long and fairly easy for the most part. The very beginning is a little tough as encounter sizes (touch encounters, thankfully), range from one to four enemies with your single idiot.
Money, too, feels very weak as you can buy only restoratives, and in your hometown (which consists of only a single room) you can also buy status boosts. Sadly, after a long dungeon haul you come across a vendor without those boosts, just when you would have enough money for two or three of them.

So dungeons have neither engaging battles, dialogue or history bits, nor treasure to lust after, nor any use in amassing money you won't need to use, which is part of the reason the game felt dragged on a lot longer than it should be. You only learn spells after boss-fights, too.
And interestingly, just as this fatigue added up, the last dungeon is actually a great example of how to do dungeon design right.

The last dungeon is the tower you saw from the very beginning - you first will traverse it to the top to get a key for the bottom and then work your way up. This gives you a great overview of how big - and seemingly intimidating - the tower is.
The enemies in the corridors are easily avoidable making it a smooth ascend/descend. The rooms themselves are very small, but packed with treasure (equipment whooo!), stones engravings retelling bits and pieces of the game world history, and generally are really quick and nice to traverse.
I was ready to take a break for a while, but I really really loved this dungeon! It wasn't particularily pretty (as were the others), but it's a great dungeon design example.


Why, hello tower I will only get into at the very end!

It's a compact, but interesting building. And you are not forced to fight numerous monsters as you were before (hedge-maze miniportion.. UGH. Gotta fight them all), but you have a lot of incentive to go through it and explore the little hidden corner too (turns out you need that one to continue, but I would have done it anyway).
The history lines, too, add a lot of value to the dungeon and makes it a lot more varied and interesting, as few as there were.

And sadly most dungeons before that were the opposite - they felt dragged out, slow, without any purpose other than to keep you busy for a little while.
The general starting layout had a lot of dialogue in small rooms and areas, and I think smaller dungeons would have benefited the general humorous take of the game to make the dialogues feel more worthwhile.
There were areas already visible on the map, and you really explored them all, which I felt may have been too much - or if you need to do so - I would have liked to keep them short and simple. And maybe have some more dialogue between the two party members, you literally do not speak outside of the meeting and goodbye.

There is one area in particular that you went to for no apparant reason
The sky palace .. it just .. suddenly appeared .. and I had totally ignored it as a place on the world map
.
This place holds the only puzzle you will encounter, but sadly there are two problems.

1. You cannot view the puzzle hint again after clicking it away, which is something I needed to reach out for and which will likely be fixed soon.

2. The only clue is dependant on the monsters you slay - and by jove, there are tons of them in that particular area. And once you have slain them your only clue is lost. And my approach is to clear the area first and then do the puzzles, welp!

If you save the status of monsters deaded remains the same. Leaving the dungeon would likely reset it, but I really did not want to.
As a sidenote: An ability should silence the enemy, but they can use spells nonetheless (the attack is still really strong, however)

In the same dungeon you are advised to stock up on specific items for this particular fight, and you need none of them to succeed. Which left me without money to actually buy stat upgrades and a little confused - you have a lot of curatives for ailments, only that the ailments you ever face are early on. It would have been lovely to make use of those instead.

Story

Pacing-wise, the story is spoonfed to you, 2 lines at a time after each dungeon.
It is a rather stingy approach on revelation, and straight-forward, too, but I think it turned out well for what it did, as you had all important characters already known from early on and only slowly filled the gaps in knowledge.

It was kept rather vague at first, as Frogge either did not want to impose a story, or had not planned one at all, and the fact you went alone into the dungeon made for the pace that was kept up.

You meet mystery guy, mystery guy knows more about things than my idiot does, and so on you go to chase him!
The endings seem very straight-forward and so it ends very apruptly. It does tie together everything well, though, even if it ends on a more serious note.

As for the tea .. oh yes, it is a defining character trait, making good tea. It is in weapon descriptions and it is what you really want after your long journey.

This is a good collaborative effort.
It suffers from too long dungeons and could have done well with a little more dialogue inbetween. However, it does tell an actually interesting story and you have a little bit of humor in there too.

Posts

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Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Thanks a lot for the review Ky! I will admit that I also wasn't a fan of the sky dungeon. Truth is, I actually made it myself with expectations that the person who picked up my half would actually change it. Piano actually ended up using the template I made as the whole dungeon, which surprised me to say the least ^^
For the story, if I were to finish the game myself, I would also personally get more serious towards the end. Personally, if I got to finish the game I would probably take it in a more dark and gory direction to a point where few of the characters would even die(muhahaha but I guess you wouldn't really care about them dying anyway--) I will admit that the game has it's fair share of flaws, and I will also admit that most of them are my fault. I made most of the battles, designed almost all dungeons(except for the tower, which you did say was your favorite dungeon anyway). I feel like the one who deserves those 2 stars is Piano while I just deserve the 0.5 star ^^;

Thanks again for the review!
(It is a fun game to break to pieces, however~ >:D )
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
goddamit libby
Aww, be kind on you. It was done under heavy restrictions. And the fact you did so much makes it hard to polish it all up, or to put it all into perspective.
As I said, a few different mechanics, dialogue or something else would already have been able to up the enjoyment and pace by quite a lot. So it's not too far a shot.

Besides, tea. I love tea.

Oops! I forgot to add the most important screen of all taking the draft over.. give me a second.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Thank you so much!

Frogge and I working on improving this game and a goodly portion of your critique will definitely help.

So let's see: Frogge designed the volcano and the Sky Palace, and I designed the forest and the tower, though I will confess that I designed the forest with the thought of echoing the volcano in order to maintain the appearance of the game.

Just thinking about revisiting the first half of the Sky Palace makes me itch, though. That map glitched the fuck out when I was working on it. I had to leave it out of the first version of the game. Seriously, I beamed a copy of that map to Liberty and we were both like "What the actual fuck". The system was confusing star, circle, and X passability and switching them at random. I think I spent about two days trying to get it to work before I gave up and skipped straight to the palace interior. We weren't supposed to mess with the other player's maps, but this was unavoidable.

That switch puzzle was my first ever working switch puzzle, btw. I'm going to make the clue something the merchant says when asked. Also, failing to put the seed items in the sales menu for her was honestly an oversight. I was considering fixing the item balance so that you got fewer potions and more of other stuff, but then I saw Liberty's stream and decided to leave it as is. She didn't use a single potion and ended up selling them all.

As for battles, yeah, I'm not very good at designing enemies. I probably set up the fights for about half of them, though I am very pleased with my design for Lady Avril. It must be the seer stones that aid her. They don't even attack, they just lock your attack and magic abilities. I can't figure out where I went right with that fight but she ended up being my exemplar idea for what a main level boss should be. And I still wish I could have thought up more unique attacks for her. I also wish I could have done so well for the final boss.

Finally, I couldn't be more pleased with your critique of my writing. I've never really enjoyed writing humor, am not good at writing unique jokes, and am usually much better at dead pan humor.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
I like dat screenshot, that's a niiiice screenshot
(edit: the floating one, that is)

Great review!
I see. Ohh. Well, that makes the sky palace even more of an annoyance.

Yeah, the switch puzzle was a little bit of a unique approach to things. The clock and counter-clockwise made me think of going through the whole switches in a circle, as they are, well, placed in one, so it was a little bit confusing to me.
But then I also really suck at puzzles, so take this with a grain of salt.

I liked the boss fight, is neat having to switch between attack modes.
And while the enemies were fairly easy, I think it's alright that they are like that. They had their unique abilities and stood out as belonging in their place, but I was glad when I could avoid most of them. It's a game that isn't living on the battles by themselves, and that's okay in my book.
I agree the last boss was a little bit of a "meh", but it was a good closure, and I'm sure one was needed under the timeframe.

Haha, yes, it really struck me as an odd combination. It didn't feel as natural sometimes, but it did have neat lines. Continuing the running gag was a good choice imho. I particularily liked the flaming sword description though, touches like these are just lovely.

Glad you can take something from the review! You are very welcome :)
Honestly redesigning the sky palace completely might be a good idea, especially with how it freaked out so badly. And it did freak out. It was crazy. >.<;
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
No one question the fact that you could have just used the airship to get to the top of the tower yet good
Honestly, I thought the best battle in the game was the final boss. While he wasn't particularly strong, I still had a lot of fun WRECKING HIM TO DA GROUND. I think what we could do to make him better would be to make it so that the difficulty increases depending on what level you are. So if you already reached the max level, he would also be stronger to avoid the player killing him too easily. Not too sure about the idea though.

Also, I did like piano's humor better. My humor was mainly just stupid gag humor while piano took the humor to a more serious and well timed style.

And yeah liberty, we so should.
>.>
<.<
You should name the girl Kyaaaah~

for the sake of hilarity

:DDD
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Oh, gawd...

"Kyaah!!"

The valley girl accent was actually a really good fit for her character, too.

Edit: By the way, you're not actually chasing Kaffe. You're just sort of running into him.
I already saw her named Kyaah!! and while it was hilarious, it would've been straight copying. And I thought Damsel just suited it better with how I named my idiot : D

And yes, I realize you are mostly just running into him. You DO try to run into him as often as possible though.
Linkis
Don't hate me cause I'm Cute :)
1025
Not being able to enter places that appear on a map....and
buildings with doors that simply say locked are my two pet peeves :(
How can you steal things from pots, barrels and closets ifin' ya' cain't
even get in the damn house?

But, I did enjoy the game anyway :)
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