August and the Abyss

August and the Abyss is a surprisingly valuable outcome of last year’s two-week Swap in the Middle With You contest. By that I don’t just mean that it’s a reasonably good game given the circumstances of its creation, but also that offers some important guidance to the starting developers of RMN, both implicitly, through the encounter design of its first half, and explicitly, through the nature of the second, crazier (heh) half.

Storyline

The game seems to begin with a flash-forward, as a large party of 6 heroes arrives in the ritual chamber of the demonic villain Zaubaal. We can see that he’s collected the protective Crystals, and is about to start breaking them, as part of his quest to awaken the demonic Goddess. So far, so generic, but the banter which retells these and other details to us is reasonably well-written, quickly conveying a lot of history was shared between our 6 characters, through hinting at various events in their recent past. Zaubaal, too, is not bad, getting a few decent lines and considering himself so powerful he initially dismisses them all outright, though he reconsiders it pretty quickly. However, before the battle may start in earnest, we flash back to the beginning, thus sparing us (and the developer) from needing to figure out how a six-character party would fight through an engine supporting a maximum of four (though it could be done in a way reminiscent of Guild Raider!’s final battle, I guess.)



Anyway, the actual beginning of the tale has us start as the blue-haired Elena, who arrives in the town of Rose Elm, which is tiny and doesn’t even have any shops, let alone interesting NPCs, but nevertheless houses those protective crystals, even though there’s a deep dungeon full of monsters and known as the Abyss nearby. That place is, of course, where our protagonist is going, initially turned away by the entrance’s guard since the local temple had wisely implemented a permit system. A rather quick chat to the priest quickly sees it granted though, as he detects the passion in her heart (or whatever it was), and she also gets accompanied by Ian, the younger acolyte of the Way, who is more of a typical “healing and light magic” warrior priest. This team only goes down two floors out of the 87 it supposedly had, though, as they first encounter a knight who suddenly recognizes Elena as his Queen, who has apparently lost all memory of that as a result of some curse, and they’re then ambushed by a demon appearing out of nowhere (but who is not all that hard to kill.)

At that point, the game’s second half begins. Honestly, it was all going pretty decently at the time, and though there were certainly more than a few clichés and other flaws, I was nevertheless interested in what might’ve happened next. Craze, however, had looked at the ambitions the storyline displayed, realized how much effort it would take to not make everything else look ridiculously rushed (and still pretty generic by the JRPG standards), and so he decided to live up to his username with a wholly different kind of a plot twist:



Yes, at this point, it’s revealed that August and the Abyss is actually a game this kid had created and now uploaded to RMN. We get to explore around his room and interact with various revealing details (like the graph paper map of the Abyss, from which I got the 87 levels number, or the zipper-covered scrawl of the main character’s custom bust), before the game is reviewed over at RMN (somewhat unrealistically quickly) and denied (also unrealistically, since I’ve played plenty of games much worse then its first half on this website.) After that, though, Liberty and Craze materialize next to him, and then he, and by extension, the player, are taken through this kind of meta mapping tutorial.





Step 2 and Step 4 pictured, respectively. Notice the before-and-after.

Once it’s done, there’s an additional section, where the “creator” gets to talk to his own characters, and then the weirdly dark ending, which I suppose can be read as a comment on the inherent destructiveness of RMN drama, no matter how good are the intentions of participants involved. Still, it's more then a little sudden and sad.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)



MV RTP for pretty much everything, obviously. There are no battle backgrounds: the enemies from random encounters just materialize in the center of the screen as you explore, which certainly doesn’t look good, but fits with the twist, I suppose. Similarly, the mapping of the first half is not too good either, as Rose Elm is pretty simplistic, and the two levels of the Abyss are practically featureless stone, although they do make for pretty good mazes (a virtue when games like DUST can just opt for long, barely connected corridors.) After the interactive tutorial explains what a proper map should look like, Craze then decides to take the piss by having us traverse an ice maze that’s supposed to be an incomplete Abyss level, and certainly feels like it, being nearly as featureless and even larger & more convoluted.

Gameplay



This guy appears only if you interact with a weird snowman doing who-knows-what in summertime. Said snowman doesn't disappear, so you can probably trigger it indefinitely. Not sure if this was an actual mistake by Subzero_Dragon, or if Craze added it to foreshadow the twist.

The actual combat you engage in those two Abyss levels is actually reasonably fun, though, especially when compared to the games I’ve played recently. It’s also challenging enough over time to make the shopkeeper nun near the entrance indispensable: I largely ignored her at first, used to rmk games not being very challenging, and had to trudge back having made it pretty far into the level, characters drained and still assaulted by many random encounters. So, don’t be like me and buy a good amount of Magic Waters quickly, since the priest can heal pretty efficiently and you certainly won’t be needing the money later. Now, the system itself is close to a true ATB, as everyone has constantly filling up action gauges, but the time still stops when it’s time for one of your characters to attack. They start off with a skill each (a weak lightning bolt and a heal, plus a “teleport to town” I never needed, and which might not even work), but quickly gain more as they level up. The array of the MV enemies generally has a skill each, too, like the Snakes’ Tail Swipes, which can interrupt the action gauge and force it to restart.

Most important factor, though, is the decision to create a notable wide range of random encounters, which are diversified further by adding levels to the enemies. Thus, even if two identical enemies turn up, they’re still likely to possess different levels, and a decision as simple as prioritising a Lvl.1 Tarantula over Lvl.2 one, still adds that little bit of agency to the fight. Then, an encounter with a Gem Rat and a Slime ended up being quite memorable. I fought them separately earlier, where Slimes caused a lot of trouble through applying DOT Burn, while the Rat just escaped. I thought the same story would reappear this time. Instead, the rat turned out to be a true damage dealer, while the Slime was too low-level to apply Burn properly, and there was a ton of needless damage taken. Luckily, Ian got the Shine skill soon after, which, besides being a lot more effective on certain enemies, can immediately cause the Rat to flee if it gets blinded by it (pretty much the only thing that Blind seems to be good for, though). The first and only boss battle against a “Lesser Demon”/Imp seems to randomly give you either a Lvl.1 or Lvl. 2. However, since you fight it with three characters, it’s not very difficult to defeat regardless.

Conclusion

While August and the Abyss is certainly not as fun as Space Attorney, and nowhere near as affectionately written as Leo and Cat, it nevertheless adds up to something that deserves recognition, especially among the newbie developers.