August and the Abyss

Intro

"August and the Abyss" is another short game developed by Subzero_Dragon and Craze for the {u]Swap in the Middle with You event held back in early 2016. An event where one developer would work on a project for two weeks before handing it over to someone else to work on it for another two weeks in order to finish it. In the case of this project it was begun by Subzero_Dragon and finished by Craze which makes sense I suppose since it was the other way around with "Creaking". Though at least this game was intended to be enjoyable unlike that game.

Story
Summary

The game kicks off with a pretty generic RPG story involving someone trying to summon a demonic goddess by destroying elementally themed magic crystals.



The party of course is quick to challenge this dude for shattering them in their presence to a fight, but before that can begin we get distracted by everyone admonishing one of the party members for swearing like a sailor giving the boss time to shatter a second crystal. He then decides to challenge us himself, but before the fight can begin we flashback to the start of the game with Elena arriving in the game's main town.



A town she's arrived in order to explore the massive dungeon nearby. Though why this town is so small when it's right next to one of the most important places on the planet is beyond me, but any rate after learning we need a permit in order to enter "The Abyss" we pay a visit to the church to do some paperwork and gain our first party member. A priest who follows the teachings of "THE WAY". I suppose I should just look on the bright side that the faceset for the priest comes from the RTP and isn't a rip of Ugandan Knuckles. At any rate after gaining our first party member we can begin exploring "The Abyss" and eventually stumble across another party member a few maps in who believes Elena is his queen. She simply doesn't remember anything do to a curse. After all, you can't be a proper RPG unless you include RPG cliché number one.

And it's at this point that Craze takes over and twists this generic RPG on it's head by having us arrive in the developer's room whose just submitted the project we've been playing to RMN. A submission that is given the boot for being utter shit.



A rejection that seems rather forced since I've played far worse generic junk on this site involving crystals than the content found in the first half of this game. At any rate at this point the game turns into a bit of a mapping tutorial and commentary on the community as a whole that leads to everyone dying pointlessly. Oh well, at least we got a decent guide on making maps and an attempt at parodying a classic coffee commercial.



Though I'll admit this parody isn't as good as the one done by redlettermedia in his review for "Avatar". After all, that one also doubles as a reference to experiments done by the CIA. Though I really don't want to spend a lot of time talking about that one considering how absolutely $#%##$ up it is. If your curious spend some time reading about Project MKUltra.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

This game either lives or dies on it's comedy. If you find the meta jokes in this game boring or overplayed than your going to hate this game. After all, it doesn't have anything else to really back on because a lot of it other elements are rather bad. After all, the first half of this project was rejected for being awful.



Gameplay

On the gameplay front the game utilizes an active-time battle system that has been sent to passive mode. Albeit it does take a moment for skills and basic attacks to activate upon selecting them. As for the overall difficulty. This game can be pretty brutal in my opinion with enemies quickly appearing in groups of two or three. Which is a lot for a party of two characters to handle. Especially when one of them is a healer by trade. So it's probably a good idea to buy some supplies from the nun before you venture into the depths of the maze like dungeon. Of course, you can get around this issue by running from fights that contain too many enemies. After all, you only need to get through two rooms in order to reach the game's one and only boss fight against a lesser demon. A fight that really isn't a challenge considering you gain access to your third character for that battle and he has access to a pretty powerful ice skill.

As for the second half of the game. At that point the game shifts over to be a walking simulator I suppose where you can interact with a few characters in order to get more advice about mapping.

Graphics & Sound

As far as I can tell this project relies entirely on the RTP for RPG Maker MV for these aspects. And as far as I can tell it's used competently. Obviously some of the stuff is a bit bad on purpose as part of the commentary on the first half of the game as well as part of the tutorial on maps with the first part of the map tutorial being designed to make people's eyes bleed just by looking at it.

Conclusion

"August and the Abyss" is an alright game as far as meta commentary is concerned, but some of the jokes are a bit played out in my opinion. I suppose that was a bit less the case when this game was first released. And the jokes that have nothing to do with meta commentary have been used better in other projects in my opinion, but considering this is an event game I'm willing to cut it some slack.