Finding Chibae is an adorable RPG Maker MV game made by Chibae, originally for the IIAW competition over on RMC, in the RPG Maker VX Ace engine, but was eventually ported to MV. It's a game I've been meaning to review for a while, and the current review jam has encouraged me to go ahead and review it.

Story
While the story is short and sweet, I really enjoyed it. Rayner (who's basically baby Ralph) and his two cute kiddy friends, are the next generation of Heroes, but they're still kids. One dark and gloomy night, Rayner tells his friends about the scary, legendary Chibae, and reveals that he knows where to find her. So they, as any good young adventurers would do, embark on an adventure to find Chibae, as the title of the game suggests.
So these cute, adorable kids go into a deep dark scary cave to find Chibae, and it doesn't quite go to plan.

As a story concept, it's great and a really cute story! While it's not the most complex or original story, I loved it!

Art and Mapping
This game is pretty. While it uses a lot of RTP, it's still adorable. I also adore the attention to detail that has gone into this game, everything is perfectly detailed. The mapping is great, it doesn't particularly stand out as incredible or breathtaking, but it gives a great sense of exploration and creepyness, as you would expect from the enviroment. Most of the game takes place inside a cave, and the cave is mapped extrodinarily well, to the point where a place such as a cave, is made new and interesting around every corner.
The faces, for the kids, are probably the cutest thing I've seen in a while. They're adorable, and I love how they're kid versions of the RTP heroes. I love how Jeffrey's hat is too big for him, (speaking of which, how does he see??) and how it looks almost as if these children inherited their hero clothes from their older siblings or parents.

The attention to detail is also evident in the faces, when Rayner gets hurt, his face is changed to show that.
Everything from the sprites, to the battlers are adorable, and the style of the battlers are something I haven't mentioned. They're pixelly but quite cute, and I do like their style.
Here are some examples of the amazing atmospheric maps of Finding Chibae:

Though, while the maps are amazing, there are occasional issues, such as this one:

but on the whole, the mapping and art of Finding Chibae is absolutely phenomenal.

Music and Sound
While I'm really bad at judging this, I feel the music and sound was done well, and I don't see any majour flaws with it like giant sound glitches, so I'd say that's great.

Gameplay
I found the gameplay engaging and fun from start to finish. The puzzles on the map were fun, and battles too. While I found some battles really really difficult, it was incredibly fun and rewarding to finally beat them.
Though, there was a flaw in battles, because some skills had slightly bad descriptions, e.g:

There are some ways in which balancing is a bit off though, where elements are deadly important and you almost HAVE to buy certain weapons to advance, but even so I found the whole thing fun, especially bosses.


Conclusion
Finding Chibae is a great game, made for a competition in only a week and then ported to a completely different engine, and STILL it excells in every field, even if it does have minor faults here and there. I personally had a very enjoyable time with it, and I can't wait for a sequel!
SPOILERS:
It's also hillarious, from start to finish. For example:


So it is with great pleasure that I award Finding Chibae with a score of 4.5⋆ out of 5⋆, with a reccomendation to definately play this sometime soon!