Mom

Mom is a spooky little game made in RMMV. It starts out with a cute, simplistic pixel style and suddenly morphs into a sketchy and dark style once the big bad shows himself and tries to possess your son.

As Mom, it’s your duty to protect your little boy - no matter the cost.



Off the bat, I noticed this game has a lot of spelling and grammar errors, potentially being made by someone whose first language is not English. Regardless, the story and characters still push through pretty strongly and you get the general jist of what’s being said. I would suggest that maybe getting someone to test and spellcheck would be a good idea, especially for parts of the game where dialogue is cut off by the end of the screen.



With regards to the nitty gritty of the project, gameplay is pretty straightforward: you have five minutes before midnight when the big evil is gonna show up and kick butt. You need to use this time exploring the house and finding as many relevant items as you can to fight off your enemies. Five minutes is ample time, and I found that even after midnight, you could still pick up items from around the house anyway so there wasn’t really any impending doom or need to rush.

So then the big bad shows his face and throws various little baddies your way in different rooms of the house. Once you defeat one, another appears somewhere and you have to seek them out to destroy them.

The fights are also pretty simple: pick the relevant item in your inventory to distract the demon, and then deliver the MOM FIST!!!! for an instant KO. This does, however, render the “attack” option pretty useless, but it didn’t get in the way too much.



The music and SFX both work pretty well together, delivering a creepy atmosphere and giving that all round feeling of “ooh monsters.” Some of the demon cries were particularly creepy, which I thought was a really nice touch.

In all, I really liked this game. It was short and sweet, delivered a powerful story with just the dialogue and monologues of Mom, and it got to the point pretty quickly. I would say that the gameplay could be polished up a bit, but I understand the time constraints didn’t necessarily allow for a lot of polish when you consider all the custom art in this game.



How to improve:
- Get a tester/spellchecker to fix up dialogue and inconsistencies.
- Vary the gameplay a bit. Maybe make the battles a little more challenging or fun, potentially with some kind of minigame or something a bit more than just using an item and then a skill.

Necessary themes: Twisted Memories, Mysterious Present
Necessary items: Demonic Posession, Cloves of Garlic, Eyeless Teddy Bear, Blood-stained Wedding Dress
Spook rating: ★★★★☆ Pretty spooky!
OVERALL RATING: ★★★☆☆