Planet Stuck The Return Of Corrin

Planet Stuck, is in fact, not Earthbound. It is a short-ish turn based RPG heavily inspired by the Mother series as the name indicates. I am under the belief that a young-un discovered RPG Maker and this is their first game, I have been granted the baton to review this one for the Review Kingdom event.





There is a lot to say. I am not normally the guy to give bad news, but Planet Stuck is just barely playable. Is there good in it? Definitely. I can point that out. But I also must point out what this game did wrong, and oh geez. There's a lot. As expected for what I presume the developer's first game dev attempt.

What did this game do good? While most of the art is hard on the eyes and the maps are presented in a not so pleasant way... I quite appreciate it's all custom made by the developer. The enemy designs have a lot of personality, despite being way too similar to stuff I have seen in the Mother series. All I can say is keep trying. Look at Mother 3 for mapping references. That game nails pixel art so well and there's only so much to learn from it. I also really like the text blips. It took me MANY years to figure out how to do that. Kudos to you!



(What a cute snowball!)

Speaking of Mother 3, let's talk about that. Earthbound and Mother 3 are my favorite RPGs of all time. Every single thing I do will be heavily inspired by those games. I have seen oceans of indie devs take inspiration from the series... In the wrong way.



(Now wait a second!)

I love the series not because of the trippy battle backgrounds, style of sprites/art, or the modern theme. I love the series because of the language Shigesato Itoi speaks to all the players. It's not the mood the game sets, it's not the story, and it's not the style. What speaks to me is how honest he is to himself as he crafted those wonderful worlds. The language of Itoi is to speak from one's heart with the utmost honesty. He did not hold back. What he had to say led me to grow as a human being.

Planet Stuck is just like how I made games when I started out way back when I was a mere 11 years old. I had the inspiration from tons of great games but I had a very limited grasp of what made those good. Planet Stuck is very similar. I see that the developer quite enjoyed Earthbound, Mother 3, and even Chrono Trigger. Yet their grasp of what is good about those games is still quite underdeveloped.

I do see potential. Tons of it. If the developer is willing to put the blood, sweat, and tears into becoming better at all of this... Then I suspect great things can happen. That's why I'm writing this in the first place. Part of me feels bad to be the one who has to point these flaws out, but there is also tons of passion in this project. It is tons better than my first RPG attempts. While that is not saying much, it also shows that if one wants to improve, they can. Do not be disheartened about what I have/will say in this review. I only mean for you to improve, not to put you down.

The game starts off in a very similar way that Mother 1 started off. There's a certain point where inspiration becomes a ripoff. That is Planet Stuck in a nut shell. You fight a possessed Teddy bear. Then as you walk outside the forest is on fire, playing the song Mother 3 played when the forest was on fire. I was literally like: 'whoa, slow down now.'



The battle system is presented like Mother 3, which I found really neat. I admit, I do not have a clue how to do that myself. Yet, the actual battling in this game is the most unstable system I have ever seen in RPG Maker. Super random. Your HP is way too low. Impossible to heal for a little bit and enemies can kill you in two shots. The EXP curve is all out of wack to the point that most enemy encounters are absolutely worthless since you'll never gain a level. (you sometimes find levels in treasure chests, which is actually funny)



Once you gain your way to the first boss fight, it instantly rips off two of the most impactful moments in storytelling for me. The last boss fights of Earthbound and Mother 3. Those two had a whole journey of build up to give weight to the concepts of the fight. Planet Stuck seemed like the developer was too eager to do something similar and ripped them off. The game also has tons of rip off moments similar. (The sunflower field scene from Mother 3 belongs in Mother 3 alone, for example.)

The story in this is very poorly written. I almost think the developer's first language must not be English as there are hundreds of typos and grammar errors in this. The story is surprisingly nothing like Earthbound or Mother 3 and I feel like that was more of a lack of understanding of what those were rather than the developer telling a unique story based off their own heart.

The dungeons often have random gimmicks within. In the desert, there are spazzy tornadoes that move super fast and instantly send you back to the start of the big map (where your walking speed is always slow in this game). Then there is the sledding sequence... It was so bad it was almost good. Like personally experiencing an Angry Video Game Nerd experience. Under water there was spazzy octopus thingies that would damage and make the player jump left upon touch... Which almost always resulted in being stuck forever without an option to even return to the title.



(You can say that again!)



(I guess I'm Planet Stuck now!)

Despite all of this, the game was enjoyable for some reason. Almost like an obsession to see what was next. Like watching an Angry Video Game Nerd episode game footage. I played about one and a half hours until I literally could not proceed anymore. I'm not sure if the developer forgot a switch or if it is just very obtuse. I feel like I do not have too much left and have enough to say to make this review. I think I will finish the game if I get a solution, but for now I think what I played was enough.

There is a lot of light within this early step in the path of a developer. The fact I deemed the game bad and still enjoyed it says something. Keep trying. Play a bunch of other RPG Maker games. Try your best to understand what makes games good and keep practicing. I don't want to rate this game, as it's quite inexperienced to the point it feels incomplete. Yet I would rather you make a new game than continue this, one that is with the voice of your own, not the muffled voice of the great games you love.

If this was not unrated, I would give it a 1 star. I do not particularly recommend this to anyone unless they want to help the developer improve. Keep trying! Improve. There is a long road ahead of you and I hope you stay on it and enjoy it. You don't need the voice of other games, you have your own. Try to find it.



(cat call)