Crystal of Abyssal Dreams

Crystal of Abyssal Dreams’ demo is subtitled Dreamland Battles, which is not bad, I guess. It’s certainly better than its download folder name of Project1. Seriously, RMN developers, do not do this, especially since there’s now already a game on RMN that actually IS called Project1. I think have something like 5 downloaded files from RMN that all have a word “Project” in them, which obviously gets confusing, and doesn't help your particular game stand out. Of course, it's not like the game itself stands out all that much either.

Storyline



The writing in the game is more than a little uneven. While its characters deliver decent, occasionally even inspired, lines, they exist a world loosely defined to the point of being perfectly generic, and are driven by a main plot that’s functional, but similarly indistinct. As such, things start off in a generic RTP town in the “real world”, where we are quickly shown the routine of the main character’s life. Way too quickly, in fact: playing as Allen, you just go from your house to Mary’s, the resident emotionless girl, then are teleported to the Academy after the lessons ended, witness some mildly amusing complaints from him about studying, and then are teleported to your workplace (a lumber mill) right as the shift has ended. Having promised to bring some firewood to Mary earlier in the day, you attempt to do so, but find her unconscious and next to a mysterious artifact that throws you both into Dreamland.

I suppose it’s notable that this opening fails to include some basic character information already provided on the game page. That we can only guess somewhat at their ages is probably not critical, unlike the game telling us nothing of their families. We can learn that Allen has a mother from the environmental description at his house, but that’s about it. That his parents are away, or that hers died, is not referred to, even though the latter would explain her demeanor to a decent degree for a normal person. That they’ve most likely died in the Dreamscape Accident is even more revealing; you can find four graves of the scientists involved, but they’re otherwise unmarked, and Allen doesn’t comment whether or not her parents were also casualties. The one good thing about this real-world section, though, are the short conversations at the pub. There are darkly humorous lines like “I started drinking to drown my sorrows, but it’s useless! They learned how to swim!”, and decent reflections on the nature of stardom surrounding Cheryl, the bar’s main attraction and the partner of its owner, who also seems to be Allen’s employer.

Once in the Dreamland, they’re greeted by a man called Pierce, who first tries sending them back, but settles for delivering exposition once that proves fruitless. There’s a nice sort of gameplay-story integration, as the titular Crystal of Dreams lets people draw on these dreams to get power in combat, which are in turn strengthened as they fight up. As such, leveling-up is literally part of the game’s lore, and so is the choice of character class once fighting has been sufficiently etched into your mind to let you move on from the default Rookie class. There’s even an amusing side quest where a family asks you to find their missing 13-year old daughter, who disappeared after she decided to travel the world fighting to get stronger. Thus, you two are quickly advised to get experience fighting at the Arena, which is where the demo ended for me, after the game bugged out at the first Arena battle:



Other than that detail though, the Dreamland is equally indistinct. There are currently 5 locations available in it: the Arena, the starting, single-screen Transitory Town, a larger farmers’ village Penoit, a reasonably sized Eselier city, and a Guard Tower that’s literally two 100% empty floors and a mysterious mirror at the top. These places don’t really have any interesting history to them, and neither does the world at large. The antagonists of the game, and the reason why you need to level up in the first place, are the Kingdom (somehow often referred to as just “the government”), whose experiment with the Relic of Time (abbreviated as ROT, thus nicely letting you know from the start it’s screwing the whole place over and needs to be destroyed by the end of the game) sent you two into this world in the first place, and now they are trying to cover it up by killing you. That aside, you know nothing about them. If it’s really a Kingdom, then who is the monarch, how is their dynasty called and what is the line of succession? Even if this is a more “normal” government, knowing things like where the capital is and how long ago their rule over the whole world has been established would be nice.

Of course, that would normally be accomplished through either the NPC dialogues or the various books and other written lore. The former don’t feel like commenting on much beyond their immediate situation, which is understandable in a stable world. The latter would require the game to get much better at the environmental description then it is now. Right now, it’s inconsistent at best: in Allen’s house for instance, an object often used for introspective notes (a mirror) gives you nothing, and same goes for windows, a wardrobe, sinks, etc. Yet, a box to the upper-left is unique from the other three boxes in the house, and tells you it has “Books left behind by parents” in it, even though an actual small bookshelf has nothing written about its contents, while a red journal is just that, with no clue as to its entries. Don’t get me wrong, some of the already present description is nice, like the one about the medicinal plant on the floor, but when the objects players are most likely to check out at the start have nothing on them, the player may soon conclude there’s no point in checking anything else. Thus, when they get to Mary’s house, which has even less description overall, they might well miss the books on her shelves, or a nice still of a puppet, available from interacting with a relatively unnotable box of crafts supplies. Even the graveyard uses “Someone’s grave” for all the non-Dreamscape headstones, in what I hope is a placeholder. Once you get to the Dreamscape, what little description there was largely disappears, although there are nice exceptions like this still in the Eselier port.



Still, what the game does do well enough is the character writing in the existing plot scenes. Allen doesn’t really say much out of the ordinary, but you often get to see his internal monologue on the situation, which does what it’s supposed to and reveals the details we would’ve forgotten about otherwise. For instance, as you are about to be teleported into the Dreamland, he notices that while the artifact glows brightly, it doesn’t hurt to look at all. Before you get the first battle (against a monster Kingdom sent after you), the game builds up anticipation for it pretty well through an extended, slow-motion cutscene detailing his confusion. (Though it then shows a shorter cutscene of your characters killing the monster after you just won the battle, which doesn’t really help anything.) Most often, though, his thoughts go in tandem with lines from Mary, as he continually guesses at the nature of her condition, which works better then might be expected. You can tells she knows something is wrong with herself (you can even find a “How to make friends” book at her house), but can’t help it much, like when her smiles are clearly forced and awkward and just make everyone laugh. The best moment was when she hugs Allen immediately after she recovers from unconsciousness in the Dreamland, only to say she was checking him for injuries. You’re left unsure whether this was true, or if this was a post facto rationalization. I would certainly like to see more of this dynamic in future versions.

Typos:

Gameplay



The game starts with this options menu, which doesn’t really contain anything noteworthy. True, the auto-dash is turned on at the start, and I unchecked that. However, it wasn’t a good idea, since the dash is equivalent to standard VX Ace walking speed, while the realistic walking speed is as slow as you would expect it to be. I think the on-map movement might’ve sped up once you got to Dreamland, but I’m not too sure. I also think toning down red might be a worthwhile option, so that the dawn/dusk effects, which regularly flood the screen in red, wouldn’t clash so much. Speaking of which, yes, there’s a genuine day-night cycle. Shops and other places close for the night and don’t open until later in the morning, kids are first at school, and then they instantly disappear from it to materialise home, inn patrons are in their beds at night and come downstairs during the day. It’s especially cute in Penoit, as you’ll get to see all the farm animals appear in place practically at dawn, before anyone else.

The cycle doesn’t seem to affect the combat much now, though, beyond being potentially responsible for the appearance of a rare random encounter at night. Either way, though, the combat system urgently needs improvement on its own, as while playable, it is far too basic to be of much interest. Neither you, nor the enemy possess any abilities during the first battle of the game, and so what should’ve been dramatic is dull and tension-free instead, as you only need to spacebarmash in order to win the fight. The abilities you do get after the next battle, Slash X and Slash, are merely stronger attacks with nothing else interesting about them; no debuffs applied, no elemental exploits, nothing like it. Though, actually, there’s something interesting about Mary’s Slash: the way it costs whole 20 MP to use (Allen’s Slash X is 7) while not being any better damage-wise than her normal attack, and seemingly missing MORE often. It’s not the only skill like this, though: Rats (normal, white, laboratory-grade kind) can perform Bodyslam (!) that is also seemingly no better then their regular attack, and deals the same pathetic 4-6 damage to your 80-100.

Yet, while those Rats are believably weak, they’re also strangely resilient: it usually takes 4 blows to kill one, when your duo always encounters them in packs of five, meaning it takes an average of 20 attacks over 10 turns to kill them all while they slowly whittle your health down (or outright fail to do so once you buy leather armor), in some truly tedious encounters. It’s even stranger when Slimes, whom you would normally expect to be a little stronger, die in 1-2 attacks, and are encountered in groups of 3. These are the only two random encounters you ever get while travelling on the world map. The one exception was the encounter with 2 Sahagin at night: these ones easily dish out ~400 damage (~90% of your health), while you’ll deal NULL to them in return. Some middle ground between the two might’ve been nice, to say the least. Really, this is called Dreamland, so why is it all so dull? Even if we are to stick with these basic battlers, then why can’t rats and Slimes be separated into roles? Why can’t there be rat pack leaders who inspire others? Where are the diseased rats inflicting various ailments? Given how much you outclass your enemies defensively, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let Slimes degrade your armour during battle, alongside general balancing?



In regards to armour, the shops in the game offer a fair range of stuff, though nothing beyond the leather gear is needed so far. There are also no unique shop inventory items as far as I can see. Penoit does have a shop selling food for various buffs and atmospheric things, as seen in the image above, but it’s certainly not necessary right now. The drops are only notable because their quote is clearly broken or unfinished right now, always displaying “What’s this? </drop quotes>”. The game should have more victory quotes in general as well, as it seemingly only has 1 or 2 per character right now. I’ve seen Mary’s “So is this the joy of victory? I like it!” around a dozen times by now.

Lastly, improving the world map wouldn’t be a bad idea either. As it is, there are only the five locations I mentioned above, and two more settlements on the other side of bridges, which haven’t yet been implemented (walking into them does nothing.) I would obviously suggest blocking off the bridges to settlements with Kingdom patrols, or something, until they get completed, but moreover, the game needs other, non-town locations. They don’t even need to be large for now (after all, the game does promise several other continents); they just need to exist, look nice, and offer some unique content, so that this particular continent feels less like a mere starting point on the road to grindom. A coast with a small shipwreck here, a river crossing in the forest with something unusual there, and a mountain overpass with ruins or something over there would all add much more to the game’s charm. Of course, that also requires them to look well.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)

The game almost entirely uses RTP resources, with some exceptions like the occasional stills, or the animated rat battlers. It has an actual mirrored surface in the Dreamland safehouse, though the RTP mirrors weren’t given the same code and are still as matte as ever. Then, the game actually does use the footstep sounds when you’re moving on wooden floors, or through the grass, which are tuned down so as not to interfere with the background music, but are perceptible nonetheless, so well done on that! Unfortunately, the mapping as a whole is not good. Right now, it’s often too symmetrical to appear plausible, and often has some weird loose ends that don’t lead to anywhere. Some illustrations below:



Conclusion

Right now, Crystal of Abyssal Dreams is more like a mostly solid, largely bare foundation that can either stay largely unnotable as it progresses towards conclusion, or eventually evolve into something much more interesting.