The Curse of Sarah Black

Title: Skies of Galaraya

Developers: Hazelsoft, AceOfAces, and Rose_Guardian

Made for: McBacon Jam 4

Story: Something, something, magic girl, and blurry dragon. A girl named Kamiko has the Star Crystal which gives her mysterious power...that you're not going to see in this demo. She's been dating Jade, who is so obviously the bad guy, all that's missing is the mustache twirling. She's friends with Skye Blade and Alexxion, who are apparently the heroes of the story.



Writing: I have read Rose_Guardian's writing. It's true, she's an inexperienced writer who's skill needs to develop, but she's not a bad writer. What she writes is fun and interesting. This is not written by Rose_Guardian, no way, not a snowball's chance in Hell. :::reads credits--Written by Rose_Guardian:::

Okay, I'm going to pause this to ask a question:DID YOU PEOPLE WAKE UP ONE DAY DURING THE LAST WEEK OF THE JAM AND SAY, "OH, SHIT!!! WE FORGOT TO MAKE A GAME!"? Because that's what this looks like.



The writing sounds like English was not the native language of the writer. There are typoes everywhere. The English is broken in places. The story is all over the place. The story doesn't take its time. It doesn't allow the mystery to build up. The demo tries to tell too much story in three minutes. It doesn't give you a chance to form an emotional attachment with the characters. It doesn't try to form an emotional attachment with the characters. All signs point to this script being written in a panic. It's particularly disappointing because I personally know and have seen that the writer can do much better than this.

Pacing is also an issue, but that's a bit more involved with gameplay so I'll address it there.

Gameplay: A demo is supposed to introduce you to all of the basic elements of a game and is supposed to generate interest. What this demo introduces you to is a standard type of JRPG combat engine, which can be good if done well, and disjointed pacing, which is not good. The combat: there is only a single battle, so there is simply not enough to judge. With only one battle, it is impossible to judge character growth, impossible to judge ability growth, and impossible to gauge the standard that combat will be following. The one battle here was relatively straight forward, so you if you force me to judge combat based on one battle, I have no choice but to assume that this is going to be a run-of-the-mill button masher.

Pacing is the big problem with the game, though. It's nice that the game is in a hurry to get you to the gameplay, but it would also be nice if it didn't do so at the expense of the story, or it would be even nicer if gameplay other than combat is established. The demo takes place in a festival. There should be more to do than just collect party members. Kamiko wants to go see the paintings and then they don't even talk about them. Festivals are a wealth of mini-game possibilities. Exploit them!

You take a few steps to the left, and suddenly it's night. There is no transition. The sun is apparently set to a light switch in this world. What was wrong with setting a parallel process that gradually transitioned from day to night over the course of a couple of minutes? It would have only taken about half an hour. Set to two minutes. There's a limit to how high your wait time can go. It would have needed 20 or so screen tint commands with the tinting gradually reducing to night for each one. Meanwhile, your characters can be talking and doing stuff while that parallel process whiles away to zero. You can set it to start when you talk to the painting guy and have your characters, I don't know, DO THINGS in the meantime.

Graphics:Rose_Guardian's artwork is, as usual, very nicely done, although I will point out that there is a lack of symmetry between Alexxion's arms. Of course, the rest of the game has the appearance of RTP or Mack. These assets can be used very nicely, but as you have already seen in the above screen shot, and will again in the below shot, the mapping is atrocious.



I would strongly recommend editing some floor tiles to at least match the corners of the cliffs and editing the cliff corners so that they're not so obviously trying to connect to a ground.

Then there is the battle. Tell me something: what is this?



The dragon is blurry, and since you can't see in the screen shot, I will tell you that he also sways back and forth like he's drunk. He's a drunken, blurry dragon. This is a sure sign that whoever made this just enlarged the battler without doing anything else to it and just called it a day. Didn't bother clearing it up or making it sharper. Maybe I'm misinterpreting this. Maybe they're trying to make the players think that they're drunk.

Music: The game starts off with a highly pretentious piece with a very digital singing "ahh" voice. It starts nice enough but quickly becomes obnoxiously loud and screechy. I recommend lowering the song volume to 80% on all music. The town festival music is nice enough, but the battle track, which is the third track you hear, doesn't even wait to be obnoxious. It makes your ears bleed coming out the gate. I had to stop myself from throwing my headphones when the battle music came on.

Conclusion: There's potential, but there needs to be a lot of work done here. Everything about this demo is a rushed mess. Seriously, this is the kind of game that could have been made in a day. As it stands right now, the only thing that isn't wrong with it is the fact that there are no game breaking glitches. Right now, I'd score it a 1.5 stars. There's a lot to work with in what little you've presented. There's no reason this can't become a 4.5 star or 5 star game.