The Inn

The Inn is a simple little game with a self explanatory title. It begins with a female adventurer who stumbles across an inn that is not the peaceful rest stop it seems to be at first glance.

The story is where this game should shine. It is simple, and revolves around the concept of greed and the issues caused by playing with fire, or magic to be more accurate. While it is not an original concept "people play with magic and cause a horrible fate to those around them due to their foolish desire to bend the world to their desires" it is a basic fantasy theme that has, and will continued to be used in games that can either do it properly or completely fail with it. The Inn is too short to accurately tell if the developer would have been able to use this common setting well, but for what it is: a game that can be beaten in roughly 10 minutes, the game remains consistent and does not try anything absurd to ruin the concept.

So the story, one more, epitomizes the common fantasy idea that "playing with magic is not good." As it is done well, this can be overlooked. What is disappointing is the fact that it felt so empty. The game begins immediately with me off on the side of the screen without any transition into game-play, I just hit start then exist. The maker did note that this was a first but I believe if a starting animation is too difficult, some opening text would have been nice at the very least. Moving on, upon entering the inn, the main location, I interact with everyone, they all have a line or two to say, and that is it. When doing something that lacks immersive combat, unique characters, or vast locations to explore, it is important to place a lot of focus and detail into the story. The concept was basic, but the surrounding circumstances should have been explained more (if a people can make captivating poems ins 6 or more lines, it is possible for a 10 minute game to do it as well). So without more dialogue, or any text to read (perfect place to do this would have been to simply put text in the book on the bed to help the player understand the situation). So the story is solid but lacking (though lacking content also means lacking mistakes) *Dialogue was all fine and basic, and the only thing that bothered me was "you all humans" should have been "all you humans" but I noted no grammatical errors, so I do appreciate that this game is not flawed in any way, especially knowing it is a first attempt.

The audio of a game, regardless of genre, is always important. If the game is longer, it is nice to have a vast selection of music and ambient noises to be played throughout the duration of the game. Though this game is too short for that, audio is still important. The music is basic, nothing special but does the job. As the game is too short for diversity, this is not too important. What should be noted, is that there is no distinct level of ambiance in the game. I do not want to spoil the game, so I will just point out that if you are trying a different color scheme in a different area, chances are you could do with some ambient noises to help set the mood for the player.

Along with the story, characters are incredibly important in games such as these. With little to focus on, simply allowing individual side characters to have their own tales and ideas can go a long way in keeping the player entertained. This is not something that requires flashbacks or anything fancy, though that would be nice. This could have easily been rectified by simply adding more dialogue to the other characters. The characters all had distinct personalities, so I believe this could really have boosted the player's enjoyment of the game.
The combat is basic as well, as there is not much of it, this is hardly worth noting. It is disappointing that one spell is the obvious choice to spam, then just heal when needed. To counter this problem, game makers usually just add enemy types that calls for the diverse use of attacks. Some games offer unique ideas like cancelling enemy turns and spell casting times, but for simplistic RPGs, simply adding enemy affinities would be the simple solution.

The visuals are simple, not reinventing the wheel here. Some more detail could have gone into this, but for something this short, I don't honestly believe visuals would have played a heavy role. *I usually have sub-categories in visuals (Design/Graphics) but it is an RPG Maker game so I assume most can already guess what the graphics are like (or just look at screenshots).

The Inn is a game that is nothing new in the world of fantasy games, but it is another that does it without being riddled by mistakes. The game could use more dialogue and text to further one's comprehension of the story, more sounds and better music to strengthen atmosphere, and more detail in the visual design of the maps. That being said, the game is free from any notable flaws or anything else that would hinder one's enjoyment of the short game. For what it is, the game definitely shows the maker cares about it enough to proofread and play the game themselves. If the maker of the game creates another game in the future, it should be longer and have more details in it, but as shown by the solidity of The Inn, it is safe to say the maker puts enough attention into their work that the game could potentially be a good experience.