Name: A Drop of Life

Developer: AtlasAtrium

Story: For the RMN B'DAY Retromania event. You are a trio of cadets studying under Lia. You wake up to discover that while you slept, a plague has struck, most of the knights are bedridden, and Lia is dead. You, as her most promising cadets, are chosen to go to the Spring of Life to bring back a cure.

Writing: The writing is pretty good for a game made in ten days. What can I say about it? I love the fact that the veteran adventurer is named Vette. The dev even managed multiple endings in the very short time he did this game. I'll admit, I'm getting a little fed up with the hard morality choices at the end of indie games. It's like they have something against happy endings, and it's really starting to grate on my nerves. I don't mind this every once in awhile, but when it's every freaking game I play, it gets annoying. This "There are no good solutions" fashion is getting a bit cliche.



Gameplay: Gameplay is in a combinations of the styles of classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. Battle takes place in a framed window, with your party in one frame, and the enemies in another. Town maps are contained on a single map, serving for both interior and exterior. Battles are balanced on the easy side, with the exception of the final battle, which is still relatively easy if you focus on keeping your stats up.

Graphics: Graphics are like a silhouette version of Ultima, almost as if he wanted to do an ASCII style, but couldn't figure out how to go that low tech. It actually feels kind of odd. The controls feel like a modern RPG Maker style while the graphics look old. It's actually a bit of a jarring juxtaposition of styles. It looks 80s, but it plays like it's modern. The sprite animations almost have a Flash game feel to them, and disabling dash and setting a specific speed certainly could have helped the feel. The game looks retro, and very nicely so, but the overall feel is modern. It's actually a really neat style, and I'd like to see more games in this style.



Music: The eight bit retro is absolutely perfect, and I have no idea where it comes from. The music really does feel old style Final Fantasy. Overall, this is all very nicely done.

Conclusion: I very much recommend this game. It's a short experience, but overall a fun experience, that's dampened a bit (actually, completely dampened) by a depressing morality choice at the end. See what I mean about this tropey morality choices? You've had a fun experience playing a fun game, and then there's a trainwreck of depression at the end that makes you feel bad about enjoying the game. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised about it considering the game opens with the death of a mentor character right out of the gate.