MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

WORD. Also, W00T! Mage Duel made featured game today. Rock. Totally freakin' rad. The only thing that would make it better would be if someone would get around to posting a link to this on GW already. Anyway, time for me to dig into the comments like usual...

Asalieri, thanks for the feedbizzle. Some quick thoughts:

while I powered up with Force of Will, which practically doubled the effect of my Smite Undead... by the way, I found it to be a useful spell, but I'm pretty sure you didn't intend certain people to be able to be HIT with this spell...it is kind of
broken, in a way, But it's nice you threw the healer a bone!

Please tell me which non-evoker, non-undead enemies that Smite Undead was able to effect. It is very likely that this is a problem that I can and will fix. Likewise, your Holy Staff should not be doing a significant amount of damage to non-undead, non-evoker enemies.

Calm Mind was my favorite of the "status effect" healing skills. Problem is...
how do you unsilence yourself with a skill that has been silenced? The cure demands
that the disease never happen! It would be nice if this spell could ALSO be
cast as a preventative measure...

Aware of this... I thought I made it so you could use it when silenced. Did that not work for some reason?

One lovely thing you could add to the game would be a piece of equipment that protects from silence... I noticed your game made a conscious effort to OMIT that kind of protection. Oh yeah, all OTHER stat effects were covered by one trinket or another, but Silence? Basically you told us to go fuck ourselves and do as Burl suggests in his intro: "I don't care if it comes down to you beating each other with your staves and canes!".

Protection from (and enemies who use!) Silence and Curse doesn't show up until Act II. The reasons is that the Act II enemies have access to these equips also, meaning that if your strategy has revolved around throwing Curse or Seal Evil, you might need to rethink it when fighting enemies armed with the protective items.

If you'd like a review, I can provide it. Although it would probably be best
to wait until the entire thing is released, is it not?
If you want a demo review, I'll do it (and i'll be less disorganized about it, I
promise)

Someone should submit a review on the site, if not you, then someone. Thank you for the excellent and in depth feedback you've given so far! ;D

I like this game but I wish it were snappier. It's so slow and plodding. Walking back to the break room, etc. I wasted legions of minutes going back to refill my MP or walking the long distance over to the stores or waiting for the announcer to finished wasting my time.

Uh, I feel like about 1/2 your problems would be fixed by the fact you can hold shift to run in RMVX. As for the announcer cutscenes, well, I took heed of what everyone was saying and made the panning and such faster in Act II.

I'm glad you like the game but I'm sad you don't love it. while I was making this game, I couldn't help but think (presumptuous fucker that I am) that the only thing better than these arrangements of Final Fantasy battle music by the Black Mages would be an OST by Brandon Abley.

BIRDIE GREW WINGS TODAY
At only 15 Minutes long, The Mirror Lied is still the best RMXP game I've ever played!

The Mirror Lied, by Kan "Reives" Gao is a COMPLETE RMXP game. It is graphically polished, brilliantly stylish, broodingly atmospheric, has an original score, and is fun, engaging, and thought provoking. In short: there is NO EXCUSE for not having played this. None WHATSOEVER. It takes just fifteen minutes of your life and it will use those fifteen minutes to not just consummately entertain and completely engross you, but will teach you some things about game design! How much better of a deal can you ask for?

This game is ART and as a result I am going to do everything I can to make this the most artful review I have ever written.

Premise/Story/Dialog/Execution:
In any other game, the writing that appears in The Mirror Lied would be only passable, and barely at that. Not only is the dialog sparse and unembellished and the object descriptions (which you'll be seeing a lot of) brief and cursory, but the game is plagued by several errors of usage with the English language, mostly relating to pluralization (a full sink is referred to as a "collection of water", a drawer is described as being full of "oversized clothings" and a potted plant is described as "a decorative foliage") which combined with the lack of characterization or explanation would have been a serious problem for other games.

Not so with The Mirror Lied.

Why? First off, the game's completely brilliant and deceptively simple premise. There is not much I can say about a game only fifteen minutes long without spoiling it. The safest thing I can say is this: the protagonist in the Mirror Lied is a little girl, with no face, in a world that is not at all what it seems. Absolutely nothing is explained, at least not in a way that spells things out for the player. The game is essentially a mystery, where the joy is in the player's discovering and unraveling of its small in scope but densely packed secrets.

I want to say more, to really over-analyze the game and get at some of the depth inside it, and that is what SPOILER TAGS are for. If you have not played the game before DO NOT READ THIS SHIT IT WILL RUIN THE GMAE FOR YOU:



The game's sparse dialog works for it because every conversation with Birdie is incredibly ominous and intentionally vague. I can't take off points for Birdie's dialog being indistinguishable, in voice, from the text of the computer messages, because that made me wonder if they were the same entity. It got to the point where I was wondering if even the curiously childlike English mistakes were intentional, that is how complete of a mindfuck this game is.

In spite of Reives' (perhaps at least half-ironic?) assertion that this game does not belong to the horror genre, HE IS LYING. It is perhaps the creepiest, spookiest complete RPG Maker game I have ever played. It upstaged Backstage. It unraveled The Longing Ribbon. I don't know if there's a higher complement I can pay. There is no blood, no gore, no monsters, no "survival horror elements", just a word that is every bit as disconcerting and nonsensical as your most poignant nightmares, or the grimmest of fairy tales.

Story Score: 4/5 (8/10)

Graphics/Sound:
This entire game takes place in a house. An ordinary house, convincingly rendered. The house has two bedrooms, one upstairs, and one downstairs, and two bathrooms, adjoining the bedrooms on the first and second floor. There is a computer room and lounge on the first floor too, a dining room, and a living room. There is a drawer in the dining room; the first time you examine it is locked. Then, right before your eyes, it disappears. You wonder if it was ever there. With the dresser gone, you can examine the painting behind it. Someone has written umbers on it. In the basement, there is a boiler, a secret office behind a locked door additionally blocked off by a table, and a mysterious panel with three switches. One of the switches is stuck. It is carved with a mysterious note: "Wait for me. 3:26."

THE HOUSE IS ALIVE.

At first, it is a sunny day outside the house. But the sunlight streaming in through the windows is just enough to remind you how dim it is inside the house, in comparison, the best use of lighting effects ever in any RM game. When it is night time, it is moonlight streaking in.

THE HOUSE IS ALIVE.

On the living room table is a music box (sometimes there is a phone there, and sometimes it isn't. It moves, you see. The phone is moving again! haha. Like it has a mind of its own.) which, when you open it, sounds just like a music box. Childlike...innocent...but with dark and haunting undertones. (It is the ONLY track of music the game uses, composed by Reives himself, and it is absolutely fantastic.) You can shut the box, or leave it open, a relatively meaningless decision, just like the ability to dress Leah in three colors: tawny, midnight black, or blood red. If you leave the music box on, it continues to play the supremely creepy tones throughout the entire house...and when you leave it alone, the music continues to play...when you move into other rooms, it gets softer.

THE HOUSE IS ALIVE.

Everything in the house can be interacted with. Every light switch can be flicked on and off. Every drawer can be rifled through. The plants can be watered and sometimes THEY GROW. The toilets can be flushed. The piano can be played. The computer used. The phone (IT RINGS SOMETIMES) answered, if you make it in time. Some of these things are crucial to advance the game. Some of them don't matter at all. The house is the most fully realized and convincing environment in any RM game ever. THE. HOUSE. IS. ALIVE.

If you play this alone and think about what it is doing, you will be haunted.

From the totally slick animated menu screen and the chilling, Dark City-esque intro to the brilliantly ambiguous ending, every graphic, every sound, ever description....perfect. Some little details I didn't notice until I watched my girlfriend replay the game before reviewing ...at some point, as somewhere outside the microcosm of the house, Birdie flew over Europe, and approached Africa, the continents on the world map in the lounge vanished one by one.

A triumph of atmosphere, hyperbole be damned.

Presentation Score: 5.0/5.0 AKA 10/10 AKA 100% AKA A++

Gameplay
This game made me obsessive compulsive. For some reason I needed to have a full bucket on me and have all three sinks filled with water, at all times, before doing anything. The puzzles are clever. The puzzles themselves were like what you'd find in a any text adventure, point and click third person LucasArts style adventure game, or any modern game like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or, for the indie scene, Backstage...only better. What at first I thought were game breaking glitches weren't; this phenomenon was nicely lampshaded by the clever title screen changing to say "Yes, I know about this glitch." the first time that I quit on it, trapped in a burning house I'd set fire to myself.

It does not have any battles. Few of the puzzles were truly deep, complex, or involving. And it is very short. That is why it did not receive a perfect score. BUT...

The gameplay approaches the INEFFABLE at times, requiring you to use dream logic to defeat the game's puzzles. In short, this is a game in which the correct choice, when you have set the house on fire, is to go back to bed amidst the flames. Brilliant.

Gameplay Score: 4/5 (8 out of 10)

The Mirror Lied is the ultimate triumph of atmosphere, presentation, and polish supporting a strong premise. It is truly different than any other games. It is emotionally and cognitively involving. It is my favorite RMXP game. IT IS THE "KILLER APP" RMXP COULD HAVE USED 2 YEARS AGO. In short...while, I have said this before, and I will say it again, I will never again say it with this much feeling: WHY AREN'T YOU PLAYING IT RIGHT FUCKING NOW?

Final Score (NOT AN AVERAGE): 4.5/5 Stars (9/10)

PS. I seem to have suddenly (and temporarily?) forgotten how to submit reviews on the site? Either that or a button dissappeared. Staaaaffffff? ???

IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE (TRUST ME) THREE HOURS HAS THE SAME EFFECT.

That's really sweet, man. And FAST WORK too! :)

MODIFY: It probably won't look as good after I resize it, unfortunately, and I think it's way too small as is.

HE IS A MAGE. 10/10