NTC3'S PROFILE

author=CashmereCat
And, I don't think in most games the more systems you add, the better it will be, for instance adding turn-based battles to Ico or Shadow of the Colossus will not make it better necessarily, because it doesn't fit the game. But in something like Myriad Cypher or another Sim, you can afford to keep adding little things until it feels dynamic.

Yeah, but you've had a qualifier in your previous comment "(that make sense)" , so that already covers it, as turn-based battles in those games don't make sense. Similarly, Assassin's Creed has been piling on mechanics with every installment, yet we all know that its yearly development cycle prevented them from being polished, and so they frequently clash with each other and basically broke the back of latest installments.

As long as it makes sense, though, you can, and should afford to keep adding "little things" to the degree your budget/time/engine allows. In a way, I've always been convinced that the only difference between Sim and the others is the amount of overall effort put into polish and atmosphere. It's precisely because of this effort we now see latest GTA frequently referred to as crime simulator, MGS as tactical stealth simulator and Alien Isolation as hiding-in-lockers simulator, off the top of my head, and I'm convinced that any game which feels sufficiently real can do the same.

author=CashmereCat
Well... not in all cases. I mean that Marrend can just add gameplay mechanics and intricacies without having to add plot length, and linear string of events taking place, but instead just building stuff until it feels like it's a living, breathing world that you can do lots of things in.

True. One of the clearest parallels here is Space Rangers 1 and 2, which were released in early 2000's, and are commonly considered in Russia to be the best Russian games made and some of the best games ever made in general. They were also 2D, had turn-based battles (though obviously not in the JRPG style) and had a whole, whole lot more stuff going on. There were five species in total battling a sixth, hostile one, and you could choose to play as any of the five, or even switch your species at the pirate stations. Each of those species had 6-7 ship types (traders, fellow ranger ships, planetary law enforcement, passenger ships, diplomatic/ambassador ships, rare drones and probably some more I don't remember) that were very unique-looking to boot.

Each of the ships could then be conversed with a system akin to TES conversations: there were general questions about stuff going on in the system, etc. and more specific and situational questions. Thus, you could always exhort protection money from traders, passenger ships and diplomats, and/or demand traders to eject their cargo for you to loot. (Although they would still shoot at you for a bit and get any nearby law enforcement to help, acquiescing only they're too heavily damaged.) Other rangers could be recruited to your side if you had enough money for yearly contracts and sufficiently high Leadership stat. Rangers, law enforcement and other ships could all be asked for help if you were fighting against pirates (or, if you tried to rob raiders, you could bribe rangers for assistance in exchange for loot.) , etc. Other ships conversed with each other, and did relevant actions too, and if you flew close enough, you would get intercepts of those conversations.

Then, on the planets, besides typical shops, repair stations and more, there was a scoreboard that ranked you against all other rangers (of which there were 500 or so), which was actually real, as all of them existed, their positions updated dynamically and could be found in the game's world. If you wished, you could look them up via in-game internet to learn where any of them was (useful if you were on a bounty hunt) or just learn the latest from interstellar news agency. Weapon types, etc. could all be looked up, too. There were also science stations with their equipment upgrades, military stations giving your ranks depending on your track record, optional, real-time battles in black holes and warp bubbles (which could be visited every time you were making a routine jump between systems) and a lot more.

Having said all that, the game certainly had no "linear string of events taking place" besides the several available questlines (in fact, it was entirely possible for other rangers and military to beat the alien threat on their own without your involvement on lower difficulties, while the hardest often led to your shared enemy taking over system after system over the years, until they overwhelmed the last free space system and won.), but a significant amount of its atmosphere still came from its writing, as light-hearted as it was. A particular stand-out were the secondary quests, where you needed to land on planets and then progress on the ground in a "choose-your-own-adventure" fashion. A similar "choose-your-own-adventure" quest also happened if you ever got imprisoned for one reason or the other. Basically, as I've seen on Russian game website recently, "No game has ever suffered from a good plot."

author=Marrend
Annnnddd...done!

Yay! I probably don't comment on here as often as I should, but I'm really impressed to see a proper space game finally coming along in RPGMaker. In fact, really exciting times for RMN sci-fi, now that we have both this and Mortal Cluster, and both have this potential to become a classic. So, yeah, no pressure! :P

I actually like the title (or at least, like it more than the alternatives offered so far.) It has that rough feel to it that I think is quite fitting.

Having said that, it would really cool if you could replace Cluster with Constellation (since latter is more obviously space) and still keep the melancholy tone of the title.

I agree, good stuff. Having said that, I think top 10 downloaded games part needs to change a bit. I mean, I just compared this statistics release with the Penguin one at the start of the year, and 9 out 10 games are the same: the only notable change has been Mega Man pushing out Heartache (well, that, and the near-doubling of download numbers for Dreaming Mary.) Expanding it to, say, 25, would be a lot more informative.

Also, I like how we've gained more than 300 new reviews relative to the start of the year. We also got 265 new games, and so unreviewed game number has actually gone up by 20. I do hope the review event manages to bring it down to below 900 once it finishes. (And that I find the time to contribute, at least in its closing stages.)

P.S. Just noticed the review numbers for Pom, Forever's End, and Hero's Realm have actually gone down by 1 (2 for Pom). Wonder what happened?

So... is the developer supposed to make the full game not-horror? That's pretty much the only thing one take away from the review design-wise (well that, and allow running in the "present-day" house, make the first puzzle not-timed and tone down the difficulty of a chase scene under hide tags.)

I get that it's a demo and all, but unfortunately, it still feels like the least helpful review I've read on here so far.

OK... Can we have a gameplay update/changelog now or something?