CALUNIO'S PROFILE

What I would do is having only two location types: Towns and action. Just alternate between regular sonic stages and towns where you can talk, shop, sleep, whatever. I think Sonic is THE perfect action game, so I wouldn't want anything like "bumping into enemies and going to a battle screen", it would be a huge turn-off.

I'd also make towns in 2D sidescrolling, just to keep consistency. There's really no reason why towns shouldn't be sidescrolling.

It can work. You just have to find ways to connect what happens in town and what happens during action... for example, some NPC gives you an item that allows you to open a hidden area in action stage, and stuff like that.

Well... like people said, the more characters you have, the less you can flesh them out and detail their personality and powers. Doesn't mean that fewer characters is the best, though. One of my all time favorite games is Shining Force (II), in which you had to chose around 8 characters from a party of up to... I don't know, 50? Of course some characters were just weaker than others, but you could chose the ones you found cooler and invest on them.

That would depend a bit on gameplay, I guess.

I'm loving this game.
But

"Since this is an RPG Maker game, you have to dash around a map and speak to each character individually, try to remember what he or she says, and then mentally associate the character graphic with the character's name, which is a lot of extra and unnecessary mental work in a game about logic. You might wish to write down all the statements, but that is incredibly tedious and as the game designer I can't expect anyone to do it."

I wouldn't expect anyone to have such a good memory as to remember everything in every map! I do write everything down, and it's indeed tedious, but I don't see any other way.

I kinda believe some puzzles have more than one possible solution.

And where do I save game??????????