Flytrap

Just had to post the steam link before it was released. XD Now I have to wait for the full release.

*Looks at time* *Looks at post dates* Let's review. >:D

This site being here was always my safety net, I always thought: "Well, I haven't done much on my game, but if I ever got enthusiastic about it, this place will still be here." I've been lurking for like, at least half the sites life, been here at least since it was rmxpunlimited. I couldn't imagine it gone... It'd be a real shame, since forums are kinda on their last legs as a breed, altogether. Unless you're Bungie or some enormous company, you just can't attract a huge clientele for these things anymore. I grew up on these, they're a real key piece of my childhood and major influence to where I went on the internet.

I keep this on my watchlist hoping to see new posts or updates from you, but alas, I am disheartened to see nothing. Any plans for Anirone soon?

I'm aware how... hostile I might sound, but seriously, I really liked the potential the game had. You seem heavily dedicated to the project, despite what I might have said pertaining to the jokes in the demo, but this was a commentary on 1.3, not your new alpha, which I am eagerly awaiting.

Alright I played through the version 0.13, and wrote a review... Um, I just want to preface this with: My criticisms are purely constructive, I do not intend any direct insult to you as a person, your character or your abilities as a designer, I am seriously just trying to help people advance as artists. Please don't take it personally when I tell you something is good or bad with a game. [spoiler=That being said...] This is chronological, so each bullet point will correlate to a section of the game as it would be played organically. Good Bad Mixed Advice The title soundtrack sound like "my country 'tis of thee", scored really slow. Not negative, just curious if that was intentional. Great map, I hate VX/Ace's map makers but you definitely used it to its limits. (With this first map) Character icons could be touched up a bit. The movement is very organic, I like it. Title image was a little sudden. Reminded me kinda of Dark Cloud 1 Event placement could be revised, as well as their stagnant movement. Everything looks way too organized and lined-up. Animations were really cool. :D added a little more depth to the crappy chibi sprites. That opening lasted a little longer than I'd like, but that would've been fine if it were actually delivering some story. It was just frame after frame of the same, tired phrases. "A tale of x" over and over again without giving away any actual story. Like almost every single game I've ever played in the RPG Maker franchise, the music is insanely loud in areas. Never have it set to 100%, ever. The text stopping every sentence is really annoying. Just have it display it slowly, but continuously so the reader can keep up without having to press enter every five second. That crystal cave scene was pretty cool but it was insanely cluttered, and didn't seem very thought out. I know we shouldn't take the opinions of GameInformer very critically or seriously, but they were right when they listen unskippable cutscenes as one of the most annoying things in games today. Food for thought. The narrative is a little confusing, first, it was a woman talking, then it seems to be an enigmatic narrator that is spouting details as if they were fact and had experienced them firsthand. You can't switch perspectives like that, it's bad writing. Not to mention that constant stopping of the text, it's like Bill Shatner is reading this to me. Holy crap bro. This isn't star wars. I'm not reading all that. Dude, Ardi, you need to compress that, or present whatever details were in there in a WAY more interesting format. This isn't 1989 where you didn't have to try very hard to get people interested, there were like eight games back then. This is 2016, I can go online and get a $60 game that took 1000+ people over three years to make for FREE. You gotta try a lot harder than a scrolling wall of text. From the fragments I skimmed over, it seemed like you changed perspectives again AND repeated the line "once upon a time". I have to really emphasize the importance of planned writing. The maps became increasingly less thought out and became MORE organized, this is lazy map making even for RMVX. The maps that were good weren't particularly interesting, either. wat (picture 1) EDIT: I forgot to save the screenshot, but there was a kind of amusing, possible typo during one of the first scenes with that demon king, or whatever he was. Dialogue isn't very impressive, either. Your age is showing very brightly through the script. You stole "Evalice" from final fantasy. Those cutscene were REALLY drawn out. Don't have the readers watching a stagnant screen for that long. Is the original narrator also the main character? It's been like ten minutes since that first scene. Her speech is extremely annoying, too. That dragon was cool as hell, I might have to steal and recolor that thing... The floating crystal (I'm assuming its a save point) doesn't do anything when touched. It makes a noise like its flipping the page of a book, blurrs the screen for a second, then goes back to normal. The fighting was decent, not my cup of tea per se, but objectively it was pretty smooth. Now I don't really use RMVX so I'm not sure if that's RTP or what, but I definitely liked the fact you changed her expressions with each different action, even if the emotion images were juvenile. This is my PERSONAL PREFERENCE, and this is prefaced as not being objective, But I don't like random encounters. They're as tired as Christopher Lloyd. I'm sure there's a reason they're talking like five year old foreigners, but it's extremely annoying. Make them talk normally and have some other character comment on their accent, or have a recurring theme of their accents being made fun of/referenced. LOL at the gameover graphic. That made me laugh. I died when facing the rat and spider, and I'm NOT going through the cutscenes again, so, you're on your own after that. Maybe nerf the mobs a little, they killed me pretty easily. Granted, I was pretty much just mashing the space bar. EDIT: Evidently the crystal DID save my progress, I'll continue a little later, I've sunk almost three hours into this as of this moment. Things to consider when developing your game are typically: Writing. Writing is extremely important, I don't mean to sound condescending but it just doesn't seem like you are taking this fundamental rule of thumb into account when considering how your players will react to in-game storytelling. Taking your own game seriously. It might not seem very important with indie games, but taking your game seriously inspires others to take your game seriously, having a joke or two thrown in with seriousness helps to abate the intensity of overly obtuse events, but constantly barraging the readers with jokes and slapstick gives the impression that you're not serious about your project, which makes other people think it's not a real game and ignore the hard work you've poured into it. Anticipating Reaction. It takes a while to anticipate how an audience will react to something you present to them, even some of the veterans in the gaming world (*cough*Activision*cough*) have difficulty with this, but it's really just about making educated, objective leaps of faith when playtesting your own game. Think about it like this: If you can't sit through it and read it all, what's compelling your audience to do so? Visual Aesthetics. You're sort of being given a relaxed critique from this, considering RMVX mapping is garbage. Now, that doesn't give you license to be lazy, you are still obligated, as an artist, to do everything in your power to make that fucker shine like a diamond. Maps are almost 50% of the game, so don't be lazy! Honestly, you have a lot of real talent, but your major areas of flaw are revealing. Work on your writing, make the narrative clear and concise, get rid of that stupid accent, don't be such a teenager, and take pride in your work. I sincerely look forward to version 0.2 Ardaceus.

I'm playing through your newest patch, I'll edit this post when I'm done and have written my review. -EDIT- Okay, so here it is:

I recently lost access to computers, so for now I'm stuck with a windows phone... I'm not gonna be able to test out your game but I'll keep a watch for new updates and play them when I save up for a new PC. Keep at it, tgramsus.

I'm a cook at a restaurant, so I typically just eat little tiny meals throughout the day. But when I actually pay for my food... Potato anything - Not much made with potatoes that I don't like. Fish Burritos Barbeque Casseroles Broccoli Steak Spaghetti Pancakes (Mmmmm...) Poppyseed Muffins Eggs I mostly like experimenting with different dishes. When the restaurant is slow, I'll take some random crap and put it together in a dish. We have really good garlic bread and high-quality beef so I make a lot of sauces and meat items. Yesterday I made a tiny meatloaf and a khail stir-fry that was delicious...

Sorry for the late reply, I had a lot of work scheduled this week. Here's my review of 4.31! Holy jesus christ the BBCode in this forum is so damn broken. Took me an hour to do what I wanted and it still looks bad because it won't do everything I'm telling it.

I like a little sense of competition, but I do understand that people have social and fiscal responsibilities... I can agree to a November month game jam. I'll even try and find something to offer everyone like Polraudio.

Aww... I had started at 3:00 PST all ready-to-go... Screw it, I'm gonna make a mini game anyways.

Version 4.30 From indieDB is corrupted, I'm getting the error "Cannot load library MSVCP140.dll"

Sure, I'll give it a go again during the weekend. Check back for my next review around Monday evening. Another major point I'm remembering was the distinct lack of impression the story gave me. I don't remember anything about the story other than that you and your party were sent to investigate monster portals. Having a memorable story and being able to deliver it in a way the players will remember and appreciate is what gives a game replayability, or, at the very least, appeal to finish. At this point, you need to work more on the immersion factor of your game rather than the bells and whistles. Work in small parts, fine-tuning the beginning, then continue on to the next chapter/part/etc.

I fully endorse this. I peeked in here a lil while ago to see if it was still happening but nobody seemed to be doing much, I was interested to participate. I can offer up my mediocre amount of points to the pool for the winner. :) I can also help out the winner with his/her game. Woo! Go Kitsuki~ way to take the reigns~

Oh my god, 40 commercials. I guess I know where my night is going...

Sounds like a plan, just send me a PM whenever you find time for Anirone. I really like this game and hope to a big part of the project.

Absolutely, I love helping out. It's what I joined to do. :) ESL = English Second Language, it means you're not a native enlgish-speaker, which is common for websites like this. Of course you can use it! That's why I made it for you, I figured you'd like something a little more professional-looking.Feel free to use it as your game cover. If you'd like, I can help you with the writing or mapping. I always like using my abilities to help fellow gamers.

I go by a lot of Pseudonyms, I use Flytrap whenever I do anything artistic, another username whenever I game, and one other for other stuff. Flytrap the word is pretty self-explanatory, it's a plant... But as my username, it's kind of a pun, a pun that would embarrass me if anyone understood it.

I'm going to itemize my replies because you all write a bunch. 1.) Yes, I agree to an extent, I hate when I'm forced to replay an entire game just to obtain an item that clearly wasn't essential, but would've made encounters easier, though, like a true fence-sitter, its easy to sympathize with the opposing side and agree that the feature adds a degree of challenge to almost any game that tends to be favored by fans of their respective franchises. 2.) I absolutely loved Majora's Mask's version of boss rematches, it was very fun and, well, I mainly used it to train as the Goron since that fucker was impossible to control. However, I don't think this should be applied to every game as a blanket rule, since a lot of games are heavily story-reliant, and refighting a boss or even having the option to refight a boss would detract from the realism or immersion of the game. Why would you feel good about beating Volvagia and saving the Goron's when you can just challenge him again and again? Though in some games, like Borderlands, it's fun to challenge boss characters over and over, not only for awesome loot but for the shittons of exp they give you and to brag to your friends that you killed some giant Skaag in under two minutes, solo. 3.) I'll be honest, FF7 eluded me as a kid, I only played it once when I was like, 16 because I bought the classic version online for the PS3. I never went back and played it again, nor did I really investigate much of the side plots, it just didn't appeal to me mostly because of the unbelievably annoying random battle encounters. Though, I did notice they tended to leave a lot of really good items in the wayside whenever you hit some invisible checkpoint and entire cities became lost to you. 4.) I hate random encounters, it's often the reason I don't play or buy a game. The very concept is annoying to me. You're getting interested in the story and just when its getting good, they tell you "Oh, you have to go to this town for the next cutscene, it's on the other side of the country,[/i] have fun getting raped by the thousands of endless mobs you have no way of repelling." Especially when there are missable items at hand, if I found out that there's some secret cave with a million gold hidden somewhere in it, or some badass item, but I have to climb up a skyscraper mountain to get to it, I typically go "Meh, I'll get it later." and never do. 5.) FFX had a lot of cool hidden things in it but I never really came across anything I couldn't go back and get after beating SIn. 6.) Kingdom Hearts had a BUNCH of missable stuff, but most of it was trash you could find later on. The only thing that stands out to me in particular is perhaps one of the keychains, I think you're able to miss getting a certain keyblade if you don't find the keychain hidden in Hollow Bastion. (Or whatever the last level was called, haven't played that in a while.) I don't exactly weep over missing a Megaether or some Synthesis ingredient I'll never use. 7.) I agree with the Pokemon thing, they have next to no missable items you can't simply go back and get later, then again, the last Pokemon game I played was emerald... 1.) They really are, it's sad how much influence production companies have in recent games' development. Most of these sequel series' games are horrible. (Battlefield, CoD, Halo, basically every new FPS and Third Person Shooter that has come out in the last five years.) I used to get so excited at the concept of my favorite production company making a new game, nowadays I'm so jaded I don't even buy games, I pirate them to test them out and will buy them if I like them. That got a little sidetracked. I agree with Polraudio, franchise games rarely have this problem anymore, they dumb it down so casuals can play games too. 2.) I kind of disagree... I'm torn though, I've had features like that inspire me to run through a game I've played, again, with the sole purpose of obtaining the items I've missed out on. (Resident Evil being one that comes to mind) Though even though I've done that, I sort of wish they didn't include those rare little easter eggs and just had them be boss or puzzle rewards instead of forcing me to play through six hours of boring tutorial crap again. 3.) Generally, I've found most sidequests can always be completed. The only ones that come to mind that have a limited window of opportunity are maybe some of the smaller events in the Harvest Moon series (since they have an internal clock that pushed your playtime forward whether you want it to go or not.) Aptly stated. 1.) I agree wholeheartedly, I fully endorse the idea of bosses only having one life. Although! I like tantalizing players with the idea of multiple choice stuff, especially when it comes to bosses so they have multiple ways to die, and if you kill him a certain way, you have to play over again (or play him in the next difficulty) to see an alternative ending. It might make me sound like a hypocrite, but whatever. :) 2.) I've found this to ring true so many times while designing events and games. There was a time when I literally designed every small event and encounter to basically impede the players progression without halting it. The point of a game is to enjoy it, right? And who doesn't like a challenge? I totally agree! In almost every game, I've developed an instinct to find the checkpoint just to avoid it so I can run around and look for all the little goodies I've missed. Games have made me weary of using keys and opening doors! It could mean the death of some hidden treasures! Though, I suppose that's the whole point of the thread.

Also, a gift:

[spoiler='seriously, spoilers, don't look if you haven't beaten the game.] Okay so I got through to the end~ All in all that was a really fun game! I'm kinda glad there at the end that I screwed up so much on the sword-lever-bomb thing because I found the best way to get as many items as I could for the end. I actually happened on the "weak spot" by accident, lol, I would've died if I hadn't used it. I only had one potion. Two things, just spelling stuff: (*) - When you have no weapons and the witch thing is coming to get you, the second line it says is something along the lines of "Also you can't go on like this", it sounds like a bad translation of a foreign game. (No offense if you're ESL) You should change it to something a little less clunky like: "You are unable to continue at this point." (*) - The description for the sword has a typo. "Weigh" should be "Weighs" and "the wooden stick" should just be "a wooden stick". Seriously though, a great game. As far as what you were looking to do, I'd say 3/5 stars. I agree with Ardaceus, I'd like to see some explanation and deeper story, though I really don't mind the RTP graphics since I don't play a lot of VX or Ace games and haven't gotten bored of them. I'd like to see another level or maybe something after you get back to the room. Or maybe even divergent stories based on what you do in the first room. (Like playing the piano takes you to a differently-themed dungeon and the teddy bear takes you to some kind alice-in-wonderland-esque area, etc etc.)

Like this? http://i.imgur.com/Aii4XHm.png

Ah, so like, when the members have been knocked out. I can try to help with that, though I can't promise it'll be the Mona Lisa.