First thought, as the thing popped up: AGGH FOOONNNNNTTT. The graphic artist in me
seethes at seeing such a wacky font right out of the starting gate. Wacky fonts are fine for logos or decorative text, but not sentences to be read. Luckily you switched to Garamond for the message text and I thank my lucky stars for that
I chose Dawn, with a Dark Arkanes specialty. When I got to that screen, I couldn't help but wonder how this would affect my journey. Would my character selection affect a lot? What about my Arkanes selection? Was I unknowingly gimping myself?
These uncertainties are something you should address right there on the spot. The easiest way would be to show a little textual description pop up to the side, the second you highlight something. This way the player will feel like they're making a more informed decision. Only after you make your selections does it give you a tiny amount of info, but that's not really enough to satisfy. It's better AS you're selecting.
Anyway, the opener was like, the perfect length. Provided a smidgen of insight while remaining blissfully short.
The learning curve is steep to someone who doesn't use RMXP. So steep, it's super easy to miss the very first puzzle piece. I do use rmxp though, so I figured: why the hell not use the action button on the rope? There needs to be a visual indicator of an object having importance. Just saying "search everything!" doesn't work because not enough things provide responses. Maybe like a very very faint glow on the rope, or a little shimmer or something, to draw the eye. Because if I hadn't picked up the rope I probably would have banged my head on the desk trying to figure out the later puzzle.
Then, my curiosity got the best of me, and I unfortunately pressed cancel, and ...
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here01.png[/img]
Allow me to echo the words of my predecessors: AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The background isn't that bad. And the animations could be snazzy if everything else looked better. Also, things are organized well. Those are the only nice things I can say about the menu.
I could barely read anything, the fonts are awful (why not use Garamond?), and everything looks like photoshop puked up a premature baby and gave it leprosy somehow. Not trying to insult your skills, but PLEASE consult someone about cleaning that up. Try low contrast gradients or something instead of crazy wacky high contrast filters? A simple trip to Resource Analysis could have quickly set you on the right track.
Anyway, ignoring that.
I explored around some. The constant upleftupleftupleftupleftupleftupleftupleftupleft and downrightdownrightdownrightdownrightdownrightdownright was wearing on me pretty quick, but I come from the King's Quest days so I'm no stranger to numpad mashing. It helped after I remembered I have a gamepad, lol.
I went to a strange little house and explored around it, and found this:
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here02.png[/img]
Is this supposed to be something? Generally when you make a wackyweird thing like this you should have an event there or summin, but maybe I was interacting with it in not the right spot or something.
So I back tracked and found the ghosty, whee neat :3. It was at that time that I started really hurting for a simple dash system, because backtracking is really killer when you can only walk like a grandmother wading in a pool of molasses. It helped that the mapping was pretty solid in these areas. The passabilities were odd (you can't walk behind cliffs ... even a
little???), but no big.
Weathering my character's apparent arthritis in her knees, I made it to the extremely cryptic scene which laid passage to the "dark world" (as I referred to it in my head). It's almost pretentiously cryptic here, but it's okay, all rpg's are cryptic in the beginning. I was SLIGHTLY underwhelmed when I found out she had amnesia (that seems to be a common ailment of rpg characters), but I'm not really one to knock people on cliches. Some cliches are cliches because they work. So alrighty
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here03.png[/img]
A very redeeming and witty line
The little thing about the exploding wall was kinda cute, I liked that. So anyway, down in the cave I go.
I came upon my first little puzzles. They were very simple, as to be expected. Then when I got to the "shoot the arrow" thing, I accidentally skipped past the part where he explained how to do it and spent 5 minutes punching keys trying to figure out how to do it. Haha. It would be helpful to have a listing of keyboard shortcuts somewhere in-game, like on a scrap of paper in your inventory or something. Since "A" and "D" aren't really easily memorizable shortcuts for quick inventory and tools.
After I figured it out though, I was impressed with the little tool system for solving puzzles. One can only wonder how these bushes grew underground in a cave, but it's a world of magic, lol
I also like how the cave looped together seamlessly. There wasn't any backtracking involved, and I was thankful for that while commanding Miss Slow Loris :3
It was about this time that I realized that I really liked the music
. It was also around this time that I realized what a pain in the ass it was to backtrack all the way to the statue room to get to a save point
.
So anyway I make it to the city. But upon my arrival, I'm disheartened to find that the decent, pretty job of mapping in the early scenes flew straight out the window.
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here04.png[/img]http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/shit/stuff/ToAnywhere05.png[/img]
There's WAAYYY too much empty space everywhere. And who would put a white picket fence just outside yet another, shabbier fence? What a waste of wood
The town design is really uninspired. There're random windows everywhere that just look like they're filling space, and the buildings are boring white bricks :/. The worst part though, was how the map was like 70 tiles across (or, it felt like it), and walking through it felt like a slow methodical trudge
. That's due in part to the haphazard mapping. Actually it's probably more due to the mapping than the fact that there's no dash system. Getting from point A to point B looks boring, so it'll feel boring.
I got to the bar, and my instant thought was:
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here06.png[/img]
Lunair from
Quintessence?
Evelyn, esp. from the sides and the back, looks nearly IDENTICAL to this very iconical rmxp character. I'd recommend maybe just changing her hair to a different color or something, because I couldn't get past that for some reason. I doubt everyone had that same recognition problem though, so it's all up to you.
Oh, and "medicine" was misspelled on one of the items in the 1st store. Can't remember which.
Ignoring that, I went to the next li'l dungeon. I'd spent my entire wad on 1 Elixir and a bunch of those Potion healing things, knowing how much I generally use them in rpgs. But the FIRST battle I get to, was 2 bats and a mushroom. I do pretty well at first, until suddenly they all attack me at once and:
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here07.png[/img]
CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP!!!! Maybe I can heal real quick!!!! GO ATB BAR!!!! GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~
http://pixelcocktail.com/hosted_items/s ... here08.png[/img]
DAMMIT!!!!
So I think, "Ok ... No worries, I'll just load."
Then I get to the load screen, and:
I'd have to do like 20 minutes worth of gameplay ALL OVER AGAIN since I didn't find any save points after the statue room, before I went into the cave.
So I'll come back to this later.
Hopefully you're able to derive some working notes from this little playthrough of mine
