Since no one had commented on it, I decided to download it and give it a try.
From the screenshots, I had the feeling the mapping would need some improvement. The gameplay confirmed it. I'm really the last person to be saying that someone's maps could be better, as it's also the thing I need to improve upon the most, but the maps are extremely bare and lack flow. It's clear where the player is supposed to go because of the "path" tiles that are generally set around the areas, but there are no boundaries. In the opening area, for example, it looks like there's open desert to the south, but you can only go east. There are no features of any kind, just desert sand and cliffs.
The dome is very similar - basic pathing, no features, fringe, or anything extra. The various rooms within the dome are a little better-done, as they have personal touches that are presumably reflective of the inhabitants. One has a metric ****ton of weapons, one has a couple ponds - these are nifty little touches. There's a serious lack of ground clutter or variety, however - the trip through the forest at the beginning is extremely repetitive and can be accomplished by simply holding shift and down for about three or four screens.
On the topic of the dome, it also could use a lot more "construction." Why am I only able to change screens if I walk specifically along the carpet/path tile? There doesn't appear to be a wall or anything to stop me from using any other section of the open-ended space to move to the next area, but I can only cross over on those screens. The dome is extremely repetitive, as well, with multiple rooms that are copies of each other with only signs to give any indication of what might be different in each door. The signs can only be read from one direction, too, which was a little strange - it would make sense if they could only be read from the front, but it was more typical to be from the side.
This repetition, though, didn't really give me too much incentive to want to explore - I just wanted to find the next place I was supposed to go and move on.
The UI is pretty basic, but I don't really think there's anything wrong with that. All the smiling character portraits were a little off-putting, though. I know they're made with the face generator, but sometimes it felt like I was looking at LEGOs or something designed to be significantly cheerier than I'm guessing the mood was supposed to be. The dialogue was about a man's wife being kidnapped, parents going missing, and young adults being savagely beaten - and yet the music is upbeat and bright, and everyone's smiling at each other and saying things like, "Hey sis!" There's a strange clash between the intended story and the actual atmosphere of the game.
The equipment screen had an interesting segment to it - "Change, I'm Lazy, Cancel." I wasn't sure if "I'm Lazy" was supposed to be a joke about "optimum equip," or if "I'm Lazy" was a note you were leaving for yourself to come back and fix later.
Characters are introduced via tell, not show, and even then, the information is a little confusing. The first character you control gets his power from the desert, so he has a slow ability and a quake ability - alright, that fits OK. Then the presumably actual main character is introduced as having control over ice elements, but has no actual abilities or magic whatsoever to support that. The text boxes that pop up when new characters show up talking about them is a bit stale. It's more interesting and fun to discover characters' personality traits and history through interaction and story than it is to have a sort of info card like you were reading a bio from the instruction manual.
Speaking of interaction, I found a lot of the NPCs didn't move and didn't talk - and some of the ones that did move were still mute.
The dialogue seems very "rough draft" and not very reflective of what we would expect from certain characters - some of the choices of the opening conversation between Direk and (Zeeel? I've forgotten the name) range from calm questions to screaming profanity in all caps. Unless he's a little psychotic and prone to sudden outbursts, it seems more like a slightly less mature version of the conversation wheel from Mass Effect.
The battle system is standard RTP, which can still be made pretty fun, but I found that Zeeel's battles were just repetitively casting Quake and Claire's battles were just repetitively using escape. I did fight one 2 slime battle and a couple 2 hornet battles, but the battles were so one-sided that it didn't look like I'd need to level up any time soon, so I just ran from them all. I did notice Claire had a sword called Bloodrayne (offputting) until Direk beat her in one hit, then had no weapon at all. There also was no incentive to stay and fight because I almost had a game over from one of the three battles I did fight - the hornets dodged twice and suddenly I was one hit away from death, with only a single healing item in my inventory. After using it, I was knocked back down to half health in the same turn, so it seemed like I would get a game over if I did anything but run.
I managed to play far enough to get told to go heal myself by talking to Kyle, then the other person in Kyle's room asked me to take a message to "K'atty." However, K'atty's room was empty, and I couldn't find K'atty in any other room in the dome (which I really had no desire to check, but I decided to just to see how the game might progress). I couldn't leave the dome, and the only people who would talk to me didn't offer any story progression, so I got stuck and decided to give it a rest there.
I noticed in your audio folder that you have music from Muse, Lamb of God, and various other bands - copyright issues aside, I was kind of dreading hearing them crop up, feeling like it would really pull me out of the game to suddenly hear someone's music collection for what I can only assume would be boss fights or something.
This seems like a first project for a first-time game developer on any engine, and it plays more like a playtesting environment for someone who's learning how to use the program than an actual game demo. If it is, then you seem to be getting the basics down so far - you've created bare-bones maps for the characters to traverse through, you've created some simple autorun events and dialogue, you've created a few NPCs with a little bit of interaction, and you've made a few pieces of equipment and items. You also have some custom sprites (although the 8-winged behemoth's sprite has an error in the top right section when it's facing right, it has some pixels that shouldn't be showing).
You've got the beginnings of a story, although the dialogue and interaction so far kind of plays like you had an outline and are just working on a rough draft of everything as you go.
If it's just your goal to simply create any kind of game at all, then I think you're on the right track. If your endgame is simply to learn how to use RPG Maker, then you're doing well enough. However, if you'd like to develop this project into a full-fledged game that people will want to play, it's going to require significant building on what you've already created - story, dialogue, mapping especially, battle balance, etc.
You might want to try out some of the free-to-download games that are in the completed projects sections, or perhaps try out some in-development demos other people have posted up here, and figure out which ones feel the most fun or impressive to you. Figure out what you like about them, then come back and look at your project and ask what aspects or themes did you like that you'd want to include in your game. The staff tutorials and blogs about game-making will probably also have a wealth of information that can help you improve all aspects of your project.
You've taken some early steps and I like some of the ideas the project promises. Good luck with your game development!
