RM2k/3 Everything's Decaying

[roachchild]

Everything's Decaying/I Hope You're Satisfied, Thatcher!
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This game contains A LOT of adult humour and is not intended for children. You have been warned.
SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

Everything's Decaying/I Hope Your Satisfied, Thatcher! is a very short adventure game. The tax evading wizard Malazar tasks you with a perilous quest to save your people. You must travel to surface world, to the mystical city of Luton. On your journey you will encounter many obstacles, such as rival wizards, poorly designed mazes and sentient killer pants. You are not the hero your realm needs, but you are the hero it deserves.

SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

DOWNLOAD LINK

Spoiler

Game Jolt - Games for the love of it

gamejolt.com

DEVELOPER'S NOTE

Spoiler

I started working on this game a couple of months ago because I was interested in making extremely strange art games, but don't really have the required skills to make anything actually good. So because self-improvement requires making mistakes, I decided to make as many mistakes as possible in the shortest amount of time. This was the result.

This was my first attempt at making a game using RPG Maker and making assets/music myself. Most of the jankiness of it is intentional, but I feel like it should be possible for something that's a little rough around the edges to also be fun. This is weird and rough, but isn't really that fun in terms of it's actual gameplay. Any feedback from people who actually know how to make games would be appreciated.

 

[Milk Bar Prophet]

Hi @roachchild . I have an eye/neurological condition, so was unable to play your game for more than 20 mins.
So much about the cons (well mostly!), now let's talk about the positives, and there's quite a lot of these.

- I appreciate the unique art, it fits the tone / idea of the game perfectly. The acid trippy look, the tiles, the unique character sprites, it's perfect (too bad my eyes disagree lol)
- The music is absolutely perfect as well, fits the art 100%
- I like the humour, even if it's profane / childish at times. Some of the seemingly random stuff the NPCs are saying or the stuff that's going on in some of the rooms is hilarious (like the man who made a shelter for trousers) or though provoking (like the art gallery room - as a person who did time 'on the galleys' I can say I understand where you're coming from, although my outlook on the world of modern art is more mellow than it used to be and I try to see the positives as well)

You ask for feedback, how to improve the gameplay, but after those 20 minutes I'm not sure I saw enough of the game (honestly eye migraine came knocking sharply, couldn't even handle a maximized screen for more than 2 seconds).
I was expecting being given some quests to do, puzzles to solve but maybe that happens later in the game.
When I say puzzles, it could as well mean interactive dialogue with a genuinely different outcomes. There's this one NPC who gives you 3 different response options ranging from affirmative to offensive (which was a nice idea), but even when you offend him (option 3: sod off old man or something to that extent) - he still wants to talk to you and behaves like nothing ever happened, gives you the same 3 options over and over - now that's certainly something to improve.

I didn't see any stuff /items to pick up or collect in the game so far, that's another gameplay idea (sorry if there are some later on). If there are quests or fights you could make the player character collect some sort of anti-establishment collectibles or power ups and so on.

Speaking about the main character, I missed any sort of background. Could be an intro screen, a cut scene, could be even a short paragraph or one line like the classic "What is this place? How did I got here? Who I am? Can't remember anything!" (did that in my previous little game lol) which would make the player care a bit more about the character and his motivation. As it is, I know nothing whatsoever about the MC, don't care about him really so have no motivation to wander the maze. If the player have no information, doesn't care about character at all, it's much more difficult to get into the story-oriented exploration based game like yours (unless there's a lot of other elements of gameplay like fights or action elements or whatever, I didn't get to the fight part sadly (In your case the weird, interesting world that the player gets to explore makes up for the lack of information about the MC, but only to some extent).

Back to the gameplay ideas, you have this unique story you came up with, I mean helping the tax evading wizard is a brilliant concept in itself (the issue is, 'why should the MC want to do this?' - is he forced or offers help willingly, why) and it can give you some interactive quest/puzzle gameplay opportunites. For example filling a tax form for the tax evading wizard could, depend on the players choice A. help the wizard B. put him in jail (or worse)

Apologies if some or all of the stuff I write about is already there and I missed it. I'd really love to play more of it and I would if it wasn't for my eye condition, this sort of graphics gives me pain. But the paradox here is, I can see and understand the concept of it and changing the art would defeat the whole purpose of the game. It was made it as this acid/trippy/anarchistic/nihilistic experience and wasn't supposed to be comfy, cute & pleasant in the usual RPG Maker-y 'chibi' way. And I do appreciate that, and that's why I wanted to give you my thumbs up, despite only having played for a short while. You made a genuine piece of art here and, like it or not, I can easily imagine it being exhibited in a gallery among other examples of art(sy) games (like Space Funeral or Hylics). So, even if it kills my eyes, I say well done!

Also, +1 for the Molchat Doma reference

don't really have the required skills to make anything actually good

Fake news mate. Your game is actually good, therefore... I don't know, make another, even better one?

 

[roachchild]

Hi @roachchild . I have an eye/neurological condition, so was unable to play your game for more than 20 mins.
So much about the cons (well mostly!), now let's talk about the positives, and there's quite a lot of these.

- I appreciate the unique art, it fits the tone / idea of the game perfectly. The acid trippy look, the tiles, the unique character sprites, it's perfect (too bad my eyes disagree lol)
- The music is absolutely perfect as well, fits the art 100%
- I like the humour, even if it's profane / childish at times. Some of the seemingly random stuff the NPCs are saying or the stuff that's going on in some of the rooms is hilarious (like the man who made a shelter for trousers) or though provoking (like the art gallery room - as a person who did time 'on the galleys' I can say I understand where you're coming from, although my outlook on the world of modern art is more mellow than it used to be and I try to see the positives as well)

You ask for feedback, how to improve the gameplay, but after those 20 minutes I'm not sure I saw enough of the game (honestly eye migraine came knocking sharply, couldn't even handle a maximized screen for more than 2 seconds).
I was expecting being given some quests to do, puzzles to solve but maybe that happens later in the game.
When I say puzzles, it could as well mean interactive dialogue with a genuinely different outcomes. There's this one NPC who gives you 3 different response options ranging from affirmative to offensive (which was a nice idea), but even when you offend him (option 3: sod off old man or something to that extent) - he still wants to talk to you and behaves like nothing ever happened, gives you the same 3 options over and over - now that's certainly something to improve.

I didn't see any stuff /items to pick up or collect in the game so far, that's another gameplay idea (sorry if there are some later on). If there are quests or fights you could make the player character collect some sort of anti-establishment collectibles or power ups and so on.

Speaking about the main character, I missed any sort of background. Could be an intro screen, a cut scene, could be even a short paragraph or one line like the classic "What is this place? How did I got here? Who I am? Can't remember anything!" (did that in my previous little game lol) which would make the player care a bit more about the character and his motivation. As it is, I know nothing whatsoever about the MC, don't care about him really so have no motivation to wander the maze. If the player have no information, doesn't care about character at all, it's much more difficult to get into the story-oriented exploration based game like yours (unless there's a lot of other elements of gameplay like fights or action elements or whatever, I didn't get to the fight part sadly (In your case the weird, interesting world that the player gets to explore makes up for the lack of information about the MC, but only to some extent).

Back to the gameplay ideas, you have this unique story you came up with, I mean helping the tax evading wizard is a brilliant concept in itself (the issue is, 'why should the MC want to do this?' - is he forced or offers help willingly, why) and it can give you some interactive quest/puzzle gameplay opportunites. For example filling a tax form for the tax evading wizard could, depend on the players choice A. help the wizard B. put him in jail (or worse)

Apologies if some or all of the stuff I write about is already there and I missed it. I'd really love to play more of it and I would if it wasn't for my eye condition, this sort of graphics gives me pain. But the paradox here is, I can see and understand the concept of it and changing the art would defeat the whole purpose of the game. It was made it as this acid/trippy/anarchistic/nihilistic experience and wasn't supposed to be comfy, cute & pleasant in the usual RPG Maker-y 'chibi' way. And I do appreciate that, and that's why I wanted to give you my thumbs up, despite only having played for a short while. You made a genuine piece of art here and, like it or not, I can easily imagine it being exhibited in a gallery among other examples of art(sy) games (like Space Funeral or Hylics). So, even if it kills my eyes, I say well done!

Also, +1 for the Molchat Doma reference




Fake news mate. Your game is actually good, therefore... I don't know, make another, even better one?

Thanks for giving such a detailed reply. I've had a couple people tell they found the visuals confusing and/or uncomfortable to look at, so this is definetly something to consider in future. I had a lot of fun drawing the sprites and tileset, though.

I'd like to say that you missed an epic, artistically brilliant boss fight and a bunch of hilarious tax evasion related comic shenanigans, but the closest thing to actual gameplay is the Evil Trousers maze. Gameplay mainly consists of walk here -> talk to character -> character makes crude dick joke -> repeat. This was somewhat intentional because I didn't want to make things too complicated, but I can see how adding a little more depth to the interactions would make the story more interesting/make sense. Originally I had wanted one of the wizards to trick you into releasing Dread Lord Margaret Thatcher from her arcane prison but that didn't pan out.

I'm also glad the music worked. It's mainly stuff I made with LMMS years ago before I had any idea how music theory, sampling or composition was meant to work.

Also, Molchat Doma rules