Rate Each Game out of 5!

[dinkledaberry]

Played a lot of great games today! And still so many more on my pile but here's what I thought:

It Lurks: Great atmosphere and feel. Unique flavor all its own reminds me of Parasite Eve back in the day. I myself didn't find it unnerving or scary at all but the setting of the game was still vastly enjoyable. And I liked the timed-strike nature of the battles. Looking forward to seeing what the full game will be like. 4/5

Sacred Earth - Promise: I like it! It's got a cool custom battle system that gives your characters plenty of options. It's got an interesting dungeon exploring mechanic that allows you to skip battles entirely if the player wishes to. The only downside I guess is the gauntlet of characters the game throws at you in the first 5 minutes. The story's pretty good though and explores the characters more than most games in this competition. 4/5

The Heart Pumps Clay: Awesome! A splendid story and characters with a battle system that actually requires thought to conquer your enemies. Every move has a use and purpose and must be mastered to conquer the final boss. Good to see a title that needs strategy. The art is decent in and of itself but probably won't be for everyone. The story makes up for it though. Great characterization and humor! It would have been nice to see less RTP but the game is legit. 4/5

The Tea Party: The only bad game I've played today. A horror-type game that aims to disturb but comes off just silly. I was not feeling it. Probably because I've played much better games in this nature before? For a month and their first game I've seen worse but I found myself bored frequently within the 30 or so minutes it took to complete. 1/5

Oh! Ko!: A fun unique setting with wacky characters. It's not for everyone but I enjoyed it a lot. An adventure game, it's not terribly long but it still serves its purpose. I really liked the robot's short quest. 3/5

Sunken Spire: Fantastic game. Great story, great puzzles, great characters. And the options? Pft. Forget about it. Customizable slime. Customizable golem. Customizable grumpy knight. I love this game. It's the longest game I've played yet of the contest too!. 4 hours in and no end in sight. Even has a Star Ocean-type study ability to improve skills and get new equipment. Totally heart. 4/5

Last Word: A debate RPG?! Why yes my good sir it is. I really like the setting and characters. Battles take hardly any time to get used to and it's good, quirky fun! Changing topics to talk about and getting the "Last Word" to win the battle is awesome. 4/5

Still have like...a dozen or more games to try. I'll update as I go of course. Hopefully someone will give me some constructive criticism on my game as well.

 

[Housekeeping]

Thanks for giving The Heart Pumps Clay a shot, big D!  I'm glad you enjoyed the story and battles, as those are what I'm most proud of (and also the music).  The art I'm proud of in a "woah, I actually managed to make something look halfway decent" kind of way, but, yeah, art's definitely not my strong point.  I would have used less rtp mapping, but drawing water made me give up on that pretty early, haha.

Edit: Don't worry; your game has been added to THE LIST.  I'll get to it tomorrow--maybe tonight now that the July 4th festivities are over.

 

[Natoril]

Just tried to play Tower of 1000? Floors It seemed interesting and well thought out, if what was alluded to was actually in the game, I don't know because I can't get back into the tower. I cleared floor 5, it asked me if I wanted to go back to town, so I did. Built some buildings, did some recruiting, but when I try to re-enter floor 1 I just get a black screen with the HUD. I reloaded, same thing, I don't know if something specific I did caused the bug, but I can't move on.

I like the basic set-up of the game, I'm not sure if you can change your main characters class, but that should be in there. Very basic, but effective resource management. Combat seemed dull (combat in the first 5 floors was very easy...but they were the first 5 floors), but there was the implication that there could have been more. Back story was well done. But I couldn't move on in the game...No Score

That never happened to me, in all the two hours I spent on it. Maybe if you tried another exit? Anyway, I think Vlue would appreciate if you told him, since he's decided to continue working on that game, with more towns, more diverse floors, more traps, more everything.

In the meantime I got to play some more games! My favourites were Oh! Ko! And Aesparia - The Fallen both had many reviews already so I'll just say that they both get a 4/5. Oh! Ko! has very nice graphics, the story is rather short but.. well. If it would have been longer and remained the same quality I would gladly pay for it. Therefore, a 4.

Aesparia - The Fallen managed to do what it was meant to do. I'm very curious for the 'real' game. I even followed them on Facebook. The battle system was interesting, but repetitive and the crafting was nice, but after some time I just.. got everything and didn't get to use it anymore. However I'm very sure that they will improve on that in the following game. I think it lacked story and characterisation, but well. I played it in 2 sittings, and that worked very well. Just stop when you notice that it's starting to annoy you and try again another day.

I also played Daughter of Sunlight . It's short, It's solid. But it's just so.. standard. Nothing really new. Sure, the story was nice, but that's about the only thing that manages to stand out (and it doesn't stand too far out, just a little.) so that's probably only a 2.8/5 or something. I'm sorry.

Another one was Murder in the Rue Marche. I think this might be a prequel, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it was solid as well. Nice. But too short. I know, you only had one month, and people have to work and stuff but it seemed more like a demo than a finished game, compared to the other entries. However, It does have multiple endings, that probably took a lot of time. But I wasn't to keen on trying more than one. I'd still give it a 3/5, because what was there was nicely done.

The last one is Please Feed Heather. Well... I love cats. I liked the game. But it has major bugs, like when you fail to enter the right code for the safe, the safe says closed and you get stuck. (you cannot reenter and you cannot continue the game). The story was nice, I've always had interest in egypt. However I failed to see the connection between Bastet and Heather. If there is one. I thought there might be, but... yeah. Maybe the issue is that I never got to see the credits. I know they should have been there in the end, because I opened the game in the RPG Maker to check, but they just didn't roll up, the screen was black and.. I was confused. I would have liked to know if there are different endings and stuff, since you get to have a lot of choices on how to act, but since I already replayed the game once (because of the safe-bug) I didn't feel like replaying it twice. So that's a 2.3/5. I would love to play a stable version or a similar game (like a sequel or prequel) tough.

 

[BlackMage]

Let me do a review of some games that I've played.
 
Painted Heart (3.5/5)
I'm trying this one because my friend suggest it. The 8-bit music at the beginning is giving me an err atmosphere, but I know that I need to finish the game before I can give the final judgement. Ok, when I finally enter the opening theme, I was stunned. It was beautiful. The graphics and the sounds are stunning. I can see a great effort were made for this one. Then, we have 3 characters, Cor, Angiel and Zophie. I like them. The way they were written is good. The story is nice too. Next is the game have some sort of battle system. I decided to challenge myself to play this game in Hardcore dificulty for the first time. With a certain ammount of effort, I manage to beat it. It was interesting, but it's easy to know how to handle the elements, and when you got the gist of it, the rest is just some repetitive gameplay. Still, I think the battle system had a lot of potential to improve. 3.5/5 for graphics and sounds and how well it was executed.
 
Farming One (4/5)
First, this is not farming simulation. This is a game where your objective is to earn money and make yourself richer. There are many different way to earn the money. We start with a farm in an abandoned village. You can invest the money you gain to make the village more lively and new people come. Some people will sell a new thing for you to unlock, and the more you unlock, the more you can have another things to unlock. Yes, the unlockable is the one that made me stay on playing the game for an hours straight.
 
I think there are 3 endings for the game, and two of them will take you to post-game, where you can get married. There's some bug that made me can't give present to another people, but I still can marry the mayor's son and female bandit boss. Yeah, I'm able to marry the female bandit boss even though my character is also a female. Not sure if this is intendet but I found it funny to let it stay like that. Aside from that, the mapping were great. I enjoy the game and I want to play it more, with lots of new content of course.

There's secret person that you can get married with, btw.

Spoiler

You can married a bootle.

Account Mu (1.5/5)

The games consist of many puzzle and it's variation, ranged from easy to a hard one. Still, it gives no more than just a puzzle, so I can't say more except that the puzzle were great.

Unraveled (4.5/5)

Amazing. That word can describe on how much I love this game. Looks like all of sprites and tilesets is original, not to mention that it was created beautifully. The animation were fluid, love how they were executed. I assume the sounds is original too. Enough, let's talk about the gameplay. The battle had some gauge (forgot what the name is) that plays role on how much damage you'll receive and give. I think the battle is well balanced. It's not too hard nor too easy. But everything is different when you're trying to achieve an all star achivement. It sure does need a lot of efforts.

About the story itself, I found it interesting. But a fantasy with a lack of text is not realy my things. I'm wandering with a big blue creature helping me fight against monster with no explanation whether it was an illusion or a dream sure set me off for a bit. Open interpretation is great, but but just not for me. I fell it less engaging for the the story rather than the battle itself.

There's a bug on a map where you need to find 12 orbs to open a wall that blocked your way. I can pass through the wall without collecting all of the orbs.

After all that said, the game itself satisfied me for the most, and I think it deserve the 4.5/5 scores.

Oh, and there's some secret ending.

Spoiler

The secret endings indicate that the game isn't over yet. If the continuation game is already in beta stage, I'd love to be the first that know about it.

Dear Red (2/5)

I'm playing this because I've played the previous game that the creators made, "The Seven Mystery" or something like that I think . The game have a lot of endings, about 16 or 17. Regardless that, it seems that even though you've got all endings, you still don't get what the stories is about. The game gives you enough hint to have the open interpretation yourself, and as I stated before, the open interpretation is not realy my things. After all, the story is rather good even though not much explanation are given.

I think that's all for today. I'll review more as soon as I have enough free time.

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

Earth Under Attack! - 3/5


+ Very well-polished custom visuals of spaceships and other space what-not


+ Lots of cool custom systems that haven't been done before in RPG Maker


+ Originality


- Lack of dynamism when it comes to shooting different missiles


-- The fast pace at which the background passes makes me really queasy


Overall: A neat little space-shooter that needs some work to make it more dynamic and allow for strategy... also the speed at which that background moves makes me nauseous.


World Remade - 4/5


+ Fantastic battle system that I can tell is inspired by Wine and Roses.


+ Really balanced, lots of different ways you can go about tackling the battles.


+ Limited AP Means you are forced to tackle each battle like a puzzle. Every single move is important and critical


- A little repetitive, lack of variety in enemies


- Some bugs like you don't heal when you lose a battle, or other battle-related bugs


Overall: Fantastic battle system that's hampered a bit by repetition, but never fails to be strategic.


The Vendor - 3.5/5


+ An extremely interesting concept for a game, I love the idea


+ Some really dynamic systems for buying/selling and identifying monster strengths/weaknesses


+ Really good polish and typography (OMG that logo is so awesome)


- Requires too much of player memory or writing down on a notepad various things


- Can be confusing if you can't remember where certain ingredients are, esp. for someone like me who tends to forget things or over-note-take. As a result it can be boring if you're note-taking all the time (feels like work)


Overall: The concept is awesome, but for some reason it leaves me a little empty because there's not much to do other than write stuff down and figure out how to get the things I want. The economy is deep only until you get past its surface and then when you've figured out all you need to get, it becomes too simple. But overall, a nice game to play for 2 hours and an innovative system that I always like to see (pushing the boundaries).

 

[Cinnamon]

Reviewing while Playing: Sunken Spire

Lovely title screen and music. Getting keyboard controls thrown at me. Okay. Better introduced gradually. Auto run is good. The arrows that show up when you're close to something to check out is good, too.

That cat above Mariah is so cute!

Love the character abilities. Battles play out great. Not too short, not too long, and the character battle systems are interesting but not too complicated.

Oh that's a shame. Random encounters. Good game so far, though.

While the battler sprites are charming, their perspective is front-view, which is completely different from the background (bird's eye view). This is painstakingly obvious while fighting the Monoliths.

Omg that slime. LOL. I love it.

Time to take a break. Will finish later. But so far this game is very veeeery good. This will/should be a prize winner, definitely.

- "/n[3]" when you first leave the room with Ooze. Message error.

- The music. It's a bit annoying in the first area.

- Battler placement. It's not aesthetically pleasing with that huge Golem up front covering up Elsa a bit.

- Battler graphics perspective.

+ Oh wow, okay. The thing at the top-right indicates random battles. Excellent.

+ THE OOZE. <3

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

I aggregated the ratings from this thread into an Excel spreadsheet. Here are the highest averages for those games with more than 3 ratings:

1. Unraveled 3.99 (8 votes)
2. Sunken Spire 3.95 (6 votes)
3. Little Briar Rose 3.88 (4 votes)
4. It Lurks! 3.87 (3 votes)
5. The Farming One 3.8 (10 votes)
6. Earth: Under Attack 3.67 (3 votes)
7. The Vendor 3.58 (6 votes)
8. Aesperia: The Fallen 3.5 (10 votes)
9. We Were Made to Perish 3.5 (4 votes)
10. World Remade 3.38 (4 votes)

Here is a list of those games which have less than 3 votes, so you can play them out and see if they are as good as the reviewers have said. Some of these might be underrated gems:

1. Entity 5 (1 vote)
2. Tower of 1000(?) Floors 4.5 (1 vote)
3. Last Word 4.25 (2 votes)
4. RUSELAn 4.25 (1 vote)
5. Eden 4 (1 vote)
6. Goblin Noir 4 (1 vote)
7. Listen 4 (1 vote)
8. Sacred Earth - Promise 4 (1 vote)
9. Teardrop Distance 4 (1 vote)
10. The Heart Pumps Clay 4 (1 vote)

Hopefully these stats are useful to someone.

 

[Paladin-Cleric of Awesome]

Awwww mine never made it onto that list... *cries* ah well. My day will come.

 

[Cinnamon]

I aggregated the ratings from this thread into an Excel spreadsheet. Here are the highest averages for those games with more than 3 ratings:

1. Unraveled 3.99 (8 votes)
2. Sunken Spire 3.95 (6 votes)
3. Little Briar Rose 3.88 (4 votes)
4. It Lurks! 3.87 (3 votes)
5. The Farming One 3.8 (10 votes)
6. Earth: Under Attack 3.67 (3 votes)
7. The Vendor 3.58 (6 votes)
8. Aesperia: The Fallen 3.5 (10 votes)
9. We Were Made to Perish 3.5 (4 votes)
10. World Remade 3.38 (4 votes)

Here is a list of those games which have less than 3 votes, so you can play them out and see if they are as good as the reviewers have said. Some of these might be underrated gems:

1. Entity 5 (1 vote)
2. Tower of 1000(?) Floors 4.5 (1 vote)
3. Last Word 4.25 (2 votes)
4. RUSELAn 4.25 (1 vote)
5. Eden 4 (1 vote)
6. Goblin Noir 4 (1 vote)
7. Listen 4 (1 vote)
8. Sacred Earth - Promise 4 (1 vote)
9. Teardrop Distance 4 (1 vote)
10. The Heart Pumps Clay 4 (1 vote)

Hopefully these stats are useful to someone.

#dead

Thank you for that list! You're amazing! So happy right now~

 

[Tenchizard]

I just played your game, Jungle Rescue... and here is my review:

First of all, I don't like stealth games. I'm too bad at them and I get frustrated easily. And your game IS frustrating, indeed. If you get caught once, you are as well as dead if you don't just use a stun grenade, because the rest of your skills are almost worthless.

Why should I use the knife slash skill, when the knife throwing one has more damage and stun chance? This is not balanced... lots of skills is a good thing when there's a reason to use them, but there's no point to do so in this game. 

Really, combat is what makes this game almost unbearable. I like that you must be stealthy, but punishing the player so harshly is just too much. 

Graphics are kinda ok, maybe a bit too dark for my tastes, but I suppose that's what you get in a jungle at night... just that it's hard to make out some of those red and green areas and lines marking the maps. I noticed a few glitches in the intro (a weird tree when flying on the beginning), but nothing terrible.

Writing is also ok, but as it's not my favourite genre I'm a bit biased there. Characters seemed a bit cliche, but at least they are not too unsuffereable. Being able to chose all genders is a nice touch, but I don't know how much it affects the game, because I stopped playing after running out of stun grenades to bypass those soldiers. You should really look into those combat mechanics, because they make the game too hard for anyone: you have just 1 character in your party (so just 1 action each turn), and the enemies tend to do 50 damage to your 100 total hp each turn. The only stun skill working is the stun grenade (I've never seen the knife throw stun even using it 5-6 times in a row), and the tazer fails at 90%. 

Finally, I didn't really like at all the custom menu interface. It felt a bit clunky, and I didn't find out how to use a medkit out of combat. I think an standard menu controlled with the arrow keys would work better.

Score: 2.5/5 - Your game could be so much better if combat was more balanced. There are some bugs here and there (one searchlight got me while I was in the inventory screen), but I guess you can work those out too. I'd really like to see how the story goes... but the combat just puts me off too much, sorry.

Now, on another subject... I have only received one piece of feedback from here, and it was from someone who didn't even finish my game or cared to get into the game (no offense intended to cinnamon, of course, just stating it), and I'd really like to hear something more from anyone else, so I can see what I need to keep working on. You know, some constructive criticism. So if anyone feels like giving Soul Echoes a try, I'll listen to whatever you have to say about it

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

Awwww mine never made it onto that list... *cries* ah well. My day will come.

Your game has 2 reviews, and its overall score is 3.375. So it's not far behind at all.

Btw, these ratings pretty much mean nothing because people are subjective and give different review scores based on their rubric (which I didn't take into account), and they're just ratings. They will give a fairly good indicator though of how people have perceived a game. Keep digging for those gems, people!

 

[rondchild]

Reviewing & writing as I play it:

Darkness of Hope

After downloading, the first thing I notice is that the game's folder is simply called "Project" as opposed to Darkness of Hope. It also forces me to install a font to be able to play the game. Not a great start.

Starting the game, I can immediately tell work has been put into it and that it's obviously been influenced by Square-Enix type games. I actually find these kinds of title screens annoying, though, because they force me to scroll through each option to see what's available. Also there doesn't seem to be an automatic full screen feature.

The introductory video is gorgeous, although I can see some jpeg distortion in the background and there are some major grammar & spelling errors, which brings me to wonder how this "video" was made. Is it actually in RPG Maker or am I watched a pre-processed video? Random names are thrown at me and I can't keep up with the text. Something about a prince and a war, okay.

Oh, okay, now I see it. English isn't the first language of the game's producer. Fair enough, but rather distracting. They could've had someone proof-read the content.

Moving through doors is done rather strangely... By using "Transfer Player" and fading the screen in and out. Takes me out of the game.

Oh God, I can't skip through text with the Enter key. I have to wait for it to finish writing, and I'm a fast reader.

Now being sent to talk to random characters. Went back upstairs. Aaaand a cutscene is playing that should've happened before talking to mom and dad. Not enough attention paid to the proper order of events and switches I see.

Why do the character sprites keep re-appearing with every line of dialogue? Sloppy eventing/scripting right there.

WALLS OF TEXT.

Oh good, something happens! I have to enter a password within a certain amount of time. That would've been interesting if I hadn't spent the entire countdown trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, lol.

Wow, this dungeon level is empty. There's no mapping done at all.

Okay, going to stop there. The battle system is gorgeous and so is the movie at the beginning, but the rest of the game is sloppy, empty and lackluster. Makes me wonder if the battle system is just a copy & paste from an RPG Maker forum and someone was hired for the video at the beginning... By the HUGE credits list the game as, I'm going to assume the latter unfortunately. The story has a very innocent charm, though, so I feel bad for giving it such a low score...

2/5

Thanks for review my game,

im sorry for force install font,

yeah this game influence from square enix game,

we not apply auto fullscreen, cause in windows 8 rmvxa not stable.

*my team use w8, after all. iam not tes on other windows.

i know about grammar and spelling error, cause my native language is Indonesian

i will improve about grammar on next patch.

Video intro made by me

i am create with after effect and manual drawing for scene.

*I'll give you example of making a storyboard, check my attachment.

for cannot skip text, i will fixed it on next patch

dungeon map is empty, cause we make battle system, dungeon, and video just 5 days

im sorry about that, i hope you can play until this game end.

cause we fokus on level design dungeon and last battle.

i want clarification this word

Makes me wonder if the battle system is just a copy & paste from an RPG Maker forum and someone was hired for the video at the beginning... By the HUGE credits list the game as

sorry...

we build this game from 0, except tileset, animations and sound effects.

Huge Credit, but the core team working on this project only 3 people.

Thanks for playing my game

nice review~

I hope you can play until end

 

[TheoAllen]

Makes me wonder if the battle system is just a copy & paste from an RPG Maker forum and someone was hired for the video at the beginning... By the HUGE credits list the game as

I've been in part of DoH team and I said clearly that we build them from scratch

 

[Cinnamon]

^

I didn't read the topic so I missed that then. Amazing video, congrats! Considering the time you had, you've done some impressive work.

And thanks for posting the concept art. ^_^ I love seeing stuff like that. <3

 

[Paladin-Cleric of Awesome]

Lol. Didn't actually mean for people to play he game.

Thanks for the review tenchizard but it is possible to beat the game without getting into fights (barring one officer). I have a few testers who managed it. I watched them do it while biting my tongue to keep from telling them how. So if your careful you can.

The combat I will be looking into more. But as the object of the game is to sneak and not get caught having an easily beaten combat would be pointless. Lol.

Thanks though!

 

[Indrah]

Uh...I assumed this was already being done but I see it's not always the case:

Actually drop the feedback on the  game's  topic TOO, not just here.

Even if it's a simple copy paste. No one one wants to slog through X pages of topic just to find a few lines of feedback for their game, come on.

If you're putting in the effort to make some feedback at least show it directly to THEM.

I got nothign against this topic, but if it takes feedback AWAY from the actual game pages then that is a problem. C'mon folks, actually give the poor sods who make the games some notice.

 

[kartersaint]

Uh...I assumed this was already being done but I see it's not always the case:

Actually drop the feedback on the  game's  topic TOO, not just here.

Even if it's a simple copy paste. No one one wants to slog through X pages of topic just to find a few lines of feedback for their game, come on.

If you're putting in the effort to make some feedback at least show it directly to THEM.

I got nothign against this topic, but if it takes feedback AWAY from the actual game pages then that is a problem. C'mon folks, actually give the poor sods who make the games some notice.

I saw one game has been discussed here and got feedbacks a couple of time but the dev seems to never notice this. d:

I completely agree with your notion.

 

[Galenmereth]

I have to admit I'm having trouble keeping up with this thread myself. I'm sure I've missed a good few reviews of not only my game, but a lot of other games too. I completely agree with Indrah here: let's also post our reviews on the respective games' posts. Not only for the developer, but to show the rest of the community that there is activity around those games

 

[valkill101]

Would it be too inconvenient of me to plug my game on here for reviews?

http://contest.rpgmakerweb.com/game/view/id/381

I've not gotten a single one yet, though the month is still early.

 

[TerminusEst13]

Here is a list of those games which have less than 3 votes, so you can play them out and see if they are as good as the reviewers have said. Some of these might be underrated gems:

1. Entity 5 (1 vote)
2. Tower of 1000(?) Floors 4.5 (1 vote)
3. Last Word 4.25 (2 votes)
4. RUSELAn 4.25 (1 vote)
5. Eden 4 (1 vote)
6. Goblin Noir 4 (1 vote)
7. Listen 4 (1 vote)
8. Sacred Earth - Promise 4 (1 vote)
9. Teardrop Distance 4 (1 vote)
10. The Heart Pumps Clay 4 (1 vote)

Hopefully these stats are useful to someone.

There's a lot missing from this portion of the list. There's plenty of other games which have been reviewed less than three times.