Great demo ! I love that we can use the mouse :) can't wait to play more !
Reviews for "Y.A.A.G. 0: The Demo"
Marcgal responds:
Glad you like it :)
Though, again, credit RPG Maker with the mouse. It comes bundled, I'd have to put some effort to disable it rather than to enable it :)
From reading those revies, some of them nasty, I have this to tell:
You made a mistake by not titling it properly in a way people could understand it's a demo.
"omg u hate deoms!1"
No, it's not that. I don't dislike demos any more than you do (I assume you don't either). It's the title thing.
Imagine ordering a dish in a restaurant. When it arrives, is only an Entry dish. It's not stated on the menu - you would be disappointed, but not enough to put you off your appetite.
That's the issue with unmarked demos - Expectations, they interfere directly with player experience. Pitfall - The mayan adventure did it bad (ending ruined the game for me), undertale did it good (a pretty mediocre game that got overrated only by messing directly with the player by breaking the 4th wall contantly).
That being said, the title don't even say anything other than an acronymn from something that also didn't mean anything in general (Maybe that's the meaning, but whatever).
Not, for the bad part: The game is TOO SHORT, even for a demo! This, and not the title thing, is reason enough to pull a star.
Also, the lack of general direction is another minus. There's simply too many stuff on the house, and most of it simply don't matter. Rooms could be at least half the size, and the attic was like, wtf? Maybe sis could have a room if you properly design interiors. lol
ENOUGH BASHING. NOW FOR THE GOOD THINGS.
About the non-combat, different gameplay: Keep at it. You got inspiration on Medieval Cop, right? That's good. I'd say it's the best use of RPG Maker. Interactive fiction is great, the platform don't really matter - If it's good, I'd play it even in MS Excel.
And, from this mini-demo, I'll say it's good.
Marcgal responds:
I think you are right that the game title should clearly state it's a demo, my fault admittedly.
The acronym is explained in the title screen - Yet Another Adventure Game ;P
Rooms could be at least half the size, but... Well I guess the characters would rather like a large and comfy house rather than a small and claustrophobic one :)
I'm thinking, maybe making the mouse cursor change to a pointer when hovering relevant items would be helpful? I know it's a minus that relevant stuff can hardly be distinguished from pure decoration... But I'm not convinced that removing pure decoration is a good fix.
The game has quite a bit of potential. I like how the demo leaves quite a bit to the imagination. The action and event sequencing is pretty well thought out and leaves little room for gamebreaking or error. The characters' personalities are well crafted, the build-up does its job, and the town map is pretty well detailed.
As for some constructive criticism, I would try to add a bit more direction when first waking up. I also had a hard time trying to figure out the main plot behind the game. I get that you were trying to provide subtle hints, but confining it to a single character's conversation kind of killed some impact. For a while, I was thinking to myself "okay, so what is really going on here?" My last bit to mention is the text and grammar. The dialogue is clever, but a little bit of it is hard to read, and it took me a bit of back reading. I'm honestly not going to rag it too much over grammar. I'm a bit notorious for being too much of a grammar nazi.
Overall, the game itself is looking to be pretty good, especially in the character and sequencing departments. With some more story work and a bit of troubleshooting, the end result could be something I'd look forward to playing on release!
Good luck, and keep up the good work!
Marcgal responds:
Glad you like it :)
As for the main plot... Well actually my idea was to not include some typical defining story arch like "The peaceful kingdom of XYZ is being overrun by hordes of ABC! We need a hero to repell these hordes or the kingdom will crumble!" Rather, my idea was to try to break the cliche and try something new: to feature a regular guy next door who will not jump right into big-world affairs. There will be a background story, but it should gradually and gracefully move from the background to the foreground. This is also to give the main character(s) time to evolve and mature before they become public figures. And no, I don't want to make it a soap opera. I admit the idea is kind of inspired by My Little Pony (please don't execute me! ;P) Now I know this idea is difficult to pull off correctly and frankly I expect to fail to do it rightly in my first attempt. So, the main purpose of this game is for me to gain experience.
As for the dialogue... Yeah, I'll definitely need to have someone proofread it. I'm not native to English, sorry. For most part I can understand others (though I'm not sure what you mean by "build-up") and I think I also can mostly be understood by others, but there's obviously much room for improvement here, I know.
As a retired RPGMaker myself, i have 3 good and 2 bad things to say about this demo.
Pros:
Interesting story, interesting characters, good dialogue.
Cons:
Horrible mapping (not every room has to be a giant box),
The demo doesn't explain what to do very well, I know that the dialogues are supposed to explain everything, but I would add a Quest System ( that would be very easy to do since you're using RPGMaker MV, and plugins are very easy to add). Sorry for the mistakes in my grammar btw.
Marcgal responds:
Thank you for your review.
Tbh I'm not sure why are rectangular rooms bad? As far as I'm aware most rooms are rectangular, and definitely all in my flat are.
I know I can relatively easily add a Quest System, but it was a conscious decision not to do so. I was thinking to make this game kind of exploration based, exploration of dialogue branches and possibilies of actions, and a quest system would kind of screw this. That's the purpose of the hidden medals: to encourage such exploration, since admittedly, just leaving home is pretty dull. Though, from what other reviews say, I suppose I've failed at this.
Very good
So this was pretty solid of a game love the sprites and pixel style graphics very intense, gameplay and control of the character is pretty amazing, All the work here has come together in one big bang, And also shows that passion can still drive every step across the board and have brought back some success, your game does prove to be fun, and full of enjoyment all around. I found this worthwhile and you have a good Concept here.
~X~