RPG Maker Review: Forbidden Magic

Game Title: Forbidden Magic

Author: Jadem Games
Platform: RPG Maker VX
Status: Production
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It’s been a while since I last played an indie game and since I got a decent PC capable of running mid-range demanding games I dived into some RPG Maker VX games. This is the first one that I played through at quite some length despite it being a “short demo”.

Remember to install the Knight’s Quest font included with the game
before you start playing!

As soon as you start playing, you’ll be greeted with an flashy animated title screen which does look nice for the first time but it can get tiresome if you find yourself playing the game in short bursts. The text intro (which can be skipped) has actual voice acting although I’m not sure if this is actually an actress’ voice or a script feed into a computer voice program. It still works and the slight British accent isn’t that bad in all honesty.

Once you’ve made it into the actual game you’re immediately thrown into a battle. RMVX for those that are familar with it, uses a top-down turn based battle system but with scripting you can change that and that’s what’s been done here. No Active Turn-Battle though but it does look better than the default system. The enemies are straightforward to kill and usually go down in a couple of normal hits. MP limits the sole skill your protagonist although this improves as you level up. It’s obvious here that Jadem Games tweaked the battles to balance things out and even guessed when you would need healing through monster drops.

Forbidden Magic uses on screen monsters so no random encounters are to be found here. One problem however is that it’s pretty easy to run past enemies as they seem to move one tile at a time (towards the hero) unless they’re blocking your path. That isn’t a good thing to do as you’ll probably need to compensate later on as you’ll be underlevelled.

Unfortunately I ran into a game breaking bug straight off the bat. I opened a chest in the first room and obtained an item which I looked up on the inventory and I hit the shift key and the game gave an error and closed. I don’t see why this function was needed as the information is already displayed at the top (see below).

Another problem was that while the item acquired message popped up, enemies could still move and this resulted in clustered enemies where you had to fight one after another. This happened especially in the first forest area.

The first boss battle was a little monotonous, no real challenge. I just got hit for 6 damage and I just returned the favour, healed and repeated until the boss was felled.

The story itself was a bit stale. The usual chosen four have to save the world from an impending doom and you happen to be one of them. The characters weren’t given much time to be fleshed out in the demo but they had the typical traits of traditional RPGs, I found it passable as I was more interested in other parts of the game which sadly didn’t really live up to expectations.

The gambling system turned out to be a waste of time and money. It consists of you getting the higher card out of the pair and your money is returned whatever-fold. I had 20G going into my first try, won the first and got 5G. Lost the next five games or so and ended up on 16G, it may seem like it has good odds but I could never win again! I gave up and decided that monster grinding was the best way to earn money at this stage.

At the moment, there are two completed tilesets in the VX scene and other other is the RTP which I’m not a great fan of. The mapping is done using Mack’s tilesets and it’d be unfair if I said if the mapping was any good as I haven’t had any real experience doing it but houses, trees, pathways and other parts of the game world were done in a way that didn’t irritate or make me want to stop playing except maybe for those twigs that the hero just can’t seem to walk over!

Forbidden Magic didn’t really have any stand-out moments. It felt a little diluted and lacked a strong story to drive it forward. The gameplay does get repetitive and later on you’ll really need to grind a few levels to stand a chance against some of the enemies you’ll meet. This shouldn’t be a selling point for this game as I feel that RPGs shouldn’t force the player to do this but I felt a bit hopeless without doing so. There’s even a monster that didn’t have it’s transparency checked when it was being imported…

I know it’s just a demo at this stage but a demo should make you want to see and play more but this game just felt underwhelming. If another demo comes with more features and a revised story then I’d reconsider playing it again.

Overall verdict: average

RPG Maker Review: The New Earth

Random, Unfunny and Disappointing

Game Title: The New Earth

Author: bulmabriefs144
Platform: RPG Maker XP
Status: Complete
Download (taken down by author)

The New Earth intrigued me after WIP mentioned (on IRC) how it got over 500 downloads since it was first released. That’s quite staggering when the average game on RMN would be lucky enough to get 50 downloads after a couple of months but alas this proved not be a true reflection of the game’s quality.

Anyway, with a username like bulmabriefs144 I was wondering what sort of game this was and secretly hoping it’d be a decent RM XP game.Starting the game up straight away presented the problem of requiring the RPG Maker XP RTP which thankfully was included with the game but really it should be made stand alone for non-XP owners.

The game throws you straight in front of a tent. You instantly gain control of the main character and the intro (a few lines of dialogue) starts after you examine the mushroom. Immediately this shows a lack of polish and poor presentation on the part of bulmabriefs144.

The main character goes through some changes and is set on fire by lightning which puzzles me as to how they manage to stay alive. They can’t rest in the bed in the tent by the way because it burns the covers…

The first area involves item fetching although this isn’t really clear. The weak dialogue of the NPC doesn’t help explain what you need to do and the average person might as well give up at this point although I give games at least an hour to win me over. Problem is it might take you more than that time to figure out what’s going on unless you read the author’s comment on his game page (like I did).

A good example of the dialogue used in this game.

What’s more irritating is the selection of music. The RTP music roars through the
start of the game and the battle music is ripped off Lufia. Not a bad thing per say but it really doesn’t fit in with the theme of the game which I think is meant to be funny but isn’t. The game over music is something you’ll have to listen to yourself.

The graphics aren’t anything special but the mapping is really bad. The first dungeon has openings which go nowhere and seem to be vastly empty. There are glitches almost on every corner of the map including the fountain, tents in towns and so on. Speaking of glitches, a party member who joins you for no real reason except God told her to, keeps reappearing in her tent even though she joined you already.

If that wasn’t even enough, the story which was meant to “defie the convention of normal RPGs” doesn’t really make any sense. That’s where “The New Earth” title made sense to me. The game makes references to several franchises including Final Fantasy and anime in general but they didn’t assume me in the slightest.

The game seems to have some scripts running and one of them is the party switching system which I couldn’t really figure out. It showed I had four party members although I had two and the names were already there, lazy coding perhaps?

Spoilers!

The battle system had some thought put to it. Flame resistant enemies won’t get damaged from fire and this applies to all the elements but the problem here was you were either dealt zero damage or an instant death especially in the first dungeon with deluge. This pretty much made me stop playing it although I thought I did well to make it this far.

I feel the same Ash

This all sounds negative but I’m struggling to get any positives out. Even the item inventory seems messed up. You can unequip unarmed!? So does that mean I can rip off my hands and put them back on later? These small niggles eventually build up to a feeling of frustration and misery. I know there’s that Atcherso guy on the game page who’s playing through the game at quite some pace so I’d like to see his take on the game but from what I’ve played, this really was just poor even by first game standards.

Overall verdict: poor

RPG Maker Review: Inside

Inside Is Torture!

Game Title: Inside

Author: Relyt
Platform: RPG Maker 2003
Status: Complete
Download

I’m typing up this review as I thought Inside needed more attention. I waited for it to be completed before diving in and I’m quite pleased I played this game.

The game starts off with a few choices you can make to the game.  These are difficulty, change default name and skip the cut scenes. I went for the Normal difficulty as I thought that’s the standard for games to be reviewed by. As for cut scenes, I recommend you keep them unless you’ve played the game once already but they’re not that long anyway.

The cutscenes in this game are thankfully short and to-the-point

The story follows a games developer named Jack (that’s you) that has somehow got sucked inside (cue the “Inside” title) a virtual reality game. The virtual realm doesn’t offer much in terms of safety so every step almost always a hazard. As the game progress through the levels you get to see the story unfold. However, there are only four levels in which Relyt tried to give a compelling story. This resulted in the pace of the story moving along faster than I would have wanted so characters were not fleshed out enough. The general idea behind the story was quite interesting and it would certainly be a hot topic up for discussion in debating groups.

Graphics aren’t the greatest you’ll see on RM2k3 but they do what they suppose to do so I have no complaints really (apart from the rainbow coloured HP display!).

Now onto the core of the game, gameplay. It certainly excels here as it carries the game forward to the levels of addiction. Spikes often need to be shut off via a switch somewhere else on the level or avoided by timed movements. Doors always need a key (that’s not a gun, I made that mistake) and monsters are unbeatable so you must cleverly outmanoeuvre them.

That creature might OHKO you if you’re not careful

The structure of each level is divided into three parts and the last part features a boss battle which can take several tries to understand what needs to be done. There are also welcomed diversions such as a maze and a chase sequence.

The sounds you hear in this game are passable. The monster groans are not the greatest things you will hear but the game’s music theme is entirely original and fits well with the game.

As with any technical RM2k3 game there are some bugs in the game. The glitches happen when you get stuck to a moving object, be it a monster or some spikes. The result: you’ll receive damage until you die. Thankfully, the game is saved after each level within an area.

It’s a-maze-ing how easily you get lost in this level

A couple of other glitches I found arose during a chase scene where my chaser got somehow stuck in the walls allowing me to breeze through the level. In one scene a log book is shown with white text on a white background, this occurred after the first area was finished. None of these bugs really deter you from playing the game to the end though.

As a treat for “cheaters” (as Relyt puts it), there is a hidden map within the RM2k3 editor where you can make your own levels and submit them to Relyt who’ll decide if they’re worthy of being included in the game. I couldn’t make any that matched the standard Relyt set which goes to shows how good the level designs in this game are.

To conclude, Inside is a short but brutal game that requires the player to learn their mistakes and push forward to the next challenge. Kind of like what the NES games were like except this game reduces that difficulty with an abundance of save points. If you’re thinking of downloading this game, do it. It’s not going to take up a lot of your time and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.

Overall verdict: good

Hero’s Realm Released!

And it’s about time too!

If you like to play games like Dragon Quest or all those 8-bit RPGs from way back then give Hero’s Realm a try. Kentona (that’s the author of this game) has worked extremely hard to make finish this game and having  played an early demo myself, I’d say it’s a game worth playing.

So here’s the link, you’ll find screenshots and a download there plus you can discuss the game and give some feedback to Kentona.

RMN Forums

I hope to put up a full review once I finish the entire game but that’ll take ages so here’s my outdated review after playing to Chapter 2 from 2007!

RPG Maker Review: Ruptured Souls

Liberate Locks and Shoot Strangers

Game Title: Ruptured Souls

Author: Max McGee
Platform: RPG Maker 2003
Status: Production (All Hallows Demo)
Download

As you can see the title screen is quite disturbing but it’s something I got used to as I played this game more.

The story is well presented with accompanying images and it’s quite compelling. The gist of it is that a detective called Mason (the character you play as) is investigating the disappearance of a girl which also happens to involve other girls going missing. Obviously something fishy is going on so it’s up to you to get to the bottom of this case.

I noticed the music playing in the background was done by KRG who posted a handful of original music on the rpgmaker.net forums. The single track that was used went well with the game.

The gameplay involves a lot of exploration for example, finding items to opening locks; there are a lot of keys to find by the way.

This room was locked.

You get to make decisions which could result in an instant game over. I’ll try not to spoil anything but one particular example is when someone’s chasing you and you have the option of hiding, confronting them or running away. This is where the game really shows a strength in depth as the choices branch out in abundance. Max (author of this game) claims there’s over 10 different ways of finishing the demo so thankfully you can save anywhere.

This is a life-or-death situation!

There’s no HUD system. Instead you get to call up your HP meter, save and quit your game via keyboard strokes. It would’ve been nice to see a constant health display on-screen but from what I’ve played Mason’s HP never was called into account.

The graphics aren’t a talking point of the game as it looks like a regular rm2k3 game. Having said that, the lighting effects (achieved by using overlays) helped a great deal giving the environment that desired horror setting.

There was one occasion where I did actually “jump” and I was completely caught off-guard, it was a sudden sprite movement so if you decide to play this game just be prepared for that.

Playing the demo the “right” way is quite short but it’s a good start of what’s to follow later on in the Medical Centre which I look forward to playing.

Overall rating: good