Whisper of Alor

I restarted Safari and it was able to work, though I played it for an hour in Chrome first.  No idea what that was about.  I’ll give you as much feedback as I can as I know it’s really hard to get people to play your game and even harder to get constructive criticism  

First of all, I think this game has potential!  The active time battle system is a departure from most RPGM games and there was quite a variety of enemies.  I also liked how gratuitous you were with items and chests.  The character writing was enjoyable, especially since Jasper cannot speak, so his inner monologues are usually exasperated since people basically make decisions for him.  (You’d think Terry would have gone with him or gave him something to write with at least.)  I also like how you gave a lot of interactive objects descriptions, which made the game feel more alive.  The bushes sparkling when they have a collectable also gave me incentive to explore.

Going in depth on some issues/things I didn’t like so much:

-The story is a bit disjointed and some things that happen don’t make a great deal of sense:

-Jasper also doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get his sister back.  

    -Jasper doesn’t speak at all, even before losing his voice, so it doesn’t really seem to make a difference that it was stolen.  I would recommend having him speak a few lines beforehand.

       -The town where you collect all of the Shadow Souls is confusing in a design standpoint.  The town itself is covered in skeletons, zombies and puzzles and seems like it’s been in that state for ages yet it is seemingly established that the town was in good order moments before you enter the forest and meet Kai.  I have no idea why I’m collecting Shadow Souls, and I also don’t understand why they open the gate to the castle.  The people hiding (I think they’re hiding?) in the castle don’t seem to react to the fact that the town is desolated.  From a player standpoint, I thought I was going into a boss fight since I got a Shadow Soul from a guy and he told me to “give that green haired dude hell” and then I go into the castle, meet the King, he steals my money and crow horn and sends me off on another fetch quest.  Maybe I missed some lore somewhere that explains or justifies all this?  It definitely felt like that entire area was building up to a boss fight or something though  

-I understand why running in buildings is bad manners, but it bogs down the pace of the game when you have to slow to a crawl inside of stores and houses. 

-There’s a LOT of mobs with status ailments.  Granted, the game throws antidotes at you, but it’s pretty wild that the first two or three mobs you encounter are already poisoning you and burning you.  On the other hand, enemies lack any real threat and are basically a non-issue besides putting states on you.  I never died or even lost a party member, but I had a single HP point a few times more because I wasn’t paying attention to my health while suffering from poison, so there’s that.

-You might want to balance Jasper’s Double Attack a bit since it only costs 5 TP.  I was spamming it in every battle once I got it since the cost was so low and I never bothered using anything else but.  Enemy evasion seems pretty high, so it wasn’t worth using any of the other skills since the chance to miss made them unwise to use.

-Kai is pretty busted (and carried my run).  He hits like a train, though he is helpless if he has no more MP for his normal attack and no TP either.  Maybe it would be better to relegate his normal attack to a skill instead?

-For the goblin hunt, it might be better to have goblin actors wandering around the map and you interact with them to fight them instead of relying on random encounters.  

-The description for the burn state runs too long and gets cut off by the edge of the screen.

Overall, I think the game is inoffensive.  In its current state, it’s not bad by any means but it’s not great either.  The RTP is used heavily, which may be a turn off for some people and the game doesn’t do anything to set itself from the pack with its graphics or music.  The battle system makes use of status effects, active time and weaknesses, but it doesn’t have anything particularly unique or interesting at the moment.  The story is unfocused and almost aimless, with the protagonist having no real agency.  I think with some bells and whistles, the game could breakout from typical RPGMaker fare.  It’s a very safe game right now, it just needs some hot sauce, some seasoning.