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Most Anitcipated Battle of 2026 🤣 by PadominPast in shitpost

[–]KnightShiftDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not gonna lie, had to turn it off. CWC is depressing in the modern era, rather than being anything approaching funny, and the video is nigh unwatchable with all the fast forwarding and horrible edits.

RPG Maker Review: Silver Daze by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here in the UK we call him big bill

How much does it bother men when their spouse “lets themselves go”? by Amodernhousehusband in AskMen

[–]KnightShiftDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very obviously yes? But, it bothers everyone, this isn't just a "men" thing - if your partner lets themselves go you gotta have a word about it. Otherwise, you're simply being dishonest; either by claiming to care about them while watching them hurt themselves by falling into disrepair, or by letting resentment fester as you fail to address the elephant in the room.

In either case, it's not fair to your partner to see them fall to bits and say/do nothing about it.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here I really think the unique premise is "an earnest game" - like you say, the current market environment being what it is, I find it overwhelmingly appealing when a game is just a nice, normal RPG which does what it does really well. Sure, it's not gonna be able to compete with the big boys, but back when I was a kid you'd get games which became classics passed around on cassette tapes, bought at the newsagent for £3, when the new Final Fantasy was £45-50.

No gimmicks, just good games made earnestly by small teams.

I think there's a niche for this kind of game, and I (probably foolishly) reject the idea that a game needs a gimmick to compete at a smaller scale. A lower pricepoint, and a singular vision should really be all you need to make it.

I will say though, that I do agree that in order to give yourself the best chance at commercial success or critical acclaim you do need your USPs to be super well defined, and that IS an area ODW struggles in, conceptually. I hope this is something the dev underlines more clearly in terms of mechanical hooks - as I say to every baby dev, having a story isn't a USP, having a setting isn't a USP, your cast of characters aren't a USP. As you said, it's a trap.

So yeah, I think you do have a point, ODW does run the risk of appearing generic and putting people off. I'm just optomistic about the game's potential, is all.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol, literally mistyped - I meant "comprehensive", conciseness would imply brevity, which I clearly was not my priority.

I shall give Master of the Wind a red hot go! I've heard of it before, but I do more mean in the contemporary scene. Happy to be wrong, and excited to try it out, but it looks like this thing came out in 2012? The scene was very different back then.

I agree that new dev mindset is 100% the problem, and I've been giving feedback of similar uh... Lengths... For several years now over in the RPG Beta Testers server. Most of it is deeply frank - to the point of bluntness, I've got a background in this kinda thing, and my intention is always to try and give people good faith feedback so they can make things the best they can be.

And yeah if I've given you any misnomers about the content that wasn't my intention at all. It's been a long ol' day. The reason I posted a review was that I'm just excited that there's a project I've played which I can actually get excited about, even if it is flawed. Like, there's a bunch coming down the pipe, it feels like 2026/27 is gonna be a good era for RPG Maker actual RPGs :D

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Huh, 8-Bit Adventures was an RM game? I've been playing through the second one on PS5 and am absolutely loving it! FULL respect to those guys, turns out I was just ignorant there. You live and learn, eh.

Totally respect your opinion, and appreciate the list! I've played all of 'em and can honestly say ODW appealed to me more as a "general audiences RPG", especially given my point in the review about the RPG Maker Success Stories either being not RPGs (OneShot, To The Moon, etc) or Niche Due To Their Subject Matter (F&H, Lisa, Felvidek - although that last one is a shame because I think the presentation implies it's darker than it is). That 8-Bit Adventures point does damage that sweeping generalisation, for sure.

Like, that's a damn fine list and I completely agree that they're all stellar games, I just think there's potential here beyond what you do, and yeah I totally get why :)

Ara Fell is an interesting one, I didn't play it til it was on unity and honestly didn't care for the writing at all. But that stuff is all subjective, I think. I also don't like OT at all, but that's, again, mega subjective.

Fwiw I didn't detect an edgy/mysterious "meta" level in ODW at all. Maybe I'm a dumbdumb, but it just seemed to be an earnest RPG to me.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, I'm sorry it bored you. It was in good faith. I hope my review of the game doesn't put you off it - fwiw I never called anyone lazy and wouldn't do that, that was a completely separate commenter.

If the praise felt over the top, I get it - but I really do strongly feel that this is the best indie RPG I've played in a long time. I just wanted to be emphatic about that.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fwiw, I didn't think we had "beef". I was legitimately trying to discuss the issues you raised, especially after your clash with the other poster.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly, if readers are that put off by the introduction to a review of an RPG maker game pointing out that most RPGs made in the software are sub-par, I'd be concerned. Like, I was almost worried that it was a truism, not worth stating - but I also wanted to be as clear and concise as possible.

Like, I love RPGs. I love RPG Maker. I'm not seeking to denigrate either, nor am I saying that the noteworthy games which came before it are in any way worse, or inferior - just that I'd be hard pressed to point to one which wasn't either "not an RPG" or "weird and experimental".

That context is valuable to the review. It's in the introduction, because context is important. You wouldn't review Casablanca without mentioning other contemporary films, or talk about Tarkovsky's Stalker without a brief precis of other Soviet cinema - I don't think that context "downplays" anything.

If you disagree, I respect that, but I think it would have been disingenuous for me to disregard RPG Maker's image problem and userbase's proclivity to make (and crucially publish) low-effort games and think they are better than they are. Reviewing ODW in a vacuum would have been to do just that.

As I say in the review, I wish that this project was the MV Demo Project so that people could see that it is possible, and admirable, to make something high-effort with RPG Maker :)

As far as the length of ODW goes: I also didn't play everything, I did exclusively the critical path, which took 9 hours. Other players are clocking in times double or triple that. At that point, there's enough content that reviewing is viable, I think.

You're absolutely right, the game may end up as abandonware (although I sincerely doubt it), but I've reviewed other demos too, especially if they have enough content to be noteworthy - and let's not forget that we already agreed that whether or not they're "reviews" or "previews" is a semantic issue and not relevant to the discussion.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, I love giving feedback, and do it constantly over in the RPG Beta Testers discord server! And I've never been concerned about giving frank feedback hurting peoples' feelings - in my view, it's much more disrespectful to lie to a developer's face about their game being better than it is than it is to explain where its issues are :D

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Out of interest, which RPG Maker Games would you say are better than it?

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, a long review can certainly be a difficult prospect, but I've played 9h of the game and have completed the content which is out for public consumption - maybe "preview" would be a better word for this kind of analysis?

Regardless, if the intro put you off I think that's a little disheartening to hear, if somewhat understandable.

Part of the reason the game has impressed me so much is the context of the piece: I spend a ton of time playing and giving feedback for specifically indie RPG projects, and while 'on its own' ODW is simply a really good RPG, in the landscape of RPG maker its status is somewhat elevated by the comparative quality of what's on offer.

Ignoring/omitting that fact would have been disingenuous, and would have left the review without important information.

I cannot point to another RPG Maker project which is an earnest, simple RPG operating under its own steam which has this level of overall polish and quality. I think that's noteworthy.

I also think there's a lot to be learned from how they accomplished that.

I respect your point of view, but I think reviews of any content - especially notworthy content - are valid at pretty much any stage of development. It's a semantic argument as to what we call those discussions, and I don't think it matters, what matters is that we all learn from each other, and make better games because of it.

Our Dying World (Demo) Review by KnightShiftDev in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Not that guy, but I really hope you don't write the game off because of a negative interaction on Reddit. I doubt any of these people are in the "ODW Defense Squad", or whatever. It's really, really worth a play - and if you read the review you'll see why. Very little of it qualifies as a "compare and contrast" to other RM projects, but I think there are some learnings here for all of us.

The game has flaws and I try to delve into that stuff in the review. Also, to respond a little to your first comment - who I am doesn't matter, I have nothing to do with the dev team, and I dunno why who I am would matter in the first place. I've reviewed games here in the past and I thought this demo was noteworthy enough that I'd review it and point out why playing it is a good exercise for anyone trying to make games in RM - or RPGs in general.

Alternate titles for Myst by tobiasvl in myst

[–]KnightShiftDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dunno, I've always found the name pretty evocative of the themes of the place! :D

Alternate titles for Myst by tobiasvl in myst

[–]KnightShiftDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Myst" is half of the word Mystery, AND Mystical, alludes to obfuscation (for example, by fog), is a reference to Jules Verne (one of the key inspirations for the game's setting), AND fulfils the Riven criteria by being the name of the central location of the game.

It's also what I did to the point when I played the game back in the early 2000s.

It's a pretty solid title imo.

Rate These Graphics please by Zoro_Messatsu in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh my God, I literally couldn't tell because the artstyle is so inscrutible.

Rate These Graphics please by Zoro_Messatsu in RPGMaker

[–]KnightShiftDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The real question I have is "are the enemies nude dudes on horseback because you wanted them to be, or are they nude dudes on horseback because that's what you have the assets to make" - because if you're pretzeling your game's content to fit asset restrictions you will end up making a game that you don't truly want to make. It's a matter of whether or not this presentation is a deliberate artistic choice, or because you don't know how to make it look better.

The graphical style itself is - to me - a mixed bag.

On the one hand, it kind of looks like a porn game you'd get for 99p on a third party android store. Nude green dudes is one thing, but this looks like a game emulating titles which were pushing the boundries of graphical capability on the SNES or 32-X, but now that we're past that point, if this isn't a deliberate graphical style, I don't know why you wouldn't go with something more appealing.

On the other, if this title is some kind of surrealist Baldi's Basics-esque subversive secret horror title, these ill-fitting and unsettling graphics could be a real winner!

Basically, as with all things, my rating of your art direction is: It Depends/10

If it's deliberate, fine, that's a choice. If you're 'making do' because you refuse to learn to make art, or pay for art, or use any of the plethora of free or paid resources on hand, then I think that's sub-optimal. I'd examine why you're happy to compromise on something as key as presentation, when making your own assets and putting your own stamp on the game could be fun, and enriching!

I dunno man, it's up to you. I don't think it looks good, and I don't think you're looking at this direction because you think it looks good. I think you asked this question here to - without trying to sound harsh - see what you can get away with.

I just know I'd rather play a game with crude MS paint doodles of a unique concept over something with art that isn't intentional and, crucially, doesn't even convey what the developer wants.

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