played oct 13th for rpgmaker october

moga, or CARRIONBLUE or bilexth as theyre known on rpgmaker.net and gamejolt respectively, is one of the more prolific creators working in the engine im checking out this month, having made at LEAST 8 or even more games in just the 3 year period between 2010 and 2013, and a few more after that. so i taste tested quite a few of them w a friend to see which i wanted to play thru the entirety of for this month, and this was the one i finished. despite having the amateurishness of being mogas first >1 hr long game, it had a lot of elements i was curious to see how theyre handled for 2011: a vague story abt a cross dressing boy sent to purgatory, graphics w that blocky cave story stink but like decently put together for it, faux bump action rpg type combat thats simplistic to a fault but is an uncommon attempt for the engine, n exploration involving tediously retreading dungeons to reach contextless crumbs of narrative that is, like much of moga's games in some ways or others, an abrasive experience. also a title like that is hard to pass up.

i didnt like it all that much but i cant be too hard on it. tbf moga was doing decaying menhera flavor before it was in vogue, and their knack for coaxing putrid aesthetics out of rpgmaker is rly impressive. its not insincere by any means, its just that there isnt alot to dig into. its not that interestingly not fun and the narrative tidbits dont really come together to do anything that significant. from what i played safety and esp life is a maze might play off the combat in this game a bit better, and the ghost suburb games (not counting instead; which is nothing) refine the aesthetic sensibilities moga goes for, idt i have more to say on these games past that.

played oct 2nd (finished oct 15th) for rpgmaker october

after playing this myself w a friend in tow id say heisei pistol show is the better game--this being a remake of a 2003 game forces it to somewhat rein in the more wild tendencies hps lets loose, and it being more subdued is not always a bad thing but it can make it feel too beholden to the blunter theming and rpgm horror conventions of the original that im not as big on. this being said, its one of the most fascinating cases of a remake out there, and even reined-in late oeuvre parun is at a greater power level than almost anyone else working with the engine. coming back to kinder to take the piss out of its own corpse party riffing and its overly sentimental moments with tone smashing cutaway gags and black humor is so much fun, and ironically makes its concerns more believable, more infused w a keen sense of self-deprecation that wont let itself wallow in misery. the motifs you can spot from hps that were added to the remake too (the princess/prince tale, art serving as parallax backgrounds) go to show there was a sincere drive to revisit the project and not just mock it emptily. yuiichi being campier in this version (as far as i can tell) makes him even better as the host of this show. the ending where everyone dies is everything i love abt parun distilled too, literally one of the best bad ends ever.

reaching the credits is too sad knowing this is the last song this author sang to us. a disappearing act at the end of a grand finale is too much to bear when they arent around to hear the applause they deserve.

played oct 12th for rpgmaker october (finished oct 13th)

maybe not a surprise since i think this has a light cult status in japan, thanks to it winning one of those old ascii contests, but this game is legit so incredible to me. re-remembering as a disorienting and painful process, not just narratively for having to piece the story together on your own from the memories shown out of order, but thru gameplay goals shooting so far above any other story-centered no-battles rpgmaker game, maybe even adventure games in general. the mental gauge system adds such a cool dimension to exploration; carefully thinking out each route for how much damage youll take before you do it is key, every failure and reset driving home BD's fragile sense of herself. this is a game that will make you DRAW A MAP (try to add more detail wrt the inactive nodes and interactables in each scene than i did) and DO THE MATH and i fucking love it for that. on top of this such a confident sense for direction n really compellingly airy writing style for this time!! still thinking abt that ending too and how much ironically isnt said. having to figure out which of the many inactive nodes suddenly got turned on was a bit of a pet peeve n i didnt feel bad defaulting to the walkthru for those, but that feels so minor. sightly disappointed at how few imitators this seems to have inspired over the last couple decades, simply one of the most inventive showcases ive seen for what is possible in this engine. no doubt one of my favs for this month.

played oct 11th for rpgmaker october

the oldest game on my list by a good margin, and fortunately the exe for the eng patch lets you skip the step of wrangling with pc-98 emulation. its p decent! rpg battles are very much present and youll have to grind just a little, but it's downplayed for adv type gameplay complete with a command menu. which of course means you might need the walkthrough provided at the site you dl the game. not unlike corpse party (i think), which was only 2 yrs before this, in how your actions determine which characters live or die, but doesnt actually give diff bad endings out of it as much as diff permutations within your playthrough that are interesting to see. really like how the theme of judgement as it relates to the chars, while not that deeply mined, kind of wraps back around onto you as the player. found a lot of the dialogue in the game p charming--besides them ragging on mitsuru constantly when was the the most useful party member for me unlike most of their weak asses!!--and it made me like most of the cast enough that i only let ONE of them get killed off. and that's bc they had it coming. ost is REALLY cool and unnerving too. craftmanship of this one really speaks for itself, esp when compared to the humbler-feeling azusa 999, which also won those contests ascii did for rpgmaker games around this time.

played oct 10th for rpgmaker october

i played too many good rpgmakers so far and needed something like this to humble myself a little. picked for the nostalgia for seeing charon's wacky little bitches on tumblr all the time.

this is better than mix ore bc its like it actually wants you to care abt the girl, even if the results of that sympathy are very silly. honestly it's not that terrible esp if you're in the mood for something quick and just will be what you expect it to be w/ little else to surprise you, and i guess i was in that mood. kinda on the same level as conan room where i cant be mad bc im not bored but hard to care more than that

played oct 9th for rpgmaker october (also played some on oct 10th but atm dnf)

this game technically is pay what you want on itch.io, but the version on steam for $5 usd is the final version, w bugfixes n a bit of bonus stuff. im trying to play freeware this month mostly but this is one of a few exceptions, i saw some screenshots and decided this was a lock for my october list. its really striking n it makes sense that, if the "printmaking rpg" tagline didnt tip you off, this is another of what feels like precious few rpgmakers w visuals brought to us by a comics artist w a fresh n unconventional (by game standards at least) eye

what wound up being the most interesting thing abt the game tho were its design sensibilities. areas branching from the hub world and their bosses can be tackled in any order you want technically, and while the game is not /hard/, it is not afraid to subject you to a somewhat steep learning curve, in keeping w its open-ended nature. you have to feel out which areas are more challenging than others, even low level enemies can knock out party members very quickly, and the way elemental weaknesses/strengths work is not obvious from the jump (unless you have experience in printmaking to know the terminology maybe lol) and will have to experiment with to get the idea. but some of this won't break you as long as you aren't just treating this as a straightforward rpg to battle through; copper odyssey VERY MUCH encourages exploration, to such a degree that not only are there cool secrets to find but, if you are thorough enough, it will allow you to jump over much of the grinding hoops. following certain quests will even allow you to overcome bosses in different ways that wouldn't be clear if you just treated their areas exclusively as a dungeon to beeline thru to get to their fights. plenty of surprise warps all over the place too, which fits with the chaotic ethos that its jumbled tilesets and walk-thru-walls geometry intentionally instills.

i couldnt finish this in time before i had to move on unfortunately ;_; but its cool enough that i plan to come back! been cursed to have the boss theme stuck in my head until i do

played oct 8th for rpgmaker october

play a vague story first. maybe patty and mr miles after that too? i havent done that one yet myself though and now im regretting not having time to have done so, and will probably rectify that asap once im done w this challenge. basically take what good things i had to say abt avs, but this time drawing more out of its main 2 characters n defining its themes a little more clearly, only losing the tiniest teensiest bit of the mysteriousness to better show a warped love's greatest smokescreen. i wish i knew what else i can say to make clear this game is easily gonna be the cream of the crop for this month, with avs following closely behind it. both were the type of games i was hoping to find out of this challenge, digging thru the freeware mines to get at least one glittering gem, and im really glad i found them thru this. and also im very sad that almost none of brownsugar's games after this one were translated, but im thankful for what i can get bc i now see how special they are.

advice for when you get to the endgame: dont take risks. know when to stop.

played oct 8th for rpgmaker october

another wolf rpg exception, maybe even too radical to be within the top down rpgmaker spirit, but brownsugar's games turned out to be well, WELL worth making exceptions for. from how much ive explored of it, not enough tbf, i think this game has a nasty trick to it that is a little bit of a sticking point for me (on this note don't do doll mode immediately, only when you feel like you've had enough), but even that is not enough to shake just how novel this game felt to experience. incredible atmosphere n sense of mystery accomplished in less than an hour, not quite as fully formed as later games would be maybe but SO fascinating as a first game. went into this expecting something pretty if empty (like conan room) and came out of it feeling like brownsugar is an author im dangerously closed to getting obsessed about. and the best part is that darkript is even better!!!

played oct 7th (+ like an hr on the 4th until i got softlocked and finished on this day) for rpgmaker october

that this was the creators first game is kinda crazy. really slick presentation for 2005! esp impressive since didnt even know you could do this kind of action game combat system in rpgm 2003; first person dungeon crawler style w "shooting gallery" mechanics, except for much of the game its more that youre trying find an opening to run away from enemies. the closest thing ive seen to it is mouth sweet and that game is not even half as cool. dialogue is cute enough to make me smile now and again, and the story is good fun, barring a kind of dumb reveal w how the villain became evil. that agency they go on abt felt like it has an entire planned universe outside the scope of this game and i loved the mystery that...maybe ill play sainth, this game's sequel, and see if that's so for myself sometime!

stuff near the end of the game is kind of aggravating at a couple pts, esp if you have 1) taken a lot of damage from the wraith up to that point that cant be fixed w a stimulant and 2) have not been following the walkthrough on the dl site extremely closely every step of the way (which you should already have been doing with this game, and even then it needed to be supplemented by an lp for reference at a couple pts for me). also as mentioned before i got a bug that softlocked me early on, and i had to change the day i would play the rest of this. but i wouldnt have gone so far if it didnt seem fit precisely into the image i had of an amateurish yet bursting with eagerness mid-aughts era rpgmaker game i had hoped to be able to play, n this did not disappoint.

played oct 6th for rpgmaker october

decided at the last minute i would play this, the only correctly numbered towelket game, instead of 3 (the actual first one). ive played the majority of this and im just gonna call it done for this day, bc i dont have much desire to go back to it another time. there's good bits, alot of rpg parodies overemphasize their jokes but this one is actually funny for playing everything pretty straight w/o need for comment, and also some of inner mind world stuff is interesting, both mechanically and narratively. but god does it get old to actually play. i could put my nose to the grindstone if the story was any good but it's rly not that committed to itself, not enough to grab me, and it started to lose its ability to surprise me abt halfway thru. towelket 2 really took notes from mother 3 and that included having a chapter of the game that is far too long to do it any good too!!!!!

had some high expectations going in yet wound up not really seeing the appeal. should be way shorter than it is at least. idk if there's more to be gotten out of these games when it's the series taken as a whole, maybe there's another entry i could like better, but if this is widely decided to be one of the best ones then i feel like it's not for me.

played oct 5th for rpgmaker october

disappointed in this after liking burial a good bit, like the potential here for sharpening of kaeru's skills after the previous game felt mostly misdirected. it's a more streamlined experience which makes its puzzles easier and endings less of a hassle to get, and to emphasize the much more intricately pretty backgrounds, but i think it just makes devil feel weightless. burial's puzzles are actually some of the better rpgmaker puzzles i've found, not just bc you have to think a little harder for solutions but bc their thematic purpose comes thru more strongly when they aren't just something to breeze thru, like they are in this game. as it is, it leans on its characters more and even when they are slightly better done here, those are not kaerus strong point in either game. that it wasnt too difficult or long to finish is a plus i guess

also i looked at the rpgmaker mv remake too to see what its like, it crashes on mvs often and some of the stuff uprezzed looks worse. stick w the og if you play this

played oct 5th for rpgmaker october

this is the better one of tokiiro kaeru's 2 games that're english translated (not counting the remake of devil of the mirror). far more dread inducing, for one. and i really liked whenever the game evoked all of these mythologies in its notes/puzzles/bits of dialogue, like on the purification of spirits and astrology and shit like that. gave a greater weight to the "border btwn life and death" stuff burial is concerned than the actual goings-on btwn its characters did, like you really are in a forsaken haunted catacomb beneath a church. while this game is not that straightforwardly effective as a story it does care alot abt its themes in a way that's hard to not appreciate and feel immersed for it! p good game

btw if you play this, take a picture of all 4 of those statues in the room w the gems puzzle. the reason why is mean as fuck but i gotta respect it a little

played oct 4th for rpgmaker october

its a wolf rpg editor game technically, but made an exception for this bc it was the most eye catching thing on this site in the "BL" tag. its a short 20 min long to get one ending and its fine. nothing much good or bad to say on it. save when the diary says "i'm sorry" for less hassle w getting the other 2 endings, which then require clicking on certain interaction points multiple times to unlock.