itch.io

There was nothing too overt, but the people in the afterlife expressing such intense relief and happiness after having 'returned' got a little worrying. This is an issue any depiction of Heaven has to deal with, Christianity's approach was to mention that this amazing paradise after death very specifically would not be granted for suicide in order to reconcile living. That said, the ninth character's journey was fascinating within this context.

I don't expect you to fix problems with the engine. It's a great tool for what it is, and part of the game's charm is in how it leans into the structural limitations. I'm just not familiar with the MV tools, if any prebuilt options were there (like player-controlled encounter rate) then filing down those pain points would be a big win. I still wish that the big-budget RPG games took a leaf from visual novels on how they manage text...

Sounds like you're describing the same issue. Going into further spoilery detail: Wiz's entrance (blocked based on encounters in the forest you pass through to get there) lets you enter the garden which lets you into the kitchen (blocked based on encounters in the garden), then from the kitchen you can enter the main entrance (blocked based on kitchen encounters, one of which needs a Curiosity from outside the mansion). Meanwhile, the mine entrance lets you into the grounds, then you can get into the hedge maze, then into the main entrance (blocked based on hedge maze encounters, which use a curiosity found within the hedge maze). I forget if going from the main entrance to the kitchen was blocked (which might've needed an external curiosity for Banshy), but it was surprising to be allowed through in one direction but not the other, especially when it was much easier to get out of the mansion from the main entrance than through the garden.

This was a neat game, I'm just playing now after the Racial Equity bundle. The Undertale influence is pretty clear, taking the conventions of a known genre and using the mechanics themselves to tell part of the story.

I did find the language used in the afterlife to veer a little close to glorifying suicide for my comfort. Still, I'm reminded of a short story which took the idea that every human life is a reincarnation of the same being, that from an outside context will have experienced every interaction in history from both sides.

I had some frustrations with the RpgMaker format; random encounters made backtracking annoying, and I found the text boxes progressed slowly with multiple hard breaks (I always set text speed to 'instant' if available). Visual novel tools would've been really nice, especially a Skip Read option (and ideally a History option for when a text box flies past due to thinking the scene was over). Toggling encounters would've been nice, like the Repel in pokémon. Other suggestions with spoilers below...

I wasn't quite stuck, but had a bad time for a while due to the Hot Potato. In the Kitchen, at some point there's a Block Rock which prevents you from walking back to the entrance unless you have the Hot Potato page, which is only possible if you have a curiosity from outside the mansion (which was on the one screen of the external island which I hadn't noticed before going to the mansion). This doesn't lock the game, but combined with the basement being mysteriously blocked off at some point, the only way out was through the back along a long and winding path with encounters every few steps. This was particularly frustrating as the same area gives access to ice cream which specifically mentions cooling down, which feels like it should work. If you ever do a quality-of-life tweaking pass, I recommend shifting that required page to the Breezy Freezie, and perhaps double-checking that there aren't any other Block Rocks which check for pages which need items behind them.

Block Rock gates in general could have really used more hints. My first mansion access was through Wiz's quest, and after finally gaining a foothold past the fence, I couldn't pass one narrow hallway before being presented with an unsolvable encounter. Fortunately the comment here about needing to solve other encounters first was enough to unblock.

The very first patterned door was pretty confusing as it gave off the clear impression of a glass door looking into a striped hallway. Everything else was pretty clear. Visual novel controls would also be nice to have, particularly dialogue lookback.

I like how the puzzles are grounded in consistent logic, most intuitive approaches (other than 'just rip the tape off the box') work as expected, and there's fun responses to trying to use the lighter in inappropriate places.