RPG Maker's best dev strikes again
Play shitty dream
Future Phantoms's itch.io pageComments
What a ride!! Ok, I completed the demo and got Ending 3. The story really hooked me. The art direction, and music are amazing as always. I really like your style.
At first I thought the story was too dramatic, but it really started to grow on me, and got me hooked. It was very enjoyable to see the development of it, so good job on that.
I belieive I completed all the quests, but the QUEST menu bugged out and is no longer avaliable, so I coudn't check if I missed anything. From the top of my head I remember: Boy, Boy Ball, Cocaine Elf, Ghost Gun, "Main Quest", Crab Hunter, Keylogger(ish), Defeated all the enemies, including the post sign and the bastard.
The Keylogger quest, after I finished the Ghost Gun, I went back out of bounds, and talked to the NPC but nothing happened. This might be bugged.
The Crab Hunter, I don't know if this one bugged as well. It told me to defeat 6 crabs. After talking to him again, he tells me the quest is completed, and talk to him again to hunt bigger crabs, but nothing happens.
I feed the cat arround 84 pieces of bugless catfood, but nothing happened. I don't know if anything was supposed to happen.
I got the snake from dicegobo, rolling a 14. The keylogger NPC told me the witch would want to buy it, but nothing happend when I talked to her.
I got Spaceship parts A,B and D. What do these do? They change the endings I get?
About the gameplay, I found it enjoyable. My only feedbacks are that, it's hard to distinguish if a skill uses SWAG or MP, and I got a bit confused by what was an enemy attack or mine attack. One thing you could do is change the color outline of the skill graphics, when it's from the party vs enemy. If it's from the party, keep it RED. If its from the enemy, make it yellow or some other color. That would give visual clarity.
I might play it more to get the other endings. Overall very good job!!
You were very thorough, thank you.
>I believe I completed all the quests, but the QUEST menu bugged out and is no longer available, so I couldn't check if I missed anything. From the top of my head I remember: Boy, Boy Ball, Cocaine Elf, Ghost Gun, "Main Quest", Crab Hunter, Keylogger(ish), Defeated all the enemies, including the post sign and the bastard.
You got all quests that are there at the moment. I have no idea what the quest menu bugging out means.
>The Keylogger quest, after I finished the Ghost Gun, I went back out of bounds, and talked to the NPC but nothing happened. This might be bugged.
Not bugged, just not finished ;_;
>The Crab Hunter, I don't know if this one bugged as well. It told me to defeat 6 crabs. After talking to him again, he tells me the quest is completed, and talk to him again to hunt bigger crabs, but nothing happens.
Yes, its content that has not been done yet. Essentially, its a second counter, then after that quest is finished there will be an additional area opened with a optional big boss.
>I feed the cat around 84 pieces of bugless catfood, but nothing happened. I don't know if anything was supposed to happen.
Bugless catfood speeds up the animation of the cat, bug catfood slows it down. Sorry that you put so much effort into just this, its kind of a one-off joke. If you eat bugless catfood, your movement speed is increased though, and lowered with bug catfood. Guess I will add something for feeding him multiple times, its a fun idea.
>I got the snake from dicegobo, rolling a 14. The keylogger NPC told me the witch would want to buy it, but nothing happend when I talked to her.
Yes, stuff that is not finished yet. You may have noticed transparent snakes appearing quickly once you enter some maps too, this will be some Animal Well/Fez shit once its done.
>I got Spaceship parts A,B and D. What do these do? They change the endings I get?
Preparation for an ending that is not in there yet.
>I might play it more to get the other endings. Overall very good job!!
Thank you for playing, an easily obtained ending can be gotten from jumping into the hole in the forest. It is not properly labelled as such yet, but it will be.
I fought the crab to the south, party wiped, quit the game, came back later and the autosave was after the fight right before the game over screen.
New game, spent 15 minutes buying wealth potions, bought two of the best armors for babe and hero, realized that there's easier enemies on the right. The fights went smoothly from there, only lost to ugly crab bastard.
Babe and Hero carried most of the fights with their damage and statboost, so whenever hero got ragebaited or stunned the fights dragged on. Guard could use a taunt or something like that.
Found endings: babequest, outside ladder after the mudmen, demonlord offered one but I refused and kept playing.
Spaceship pieces A, C and D, did the ghostgun quest for the keylogger guy but nothing came of it.
The only thing I haven't tried is to see if dicegobbo has some event needed for progression.
Am I missing anything?
Anyways as always I like the style, humor and soundtrack.
I don't comment on your stuff often, but it's always pretty nice looking and fun. Not sure why you haven't released anything on Steam? Great games though. It's funny.
did the first three quest kids ball, cocaine elf, and one for the crying guy no bugs
art direction is very unique I think I would call it grunge but that might not be the word
I like that the story is introspective and seems personal it seems like your going through the programmers emotional and creative past and its an intimate kind of story.
I feel like the combat needs something im not sure what,
the animations feel good and energetic but normal rpg combat feels to plain for something with this much character
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2505068300
(Not sure how interesting this footage is, I took my sweet time moving around. I played until I wasn’t sure if there was more to see or not. Would sure have liked to figure that sack of cocaine but I hadn’t seen any further clues to it existing atm.)
I don’t know what feedback to give, you are clearly creating some kind of art and it will resonate with and be enjoyed by a small audience (me included); and crabs are gonna crab as they always do.
I like that the writing seems both personal and detached, such that we would never be sure any detail was really from YOUR biography, yet clearly your emotion is in it.
Some small observations:
- As with every RPGMaker game, I am repeatedly unsure if damage numbers are intended or completely bugged. Especially the Dietz character seemed nigh useless in combat, even his stronger attack hit for 0, 0, 0 usually. I just put him on Guard as a damage sponge.
- In a similar vein, the healing item is phrased like it would heal the whole party, but it heals just a single person, and for a puny amount.
- There seem to be some slight mistakes in the language at times, I am ESL myself so I wouldn’t dare to list them, maybe half the times it’s myself who is wrong. I only noted down "nonetheless [the] wiser" - the phrase is "none the wiser" I am quite sure, but I also don’t know if or how to use it in that context 100% correctly.
- Very phunny how you put those atms in the game so Tomo doesn’t have to crank out the cheat engine again.
The humor is generally funny and I appreciate how you put the real bad misery behind talking to the same character again and again, I was really not in the mood to go all the way...
Thanks for playing and thanks for the input!
- As with every RPGMaker game, I am repeatedly unsure if damage numbers are intended or completely bugged. Especially the Dietz character seemed nigh useless in combat, even his stronger attack hit for 0, 0, 0 usually. I just put him on Guard as a damage sponge.
Combat system is pretty borked, I am working to make it better.
- In a similar vein, the healing item is phrased like it would heal the whole party, but it heals just a single person, and for a puny amount.
Some of the healing items heal random amounts... I thought it was funny... There are a bunch of such decisions, things I mainly put in there to see how I would do it within the confines of rpgmaker.
In terms of story, I have nothing but glazes, the story hooked me hard.
In terms of game mechanics, not a big fan of turn base RPG maker style, I generally try to avoid combat as much as I can, and the game allows it quite a bit, which is really nice, the ladder thing was a bit confusing at the beginning.
The art and the theme mesh very well together.
Don't have any good feedbacks to give tbh, I enjoyed my time with the game, I just wish it's something other than RPG maker style game haha, but that's just my subjective taste.
Protips for if you think the combat is hard, play with the intent to break the game. Good start is to begin with the Guard Captains quest outside of the first house, talking to the child in the smithy, talk to the Guard Captain and then finish the childs quest.
Talk to npcs, loot trash and chests. Use the cheating machines in the smith...
There are a bunch more things, but these are some easy tips.
Absolutely loved everything about this game. I'm sure there's still a lot I'm missing but the combat is starting to grow on me a little bit. the crab bastard was very tough. oh and ladders are working for me too, but like federx at first I thought they weren't because the witch didn't say anything about it

I think I'm done for now because I've explored everything I could find and I keep getting ganked by the bastard whom I haven't been able to beat. A common trend in my day to day life. Also, at one point the game crashed while Dietze was saying "Wait" and I thought it was a mock crash at first, but no, it was real but restarting the game allowed me to progress further.
On that note, the auto-save might be too lenient because it will save when you are already dying or reaching a secret ending game over which is kinda pointless.
As for the writing, I see you've gone the full post-modern route although the self-pity element of the story is too self-aware to come across as schizo. It helps it come across as deliberate.
It's interesting to see how most of the placeholder town has a purposeful generic fantasy vibe but then the hero is Duke Nukem. I also noticed that even the designated punching bag character doesn't like Dietze, but the fact that he uses crab magic did make me wonder if he's secretly turned evil after getting rejected for the position of hero so many times. The fact that he uses a shield as a weapon wasn't lost on me either, the game has a lot of cool details like that.
I also noticed the healer comes equipped with an item that makes her easier to kill.
Finally for the writing, believe it or not, this isn't the first time I kill a kid in a game during a generic early game side quest. In Wasteland the first side quest you are likely to get involves looking for a lost dog only to find it's rabid and you have to put it down. This prompts the kid who gave you the quest to attack you too and you have to fight him with your party of 4 armed federal agents. They were ahead of their time back then, Wasteland came out in 1988, 5 years before Waco.
Moving on, I'm not sure what to say about the gameplay. The start is a little rough but you snowball pretty fast. Guard guy and Dietze feel a little redundant besides their ability to decrease the chance that a more important character gets attacked, but maybe that's the point.
The music is great as always. I wish I had the prerequisite knowledge to actually describe why.
Keep up the good work.
"lso, at one point the game crashed while Dietze was saying "Wait" and I thought it was a mock crash at first, but no, it was real but restarting the game allowed me to progress further."
Could you give me some more details so I can see where this happens?
Never played the original Wasteland, probably should, though I played the newer games from the reboot. Combat is a bit iffy and poorly tested. I do need to work on it for the final build. Guard guy is OP though, he has the doyd "curse" ability which has always been the strongest shit.
Two questions if feel so inclined:
1: Did you jump down the hole?
2: What did you think about the characters?
Of course, in fact, I managed to recreate the crash. It triggers after the dialogue windows open and, as I said before, you only get enough time to read the first word. It's the stage you access from the stairs that spawn outside of Heroboy's house. Here's the error message.

As for your other questions, I did jump down the bottomless hole, got the spin-off game ending and then restarted and went back to get the card.
As for the characters, apart from what I already said, I noticed how most of them seem to be at least partially aware of their role but are also unable to change it. Some characters are explicitly stated to not be creations by Dietz but he also says that he never got a publishing deal either so it shouldn't be executive meddling either. Perhaps an unseen player?
Flobbert might be important, I suspect a cat bias is at play.
The last note I have is that I liked Gargabelle. it's a shame that you have to shoot her with the ghost gun to turn her into an abomination later.
That would be the train sequence then, I will have to look into it. Thank you. Yes, the characters, even the ones that Dietze once wrote, have "grown" even though they are mostly stuck to their roles. Things appearing that were not originally part of either his games, representations of him as a person, or his experiences, are outside things leaking in. This game exists in the bigger doyd narrative, and the concepts that makes all of the weirdness fit together are the same.
In the future I want to add more "options" as for victims for the ghost gun. Once some more quests are added some of them will sort of feed into each other, or change the options available in one quest due to what you did in another.
Ah, so we are back yet again, to pursue the height of misery?
as always, great art and great ost, but the game itself had some annoyances
what bothered me immediately was that the walking speed was not the max walking speed, and to move faster you HAVE to hold shift like, 99.99% of the time. i see no reason why not just make the character move faster by default and remove sprinting entirely.
i tried buying the ladders but nothing happened? considering the generic and repeated text lines i got when i tried it felt like the purchase was straight up not going through
i tried fighting a goblin crab to the left and got destroyed immediately, like they (or the slimes?) OHKO anything in my team
This is an experimental thing I have been playing around with, trying out a bunch of stuff. It is canon, but do not expect Dreams of Joy Departed. This is way less serious.
Not finished, poorly tested, do tell about bugs. More quests endings and stuff are coming, some things can be begun but not finished.
Oh, and it is very possible to cheese the ladders at the witches place, buy them without money, EXCLUSIVELY for this version.







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