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Only Trust Your Fists's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Does the game seem fun to play? | #21 | 4.007 | 4.250 |
| Overall | #23 | 3.811 | 4.042 |
| Did it build on the Havoc Engine and add interesting stuff? | #24 | 3.653 | 3.875 |
| Did it make good use of the Havoc Engine? | #28 | 3.771 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
This is a really neat transcription of the rules and conventions of beat-em-up games into tapletop form. Clean, straightforward, though as mentioned, the rules for combos aren't fully explained. I assume filling the combo box is something that's supposed to occur repeatedly over the game, since the conditions are so simple to fulfil? The limit break, using adversity as fuel to build up to a powerful move, is spot-on, and the thing about earning arcade tokens for extra lives with high scores and items you get from breaking stuff gave me some serious nostalgia for the 80s. The fonts work well to evoke that feeling too, though the readability isn't the best for this aging GenXer. I had a lot of fun imagining all the cool art that's going to be in your book, so thanks for giving my imagination the workout!
Perfect marriage of game concept and system. One thought: right now the threats are all painted in broad strokes, which feels in line with the arcade genre but I imagine could make a successful run feel a little shallow. It might help give the action a bit more 'punch' if the threats were slightly more defined or tied in to the opening premise… so that the big bad isn't just a 'cyberwarrior' but instead explicitly related to the Police, or the Fat Cats, or some other thematic thread that carries through the whole thing.
Perfect marriage of game concept and system. One thought: right now the threats are all painted in broad strokes, which feels in line with the arcade genre but I imagine could make a successful run feel a little shallow. It might help give the action a bit more 'punch' if the threats were slightly more defined or tied in to the opening premise… so that the big bad isn't just a 'cyberwarrior' but instead explicitly related to the Police, or the Fat Cats, or some other thematic thread that carries through the whole thing.
It's really clever and evocative. I think the Havoc Engine lends itself to this premise very well. My only nit-picks (and please take these in the spirit of collaboration rather than critique) were the random item chart on page 8 (it calls for the GM to roll 2d6 and consult the table, but the table is numbered 1-10) and the call to Choose Your Fighter (page 11) when one of the pre-gens is literally called "The Fighter." Those are easily remedied, however, and don't ruin my immersion at all. Great work.
Cool idea. I see other comments about the readability. It seemed mostly okay to me after you updated it. The font does have some legibility issues, W's and H's look really similar, but that's a minor issue. I see why you picked it to help evoke fighting game nostalgia.
I really like the limit break idea. Turning 1 results into a resource for a big move is a great concept. I'm a big fan of how you executed that. I'm not sure if I'm missing something though regarding Combos and Combo moves. I understand that once you unlock you combo box, you can do a combo move with another player once per session. Does that mean that each player can combo move only once per session, or each "pair" of players can only combo move once per session. On top of that, what are the mechanical differences between a combo move and a regular action. I'm not sure if I'm just missing where that's written or if it's left vague intentionally. I really like the idea and would like to see more of how it works.
Lastly, I think some work linking together the mission setpieces to one another in the narrative would be nice. I like the idea of moving between stages and how that evokes the old fighting game nostalgia. And I know that a lot of those games only put cursory efforts into explaining why you suddently walked into the mall. But as this is a TTRPG and the goal is to tell a cool story, I think fleshing that out would go a long way to giving your players something to chew on when they're making decisions.
Been browsing through this jam, and found this - I WISH I could like it (I’m a sucker for anything “fighting game coded”), but it isn’t just that the big font words in red and gold are big, it’s that their letters are smooshed together (making it impossible to read them), and in paragraphs with “normal” text they outright crop the other words out (making it impossible to read those paragraphs, at least in full). I can’t even make out the stats of the characters, just whatever’s in the normal font.
As a placeholder, maybe you can add a “plaintext” version, so I can read everything? I’m sure this could be a great game, if the stats weren’t crunched together like cars after being put in a junkyard crusher.
Looks like I messed something up with the formatting on my export! I just published a (hopefully) fixed version if you want to take another look.
Hello Rob, your rpg looks very cool, I like the style you chose.
The words written in bigger fonts are hard to read, cold you change that? It would make it way more readable.
Thank you for your submission and good luck!
Looks like I messed something up with the formatting on my export! I just published a (hopefully) fixed version if you want to take another look.