LOVED THIS GAME. Story def wasn't afraid to pull at your heart strings with the characters and their storries. For a shorter game the characters actually had alot of emotion depth and lore to them which is so impressive! Def recommend this one!

This game had some serious production values. An FMV opening with voice acting? In a game jam entry? I wasn't expecting that level of polish in such a short time frame. One thing that brought it down was that the opening was a bit long, describing events that, if you expanded this from a game jam entry into a full game, I would prefer to play rather than read about. Once we were in-game, I enjoyed seeing customised and modified sprites, using the RTP as a base to build from and giving the game its own identity. The character portraits were great. Enemies had clear variants and hierarchies. I always appreciate when someone makes good use of the TP gauge. The story-related difficulty increase midway through (being vague because spoilers) was also effective.

This was devastating... Well done!
Here is the stream!!

The voice acting for the narration was well done and I liked how the events were set up in the game. I also found it interesting how it was kind of like a visual novel with how the narrative/descriptive sections were included in the game. The use of lighting also helped with setting the mood for the game with the music. The story was also decent and I like how it worked with the gameplay to make things get progressively harder.

The problem with asking about enjoyment is that I don’t usually play jrpg games. I learned a lot about them playing this game.

I played through the end twice.

I think the dev has a very good grasp of the engine and the theme for this game jam. The game shows that, despite the fact it’s the dev’s first game jam, he has very good writing, map making and eventing skills. He also created the Character busts.

My only niglet is that I think the intro is too long for those wishing to get to the game play.

Full disclosure I was a play tester for the game. I only hope my first game is of this quality.

Swords of Wartales- Beneath Glimmerscar

Misplaced the game files for a minute because I was looking for “Swords of War Tales” based on the easily readable cover text and not “Beneath Glimmerscar” the web game title proper and name on the file.

First Impressions:

Beautiful Art, Incredible Music, Wonderful Voice Acting, Moving Storyline.

Mini Essay:

This is a game I’d call a Visual Novel. A very narrative driven short story that was beautifully executed with a hauting conclusion and just a dash of main story promotion.

 The art is a classic anime style for the character portraits with no shading, probably due to time constraints, which conflicts just slightly with the highly polished design of the narrating Bardess who is almost certainly an asset used in the main game.

The gameplay is smooth save for the sfx being mind blastingly loud. After turning them down to 20% it was in balance with the rest of the stellar audio, sadly this made it hard to hear the final narration of the Bardess.

The attack animations were quite large compared to the battler sprites and the scale of the enemies to the scale of the people based on the noncombat sprites was a bit off.

As a side story from the main story it was not lacking in narrative depth at all, though some portions of the narrative were repeated verbatim in differnet cutscenes. Additionally the pacing of the voice over, though beautiful, felt like it was holding back the story as there were no visual accomplaniment to compliment the depth of spoken word. The speed made me a bit antsy. My biggest pet peeve in literature is redundant narration. The lines at the beggining saying “Shall we begin then? Wonderful, lets begin then.” unnessecarily ruffle my feathers. If the wording changed to not have the same words in a different order or cut one of those lines that would be fantastic! (Also there’s a part of the credits too big to read.)

The replayability value is the same as reading a good short story, if you love the story you’ll love the game!

It's very immersive! I had a blast!

Came to hack and slash some goblins, left melancholic from the tragic ending of our brave soldiers.
What a phenomenally excellent game you got here, friend. Here's to see more epics from you in future games.

Four little explorers enter a mine. One gets caught because they lagged behind. Three little explorers run into an ogre.  One felt brave and they fell over.  Two little explorers charging towards the sun. One got poisoned and that was no fun.  One little explorer makes it home.  No one could save him so he is skull and bone.  

-A Goblin Poem.   

loved the intro, i think immersion could be increased with more sfx work and also message sfx.

Came to kill goblins, was not disappointed. 
That VA crushed it, 10/10 RPG experience indeed. 

Death to all green skins...

A very solid RPG experience, 10/10.