itch.io

PEAK INCOMING

god speed and good luck

spent about 12 hours with this so far. and man. this project has a LONG way to go. even though it's just a demo for now, it's not a demo that inspires confidence. maybe it just wasn't ready to be available publicly.

the countless interlocked systems are superfluous at best and annoying at worst.

navigating most of the maps is a baffling chore, and a surprising amount of my playtime was spent trying to figure out how to leave whatever city that i was in at the time.

as far as character building and skills go, the sheer number of things to acquire and use is so much that it feels less like something to consider and immerse yourself into and more like a landfill of disposable menu options.

the combat balance is... uhhhh.... uhhhhhh.... its certainly is a thing.

and the bugs are so numerous and the code is so bloated with funny AI nonsense that i have no idea how much time it would take to bring this game into an enjoyable state.

you've got a lot of work to do, but it just might be possible to make sense of the madness. I hope it's possible, because the scope of it all is commendable.

cute as hell

pretty neat, but you've got to be some sort of psychopath for not letting me play an RPG Maker game with the arrow keys.
if you're going to enable WASD movement, don't disable arrow keys too.

many moments were uncomfortably similar to conversations I've taken part in while collaborating with others on games.
really nicely done little story. well paced with good characters and just enough visual variety.
for anyone that's of the disposition to be downloading this game in the first place, it's sure to resonate.

badass

i need so much more of this.

I am utterly in love with the dark story, strange atmosphere, and unusual game mechanics.
I will keep up with the development! Keep up the great work!

i could see a desert area to the right, but the path to it was just a visual diagonal one rather than a real path i could walk

I eagerly await the finished game.

there's a room in the xelka trials that seems to be blocked off and is a softlock

THE LEGENDARY SPICY PEPPE RETURNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this was life changing

super short, but very cool visual style!

need a sequel

Peak

peak upon peak upon peak.
the cohesive aesthetic does a lot of heavy lifting, but the atmosphere and story fulfill the promise that the aesthetic makes.

as i was playing this, i was giggling to myself thinking how much this was like carmen sandiego.
then i looked at the title of the game. man im dumb

Thank you

wow! embarrassing and shameful!

alright, i've had some time to gather my thoughts on this.

to be honest, I found myself finding the very serious and somewhat edgy nature of the game to be comical. considering the first half is full of genuine attempts at humor, my mind was primed to be laughing, so that's what I did.
of course, it's possible that I found it so funny because I relate to Oliver's views on death and suicide, pretty much 1:1.

the writing and characterization is consistently portrayed! even if I wasn't able to take it as seriously as it probably wanted me to, I have to give you props for ensuring that characters were well-realized!

i don't know if this is a flattering or unflattering comparison, but my enjoyment of the experience was pretty similar to my enjoyment of Anonymous Agony, a classic edgy RPG Maker game with heavy themes of its own.

where I think Despair Springs Eternal fumbles is that it's waaaayy too wordy! some scenes feel like they linger on for too long. it really struggles to get to the point and move on to the next. this isn't as much of an issue when the dialogue is nonstop throwing out corny one-liners, but whenever it's trying to be serious there's not nearly enough variety or progression to justify how much reiterating there is.

although i wasn't able to enjoy the game in quite the way that was probably intended, i truly do want a full game to come of this. I wish you the best on any future content, or related project. I will be playing it.

well that was a thing

So awesome to see another game from you!

I see.

That explains it all.

I look forward to seeing what Apple gets up to.

I feel like I'm missing a bit of context.
Were there other Final Chaos games?

i hope it can become real.....

an amusing little game, but i thought that the visual style was really hard to read. the low contrast grayscale was hard to look at

Pretty cute method of obfuscating the save data! Nothing too crazy, and just enough to deter anyone looking to cheat.

Your work ethic is unstoppable, dear god

freaky (part 2)

I am SO glad that you uploaded this!

Downloadable

Talking to an NPC in the school library triggered a crash because a picture was missing.

Pretty impressive prototype!

Maps that shouldn't be lagging, but lagging anyway? Hm. Normally VX Ace runs pretty well, even with a lot of events and effects going on. (Though this does change when a ton of funky scripts are involved...)
I haven't looked at the data for the game myself, but I can only assume that somewhere there might be lag caused by a parallel event with a loop that doesn't have any wait frames. At the end of a parallel event there's a sort of implied wait frame, but if there's a loop then it never reaches the bottom of that event. Gotta manually place 1 wait frame yourself in those cases.

HOLY CRAP NEW REFULGENT CONTENT IM READY

Bars

It's really impressive, but I have to wonder why this runs in RPG Maker.
Considering that it's mostly made in a bunch of custom javascript code instead of the eventing system.