Dungeon Rummage - Tiqee's Escape

Tiqee's Escape is a fun, quick little game. You play as Tiqee, an escaped goblin who has brighter dreams for her future, and possesses the will to reach them. The game focuses on battles and using resources to create and upgrade your robot allies, all while you escape a dangerous cavern. The game's most unique aspect its its combat. Many games have the protagonist be a fighter or mage/knight hybrid, but in this game, Tiqee is more of a support character. She does have a few strong attacks, but most of her skills involve helping her robots perform better or restoring their resources, which is really unique. The battles are fairly challenging, but manageable. I didn't grind at all and I won the game, but it is there if you feel like you need it, which is welcome. Tiqee's skills are nice, especially the sleeping gas, which lets you disable many enemies, including bosses. I always love when a game lets you land statuses on boss enemies, and this one is no exception. The story is simple, but fun. It's very lighthearted, and Tiqee is a great protagonist. She says some humorous things that made me chuckle. Each robot is customizeable via various upgrades, and which modification you have applied to it. The defender bot, for example, can focus on protecting itself and absorbing hits from the enemies, or it can take a more offensive role by dealing heavier damage. My only real critique of the game is that I wish I could control the AI's targets a little better, especially during the boss battles. You have to eliminate the heavy DPS enemies as quickly as possible, and if the robots don't focus on the target you want asap, you can have a lot of unnecessary trouble. This is somewhat circumvented by one of Tiqee's skill, which is very powerful, but more control would've been nice for the really tough fights, like the final battle. For 2.99, this game is an absolute steal. It's a quick adventure that is strategic and charming, while being a lot of fun. Give Tiqee's Escape a try. You'll enjoy it.

I love games that rewards their players for exploring, and this game does just that! Dungeon Rummage Tiqees escape is a fun game, you get to play as a goblin/human girl who is crafty and creates robots that she commands in battle. This game is meant to be explored and rewarded and having a keen and sharp eye is the key. This is a good choice for those who want to try something different!

Fun little game. The tinkering and dungeon exploring mechanics are pretty fun, and Tiqee is a pretty cool character. Combat felt like it could use a little balancing, for example defender bot was sometimes a liability since he didn't have great HP or Defense, and AoEs hit him as well, which meant more resource drain. Some TP moves were weaker than regular moves, and had little upside. Other moves seemed to exist only to counteract a single enemy, and had little upside. A little tinkering of these things could have smoothed out some issues with combat, but I admit i found it quite fun and am looking forward to completing it.

I played this from Itch.io, so that's why I only have like 5 minutes of playtime lol. Very fun, very wholesome, quick little experience. Would recommend if you have some time on a Saturday to chill with a classic JRPG. Can be finished in 3-6 hours. Loved Tiqee as a character and can't wait to see more from the dev!

TL;DR: Final Playtime: 1:55:00 Deaths: 1 Fun had: 8/10 Now the long version: Tiqee's Escape is - above all else - interesting. You play as the eponymous Tiqee as she (you guessed it) escapes from a multi-tiered dungeon, in which she lives with the rest of her Goblin Tribe. Tiqee isn't a fighter, or a mage - but what she lacks in traditional battle skills she more than makes up for in mechanical know-how. This is where the central gimmick of the game comes in: Robots! You control Tiqee herself, but the remainder of the party consists of robots you craft yourself from scrap and blueprints conveniently lying around the dungeon. You start out with a Sentry bot (a stand-in for DPS), but soon pick up Defender (Tank) and Support (Healer) robots - all of which have multiple configurations called "Mods" which you can install to change up their main functions, as well as the commands available to Tiqee on her turn to give these adorable droids an additional action. Sentry can be a powerful single-target DPS, or - when equipped with the Bazooka Mod - become a powerful multi-target fighter and the core of your party. Your Defender can be reconfigured into an additional DPS unit (but why you'd want to do that is beyond me when it is nigh immortal in its default form is beyond me), and Support can either heal Tiqee (nah) or the rest of the party (yee). It doesn't require a ton of theorycrafting to end up with an optimal party - and once you do the combat changes from a slog in the lower levels to being genuinely engaging and fun as your role shifts from "doing attacks to win" and managing the various bars of your party members. Each robot has ammunition which Tiqee needs to keep topped up, and their special functions require additional ammo, so a lot of the time you feel like a Goblin running between hastily constructed trash automata and keeping them running rather than an active participant in combat. Needless to say - I quite liked it. Tiqee herself has some additional combat abilities not to do with the robots - all of which are on-theme for a freaky little Goblin. Flashbangs and sleep bombs can keep enemies off-kilter while your army of killer robots murder the other denizens of the dungeon. I didn't use them a ton, but the tactical decision-making and weighing up long-term strategy between keeping bars filled, or keeping enemies on the backfoot was genuinely engaging, and quite well-thought out. So, that covers the combat - which makes up the core of the Tiqee's experience - but what about the rest of the game? RPGs run on plot, characters and exploration; and while Tiqee herself is quite charming it is in this area that the game probably struggles the most. The call-to-action here is that a Mech (not one of yours, a bad one) destroys the Goblin Settlement at the bottom of the dungeon and Tiqee must escape to the surface. Every time she ascends a floor she loses ten levels from her total (booooooo), thus relying you to upgrade and rely upon your robots more as you ascend towards your objective (ok, less boo, this actually makes sense). This isn't really explained, but given that at the start of the game you are fighting hellish abominations and spider-queens, and at the ending you're fighting what would usually be typical low-level fodder there is a clear thematic undercurrent here: As you ascend, the monsters are getting weaker, and you are a monster. This is quite a novel concept, and it's one that really lends itself to the theme of just being a pathetic little creature who thinks its way around problems. Upon reflection I really came to appreciate this, and enjoyed the time I spent as Tiqee - even if the other characters in the game are far less likeable or appealing. They don't tend to have much screentime, generally being confined to the game's single shop/inn, but it's a cute enough concept and I wouldn't say the lack of explicit plot or conversations really detracted from a game whose objective is just "Get out of the Dungeon", but it does feel like it could be expanded upon in other Dungeon Rummage games. Now, on to structure: The game follows a Metroidvania style of progression and the loop is relatively textbook. You have a Crafting (or as the game calls it "Tinkering") menu at your disposal, and this allows you to craft bombs to blow up walls ala Zelda, and to create a hookshot to traverse, also ala Zelda. The menu is otherwise practically unused with the exception of crafting the Upgrade Tokens used to level mechanical party memberss (as they do not gain EXP the same way Tiqee does after battle), which seems like a deliberate decision on the point of the developer to keep things more focused on the action than on spending time in menus. In a longer game I can see there being opportunity to expand upon this, and while it is a little bare-bones in its current form, scavenging for items, mining ore, selling Monster Crystals and patching up and upgrading robots was a lot of fun. Usually I don't care for Crafting Systems in games, but the flavour of being a Goblin really held it all together, and I can't say I didn't have fun with this. Now, so far this review has been broadly quite positive but I do have a few gripes I'd be remiss if I didn't list them here. I did die once in the game - which is obviously fine - but that was to a surprise boss encounter I had no idea I was triggering by walking across an invisible line. I nearly beat said boss - even going into the encounter a party member down (you cannot revive your robots in battle), and the death felt completely unearned. Now, the game was generous with its autosaves, and plonked me right before the encounter giving me a chance to heal up and restore my defender to life, but the fact that it jumped me out of nowhere was a pain. The final boss does this too, but given where I was structurally I figured that it was coming and healed/saved, but it was a low point in the experience for me. The reason I bring up that I almost beat the boss a party member down is my second complaint: There is a lack of difficulty to the game which one usually only sees in games with a far heavier focus on story than Tiqee's Escape. This isn't to say that things weren't engaging - the combat was really starting to get good by the end of the game - but by the time I hit the final boss a little under two hours in I was essentially a tiny green woman with an army of death-machines at my disposal, and the lack of challenge could be an issue for some players. Not for me though - I destroyed the final boss and felt great doing it, just saying that if you're looking for a challenge this game probably isn't going to scratch that itch. The other note I wanted to bring up was the structure of the game. As I said, you fight your way up and out of a Dungeon being deleveled as you go (arbitrarily, at least that's how it felt). There are """Lore""" reasons for this around monsters getting weaker as they leave dungeons, but this being the case it is confusing to me as to why Tiqee is trying to escape in the first place. The ending is quite sweet, and I'm excited to continue Tiqee's adventure, but the first time I saw that "You've lost ten levels" thing it felt like I was being intentionally hamstrung and losing progress I had worked for. I'm glad I stuck with it, because it does make sense, but the first time you see it prepare to be frustrated. All in all, Tiqee's Adventure is a fine little Indie Game. You'll notice I've said very little about presentation, or audio - and that's because they are entirely unremarkable. The game looks nice enough, plays well, and has perfectly functional audio, but it's not going to blow anyone's socks off in that regard; but I don't think it was particularly trying to. It's a fun little game about a Little Goblin that Could, and if you have two hours to kill this is a perfectly acceptable way to do so. 8/10 - it's £1.24, can't say fairer than that.

Графика - типичная для игр в RPGMaker, что для меня не минус. Мир довольно однообразен, мало персонажей, враги респонятся быстро и потому быстро надоедают. Бои - типичные несложные для JPRG, с кучей хитпоинтов, и где чтобы выбрать какое-то действие надо каждый раз выбирать действие в меню. Из плюсов изюминка игры - то, что действовать в боях приходится только за героиню: атаковать врагов, чинить, перезаряжать роботов, а роботы-помощники действуют сами. Интерфейс в целом довольно неудобный, игра не раскрывается на полный экран, максимум - окно на весь экран с заголовком. Игрушка в принципе не самая плохая, но рекомендовать не могу.

[h1]Cute little top-view Dungeon Crawler. [/h1] A game in which you, a lone goblin, build and manage bots who bear the brunt of the battles for you. The player controls Tiqee who has a basic attack skill, some skills to debuff the enemy, and another set of skills to order her bots to deliver special attacks. There is a small variety of resources, that can either be found in the dungeon or dropped by enemies, to be used to buy or create items and ultimately upgrade your bots. Because the bots are all CPU-controlled, the battles are pleasantly fast-paced, with a nice variety of both combat music and enemies. You will build just three bots, each with just one alternative module that can be found in the dungeon to add some options for combat. It's very simple but good enough for the length of the game. Boss battles occur suddenly and without warning, but unless you have kept your bots unattended to, it isn't particularly unreasonable. There's also an optional boss that requires a little more preparation to defeat. The exploration of the dungeon is the most fun part of the game, collecting resources and finding special items to help you advance the dungeon. Exploration is mainly a matter of finding brittle walls that can be blown up with bombs, and you can backtrack most of the game so if you missed something you can always go back. Tiqee offers a fun and relaxed five hours of gameplay with little in the way of filler, and is more than a passing mark especially for its price point. Due to how well the exploration and combat work, I cannot help but wish if there was a little more... like more bot types so you had to choose which one to build. Also, some lore on the dungeon is obtained right after game start, but it would have been nice if you could learn more from the bookshelves you find in some hidden rooms. All in all very much recommended. One final note: if you like achievements, talk to everyone in the settlement before advancing the story. You'll thank me later.

On the surface, Tiqee's Escape doesn't really stand out. The graphics are mostly nothing special and, if you've played other RPGMaker games before, the maps and characters will all look and feel really familiar to you. The character artworks, however, do look really nice... but outside of meeting Gabbo and Gobbo, you never really see anything else on that same level again. The game does a bit better in terms of gameplay. The gameplay primarily focuses on gathering materials and resources from around the dungeon (the setting in which the game takes place in), and using them to craft various tools and robots to help you along the way. Besides this, the game also puts an interesting twist on the usual turn-based battle formula. Instead of controlling the entire party yourself, you instead control only Tiqee, and use her to support the rest of the party. Because of that, your role in these battles becomes primarily that of resource management. The game's difficulty is also balanced pretty nicely. The normal enemy encounters are easy enough that you can complete them mostly mindlessly, but are just tough enough that you will begin to suffer if you stop paying attention for too long between battles. The boss encounters, on the other hand, dial up the difficulty enough that you'll need to actually stop and think carefully about what you're doing, but still keeps the difficulty low enough that it shouldn't take you more than 1 or 2 tries to defeat them. The game doesn't particularly require you to do any additional grinding to complete the game. Outside of battling the enemies I ran into, I never once felt the need to go back to farm additional EXP or money. This, however, changes if you happen to be an achievement hunter. There are some achievements that you likely won't unlock by just playing through the game casually, so you'll need to do that extra bit of grinding if you want to become a "Platin-Gobbo". Tiqee's Escape is a short game and doesn't have much in the way of story. Unless you're planning on unlocking all the achievements, the advertised 3-5 hours is an accurate estimate. That said, it was still pretty fun playing through this game. Considering it only costs about $3, it's not a bad buy.

This game is one of those games that is hard to put down once you get into it! It has some really cool enemies, fire music, and Tiqee is such a cool protagonist. Plus, the story connects to a larger narrative, which is awesome!

This was a fun dungeon crawl type rpg, uncommon in the rpgmaker space. Good balance and gets addicting once you start. The level setup done well. The developer must be a master at map design.