Short Adventure

Definitely a labor of love. There is a lot of story and you get to follow a wide cast of characters as they travel through the world of Avabel. There are optional bosses that grant certain characters power boosts and reveal more of the world's lore if you take the time to backtrack to different locations available to you at any point in the game. That means if a path is open to you, check it out even if you have gone there in the past. As of this review, there are 8 Chapters (~31.8 hrs, including backtracking for optional bosses), but the story itself is on-going. Some characters entering the party for part of the story might have fixed equipment that cannot be changed, but the game also gives stat boost items from certain battles (particularly with bosses or rare encounters), and those can be used on any party members. Sometimes you will have more than four characters in the party, so you can decide who will be fighting in battles (and the other members still gain experience). Different characters have voice lines in battle and sometimes out of battle, and there are cutscenes with visuals that help illustrate what happens at key moments in the story and give you an idea of how the characters look outside of their RPG Maker sprites and character portraits. It's great. The game does a good job giving hints in the dialog about the characters' next steps and sometimes even hints for battles. There's also a lot of entertaining dialog in some places when you talk to people. The game progression is guided/linear, but you get to travel to different regions in Avabel and will skip around different points in time as you follow the various members of the main cast on their journeys. The battle system is active time, so I advise reading up on the various characters' techniques and magic spells out of battle so you can quickly react during battle. The time pressure in battle can be a bit stressful, but definitely try out different attacks to find an opponent's weaknesses. The game is great for people who like plot in their RPG Maker games. Most battles are winnable on the first try, but it does help to remember to pay attention to weaknesses and resistances. At the end of the current game's contents, there's a bonus segment featuring appearances of characters based on people who participated in helping Supernerdyguy with his game development process. It's different for each game update, so I have missed multiple bonus content due to not having played the game after some updates. My favorite character is Risa, but I also like Princess Faithyta, Escarlata, and Melrose. Iveliz is entertaining, and even characters like Dashell have funny reactions (but that's probably just me; I thought the funniest was after two optional boss fights during part of the game following Shara, where it was possible to backtrack to places you had already visited). In any case, I liked Short Adventure and will be playing along to it as the game progresses. Supernerdyguy has made a wiki for the game with various character trivia and item/boss guides. It's probably linked somewhere on the Steam page.