Slimes

That's a tough one to just straight up review. Overall? Nice game, great even, but some of the characters, themes and gameplay mechanics fall a little short. Let's start from the best part - the world building done really well, especially if we take in consideration that most of the world building done trough notes! They are genuinely fun to read and provide a good enough picture on the world and it's inhabitants while giving a pretty nice stories with characters who have arguably more personality than shown in the actual gameplay. Said notes you can obtain by eliminating every enemy on the floor - of which there are a significant amount. The process of killing all enemies though is a mixed bag, since the entire battle system have no stat progression, instead choosing to reward the player with skills for level ups, while leaving inventory and equipment without any particular use for the gameplay. Initially it feels intriguing and interesting, since the way battles gonna play out depends entirely on how well you know your enemies and your ability to correctly choose skills in time of need, unfortunately the process of getting all notes requires you to kill every enemy in the game which becomes boring about 4 hrs in, since you probably developed a good strategy for 90% of all possible enemy combinations at this point, and new introductions to the skills and enemies do not help. It's a good thing then, that boss fights are nice and the game is relatively short (only about 5 to 8 hrs if you go for secrets), but even then, by upgrading enough times you'll probably get all the necessary skills to make the last few hours a walk in the park (for example, all of my deaths were in thee first half of the game and by using the combo of buffs+blessed on Julius and Berserk on "Healer" I got trough the last 4 floors without any problems). Even more - the camps felt unnecessary since out off 80% of the battles I've got with almost full health even while playing on normal mode with one-use camps. Which is a shame, cause battle system is honestly good at portraying relationship between two main characters - they really hate each others guts. Not a foreign trope for a jrpg, but also not a common one, especially with this implementation: Your party hate each other and as you progress their hatred only gets worse with each floor cleared, and the skills that you unlock perfectly reflect that - want to buff yourself? Establish a superiority over the other party member? reducing his defence in the process. Want for enemies to stop taking all their attention to you? Just put a mark on Julius so they would target him instead of you, because ♥♥♥♥ him. The relationship between Julius and "Healer" is probably the most interesting aspect of "slimes"s direct plot, which filled with dark atmosphere and moraly grey themes. The entire thing is filled to the brim with interesting questions about hatred, racism and religion, and it pulled off most of them good enough to give a player general sense of it's believes, which are dark but somewhat honest and realistic. Unfortunately, the biggest problem I have with the game is not tied to it's theme, but it's execution. It's hard to do a non-spoilery explanation, but heere it is : the game explores the possibility that sometimes people are just so bad that they do not deserve even an attempt at forgiveness, but to prove this point it uses the least "human" characters, which would be perfectly okay, except that [spoiler]Julius[/spoiler] absolutely have reasons for his behaviour, he have a backstory, he have *something* there that game could show us to tell that he is still a person. Yes, crazy and 100% ♥♥♥♥♥♥, but still a person nonetheless. I don't want this to be seen as giving him justifications for his character though - his actions are still subhuman despite whatever story/inner demons he have, but it's just that the game never tells you them directly, instead choosing to givs some subtle hints. It would be good, but because of this the main theme doesn't land as nice as you want, making it feel like the confrontation wasn't with a human being (which it feels like when it's comes to other characters), but with a Bond/cartoon villain, making the reasoning more apparent/showing off more human paarts of inhuman people would probably make the entire theme more heavy and realistic while not contradicting the main point. Still, despite my point about theme I do belie that game worth its prise and your attention, *especially* if you, just like me, have a certain itch for weird rpgMaker titles.

"The anger of somebody frustrated at the world is not like the contempt of somebody that made their life hell" This is one of the best RPGs I ever played. The writing all about hate, its origins and consequences; the very unique artstyle, the phenomenal OST and the battle system that all work together make this such a fantastic piece of art that has a lot to say and give; both personal and on a worldwide scale. Really consider giving this game a shot to experience the story unfold between religious gun-wielder and cursed healing caster who grow to hate each other more with each floor.

A truly excellent narrative-first RPG that acts as a deep dive into anger, and all its adjacent effects. There's an option to essentially enable a combat-free story mode, though the mechanics are finely-tuned enough that fighting, while no cakewalk, doesn't require any real trial and error. I played the demo last year and loved it, and even then the full game blew all my expectations out of the water. Strong recommend. (For anyone wondering, there are 20 floors, just to give you an idea of how long the game is.)

this game is lowkey unplayable.

Fantastic world-building, great writing, a distinct art style. I don't play many RPG maker games but I'm happy I spent the time to explore this one, it's memorable in both presentation and message.

Gameplay- ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☑ Nothing special ☐ Okay ☐ Bad The game-play sums up to be turn based, which I don't like. It isn't that interesting and doesn't require much thinking, which isn't good for a turn based game. I also don't like the lack of upgrading. Sure, every lvl up you get, there's a new, vague option you can use in battle. Not much of a tutorial, and for a game trying to be complex, it does't fit. You don't dodge stuff, by the way. Graphics- ☐ Masterpiece ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Will do ☐ Bad ☑ Awful m.s. paint it better. I've seen literally randomly drawn scribbles as a background??? I understand its supposed to set the mood or something, but please do better than that. Audio ☐ Amazing ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad Soundtrack is above average, if you like the Mother series. It fits the atmosphere. Really makes you feel in the game. Too bad the animations don't meet the standard.... Audience ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Everyone Some swearing (nothing worse than the f-bomb), some blood (very little, but the animations aren't that good. I like 8-bit games, but wow where they bad), that's about the worst of it. Some people are racist to fictional races. Really just depends if you are comfortable with the minor swearing. Story- ☐ Lovely ☐ Good ☐ Average ☐ Not great ☑None They try to use the stuff you get after clearing each level as a vague idea to get the plot/lore. Does not work. It is far too vague, and only some of it got through to me. Difficult- ☐ Just press a bunch of buttons ☑ Easy ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Not so easy ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls It is really easy. No strategy needed, but it is a turn-based game, without any dodging. A little like pokemon. So far, none of the monsters have hit me?? Its all null or miss. Grind- ☑ Nothing ☐ Only if you care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isnt necessary to progress ☐ A bit grindy sometimes ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ Insanity Eh, Game Time- ☐ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☑ Depends on you ☐ Endless You could finish it regularly and get 3 hours, or be a competitionist (and oh god is it a lot of bad world-building) and get it done in ~7 hours. Price ☐Just buy it ☐ Worth the price ☐ Wait for sale ☑ Maybe if you have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended Overall, not a good game. Maybe if it's only on sale. Also, there's some input lag that's in the game. Its very annoying to me, but it might not be for you. Just an extra thing to add.

A cool edgy rpg maker game, but I dropped it because it was a bit too repetitive for me

Slimes is the crowning example of the idiom "don't judge a book by its cover". At first glance, it appears to be this laughably edgy RPG Maker game with a three-colour visual gimmick and artwork that looks like it was made by a child... and truth be told, that is *technically* what this game is. However, if you leave it at that, you're missing out on one of the most personal video game narratives I've experienced in a long time, as well as a truly grueling battle system that puts even a seasoned RPG veteran like myself to the test. The story starts of simple, almost generic; these slime creatures are tormenting villagers, and so you play as an adventurer that hopes to fend them off. Of course, it's much more complicated than that, considering the first of the two main protagonists happens to be a religious zealot that uses his "righteous fury" as an excuse to go on a crusade against not only the slimes, but magicians as well which his church has deemed unholy. Spoiler alert: the other character is a magician, and this isn't treated as your generic high-fantasy casual racism of "oh golly I cant believe I have to work alongside an ELF!" Instead, Julius (our aforementioned crusader) is relentlessly cruel to his companion who he refuses to acknowledge even has a name, to the point that this cruelty directly ties into the gameplay (more on that in a moment). While the brunt of the main story focuses almost exclusively on these two, going out of your way to slay every slime you can find will reward you with a variety of items that effectively serve to trigger cutscenes about other characters. These center mainly on three different groups of characters as it allows us to see this world from different perspectives and come to terms with just how bleak and hopeless the lives of the people living in this world are. Apathetic governments condemning the lives of individuals to preserve a facade of comfort, religious organizations influencing politics and refusing to listen to reason or critique lest they be seen as questioning the church, xenophobia, racism, pretty much everything that's wrong with our world is present in this world... we're just lucky enough not to have that slime situation. But it's also this depressing narrative void of happiness that makes the very infrequent moments of respite that much more meaningful. It had gotten to the point that a couple characters just having a picnic was enough for me to tear up a little, because any character in this game showing any happiness is going to end up feeling like an oasis in a desert, and I mean that as an absolute positive. It's worth noting that with the game's themes of justification and "good hatred", the absence of positive emotion could very well be more than just a tonal choice but rather an intentional thematic device. If you like games that make you think and make you feel a little gloomy, this story has you covered. But of course, a game is nothing without gameplay, and there's quite a bit to discuss in that department. While there are some exceptions, you'll spend most of the game playing as our two protagonists, Julius and "Healer", and as I mentioned earlier, these two don't get along. This is especially true for Julius, who hates working with "Healer" to such a degree that just about everything he does works to hinder "Healer" as a side effect. The two characters have a variety of your standard RPG abilities: attacks, buffs and debuffs, and healing spells. However, almost all of Julius's non-offensive abilities have some effect along the lines of "make it harder for Healer to stay alive". This creates this dynamic where in order to optimize your fighting style, you need to play around the two characters trying to sabotage each other. Julius may use a self-healing ability that hurts Healer's self esteem "and defense", so in response you might have to use abilities that make enemies target Julius more often so Healer doesn't get ruined by taking extra damage. Although the characters do have a level of traditional synergy, the brunt of strategy revolves around them selfishly buffing themselves and trying to work around the side effects that causes for their partner. As a slightly cocky veteran of the genre, I obviously went out of my way to choose the hardest difficulty settings available, which causes this game to become brutal. It DEMANDS mastery, and unlike most RPGs, this is not a game that you can rely on numbers in. Customization is effectively void: there are no weapons, no items, no armour, no party members to choose from, and even leveling up merely grants you new abilities as opposed to increasing your stats. The lack of customization lends itself to a battle system that is meticulously balanced. You can rest assured going into every fight that, generally speaking, it is statistically possible for you to win, even when some encounters are brutally frustrating. Even with this rigid play style, the game ensures you don't get too comfortable with restoring your MP and healing in order to stall out enemies. After a couple turns, enemies get stronger, and if you wait even longer than that they get to a point where they overpower you to the point that you're going to lose in a few turns. For such a relatively short game, this has been one of the most challenging RPGs I've ever played, and without any kind of grinding to do, you can rest assured that if a battle is too hard, you're going to have to beat it because you understand the game. The game has very few bosses, but every encounter is a terrifying ordeal that has you spending minutes thinking through every move you make. However, this difficulty can at times prove extremely frustrating, and I often found myself getting a headache from how stressful certain points ended up being. Part was my fault: if you choose to make full heals a limited resource, managing yourself between battles is an ordeal. That said, however, there are certain aspects of this "limited resource" philosophy that I do take fault in, largely that there is no way to restore Healer's MP between battles, meaning that if you use a lot of MP in one fight, you're automatically at a disadvantage in the next encounter. This could even hypothetically lead to a very easy softlock: with a limited number of enemies to fight, going into boss battles with low MP and low HP is a death sentence. Overall, however challenging it may be, the balance in this game is commendable. The visuals are worth taking note of, because they have a very unique appearance. Everything in this game is either black, red, or white, and as a pixel artist myself, I respect the dedication required to follow through with that limitation (although there were a few jarring instances of the colour scheme being broken that was clearly not intentional). Aside from the colours, however, the visuals in this game do look lacking in polish. The scribbly aesthetic actually lends itself well to the larger scale visual-novel esque parts of the game, even if they do look like they were drawn in MS Paint, but in the overworld where there's less space to work with, entities tend to look like a first draft, with little Lego arms and legs that sort of just vertically bounce up and down like pistons in a poor attempt at emulating human movement. Along with these, while the assets are largely home-made, the game ultimately looks and feels like an RPG Maker game, with remnants of the engine's default assets lining the seams of the UI. This isn't an immersion breaking flaw however, nor does it feel out of place, but at times the colour scheme combined with having to squint at the small screen resolution did leave me with mild eye strain after prolonged play sessions. Most egrigiously, however, the sound effects are almost entirely stock sounds that come with the engine, with a few occasionally making me go "huh... I know that one". I thoroughly enjoyed Slimes. Ran out of characters. 8/10

I've played the game to completion before, with the version that was released on itch. It's a solid RPG that should take an afternoon to complete, well worth the price of admission.