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Scarred Stars's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #39 | 3.462 | 3.462 |
Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
The only true horror title I think of the whole jam, and a rather amazingly well done one at that. I was honestly surprised by the quality and level of polish of this game, and the VERY dark and mature themes prevalent throughout. This didn't feel like a Toumo game, and I mean that in a really positive way. Excellently crafted.
Suggestion: Proofread! My score would have been perfect if there was some more proofreading.
Please see Teal's play-through video, as well as her review of the game in the video description:
Leaving this clip here, since it was my favorite part of the video.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgwlkRY4AY0cCGvOeOd4AaABCQ
Let's just get this out there right off the bat, I really don't like horror games, period. However, that doesn't mean I won't be able to make an objective judgement on horror games. We cool on that? Alright let's get into the review:
I like the inclusion of extra sound options like the mixer (Tony's Plugin?) Raising the low frequencies sounds cool with this edgy title screen music. I'm sure I'll regret raising the volume levels and low frequencies later on (probably jump scares incoming).
Obviously, if I walked into an amusement park and everything went dark and a dead body appeared on the floor... I would just leave.(And call for help) This game doesn't let me immediately leave the park at the beginning of the game. 0/10.(This is a joke, not your score lol)
I like that you gave two light sources to the player right of the bat. The circle radius light and the flashlight. Most of the time these games are too dark.
Good idea with applying a pixi filter to the screen when the player is actively being chased. It's a good que to the player that it's time to hide.
The menu has been simplified and I think it looks clean. The busts are cute and look good. Well done.
I appreciate that not everything is an instant death, like drinking the mysterious liquid. Instead you will suffer HP loss and depending on your current HP it may or may not be an instant game over. This is a much better way to make these horror style games and it still requires trial and error, but gives some room for learning and you end up wasting less time in the menus, saving and loading. Good stuff.
The maps are small and the tilesets used are really good, I'm sure it would be easier to find flaws if everything wasn't so dark, but at the same time I think you're providing enough light in the scenes most of the time.
The blood fountain's collision is messed up , It lets you walk on top of it instead of behind it.
There are too many events that say "Nothing Interesting." This doesn't mean that there are not enough events, it just means that you're wasting everyone time. If there's nothing interesting then you don't need an event saying that there's nothing interesting. Just eliminate the extra show text padding by remove the event.
Legit got scared when being chased after finding the hall of mirror key, good timing on those chase events. Damn you!
The dragon map looks a little off, It's easy to fix by removing a few tiles. Also the lighting isn't set and I can tell this is where you ran out of time on the entry.
I felt like the ending was missing a scene or two. The last show text thing was just an odd place to roll the credits. Anyway, this was a decent and short horror RPG Maker game. Like I've stated earlier, it's not my type of game and I really didn't enjoy it, however I think it was decently made and with the exception of a few instances, I felt it had good pacing. Unfortunately most of these types of games are just backtracking over the same maps trying to find the switch to flip. Not fun gameplay to me, but there is an audience for this kind of stuff.
The story is dark and demented and I didn't really like it, but I'm just one person. I think you put together a good entry into the game jam so congratulations. I'm sure you've got 100 more demented stories to tell as I know you've already made a bunch of games, so I expect to see more from you in the future of course.
Thank you for all the feedback!
About the dragon room, yeah I am not entirely happy about that room. I was going to make light effects but then thought that it may make the puzzle harder to see, I may have to think of a way to really make this make sense and still look good.
I'm sorry that you didn't like the game.
If you have low courage and sanity. Never play this game! If you do then you'll find this game looks interesting! The storyline is good, the game mechanic is good and the plot twist is very something! And be warned this game might cause sudden heart attack for scaredy cat like me :D
Watched someone play this so I didn't play it myself but this looks really cool! Scary too!
I really liked the hiding in areas mechanic. And just by watching it, it really made me nervous! So the fact I wasn't in control and my heart still started racing is a good sign. This one is really well done. Good job! :D
Thanks, I hope you'll try it yourself too! This game has multiple endings! Maybe you'll get the best one?
Ooh! Maybe I will then! Thanks!
This game almost make me losing sanity and heart attack XD
This game almost make me losing sanity and heart attack XD
This was a pretty good game, despite horror not being a genre I'm usually a massive fan of in RM.
I wasn't able to pick up many bugs, the most notable one in my memory being that when saying "no" to reading more manuscripts the book picture stayed behind, but that wasn't a massive deal.
How many endings are there? I got two of them.
I'm going to be perfectly honest: the story is more engaging before the "twist" at the end. The details given there just sort of jumped out of nowhere and didn't mean much given I wasn't that invested in the characters yet. The nature of the monsters was cool, though.
I also admit that the hiding mechanic got annoying after a while so I just edited my HP and SAN to 9999 so I would never die. :P
There's two endings, I'm glad you liked it. The manuscripts kinda lay foundation for that ending.
That is a really creepy game! LOL But I liked it. I admit to jumping a few times, especially with the music going. I also admit to getting lost xD I wasn't sure what to do after wandering the park and looking at everything. I went back into the house of fun and ran away from the horse a handful of times, but I couldn't figure out where to go or what needed to be done. But I do believe that is just me because it looks like others were able to get further. I will be playing again, I did enjoy it (even though I'm not a horror person lol ^.^) Loved the music, it really added to the atmosphere, the art was good too, very creepy! That horse is utterly terrifying. Great stuff! <3
Hey thanks, did you check out the teacup rides? That teacup operating room does give something that you may need...
I did, but it is very (highly) likely that I missed something xD When I play scary games I get super tense LOL so I tend to miss things cuz I'm ready for something to jump out and try to kill me LOL I will play again and go check out the teacup rides! Thank you!
OMG! LOL I literally just went and replayed. Found the key and screamed through the house of mirrors xD I'm lucky my headset survived... I totally died too by the way xD Good stuff! I did enjoy. LOL Once I find my heart again, I'll play to see if I can survive. <3
There's trick to that mirror place, will you be able to figure it out? :)
Lol maybe! I'll be giving it another go tomorrow ^.^ I really wanna figure it out before I ask for more tips lol Thanks so much for asking though! I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes! :D
I definitely found that the artwork and music was nice. The ending (not sure if there are multiple endings) was I guess okay.
Definitely found certain parts annoying, like the chase scenes didn't feel like a huge rush for me. The enemy disappeared by leaving the area then returning, so that felt a bit weird.
There were some passability and layering issues in the game as I demonstrated in my stream.
The dialogue was a bit odd at some points and the forced slowdowns were a bit annoying.
Other issues I found:
It wasn't really intuitive where to go next except by blindly wandering around, one of the hiding spots ended up being destroyed even though there shouldn't have been an enemy there. Is there a hidden usage limit for hiding spots?
How did the main character already know about the mirror hall when there is nothing that seems to really point out the hall's name?
Why are they expecting the amusement park to work if it has been abandoned for years?
The mirror hall can end up with a hardlock (You can true hardlock yourself there and have to restart the game if you only use autosaves or save after hitting the lock, you can also semi-lock yourself). All purchases are basically useless except the chocolate bar. Buying other items can hardlock you. There is apparently a way around this if you know how or discover how, but this is not apparent in the game unless you happen to discover it. It is apparently supposed to be a puzzle, but lacks any real hints that it is supposed to be a puzzle.
Imagine I gave you:
Then told you: Solve the puzzle. You might ask: That is a puzzle? With what clues?
Now imagine, I don't even tell you it is a puzzle. You might think it is supposed to be a die face of 6. You might think it is just some random thing thrown out there.
Nothing there tells you that you are supposed to turn the Os into + and add a - to the middle column. That means the puzzle is bad because there isn't enough information. I'm partially guilty of this myself (giving extremely obscure clues and very minimal clues), but in my case, it is usually more on purpose because most people aren't supposed to pass (ie. An extreme secret that people aren't supposed to figure out, such as the fact that in a certain map, hitting the top sign, top sign, bottom sign, bottom sign, left sign, right sign, left sign, right sign and then some other actions unlocks the debug key).
Now, what we know from the game is that you can attack enemies to push them back. If you try this on the mirror hall enemies, it gets rid of them. You have vending machines that sell items to recover your health and sanity, which are used when you attack. What do you think the most visible solution is? It is definitely not to move step by step (considering there are forced chase events in the game before reaching the mirror hall).
Imagine with the earlier example if the entire time before that point, your goal was to prop up the image and drop a penny so that it would fall through the empty cells without touching the filled cells when looking at it from the side. You'd think that that image was the same, right? Same issue here. The rest of the game up to that point teaches you that the game expects certain actions, then that one room defies those rules without telling you.
You can use subtle hints to help push the player towards the solution, but not having any hint as to what to do is just not a good way to design a game because it will just unnecessarily frustrate players. Part of good game design is making it so that the solution can be figured out. Take a Kendama for example. You have a stick, a string, and a ball. The stick has two cups and a long pointy area. The ball has a hole about the size of that long pointy area's base. Very simple, but it is very easy to figure out the intended goal. You want to put the ball on the stick. No instructions really needed, but the player still can easily understand the goal. Look at the early M**** games. Very simple, simple instructions, yet things are fairly intuitive from there. Look at the ghost enemies in Super M**** World. You start off facing them so they are hiding. Then, as soon as you turn around, they start following you. Turn to face them, they hide again. This makes their mechanic very obvious without any real explanation. That first ghost acts as a tutorial without you even realizing it is a tutorial.
Yes, there are multiple endings.
Yes, there's hidden limit how many times you can use same hiding spots.
How does Hall of Mirrors Hardlock you? What do you mean buying stuff hardlocks you? You don't need money to win the game. You don't need to buy anything to beat the game.
The dolls after you get the key attack you and you run out of HP and Sanity fighting them if you don't heal, so if you don't have enough HP/Sanity healing items, you are hardlocked.
You don't have to fight them. If you look at their reflections, they turn to your picture.
Didn't work for me unless you have to do it on your way to the chest.
You do it whenever you see Momoko's reflection in the mirror.
Definitely not clear in the game. Also, if you use up all the hiding spots, do the enemies stop spawning or is there a hiding spot with infinite usage?
I mean that's literally a puzzle for the player to figure out, lol.
Enemies can only spawn once in the same location. There's less spawn locations than there are hiding spot usages, so it's impossible to use them all up.
Edit:
I looked at your stream, you never looked at the reflections, you ran like madman through all of them and got attacked repeatedly.
I did sort of look after, but looks like you have to look before they spawn, not after.
It isn't really clear that it is supposed to be a puzzle and initially, I didn't run like a madman, I walked through like I would normally.
Same. I couldn't figure it out. Not very intuitive. I tried looking at the reflections a few times but nothing happened so obviously I was doing something wrong. I ended up buying multiple health items, running through them, dying a few times. (Sometimes they walk over the mirror's hitbox, not sure if that's a glitch). One time I got lucky and managed to escape. If you try and go back they're still there. Reminded me of Pocket Mirror's mirror maze, which despite how frustrating it was, you had an idea of where to go and do for the most part. I'm just glad it wasn't a huge map.
I agree with you about the chase scenes and the layering issues. Although I do like the different monster designs, that horse was creepy. Also a really nice tile set. I played a similar game a while back that used similar graphics tiles, I have a screenshot if you're interested (I don't think it was ever finished). Also that broken giraffe sprite in the main park though, poor thing. :(
I'm not really sure what you're proposing I could even do to address this issue, that I should be having Asuka go "Huh, my reflection sure looks weird, I suppose I should look at my reflection more" or something in that line? That would be really weird and tacky and completely ruin the thing. I really don't know how else to present something like that other than completely break the immersion of the player or put a tutorial box, which would eliminate the whole point of the room in the first place.
Honestly I feel that part of horror games, especially retro horror games like Clocktower is trying to figure out what to do and what's the sollution to the problem, even when they're vague. This is meant to be a retro horror game and emulates that unknowing factor of what you can do.
Really high-quality stuff, at the moment I started the game I was already impressed. The menu looked great with the fuzzy animation, music and sound design was phenomenal and even language options.
Great drawn character sprites and busts, unique tilesets and mapping, dialogue is perfectly crafted, and (obviously not bias) a great genre to work on, being a story-horror game. By the time I went into the park and suddenly everything went horror-like, I was still amazed. Everything is definitely made with passion and love into it.
For my feedback, I feel like the noise that the horse-enemy played was kinda obnoxious every time I entered a new area, as it spooked me every time because I felt like there was a real horse behind me or something. Not like that's a bad thing but the first time experience is definitely out-of-this-world. I was also kinda lost after the chase started, but I loved the adrenaline sprinting around the map jamming to the chase music.
These are the type of horror games I look up to, although I'm quite disappointed that this will 100% beat my game, despite a month's effort. Oh well, amazing horror game 10/5. I will continue playing after I review more games, and maybe suggest more feedback cos I got nothing more!
I look forward to what you do in the future with this game and other projects. Keep on the awesome stuff! If you win first place, you definitely deserve it! As a big big big fan of horror-games!
Thank you so much for your indepth review! Yes, please try and get the best ending as it's really worth it!!
Same, I thought the whinny was a little loud/repetitive. It's a cool idea for an enemy though and I generally enjoyed my time with the game. I still only have one ending. perhaps I'll try and get the other.