Rock... Paper... Scissors, Again?
Not another round of ro-sham-bo...
Participate in a grueling race on a tiled map under the watchful eye of the RNG Imp. Defeat your competition in turn-based rock-paper-scissors combat, and speed-walk your way to completing 3 laps.
Built in RPG Paper Maker. Web and Windows versions are available to play on Itch.io at the associated link.
Comments (6)
I didn't like it very much. Everything is confusing, the controls the ui, the camera, the objective, the combats. Sometime I attack and the enemy doesn't seem to get damage, and sometimes they die after attacking me. It's not clear if we need to follow the rock paper scissor concept. Also at some point I ended up on a tile with a lot of ennemies, and having to do the combat again and again wasn't fun (combats are not interesting in my opinion). And it's followed by more combats on the next tile I end on.
I managed to do a lap, but it wasn't entertaining enough for two more.
The web export is quite inefficient: it loads a lot of small JSON files sequentially, each taking about half a second or so. But that's probably not something you can do anything about.
The game is weird and quirky, and it has pleasant music which fits the style well. I like the style of the overworld 3D track.
There's a lot that I don't understand. Why do I only have a fight sometimes when entering an occupied tile? Why and how often does the fight repeat? What's up with those "movement rolls"?
In general, I don't feel like I have much control over what's happening. The only real choice is which attack to use, but since its effect depends on what the enemy is going to do, it's also pretty much a dice roll.
There's a lot of needless clicking involved in the combat. Ideally each turn should need only 1 click. But maybe this, too, is a limitation of your engine.
It was an interesting concept, but I don't think the execution is great. As said above, there is a lot that is confusing. If I understand correctly, we (the red enemies and the white player) move around on a circuit of numbered tiles. The RNG Imp tells us where to go, so we move there (but not all at the same time?) and when the player gets there, there may be an encounter? Unless a red enemy that is standing there isn't actually there, just passing through??? Immediately this is very confusing because: the numbers on the tiles aren't shown to the player, so the stopping point seems pretty arbitrary; the reason for moving around the circuit isn't explained in the first place; it is unclear whether the red people are "listening" to the imp or not; it is unclear whether or not there will be an encounter.
After completing a lap the game told me I need to complete two more laps, which is when I tapped out. The experience up to that point made me think: ok, this is JRPG style combat where there are 3/4 abilities that my character can use. Because this was all made in an engine for RPG games, the combat interface isn't really something you designed, so there was a bit of extra friction like, selecting "an ally" (there is only one of me, why do I need to select me?) and selecting the target (again, there is only one). Even apart from that, the actual balance of the three abilities seemed strange. I guess the idea is that a rock will indeed beat scissors, i.e. defeat the enemy in one shot; but the inverse is not true and an enemy's win is "just" a bunch of damage. So unless there is a pattern to the enemy choices, which I didn't spot, the actual individual battles are just rock paper scissors, i.e., a one-in-three chance to win, and a one-in-three chance to lose some HP with each step. But there are additional effects added to each ability, which let you heal HP (negating the effects of the losses); let you gain movement on the overworld (making the game overall go faster?); let you gain MP (for the sole purpose of using "shoot", which is funny I guess? but mostly makes the game overall go faster again because you can skip some encounters). Overall, it feels like there are two systems at play which don't mesh together extremely well.
In terms of technical presentation, the music is very nice and I especially like the overworld track (is one of your team a composer or is this an existing asset?). The 3D-ish pixel-ish effect is cute, although I see that this is just what RPG Paper Maker is like, and honestly the WASD to move and left/right arrows to turn the camera 90 degrees was a bit strange. The actual graphics assets are functional, but could use a lot more variety and polish.
I think you got all the feedback I would have said in the comments already. Based on the comments I think it wasn't quite as confusing to understand for me. But it was still lacking some information and feedback to make it immediately easy to grasp. Biggest things I missed were numbered overworld tiles (so I know where I am and where I'll stop), health & mana UI in the overworld and maybe some better feedback what's happening in the fight. Maybe battle log or something would have helped the fights or show my and enemy's attacks side by side with icons so I understand the flow better.
Other than the characters, I think the graphics were great and just what I'd want from a game like this. And like others said, the music was spot on for the game.
I might have enjoyed the game more if the strat wasn't just this: spam paper and scissors to gain health and then when your health is safe and you have enough mana shoot. The rock is basically useless since it's just a thing that you win with 33% of the time and even then you lose health.
Anyway, I beat it. It was fun in a way but a bit too tedious.
I'm a little confused by the battles. It seems that I can always win an enemy with 999 damage just by clicking it. After a while, the game gets a little repetitive but I finished three laps. Nice fun game.