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Reviews for "'Arcane Cereal Duel'"

Eh, cute.

A game that takes a gamble at those jRPG kinda battles and tries something innovative and fresh for a change. Usually i don't even look at jam games, since it's nearly impossible to conjure a polished game in 24/48/72 hours, and only some of them end up being nothing more than solid concepts, but this has some potential both as a concept and as a standalone title.

The presentation is cewl, with a cutesy colourful style, and some exposition (granted that you can make up the protagonist's lines) and i think you hit the sweet spot on the battle's difficulty: you usually end up beating the antagonist just in a nick of time. The battle system is fairly simple to get into; the objects are distinct, have their niche role and are unique in playstyle. Wish there would be more battles, but i understand the need for constraints associated with jams.

But the balancing's kinda flimsy. In fact, it is VERY flimsy. For starters, there's absolutely no indication on what the objects end up doing, so you are guaranteed to lose the first time around. Some dialog (at least some trashtalk from your opponent hinting at their purpose) would've been sufficient. Secondly, the RNG plays an abysmaly important role (I've literally tried the EXACT SAME strategy 3 times, and got two wins (with different amount of health left (duh)) and one loss (i was very close to win tho). Also i saw a random crit precisely twice out of 6 games (that's about 18-20 (approx.) moves per game, equating a critical hit chance of about 1.5%, whicn may be too low after all, wassup with dat?)).

Speaking of strategy: mine involved simply spamming objects at the beginning (since their damaged is guaranteed to be higher than your basic attacks, even with a plant's buff, despite the delay), tanking the damage, then picking cheese last, healing twice, blocking the enemy's atacks twice (at this point depleting all of your mana), and praying to RNGJesus that i can kill the mage. The strategy may not be optimal, but i found it worked out best for me.

Overall, i'll be waiting for the game's expansion, since i've really loved the (basics of) realisation of this jRPGish formula and art, but it may require some balancing and/or tweaking. 4/5, 6/10.

Butzbo responds:

Wow thanks for the review Hawk!
Glad you liked the twist on jRPG battles. and you have some good points: I considered having some sort of description on the creature abilities, but decided against it, just considering how brief the game was, and how Wizlog is 'figuring it out' as it goes. That said, hints could've been cool, and if this expands it will make a lot of sense to have a list of characteristics (power, amount of blocks...) so that the player can plan ahead.

Now that you mention the RNG bit, actually the critical chance is slightly more than that, but, on such a low range that it's still low. I didn't wanted the crits to steal the show so that's why they're SOOO rare, but now I have a better idea to look for a 'sweet spot'.

Great you could take a moment to analyze it!

it's starts boring but gets pretty cool with a fun gimmick and really good animation.

I liked this. The method to win was cleverly conceived of and implemented. (Intentional phrasing to not spoil.) I'd have liked it to be longer, much like everyone is saying. The animation was a little off putting. I did not like that it went to full screen as soon as it started. Definitely enjoyable. Keep doing your thing.

I admit the premise I thought I was getting was a battle of great breakfast sorcerers.. the General of Mills and Kel Logs, for example. A flurry of frozen frosted flakes, and soggy shredded wheat. What I got was... OK. I beat it the first try, but I'm old hat at these type of games. Needs more cereal in it, the prize is just a MacGuffin.

Well, it looks great. Really dig the artstyle. My problem is, obviously, the length. I hope to see this turn into a full-length game so that I may give it a higher score. Nice work so far, though.