MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	The Misadventures of ShyGuy, by Tuppcord
Review Author	Yakibomb
Created	Apr 18 2020, 7:10 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

I'm going to write this review from two different perspectives.
1: From the kid in me who loves old, unpolished, buggy and gritty tongue-in-cheek humor of fan-games back in the day.
2: From a more knowledgeable, wiser, and a more humble game developer.

Let's go.

In my opinion, this is a neat little gem is packed with quirky "ye olde fan-gaming" vibes, complete with aesthetic flaws, excessive chit-chatty dialogue, and just off-beat 13-year-old humor.

This is an RPG-Maker game. The gameplay is roughly 30 minutes, so it's easy to pickup and finish to the end. It might be an RPG, but you can expect the difficulty to not really exist, and the skill ceiling to be comfortable. The game doesn't really tell you a lot about itself, so it's not really holding your hand. It is easy to figure out though, as long as you're observant. (Yes, Spacebar and Esc are the only keys used here)

The story in this is actually, I would say, very well executed, for a small-scale project like this. Premise is this: You're a ShyGuy, you go out to visit your friend Snifit, and suddenly you find their storage chest missing. The point of the game is to find your friend's stuff. And, it works. It might be disorienting when traveling to some places, but the game keep you guessing with how you travel (which I'll leave as a surprise for you when you play the game!).

Another real plus is the humor. I had fun with this by making weird voices for the first two party that join, which I was surprised that they do have some personality to go with them. I won't spoil anything, but there is a joke about Toad's voice that I liked because it shows the contrast of the protagonist's personalities. This helped me get an idea for what the characters were like, and how they interact with the world. However there are some bad cases where the characters cuss and I don't think they're being ironic, which can seem off-putting for Mario fans.

I recommend playing for those with a sweet-tooth for nostalgia and "tongue in cheek" humor. I would NOT recommend this game if you are not looking to take a hit of nostalgia.

Pros

- The criteria for a nostalgic "retro" fan-game is met here.
- The story might seem linear and basic at face, but you can tell there was intention in the humor to give all characters a little, tiny tidbit a deeper depth into their character traits.
- The humor is good, can be improved and shortened, but this game lives by the humor it brings.
- The story itself considers travel time. The game cuts to new areas abruptly sometimes, but it does make the world feel kind of "magical" if I could put it that way because you don't know where you're gonna go.

Cons

- Non-existent difficult. The skill ceiling is comfortable, but not really challenging.
- Random Final-Fantasy battles without sprites I don't think works well for Mario games. Adding interactive sprites to engage in battles might make the game feel more skillful.
- Dialogue script was a bit excessive at times, and redundant, and sometimes pointless. No need for "yep" or "uh huh" type responses when it's clear you've made the text exchange with the NPC.
- The food is poisoned! The only two spots on the overworld with food set HP to 1 without telling the player (the latter outright lying to the player saying their "health is FULL").
- The story is linear and has a tendency to cut to new areas abruptly. It can be disorienting and unpolished.
- There is cussing in Mario. I don't get this, it's abrasive.

Impressions

Gameplay 3 / 10	Like I said above, non-existent difficulty. There is an Auto-Battle feature, letting the game fight enemies for you. It's a lot of pressing spacebar to skip the battles. You don't want battles unless they're story based or you're collecting coins to survive story battles. The walk speed is a little slow. I was surprised when you do go in a castle to find the thief, that the move speed suddenly jumped to a Mach 5 Jet. I wouldn't mind if that was always like that, which helps to illustrate my next point. The maps themselves are too big or don't have enough in them. The invisible enemies don't help this, making the areas seem lifeless and barren. I would scrap invisible random encounters and go for engaging sprites that let's the player more skillfully interact with the encounters.
Graphics 7 / 10	These give the game a quality of nostalgia that breaths life into an era long, long ago when fan-games sprouted. It keeps this intention consistently (clashing Mario graphics, stock RPG-maker assets), it's a mixed bag and that makes this fun for me.
Sound 10 / 10	I have no complaints about this game's chosen soundtrack! Koji Kondo and Yoko Shimomura are amazing and they are recognized in quality MIDI format here. Also "Paper Mario" soundtrack composers Yuka Tsujiyoko and Taishi Senda are expressed here in MIDI format.

Final Words

This RPG game has a natural way of cohesively short-circuiting my senses with nostalgic joy for fan-games back-in-the-day.

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