I hope that the dev used RPGM because they thought it would be easier to program, because there really is no excuse to use RPGM on games without exploration. This game has ll the bad elements of an RPGM game (walk into bathroom to take shower, walk to dresser to get dressed, walk to kitchen to dring coffee.... EVERY SINGLE DAY, plus ne3eding a walkthrough to avoid borking the game because you don't now that you need to take mandatory actions in a given order) without any of the good elements (exploring an interesting world, sandbox play, magic use).
The game is reasonably well-designed, except for the RPGM use (which, alas, includes the time-honored tradition of forcing grinding), and is overall pretty enjoyable. A Ren'Py port would be even more so.
I would especially like to praise the author for using decent dialogue. For some reason, lots of otherwise talented designers can't wrap their heads around the idea that people don't speak in the kind of stilted phrasing that is suitable for narrative.
I don't have the same issues with RPGM, and as for Ren'Py, there are far too many titles that go that direction and pretty much every single one ceases to be a game as soon as that choice is made. Not saying CYOA is bad. I enjoy it quite a bit. But a VN does not feel game-like at all to me.
There is a little bit of exploration (like searching around to find at least 3 different locations to eat lunch), although admittedly it isn't much. But really, controlling a character by running them around to make a choice rather than seeing 2-5 buttons pop up and making a choice by which is clicked is more the point of the system.
The thing I'm most a fan of in this RPGM instance is that the maps are relatively small and the locations are close together. Some titles make maps so large that it takes ages and multiple maps just to make the next choice. Then it often becomes easy to forget where destinations are, or go to the right place at the wrong time and waste ages running all the way back to where you started. Not to mention the horrible fetch quests of "run to the farthest map on the right" only to be told when you get there, "no, you needed to bring item-X with you, which can be found on the farthest map on the left (right where you started)." So far this title has kept choices in close proximity.
As for the grinding, that has nothing to do with RPGM. Port this to Ren'Py or any other engine and the tasks are still the same. Perhaps one could grind a little faster, depending on the setup, but the grinding is due to the game design and choices, not the engine. Actually, the way the game is currently setup, a lot of the grinding can be skipped over (the game doesn't care at all if the player skips the shower and the coffee in the morning; it doesn't care if one goes to the doctor's office or not; if one skips the gym at night, that's fine too...). Granted, there's no way to know which action contains the next magic-trigger to advance the plot. So one needs to keep trying repeat actions often enough to test if they now have something new.
I will agree that the bugs are a bit of a killer. The fact that the game has prerequisites for actions, but does not verify that those prerequisites have been completed is just bad coding, and needs to be fixed. Hopefully that will get better and better as this dev becomes more familiar with coding. (The fact that this current release is only like 10-steps long and pretty much everyone who plays it fails because they reach an impossible to continue state and have no way of knowing it is rather sad)
So far it is a cute new title that has some promise. The graphics aren't spectacular, but they are decent. Nor is the gameplay spectacular, but it does have the feel of a game (which many current titles lack) and the dev isn't resorting to "lengthening claimed play-time" by making run distances overly long. If the game can shore-up its bug problems and add a quality of life change or two to the mechanics, this game could become really good.
and yeah found polly. I figure i would give an RPGM a chance since i hate them hope it gets ported to Ren'py GL all
