Oddventure

First impressions: The game is heavily inspired by Undertale, Earthbound, and Omori and oh my goodness does it show. It's your standard turn based rpg with the Earthbound pixel art aesthetic, Undertale's mercy system, and Omori's Emotional manipulation system. While I wouldn't call it 'fresh and unique' approach to the battle system the blurb claims it to be, it works. I do think it needs some more depth as it's very shallow as it stands right now. Undertale's system was personalized to each encounter so every battle felt unique because, while all the actions were in the ACT menu, Frisk was doing something new each battle. While the characters in this game all have a set list of skills. You'll quickly find the rhythm that works best for you and then each battle plays out exactly the same. Nice words, joke, happy dance, tantrum, repeat. I started avoiding battles towards the end of my playtime because I was getting bored with them. Also for the love of god speed up the animations for the block moving puzzles, that's the only thing that really was making me pull my hair out. It was funny the first time but after kicking them around for minutes at a time it's lost its charm. I haven't finished the entirety of what's available, just up until the fox boss. Because of the warning at the start that states save files are not guaranteed to remain between updates and I don't want to have to replay too much of it when the full release is ready. Now, that being said, I am still recommending this game so let's talk good stuff. This game is very funny, I belly laughed at multiple occasions. The characters are charming, the world is quirky and interesting. Things are as deep as a Saturday morning cartoon and just as enjoyable. The world is bright and colorful, and the characters live up to that aesthetic. The Omori influence creeps in again as that rug is pulled out from under you to explore the darkness in Charlie's psyche. I don't know how long the full game is intended to be, and this is definitely a personal opinion, but I feel that the development of this happens too fast. I don't want to spoil it and no I won't type it with the spoiler tag either. This game is worth your time and you should buy it and play it. My criticisms are to attempt to help the developers and writers polish this as much as they can for the full release. Go buy it and play it for yourself this nano second. There's also several easter eggs you find for Undertale and Earthbound which will make you go 'ahhhhhhhh I see what you did there.' Bit heavy handed for my tastes but it's still nice to see the inspiration on display. I'm looking forward to seeing how this game progresses and to the full version one day. It's got actual heart and comedy to it and any game that I can describe unironically as charming is worth a look.

Goes without saying, but wait until this game is out of early access. I thought there would be a bit more to uncover, but there isn't. Right now the game ends just as things were getting interesting. This review is subjected to change when the game is fully complete. There are about two routes to play in this game. An optimism route, and a pessimism route. I did the pessimism route first as I felt it was a more appropriate path to take for the player character. This included, [spoiler] leaving the dwarf brother to die by the wolf, disengaging with the goose conflict, and killing the fox in the cave. [/spoiler] This game is very reminiscent of another game in which you have the choice to spare or kill every monster you come across. However, unlike this other game, the combat in Oddventure is tedious and frustrating. There is two ways to deal with enemies. Either kill them or compliment them until they leave. When the enemy holds up a white flag, they will skip a turn and you have the chance to spare them. If you fight enemies and they raise the flag, the next hit will surely kill them. Enemies have both health and mood to take into account. That's important to note since fighting and using skills are two very different things. If you were to lower the enemy's mood using your skills until they raise their flag, and then attack them, it would not kill them right away. So if you plan on killing everything you see, there would be no point in using your skills. One would think that an appropriate strategy would be to lower the enemy's mood until they raise their flag, then hit them until they die, but all this does is drag the fights out longer than they need to, and is thrown out the window when there are more than one enemy. The only reason you would need to your skills to lift the mood of your party members. If your mood is more negative, you'll use only negative skills. If it's more positive, you'll only use positive skills. If your mood is [b]too[/b] negative or positive, you won't be able to use skills at all. If your mood is too negative, your party members won't take a turn. I felt like I was being punished for the way that I play. There's another part of combat that I still have no idea how it works. There's a blue flame behind the mood masks. This let's you take a turn. If the blue flame goes out, your character will be burned out, and unable to take a turn. Which makes the characters that are burned out entirely useless. I died three or four times to the fox in the cave because of this. The fox hits us with an attack that drastically lowers our mood and HP. And because it lowers our mood, we are left with only negative skills. I didn't have enough chill pills left, or many items for that matter. There is a chance that enemies will drop something useful, but I was so over the combat that I skipped and ran away from most of the fights in the cave. So because I had few healings and revives, it was a bleak outcome for me. The bard character(s) became useless against the fox because their flame would always be out. Which meant I had to rely on the siblings for the fight. But even that felt pointless since most of the time, they missed their attacks. On my final attempt, I got lucky as the fox missed us all with his first attack. If having to rely on luck to help me win future fights in this game becomes apparent, I will refuse to play anymore than I already have. I would've been fine with the combat as long as the story was good, but it feels very shallow. The story doesn't feel all that engaging, and the characters are mediocre at best. There are two parts in the game where it shows the the player character's backstory. They're good, but the first part comes out of nowhere and I feel isn't an appropriate time to dive into yet. I believe what their doing with revealing bits and pieces of her backstory is really good, but I think it could be better on building it up to show us why the character is the way she is. [spoiler] Maybe reveal Charlie's mother passing during the climax of the story, and follow suit with everything else that shaped her personality. Show us a bit more on why Charlie despises her brother beside just being annoying and a nuisance.[/spoiler] If they plan on making any more improvements for the game, I hope it would be to make combat more fun and make the story more engaging in the way its told. There is potential for this game, let's just hope it gets more polish.

As a coasy gamer i had much fun while playng this. Combat system was something that kept me going for more. I am waiting for the full release with an excitement

There’re some things that I find enjoyable, but two things ruin it for me. The first one is fighting. It was fun a few times, but it became boring and annoying very fast. No new skills, not much development, takes too long, and you can’t make one step without being attacked. While this potentially can be balanced, the second thing that I don’t enjoy at all is the core story. [spoiler]Where you come back to Charlie's childhood and relive her trauma.[/spoiler] Just why? I put it in the spoiler brackets but tbh it needs to be put in the game description

I told as many nice words as I could. I spared every enemy I could. On the other hand I picked up all acorns and smashed all flowers there were. Soon, there will be no forest, but the hunger, overcrowded desolation and death. Immersion possibilites 10/10 Love this game! PS I REALLY need the full content of "Beyond the cool and lame. Flirting for dummies"

So far so good. The passion of the developer is literally dripping from the screen. And its visible that whoever made this - is someone with deep love for all Motherlikes. Its even hard to call this a game. It feels like someone is letting me spectate another world. Thats it for now. I will update this review if a need arise.

Found it on the pixel art reddit, wanted to see the crt filters in action but really enjoyed the gameplay. Hope that we don't need to wait for full version for much longer.

Good in it's own right but NOT as strong a showing as a Jimmy in The Pulsating Mass or Omori...

This game is like Mother 3 meets Alice in Wonderland. Almost like a fairy tale. I remember playing the demo ages ago and loving it. It remains the same so far for the EA release. Great music, great art, and a good sense of humour. Loving this! Edit: Had a manly dinner with manly dwarves. 10/10 would be manly again.

Oddventure/deltarune, two games that will never be finshed

I didn’t know about this game untill lately. I wish I didn’t miss their Kickstarter capaign. I really love the art style. The pixel-art is charming. Whole wolrd is very immersive and atmoshperic. I really love all the details. The story is interesting. Jokes, althought sometimes cheesy, are funny and I had some good laughs. I was skeptic at the beginning because I read some comments describing this game as „Earthbound about depression” and there was some games like that in the past. But I didn’t feel like everything is about that. There were some darker undertones and the story explains why the main character is the way she is, but it’s not like OMG IM SAD EMO PROTAG AND NO ONE UNERSTANDS ME.The battle system is something new for me. I had to do some battles before I figured out how to juggle the party members moods. And since then I had fun with it. I see some place for improvements and I’m hyped to see the final results. I recommend Oddventure to anyone who love classic and retro games with a little modern twist. Can’t wait to play the full release!

After a few weeks of Pokerogue, it's nice to have some actual story in between my battles :D

Just wanted to give you thumbs up and tell you i can't wait for the full game!

Earthbound 4 on steroids someone ? :)

My oh my, looks like new Undertale is in town.