Hello everyone!
We are
Entangled Pear, an amateur hobbyist game developing couple. We make games in RPG Maker, since we are retro JRPGs enthusiasts (and also not professional programmers, so we have to use ready-made tools). Our projects are inspired by games like the early ones from the Final Fantasy series, but we also like to include a bit of adventure game investigating (e.g. collecting clues from dialogues with NPCs, which can change when new information is obtained).
Our first game, which we'd like to introduce here, is called
The Stuff Fairy Tales Are Made Of. Its story is based on folk tales collected in the 19th century by Pavol Dobsinsky, who is also the main character of the game (named Paul to make it more international).
(https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMTQ5MjM5MS84NzAxMDE0LnBuZw==/original/9bqsnI.png)
The story begins with a mystery of sudden perpetual night. Paul takes up the challenge of finding the witch who inflicted the dismal fate on his kingdom and bringing the sunlight back. During his quest, he meets new friends who help him with the challenges he faces, people in need who he is happy to help, and various adversaries that test his strategic skills.
The game features are those of traditional RPGs, including:
- a simple turn-based battle system,
- gathering ingredients for potion- and accessory- making,
- puzzle solving,
and some not so traditional, such as:
- the main character learning the enemies' weaknesses to be able to deal better damage,
- gathering information from NPCs and other sources to progress in the story,
- a journal, where important information and notes on enemies are kept.
Paul, the main character, is a scholar who values knowledge, and so does the game. It is important to take in what is said in the dialogues and what various descriptions tell you. If you are unsure about your next move, check with people, even those who you've already spoken to, since they might have new clues to give you.
The game is our first one, so it has some flaws (a game mechanics one is the counterattack skill, which in some circumstances cancels out the chosen battle action and which we haven't been able to fix yet), but we think it's still fun to play, especially if you're a retro fan like us. It can be beaten in around 15 hours (longer if you decide to be hardcore and not add a certain character to your party). It's advisable to save often and to various save files (saving is allowed any time in the game and there are enough slots available).
If your interest is piqued, our game can be downloaded for free on itch (https://entangledpear.itch.io/fairy-tales). It has been made for Windows, but it should run through Wine on Macs (this was tested) and in Linux (this wasn't tested).
We'd love to hear what you thought should you give the game a chance.
Welcome to Exilian! I'll try to have a go and post some feedback soon, it looks a really interesting concept for a game and I do like fairytale and folklore themes in things I play :)
Hi! I hope to give this a try when my project settles down a bit. How long did it take you to make a game of this size? Were you aiming for a 15 hour playtime, or is that just how the content you came up with turned out?
Do you find it easy to create puzzles? I enjoy putting simple puzzles and riddles in my dungeons to give them a bit more flavor and variety, but I am not a genius puzzlecrafter. Some of them come easily, others not so much.
Quote from: Antiquity on May 03, 2025, 12:21:31 PMHi! I hope to give this a try when my project settles down a bit. How long did it take you to make a game of this size? Were you aiming for a 15 hour playtime, or is that just how the content you came up with turned out?
Do you find it easy to create puzzles? I enjoy putting simple puzzles and riddles in my dungeons to give them a bit more flavor and variety, but I am not a genius puzzlecrafter. Some of them come easily, others not so much.
I feel you, I'd love to try out so many games made by fellow indie developers, but always remind myself that I should be working on my game instead :(
This one took us about four years to finish - I was still working full time then, so only worked on it in my limited free time. I didn't want an overly long game as our first one, so we purposely made it shorter. But the 15 hours wasn't a goal, it just happened :) Funnily enough, I don't think our second game (which we're working on now) is going to be much longer, even though it's more complex ::)
To be honest, puzzles are mostly created by my partner, who has a more analytical/logical thinking. I don't know what I'd do if he weren't helping me. I think puzzles are fun, and, as you say, add variety, and I wouldn't want to leave them out completely. I'd probably have to ask for some help because I'm quite useless at designing them.
Hello and welcome to Exilian :) The game looks lovely!
Quote from: Jubal on May 03, 2025, 10:19:46 AMWelcome to Exilian! I'll try to have a go and post some feedback soon, it looks a really interesting concept for a game and I do like fairytale and folklore themes in things I play :)
Thank you! I'm happy to have a chance to share our projects :) I'd love to hear what you think. We mostly took the fairy tales as starting points for the subquests, and developed them into something playable. Some of those old tales are pretty crazy ;D
Quote from: EntangledPear on May 03, 2025, 04:47:12 PMI feel you, I'd love to try out so many games made by fellow indie developers, but always remind myself that I should be working on my game instead :(
One of the worst parts of doing game dev as a hobby is that there's not enough time to play indie games.
I did give this an initial run, forgot to save and got brutalised by wolves shortly after leaving the village, I'll try to give it another go soon.
A couple of QoL things:
- I'm aware it's kind of A Thing that in this style of RPG people do the houses weirdly spaced out within settlements with long paths through grass between them, but it still feels rather odd to me and makes the early intro bit of the game take a bit longer than it needs to. It'd be nice if the village either had a bit more life between the houses or was slightly more densely packed, IMV.
- I don't know if game maker has a way to highlight interactables but that could be really useful. I wasn't sure if I was meant to be checking every square of every house, given most of e.g. the bookcases ones in my house were interactable but as far as I could tell this wasn't true elsewhere.
Thanks for giving it a try. I'm aware that my mapmaking skills are not that great, trying to do better. As for the second point, I would guess highlighted points of interest are doable in RPG Maker, but to be honest, I wouldn't really want to do that. For items/interactions that are necessary, a hint is provided (or you can't move on without them), and the rest is earned as a reward for exploration. I do understand a preference for letting the player know that they missed something, but our philosophy is a bit different.
I saw that you have a demo available for the sequel, are you interested in detailed feedback on that? Or are you past the point where that would be helpful?
I do think that using a different font for the sequel would be nice, if it's possible. The default RPG Maker font is just not very readable, in my opinion. I realize this would mean a lot of retesting existing dialogues, though, unless you used another monospaced font (which might not be an improvement).
Quote from: EntangledPear on May 27, 2025, 05:58:13 PMThanks for giving it a try. I'm aware that my mapmaking skills are not that great, trying to do better. As for the second point, I would guess highlighted points of interest are doable in RPG Maker, but to be honest, I wouldn't really want to do that. For items/interactions that are necessary, a hint is provided (or you can't move on without them), and the rest is earned as a reward for exploration. I do understand a preference for letting the player know that they missed something, but our philosophy is a bit different.
That's absolutely fair - I guess I think if you want players to feel rewarded for exploration in that more open way, you might need a slightly higher feedback density. Not as in more stuff to find, but more little notes on what you don't find or the things you can't take with you in some of the places that don't have as much to find, if that makes sense. I quite like games where I'm encouraged to explore and poke around but I felt like as it is, I wasn't really sure which behaviour the game was trying to encourage as there was such a big difference between the high density stuff like home and other houses in the village that really had very little that gave anything back for interactions.
Quote from: Antiquity on May 30, 2025, 08:58:46 AMI saw that you have a demo available for the sequel, are you interested in detailed feedback on that? Or are you past the point where that would be helpful?
I do think that using a different font for the sequel would be nice, if it's possible. The default RPG Maker font is just not very readable, in my opinion. I realize this would mean a lot of retesting existing dialogues, though, unless you used another monospaced font (which might not be an improvement).
I'll probably post about the sequel separately in the forum, too, and ask for the demo feedback there, but definitely, I'd love to get some :)
Changing the font would definitely mean a lot of extra work (this type is very convenient, and we have tons of dialogue for many conditional branches), so that's not what we would consider. Interesting that it can be seen as hard to read.
Quote from: Jubal on May 30, 2025, 04:50:58 PMQuote from: EntangledPear on May 27, 2025, 05:58:13 PMThanks for giving it a try. I'm aware that my mapmaking skills are not that great, trying to do better. As for the second point, I would guess highlighted points of interest are doable in RPG Maker, but to be honest, I wouldn't really want to do that. For items/interactions that are necessary, a hint is provided (or you can't move on without them), and the rest is earned as a reward for exploration. I do understand a preference for letting the player know that they missed something, but our philosophy is a bit different.
That's absolutely fair - I guess I think if you want players to feel rewarded for exploration in that more open way, you might need a slightly higher feedback density. Not as in more stuff to find, but more little notes on what you don't find or the things you can't take with you in some of the places that don't have as much to find, if that makes sense. I quite like games where I'm encouraged to explore and poke around but I felt like as it is, I wasn't really sure which behaviour the game was trying to encourage as there was such a big difference between the high density stuff like home and other houses in the village that really had very little that gave anything back for interactions.
If I understand correctly, you mean the player should get some kind of response for all/most objects, even if it's just to say something like "You can't take it." or something? I would agree, and noticed when I playtested the game we're making now that there are inconsistencies in how much interaction happens in different places, so that's definitely something I'll need to work on if I want to encourage the player to interact more.
Quote from: EntangledPear on May 31, 2025, 08:18:28 PMQuote from: Jubal on May 30, 2025, 04:50:58 PMQuote from: EntangledPear on May 27, 2025, 05:58:13 PMThanks for giving it a try. I'm aware that my mapmaking skills are not that great, trying to do better. As for the second point, I would guess highlighted points of interest are doable in RPG Maker, but to be honest, I wouldn't really want to do that. For items/interactions that are necessary, a hint is provided (or you can't move on without them), and the rest is earned as a reward for exploration. I do understand a preference for letting the player know that they missed something, but our philosophy is a bit different.
That's absolutely fair - I guess I think if you want players to feel rewarded for exploration in that more open way, you might need a slightly higher feedback density. Not as in more stuff to find, but more little notes on what you don't find or the things you can't take with you in some of the places that don't have as much to find, if that makes sense. I quite like games where I'm encouraged to explore and poke around but I felt like as it is, I wasn't really sure which behaviour the game was trying to encourage as there was such a big difference between the high density stuff like home and other houses in the village that really had very little that gave anything back for interactions.
If I understand correctly, you mean the player should get some kind of response for all/most objects, even if it's just to say something like "You can't take it." or something? I would agree, and noticed when I playtested the game we're making now that there are inconsistencies in how much interaction happens in different places, so that's definitely something I'll need to work on if I want to encourage the player to interact more.
Exactly, yes :) Or at least have responses for
more of them, I don't think it necessarily needs to be most but upping it in some places would go a long way I think.
I'll keep this in mind when polishing up the sequel, thanks :) And in some years, when we make an anniversary edition of this one, with some improvements ;D
I could really use a break from my year-long crunch, so I finally gave this a go today. I like it! I like how you need to gather clues and talk to people in order to know how to advance. There is also a lot of attention paid to making it feel like an actual world. Rather than just wandering nobodies, towns have people with different jobs like crier or blacksmith, many of whom you can talk to about your various current leads. Shops and houses extend beyond their public front and the protagonist won't rudely wander through them. It seems like you also spent a lot of time decorating areas; you did a good job of making them detailed without being noisy.
The weak point mechanic is an interesting idea, but I haven't really used it much. If I need Paul to contribute damage, magic is generally more effective; using weak point vs. a standard attack is kind of moot in most combats.
I made it to
Spoiler
the top of the Black Castle, but the Black Lady is handing my head to me. I figured out that only non-magical weapons can damage her, but I can't keep up with her spell damage and summons.
I'm around level 19. I'm not sure if I'm missing a clue somewhere, or if I just need to grind werewolves for a while or maybe bring some buff potions. I'll probably do that, since I don't have any other leads on what to do next.
You may have gotten slightly carried away with that dungeon. It's gigantic, and every step of the way is spent searching boxes and dressers and such. The shortcuts between floors seem arbitrarily placed, so I didn't really use them. I'm sure I missed some treasure, but hopefully it's nothing important, because I don't really want to comb through the whole place a second time. It's a cool dungeon with lots of neat flavor text, it's just very long.
Other than that, my only real complaint is that I wish there was a way to speed up combat animations. Combat against even weak enemies can be pretty slow to resolve, so I usually just flee if they're not worth much.
Thank you, world-building and character interactions are my favourite parts of developing, so I'm glad it paid off :)
You're right about the Black Castle dungeon, in a way we wanted to give a chance to gain experience before the boss, but it is quite long. For the boss, it's really useful to have three party members, one of whom can use some luck based skills that help a lot. Leveling up just a bit is a good idea.
I'll have to think about the battle animations - again, for this game, only for some kind of anniversary updated version, but more for the one we're working on, which might have the same problem. It never bothered me when I playtested, but I had someone else mention it, too, so I should keep it in mind.
Thanks for the feedback so far, and I hope you kick the boss's butt.
Quote from: EntangledPear on September 04, 2025, 10:17:10 PMYou're right about the Black Castle dungeon, in a way we wanted to give a chance to gain experience before the boss, but it is quite long.
I guess that's fair. I did gain a few (3?) levels on the way up, which was not nearly enough to defeat the boss, but it
was enough that I could then take the mirror shortcut back down, buy all of the remaining equipment upgrades, and start leveling on werewolves. These give a lot more XP and gold than the castle enemies.
I did finally win after grinding up to the low 20s:
Spoiler
Barbara doesn't learn Assassin's Edge until 20, so I didn't even have that yet on my first attempts, and it ended up being absolutely required. I brought along some magic booster potions (cursed bones have an annoyingly low drop rate, btw) to improve magic defense, which didn't make a huge difference, but they helped. I kept Barbara's attack buffed with Breath Weapon or bravery potions and just kept her focused on the boss. I did see that Thief's Luck boosts Assassin's Edge, but I ended up just spending her TP on Edge. Adele was almost exclusively healing or dispelling the defense buff on the boss. Paul couldn't do anything at all to the boss, so I just had him clearing the zombies or using healing potions. I just ignored the rot, it wasn't worth spending a turn to cure it.
I should have grinded up just one more level first, though. After I won, Adele made level 22 and learned Heal II, which would have helped a lot during the fight.
QuoteI'll have to think about the battle animations - again, for this game, only for some kind of anniversary updated version, but more for the one we're working on, which might have the same problem. It never bothered me when I playtested, but I had someone else mention it, too, so I should keep it in mind.
It's not the individual animations per se. Those are fine, but combat as a whole just kind of runs slowly, because there are a lot of delays between turns or when resolving damage. I don't know how much control you have over this, but any way to speed it up would be helpful.
You found a good strategy. That's how I fought her too ;D
I think I know now what you mean about those battle animations. Like when there's a hit, there's a small delay, then the target moves backwards a bit and gets back to the original position. I did try to find where that delay is set up in RPG Maker, or the battle script, but I wasn't successful. Maybe I could try asking in the RPG Maker forum, since people there know much more about its inner workings than I do.
Have fun with the rest of the game, and don't forget to save often in different slots :)
I haven't gotten to finish just yet, but I did complete the northernmost area and should be ready to move on next time I play. In the mean time, I left you a rating on Itch.
Spoilers
I thought the consequences for banishing Death and having to bring it back were interesting. Lots of games have Death as just a regular boss, but literally defeating Death would probably have an impact on the world. I also appreciated the affable dragon and peaceful witch that didn't need to be slain as a first resort, which is also in keeping with Paul's character.
The point of no return took me by surprise, although fortunately I had a save file from right before it. The fact that you can't return once you teleport into the castle is very clearly telegraphed, but it isn't obvious at all that you can't leave the witch's tower. It's especially odd since the alchemist asks for various items from outside the tower, which I did not have and then could not go and get. This is a weird trap for the player and doesn't feel necessary.
So, I reloaded my game from right outside the tower, and went around to finish up everything that I hadn't done yet. I wasn't able to procure any spices, since the spice merchant is gone, so I am hoping that they won't be required to finish the game. I'm pretty sure the spice merchant was a long while back at this point.
Speaking of which, I was curious about something. I found two ancient wines in the castle, which I noticed sold for 30,000 gold, but I held onto them. I later traded one for the brandy. If the player just sells both of these, it's enough to buy the brandy, but what if the player does so and still runs out of money by this point? It's no longer possible to grind for gold, because enemies don't die. Is there an alternate solution, or would farming and selling mushrooms/gallows dew/etc. be the only renewable source of income at this point?
I also wondered about the meditation. I did this with Paul at the beginning of the game, then returned every so often to see if I could do it again, but I couldn't until where I'm at right now. I gave it to Adele this time, but is it possible to meditate a third time to cover all characters? What determines when it refreshes?
Thanks for the rating :) I trust your opinion won't change when you've finished the game (hopefully you won't find some obscure bug that no one else has).
Answers to your questions
The part with the Death, both calling it and then having the consequences, was inspired by two different fairy tales. I'm glad you liked it, we thought it was interesting and brought variety to the game.
I understand your point about the inability to leave once you reach the witch tower. We tried to remember why we did that, and I think it was because it would have meant changing all the NPC dialogues to reflect your new knowledge. So purely practical reasons, but maybe if we return to this game sometime in the future to improve it, we can put the time into adding the dialogues.
To be honest, the love potion recipe was meant to be just a joke (also so that the apprentice's selection wasn't that small), so it's not possible to make it - the Spanish flies are not obtainable in the game.
As to the aged rum money - for this, we added something that can be caught in the Silver lake and can be sold for a higher amount of money. It takes some time if you go from zero, but it's not impossible to make enough to buy the rum.
The meditation can only be used twice - once before and once after Andrew joins you. It was supposed to be rare, but I guess it could be increased to three (in the 20th anniversary edition ;D ).
I'll be happy to hear your overall thoughts after you're done :)