The Stuff Fairy Tales Are Made Of

[EntangledPear]

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).




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. 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.

[Jubal]

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

[Antiquity]

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.

[EntangledPear]

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.

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.

[The Seamstress]

Hello and welcome to Exilian The game looks lovely!

[EntangledPear]

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

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 

[Antiquity]

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 

One of the worst parts of doing game dev as a hobby is that there's not enough time to play indie games.

[Jubal]

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.

[EntangledPear]

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.

[Antiquity]

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).

[Jubal]

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.

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.

[EntangledPear]

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).

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.

[EntangledPear]

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.

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.

[Jubal]

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.

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.