Recent reviews by CT Zeal

Super incredible game! I'm 8 hours in (8 hours straight, in one day...) and I easily can tell how addicting this game could be. Very well done for an early access game. A small complaint I have is model pop-in is somewhat easy to notice, but maybe that isn't so bad considering my high framerate anyway!
This game better win GotY. It deserves it, genuinely.

Super fun, very funny. Truly a sight to behold.

I decided to finally play this for myself as I have seen a couple play-throughs of the game before. I had no bias to it being good or bad - in fact, I actually had high hopes going into it myself.
Sorry to say but this game is pretty awful. Sure, it's free, but that doesn't render it immune to criticism or tips on genuine/tried-and-true game design.
The intro was so bland that I forgot if anything even happened during it. I think I picked up a keycard. I'm not sure. I found a couple eggs after that for opila bird. Went into this section with couches on poles, I guess. The back of the couch had no collision, so I thought it would stay this way. When opila bird starts chasing you, suddenly the couches gain collision again. Why is this important? Because the couch is directly blocking your exit. So when you try to jump over to the other side, you will quickly be met with a couch that has gained collision. Please do not feed the couches collision after they have already maturely grown.
I died around 5 times in that section. Because my drone did not press the button to initiate the... weird platforming bridge, so I had to send my drone to the button twice to press it once. I would've died another time had I not been aware of the fact opila bird can kill you through the railing. The other couple times were from the collision couches, and the fact that the door is barricaded with an invisible wall. I had no idea what the emergency stop button would do. I assume it would stop the couches from moving, but instead it stops the bridge... which has no right being there in the setting the game is meant to be taking place.
It felt odd to me that opila bird kinda just... stood there, watching me instead of chasing me. Sure it's creepy. Somewhat. But if my current enemy that I am supposed to be terrified of is entirely idle, I feel like there is no danger present. Until the game practically tells me to be scared by starting the chase sequence music regardless of if I have summoned the bridge or not.
Something else that annoyed me is the game's max resolution is 1080p. 1080p is a common resolution, I know, but why NOT have options for higher resolutions? I play on a 1440p monitor, so it's quite annoying to see that my desktop icons are constantly moved around whenever I tab out of the game.
Some advice - whether you adhere to it or not, game developer/comment viewer - it is okay to tell the player directly what to do sometimes. Even in overhead tips, just don't go overboard with it. Also, with the papers being spread across the floor, maybe one of them could've been management notes explaining what the emergency stop button does. Try to keep things consistent as well. Whether it be collision couches or chase sequences. I want to know that world objects are not subject to change after I have already understood what their purpose is or how I can interact with them, unless I initiate that change myself. I also want to be scared if the game wants me to be scared. I don't want to feel like I broke the game and/or the developers don't know how to progress the sequence accurately.

TL;DR: Game is bad, but it's not terrible. If you're curious, worth a play regardless.

Great game so far. A lot of the aspects from The Forest are improved upon, but strangely the rest are forgotten or made worse. I'm hoping with time these things can be added back (i.e. log sleds. And no, the printed sled doesn't count - it would if you could put logs in it though). I'm hoping better methods of transportation can be made. Maybe add gasoline back into the game for a bike you can find? Or maybe use batteries on a golf cart you can repair? With a map 4x bigger than the original game, it would make sense for the player to not travel by foot all the time.

The ending of the game is extremely underwhelming. I like the reveals, but a lot of it feels disconnected. Who is the guy in the cube? Why does Virginia faint (I originally thought she died, but she's just fine in the helicopter)? Why does the lady that pistol whips you in the intro show up for only a second again? If these are answered in-game, I'd like it to be a little more obvious. I know it's my job to piece the story together, though, so don't hold my hand through it. Your friends don't see the same cutscene as you either, as my friends entered the cutscene AFTER me but finished BEFORE me. From what they said the cutscene finished prematurely, but I can't see their perspective as I am host. It'd be better if it was similar to The Forest's endings where everyone has to initiate the cutscene together so they can watch it at the same time.

Some of the achievements don't make too much sense, either. Why are they hidden? Very little, if not none, of the achievements reveal anything of the story. The blister achievement, for example, seems like an achievement to get just to get all achievements. Realistically, nobody is going to be doing that. There's no incentive to do it.

Despite my negativity, I had a lot of fun with this game. It's rare that I can play a game for nearly 40 hours through 3 days and have fun the entire time I'm doing it. The building mechanics seem much more fun and intuitive than The Forest. The A.I. is also super convenient, and it feels like I am bonding with real people in the game. And, remember, all of these annoyances are subject to change, as the game will be in Early Access for quite a while. I am super excited to see where the game goes from here. Thank you for the wonderful games, Endnight.

I feel like MZ is the best maker. Out of the box, there still aren't as many features as 2003, but that's of course remedied by plug-ins. A good chunk of features have been upgraded since MV, including functions from plug-ins the community has made for MV. It's nice that those functions are incorporated into the maker now, I find plug-in functions to be extremely fragile, no matter the Maker I'm using. It's annoying that you have to rely so much on plug-ins, however. I feel like the main reason why plug-ins are needed is because the developers either don't want to overwhelm a new user or they are just lazy... Pick your poison.
If you make a custom menu, just be aware that the menu is subject to extreme lag spikes (as low as 7 FPS on an overclocked AMD 5800X processor) for no discernible reason and a good majority of the time it can't be remedied. Just because there are other parallel process events running while an autorun event is running doesn't mean the game should lag so terribly. This is a non-issue in VX Ace, which is why I'm even bringing it up at all - a past Maker is better in this single aspect. UPDATE: This renders the previous paragraph completely useless (lol), but adding a 1 frame wait timer at the end of the custom menu fixes the issue.

If you are looking to decide between this maker and any others, I suggest either MV or VX Ace. VX Ace is less prone to bugs, as the coding language is Ruby (where MV and MZ are javascript) plus MV is sort of the awkward transitional puberty phase between VX Ace and MZ. MV seems to generally work... less? Than MZ or VX Ace? If you want to avoid using plug-ins at all costs, then I suggest 2003, although there really is no good reason to avoid plug-ins. Plus once you learn enough about RPG Maker in general you won't really need plug-ins for most cases. Don't take my opinion to heart though, do your own research. Some dude on Steam is not good enough research - or maybe I'm just projecting. Thanks for reading.

I'm going to start this review with my advice - not really a review of the game as others have already done that for me.

The hitboxes for the enemies are kinda small. Usually games that are similar to this have enemy hitboxes be larger, and the player's be smaller. Also, the player character really needs invincibility frames, maybe it was your goal to have it be this way but it doesn't sit well with me. The knockback that you receive upon getting hit doesn't really count, as you can still get hit by something immediately after receiving knockback.

Also, there is absolutely no sound, which is very jarring. I would at least expect sound effects, maybe even ambiance tracks would fit. I just would expect hurt sounds, bullet sounds, even if you wanted to you could add footsteps, just something that rids the silence.

Overall: 6.5/10. I would expect there to be more content, especially considering the game is $25. I feel like $5 would be a good price point - at most, $10.

i don't even remember installing this game but you're insane if you think i'm not gonna play the hell out of it

i make-a-da bidyo gaem :)
edit: i have become familiar with this application

Definitely, I recommend Chrono Trigger to newcomers. Does that mean I recommend the Steam version? Don't even ask me that, of COURSE I don't! It's extremely buggy and decides when it wants to work on it's own. Just so it's not illegal, buy the Steam version and play the original on a Super Nintendo emulator. Or buy the DS version, it has all the same content as the Steam version, just not buggy and actually runs well.

>buy aseprite
>make colorful looking squares
>make game
>profit
in all honesty though, this is a really great program to use.

edit: why is there no function to generate noise? this saddens me