Completed Pokémon Reflections

​

Welcome to the world of Pokémon! Step out into a land of wonder... and mystery! Meet new people, new Pokémon, and maybe learn a thing or two about yourself along the way. For not everything is as it seems in this world...

Features:

• New Pokémon!​
• A truly insightful story told through the medium of Pokémon Essentials and RPG Maker XP​
• At least one puzzle​
• Unique, mystery gameplay mechanics​
• Okay there might be two puzzles, possibly more​
• One randomly generated dungon = potentially endless replayability​
• Brand-new, modern-feeling UI redesign probably inspired by that one Shin Megami Tensei spinoff absolutely nobody has heard of before​
• A real soundtrack featuring absolutely no music from Yakuza 0 this time​
• I'm having difficulty counting the puzzles, I'm sorry​
• Not sure I can tell you exactly how many hours of gameplay but one of us did a speedrun and it took 2 hours so do with that information what you will​
• Tons of compatibility breaking modifications to Essentials that will make this game impossible to upgrade to v21​

Screenshots:

Download:
v1.0.3
Soundtrack (Side A)
Soundtrack (Side B)

Credits:

Spoiler

Directed by Riley "rainefall" Pierce
Story by rainefall & Jenetics
Complaining by rainefall

UI/Gameplay Programming by rainefall
With code based on
Overworld Shadows EX by Golisopod User, Marin and WolfPP

Concept Art by Jenetics
Sprite Art by Jenetics
Background Art by rainefall

Additional Graphics from
Pokémon Ruby Sapphire FireRed and LeafGreen versions (by Gamefreak, ripped by Nenu on SpritersResource)
Pokémon Midnight (by rainefall, Brom, Holoserica and Jenetics)

Music by rainefall
"Stripped" written by Martin Lee Gore and performed by Dream Library (Originally performed by Depeche Mode)
"through a looking glass" written by Riley Pierce and performed by Dream Library
General MIDI version of "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence that I've had on my desktop for years and don't know where it came from


"Pokémon Essentials" was created by:
Flameguru
Poccil (Peter O.)
Maruno

With contributions from:
AvatarMonkeyKirby
Marin
Boushy
MiDas Mike
Brother1440
Near Fantastica
FL.
PinkMan
Genzai Kawakami
Popper
Golisopod User
Rataime
help-14
Savordez
IceGod64
SoundSpawn
Jacob O. Wobbrock
the__end
KitsuneKouta
Venom12
Lisa Anthony
Wachunga
Luka S.J.
and everyone else who helped out

"mkxp-z" by Roza
Based on "mkxp" by Ancurio et al.

"RPG Maker XP" by Enterbrain


Pokémon is owned by:
The Pokémon Company
Nintendo
Affiliated with Game Freak


Special Thanks to:
local-logs
Holoserica
LuxDiablo
The Relic Castle Discord Server

Known Bugs:
Due to the nature of game jams, and the fact that mine was cut short by a few days, not only did I miss out a lot of content I wanted to include but I was also unable to test the game as throughly as I would have liked. That being said, there are a few bugs I am aware of and that may or may not be impossible/very difficult to fix.

Certain lighting overlays appear and disappear visibly (Fixing this would require a complete rework of how fogs are displayed which I didn't fancy wasting my time on for a jam game though I may fix this at a late date.)

• The game stutters while progressing through certain sections of Route 7. (Due to how those sections are set up, this may be impossible to fix without rewriting the entire map renderer from scratch.)​
• In the overworld command menu, the scrolling "COMMAND" text freezes while the save/quit dialog boxes are open. (Fixing this would require completely rewriting both of the save and quit screens, potentially even the entire concept of choice boxes, which I didn't fancy wasting my time on for a jam game though I may fix this at a later date.)
• Some Pokémon are missing footprints in the Pokédex​
• Pokédex footprints are inexplicably misaligned​
• Spoiler: Falsorio City onwards

  Most dialogue from this point was intended to be voice acted in a manner similar to Master from Fallout 1, but I ran out of time. Due to the nature of the jam I can't go back and do that until spotlights have been picked, and by that point there would be very little point in doing so.
• Spoiler: Whole game

  Some moves can very easily abuse the system that normalizes all attack values. Fixing this is kind of pointless, there aren't many situations where a battle becomes extremely difficult as a result of this, so I'm calling this a feature not a bug.

NOTE TO WINDOWS USERS: Certain optional content in this game requires latest Visual C++ Redistributable to run. This is in order to run a couple of utility functions that required access to the Windows API. The game MAY run without it however.

 

[lichen]

Oh my god that UI!!! Super pretty

 

[Astefia]

All that Persona prettiness and no Pokemon summary screen from the party and no way to heal at home or lab before heading out. I just want to check my stats and heal up...

 

[rainefall]

All that Persona prettiness and no Pokemon summary screen from the party and no way to heal at home or lab before heading out. I just want to check my stats and heal up...

Honestly didn't expect anyone to notice this! I had to cut out some of the UI changes last minute but they may be implemented post judging.

 

[KennyCatches]

Spoiler

Hey there! I'm playing your game right now, and I noticed that every damaging move does the same amount of %hp damage. For example, ember and scratch doing the same amount of damage to a Beedrill, or a level 12 Rattata using take down on my level 4 Pidgey and barely doing any damage etc...Is this intentional?

 

[rainefall]

The game has been updated to v1.0.2
I strongly recommend downloading this version as it fixes a few major bugs/crashes.

Changelog

• Fixed a potential crash upon talking to the 5th gym leader, wherein the game would attempt to set the portrait sprite for a portrait object that may or may not exist instead of simply creating a new one
• Fixed an event page order error in Falsorio City
• The game no longer displays the indev version numbering scheme
• Tweaked ending text

 

[KennyCatches]

Hey there! I'm playing your game right now, and I noticed that every damaging move does the same amount of %hp damage. For example, ember and scratch doing the same amount of damage to a Beedrill, or a level 12 Rattata using take down on my level 4 Pidgey and barely doing any damage etc...Is this intentional?

Just finished the game and

Spoiler

Oh, I feel like an idiot. It wasn't a bug. I get it now!

 

[Tomix9tomix]

Finished playing the game on stream, some thoughts, MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW:

Spoiler

I find it really hard to put an opinion together for this game. I had a little think over it on stream and I think my thought process there summarizes it best so it is probably worth watching that, but I'll try to write something here.

The game is incredibly tedious, and not in a fun way. Mostly because of the battle system and then the number of trainer battles you are forced into. With the battle system the player has no agency over their gameplay, and the hp feels so incredibly bloated that the game really does feel like a slog.

But this is all intended, this is what the game was designed to make the player feel. So I don't really know what to say. But I do believe that just because something was intended to be bad, doesn't excuse it from critism. Furthermore, even after the point where the player probably understands that things aren't as they seem, the slog seems to continue for a while.

Furthermore, the game doesn't really seem to have a proper payoff for the build up, it seems to amount to "all pokemon games are the same when simplified and the franchise is dumb and overmilked"

Honestly my real take away from this game, was just how tortured you seem. I could be wrong but it, and if I am then it is a testimony to how well you presented the idea of this experience, but this really does feel like a game that you started, and then gave up out of self-hatred. Especially with the inclusion of a map from one of your previous unfinished projects. And I think that is where this game's pay-off so to speak does excel, it is an interesting look into a somewhat depressive and self-destructive part of your mind.

But I honestly feel kinda shitty saying all that, doesn't feel right taking your mind and trying to analyze it as a piece of art.

I will say, the UI was beautiful, and I did like the designs of the fakemon. Ironically, I do feel like you've shown me that you can make a really good and fun pokemon game.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, by the end, more than doki doki literature club, this game reminded me of "The Beginner's Guide". You should give that a watch/playthrough if you haven't.

 

[rainefall]

Finished playing the game on stream, some thoughts, MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW:

Spoiler

I find it really hard to put an opinion together for this game. I had a little think over it on stream and I think my thought process there summarizes it best so it is probably worth watching that, but I'll try to write something here.

The game is incredibly tedious, and not in a fun way. Mostly because of the battle system and then the number of trainer battles you are forced into. With the battle system the player has no agency over their gameplay, and the hp feels so incredibly bloated that the game really does feel like a slog.

But this is all intended, this is what the game was designed to make the player feel. So I don't really know what to say. But I do believe that just because something was intended to be bad, doesn't excuse it from critism. Furthermore, even after the point where the player probably understands that things aren't as they seem, the slog seems to continue for a while.

Furthermore, the game doesn't really seem to have a proper payoff for the build up, it seems to amount to "all pokemon games are the same when simplified and the franchise is dumb and overmilked"

Honestly my real take away from this game, was just how tortured you seem. I could be wrong but it, and if I am then it is a testimony to how well you presented the idea of this experience, but this really does feel like a game that you started, and then gave up out of self-hatred. Especially with the inclusion of a map from one of your previous unfinished projects. And I think that is where this game's pay-off so to speak does excel, it is an interesting look into a somewhat depressive and self-destructive part of your mind.

But I honestly feel kinda shitty saying all that, doesn't feel right taking your mind and trying to analyze it as a piece of art.

I will say, the UI was beautiful, and I did like the designs of the fakemon. Ironically, I do feel like you've shown me that you can make a really good and fun pokemon game.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, by the end, more than doki doki literature club, this game reminded me of "The Beginner's Guide". You should give that a watch/playthrough if you haven't.

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

Spoiler

Thank you for "playing" all the way to the (almost) end!

I think I mentioned on discord but if not, you didn't reach the end of the game because of an error on my part. I realise the game gaslighting you into thinking there is nothing else to experience for 20 minutes only to genuinely say "there is nothing else you should quit now" to get you to trigger the ending cutscene doesn't exactly work, in hindsignt I probably should have made the end cutscene trigger automatically. I don't know if/how much that would change your thoughts on the buildup + payoff. I honestly quite enjoyed making this game, though it's worth mentioning my original idea for the ending was scrapped early on due to being far too ambitious.

About half way through making the game I did sort of realise a lot of my criticisms were mostly criticisms launched at myself and my own games, the game's ending somewhat contextualises that. My friend and I both got quite attached to the characters and the world we created, and I ended up wanting to fill the game world and fake story with far too many complex and interesting ideas for a game that was to "criticise" Pokémon. All in all, it was quite a fun game to make, though it did make me wish I had made a proper game, that might have come across in some of Us' later dialogue. I've never managed to finish a game besides this one, which is somewhat ironic.

I haven't played The Beginner's Guide, though from what I've heard I think I understand the comparison. I did take a fair amount of inspiration from The Stanley Parable in writing the third act however. I find the Doki Doki music comparison quite amusing, I was attempting to go for a Pokémon-Meets-Persona5 style, though looking back I do agree with it sounding like DDLC at times.

I'm glad you found it interesting to play through though! On release I accepted that the game would be extremely polarising, but I was a little worried that the commentary/message I attempted to convey wouldn't be interesting enough to warrant playing through what is objectively a terrible game.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the streamer bit was supposed to be a reference to ATLUS West's poor handling of streamers/let's players upon the international release of Persona 5, that joke completely falls flat if you don't make that connection so that's 100% my fault, I probably should have completed the joke with some reference to it in the thread you're right.

 

[rainefall]

The game has been updated to v1.0.3

Changelog

• Fixed minor spelling errors
• Fixed a graphical error when sprinting while wearing a certain outfit
• Fixed a bug where blacking out near the end of the game would send you to a Pokémon Center and disrupt the intended flow of the ending
• Made the ending slightly more obvious

 

[safr]

I think this hav have pretty good concept, with character pictures, pokedex and menu design, dialogue frame.

Maybe the weaknesses of this game is on graphics and story but it's understandable because it's game jam with pretty limited time to build.

My only hope maybe if you have time after the game jam you not abandon this game

That's all and stay healthy

 

[rainefall]

I think this hav have pretty good concept, with character pictures, pokedex and menu design, dialogue frame.

Maybe the weaknesses of this game is on graphics and story but it's understandable because it's game jam with pretty limited time to build.

My only hope maybe if you have time after the game jam you not abandon this game

That's all and stay healthy

I must say I am a little confused by this response, as this game is finished (and I’ve moved on from it to new projects). I don’t intend to issue any major updates as I’m satisfied with the content and story of the game. I am glad you enjoyed it though!

 

[safr]

I must say I am a little confused by this response, as this game is finished (and I’ve moved on from it to new projects). I don’t intend to issue any major updates as I’m satisfied with the content and story of the game. I am glad you enjoyed it though!

Nah it's okay it's just suggestion it's also good news you think about new projects, maybe the reasons many people like me thinking this game deserve remake maybe because the potential of the game, in the end thank you for the good game

 

[Raffs22]

Wanna ask, is the protagonist male, female, neither, or up to player?

 

[rainefall]

Wanna ask, is the protagonist male, female, neither, or up to player?

neither