Intro

"Sister's Storybook" is a short RPG developed by rabitZ and Epischdrew using RPG Maker XP that was created for the RMN 2011 Summer Games contest. A contest that gave developers and teams of developers a month to create a game around the theme of surrealism. Though, I'll admit this game feels a bit light on the theme since the game's visuals are pretty standard for the most part, but the nature of the world itself is the main driver for why this game counts.

Major Bug



It's possible to lock up the game. This is doable because you can move a bit during the opening cut scene which means you can mess up the preprogrammed walk path your character takes to your Sister's room and end up stuck against a wall or other object.

Story
Summary

In this game we take on the role of a nameless brother character who loves to play pranks on his sister. Unfortunately for him when he goes into her room in order to deposit a fake rat into her toy box in order to scare her he gets sucked into her coloring book. A coloring book which contains various domains both beautiful and dangerous. Thankfully a few of the denizens are willing to help us escape, but will there help be enough?

Naming the Character

As I've mentioned in several other reviews allowing the player to name a character in a game is always a bad idea. It's basically just asking for someone to put something inappropriate there for a laugh.



As such I recommend never giving the player the chance to name a character. It's just safer that way. Especially when you give them enough space to squeeze in something like "Lets*&*@" for example.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

I'll admit the game feels a bit short for a journey of self-growth, but at the same time it's dangerous to make your game too long when it's an entry in a contest, but I think aiming for a game that takes closer to 45 to 60 minutes to complete would have been better. That way the brother turning over a new leaf at the end of the game would have felt a bit more earned in my opinion. Though one could argue this game being rather short is also an asset since it increases the likelihood people will both play this game and finish it.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front the game is largely comprised of rather easy battles and simple puzzles. These puzzles range from pushing a block onto a button to walking a path a certain way. Though the directions on that path are wrong since the person that wrote the text their got East and West confused. Oh well, a rather minor mistake in the grand scheme of things and I've seen far worse examples of this issue. After all, it plagued a walkthrough I found online for "Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne". As for the battles they tend to be rather easy as well. Albeit a few of them are also puzzle battles. A factoid that led to me dying a few times on the game's final boss before I realized I had to toss a certain object at it in order to defeat it.



Though with the way this feather explodes you'd think it was a skittle instead. After all, this feather seems to be ripping off their catch phrase of taste the rainbow when it goes off.

Graphics

On the graphical side of things this game is a bit of a hodgepodge of custom assets, borrowed assets, and the RTP for RPG Maker XP. Though unlike most hodgepodge efforts I've seen the graphical assets used here blend together rather well. As a result the game's graphical assets don't feel like they don't belong together like when developers use RTP assets and combine that with facesets from "Chrono Trigger".

Sound

On the sound side of things the game entirely relies on the RTP for RPG Maker XP as far as I'm aware. On the plus side the default assets are solid and the developers did make good use of the RTP in this game. On the negative side of the scale it's always nice to hear something new since I've heard most of the tracks in the RTP for this engine quite a bit over the years, but that's a minor gripe.

Conclusion

"Sister's Storybook" is a solid game in my opinion, but that major bug at the start is definitely going to cost this game half a point. Admittedly it's a bug that most people will probably never find, but I can't ignore it since I know that it exists. At any rate this game definitely makes solid use of the RTP and shows you can make good games with the default assets if you put some time and effort into it. So if you've got a little spare time this game is definitely worth a quick look.