Blue Moon Circus

Intro

"Blue Moon Circus" is a short puzzle game developed by Ike using RPG Maker VX Ace that was created for the 2015 Indie Game Making Contest. A factoid that makes me wonder how this game has managed to evade reviewers for so long. After all, contests tend to be one of the things that draws us in. At least it usually draws me in since contest games tend to be on the shorter side. So it's easier to play and review them over the course of a couple of hours. Though, I'll admit this game is a mixed bag for me.

Story
Summary

You play as Daniel a youth whose attending the circus with Sherry, his friend that just so happens to be a girl, at her insistence. Though apparently Daniel really doesn't like being seen with Sherry for unspecified reasons despite them being friends since kindergarten. At any rate you get spotted at the circus with her by some local bullies who declare they are going to pick on you for not hating girls so you run off and leave her alone. Of course, you can't go home without her so decide to wait around the exit for her, but after she doesn't show up for a long time you decide to go in and look for her. A task that turns into a puzzle solving journey.

A journey that requires you to make use of scissors, matches, paint, and bed sheets. A journey that doesn't take all the long and ends with you reuniting with Sherry and becoming closer friends. After all, you always show up to rescue her when your needed the most.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

On the plus side this basic story about a boy and a girl is cute. On the other hand it's plagued by pacing issues that just kill this game in my opinion. Seriously your subjected to multiple cut scenes that are several minutes long as you watch characters move around a bit. Sometimes your forced to watch Daniel get up and look around a bit before getting back into his chair. In fact, I'm pretty confident if the cut scenes in this game were trimmed of all of their excessive fat it would be possible to beat this game in under 30 minutes. After all, do I really need to watch Sherry and Daniel staring into the ring to view a performance I can't even see? Or to watch Sherry apparently walk off to use the restroom or something? In fact, the sheer amount of slow-paced cut scenes in this game started to piss me off since they were getting in the way of playing the game.

Gameplay

While this game does sell itself as a puzzle games. The puzzles in this game are extremely easy with the player need to solve a block pushing puzzle as well as pick up and use a few items they'll find over the course of the game ranging from a pair of scissors, an ear of corn, flammable paint, matches, an ice shard, and a white sheet. And while a few of the puzzles require you to combine items. This really doesn't raise the difficulty that much since you'll only ever have access to a small handful of items at any given point in time.

Graphics

Graphically the game uses entirely original assets as far as I can tell which is always a plus in my opinion. After all, I've seen the RTP for RPG Maker VX Ace a lot over the years. After all, it was the engine of choice for a pretty long time. Though, I'll admit making most of the NPCs in this game noninteractive black shadows is a bit questionable in my opinion, but I might be in the minority in thinking it would have been better to use a few different models for these characters even if they were used multiple times on certain screens.



After all, the shadow people are clearly used multiple times on the same screen as it is. And at least that way the main tent might look a little more bright and lively as were forced to stare at people watching a performance we can't see.

Sound

Sound wise the game is alright in my opinion with the only background song that really stands out being a classic carnival piece. Though I suppose that really shouldn't come as a surprise when your dealing with a game titled "Blue Moon Circus". Though it does make me wish I had some popcorn or something to snack on while playing it.

Conclusion

"Blue Moon Circus" is a cute little game about a boy and a girl that is heavily hindered by it's glacial pace in my opinion. So much so that I found myself ranting a bit while playing it about how I wanted control of the character back so I could actually advance the plot. So much so that I'm glad this game only takes around 35 minutes to finish since I don't think I could have put up with this game if it was much longer. Simply because it tends to give the player all of the information they need to understand what is going on rather quickly, but then repeats itself as it needlessly holds the player's hand to make sure they got all of the information they needed.