Good day again, my lovelies. Second review here at RMN, and I dare say my formatting with my first review was pretty bad. I'll try to make the reading a little bit easier on the eyes this time. This here's a fun little game I'm reviewing, not perfect but still better than what I can come up with right now. Inspired by the Five Nights at Freddy's series, and with an Earthbound/MOTHER feel, allow me to pick apart the pros and cons of One Night at the Steeze.


The Story
In the fascinating time of the 1980's, an urban legend was born of a fat kid who loved pizza, spending a lone night at a pizzeria with some rather strange happenings, well, happening. Arriving an hour before closing, with just a redhead as the only member on-staff, he's given free reign over what he gets to do at the place for the time. You take the reins of this kid who, I must say, reminds me of the protagonist of Steven Universe with glasses from appearance alone.


Game Mechanics
The front desk of the pizzeria, once you punch your way past some wet floor signs, serves as the central hub of the adventure. You can save your progress at the desk, as well as redeem tokens obtained for prizes and even level-ups (shouldn't you be giving tickets for prizes? Back in my day we didn't pay cold hard cash for the good stuff at these joints...), up to Level 5. Up ahead is a show stage which you can't access for a time, the left an arcade, and the right a play-place for the kiddies, complete with a ball pit.

Like I mentioned before, however, this seems to be a tale of an urban legend. As the Kid ventures through the pizzeria, eating leftover pizza to recover his strength and fill his chubby gut, he'll encounter a smattering of haunted baddies. Thankfully, the spirits possessing these things didn't choose very threatening-looking objects to haunt -- balloons, computer viruses from arcade machines, hand puppets and few more will be your main adversary. Besting them in pitched combat earns you tokens to buy the aforementioned goodies. You can also pick up trash and give it to the talking trash cans to reap rewards, with both choices of reward being excellent but finite due to a limited amount of rubbish on the floors.


The Pros
The game's short and sweet, taking only about 45 minutes to do just about everything it has to offer. Battling the optional bosses in the game requires you to equip a specific accessory for each, but defeating these baddies nets you an excellent piece of gear in return -- one that even gives you new abilities. The non-icon graphics all seem to be custom-made and based off the style used in Earthbound. Not to mention, the title theme song sounding a lot like "Earth Angel" (or whatever the song's called) and the in-game tunes being made from MIDI files of Queen songs converted into a 16-bit soundfont.

The flavor text for items, and when interacting with the environment, is entertaining to read, and above all the game's got some style. When I eventually get off my ass and create my own RPG, I'm tempted to see if I can lift the boss item mechanic, because it seems really cool and more innovative than, say, just getting a lot of XP and currency alone.


The Cons
Even with the stuff I like, there's elements that I feel could use s'more polish. Overall the battles were... pretty easy, at times boring, to slog through. Maybe I just got lucky with RNG, but most enemies possess a silly move that does absolutely nothing; I managed to get "hit" by those inconsequential moves more often than not early on, which allowed me to get tokens and level up pretty quick.

Once you hit LV5, the Kid gains an ultra-powerful move that, paired with all the optional boss gear, makes the final fight a breeze. That, or you can just spam Pop Rocks and/or firecrackers to blow away the enemy. The game was described as having a Souls-series difficulty, but I just didn't feel it. Again, maybe I just got lucky early on, but the Kid's ultimate move and the explosives-based goodies make the game too easy. What's more, I'm pretty sure there's a point where you can get an infinite amount of candy bars off the ground that, while they don't give a lot of health, give a pretty high amount of power points and thus make the soda pop items (your main PP restorative) pointless.


Overall Thoughts
Long story short, the game's anything but perfect in terms of combat balance. Still, everything else is pretty dang good. The graphics and entertaining style make this a romp you should definitely try out if you've got about an hour to spare. With a bit more polish in that aspect, I feel that horror_and_oates, the creator of One Night at the Steeze, could have a bright future with RPG Maker ahead of them.

Apparently, from Urban Dictionary, "steeze" is a combination of style and ease. In this case, I'd say this here game's got plenty of style, but maybe a wee too much ease.