Void Crypt - testers wanted

I wouldn't know what to say other than polish up some things. The only issue would be things like repeated tiles, which already isn't a big issue in this game. However, because the rooms are only one screen large, I think it would do the game magic to put heavy attention to detail in every room. Make every room memorable, add small monuments that give insight into the game's lore.

Now, the reason I don't find it completely necessary to say this is that you've already done so to a certain extent. The blood (or robo-fluid, not sure what) on the floor in the second room, or the hole in the wall the freezer room, which you see a similar example of later on, all of these things really connect the whole dungeon into a living and breathing place. Small details like this give you that uncomfortable feeling that there are things living here that you weren't previously aware of; there are creatures in the walls, something could be watching you at any moment.

These are the things that really engage a person into a game, and the problem is, you have to make every small detail engaging in these ways in order to fully captivate one's attention. And to use these small details to their fullest extent is to connect them, reference them, be consistent. The statues' descriptions are cryptic and ominous alone, but incorporating the same emotions evoked through them into other aspects will really flesh it out and make your universe complete. For example, one of the statues explains to make the player anxious, sad, which is a nice touch, and personally gave me some chills, or at least raise an eyebrow. However, if the player later found the scrawling of some unknown scribe who was driven insane by the condescending faces of the statues, that would add another level of depth to the effect of the statues and make the player question: are they really just statues? The greatest things about this is that it doesn't require any new game mechanics or anything complicated, just a few text boxes and maptiles.

I don't know, just something to think about I suppose. Again, I think you probably already have the inspiration to come up with things like this, I'm just reaffirming that I believe that in this case, attention to detail will really separate your game from just being a dungeon-crawler/RPG, or, dare I say, another one of those poorly made OHR games (because we all know they exist, mainly because most of us made them ourselves). I think this kind of detail will make Void Crypt a worthy title to mention, with potential to move on to other mediums of game distribution.

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Since I'm not adept at scripting yet, the way I would do it is make three background layers for the laboratory map:
Layer 0 normal and fully lit,
Layer 1 dimly lit,
Layer 2 with near zero visibility.

Make an autorun script which, at random intervals, disables and re-enables Layer 2 (the super dark layer) to reveal Layer 1 (the dimly lit layer). When the circuitry is fully repaired, disable both Layer 1 and 2 to reveal the fully lit, normal Layer 0.

Of course, if you're good at palette tweaking and other plotscripting tricks, then you could perhaps figure out a way to do that instead of copying the tileset and manually editing each one. Although you could maybe export the tileset, use an image editor, and re-import with decent results rather than edit stuff in CUSTOM.

I'm serious. If you want me to play your game, I'm willing. However, I do not have a way to make videos.

I'll probably recruit you test again once I have all the areas done in Void Crypt which should be sometime early to mid summer.

Haven't actually tested any of that, so no idea if it works. SetColor doesn't say you need to update the palette after using it, so I don't know. One downside of the menu is that you'll be able to see the map brighten and darken each time you open it. ResetPalette has a weird behavior that might fix that though. It claims that you have to run an update palette to update the colors, but User Interface things (IE The menu) will be updated immediately. Thus, it's possible that if you remove the UpdatePalette from FixedMenu, the menu colors will be correct and the rest of the colors will remain at whatever their previous setting was. That's a guess, I could be wrong. Really sorry I didn't have time to test your game, it looks fantastic!

This is similar to what I suggested, with the exception of being much smarter. I'll have to keep this in mind for the future.

That's a pretty powerful technique in general! You could do Final Fantasy 6 style pre-battle blurs by applying a little bit of photoshop blur filter to a few different tilesets, or do trippy "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" style effects, all kinds of cool stuff. Great idea!