Alliterative Abbreviated Adventure Review

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Baconlabs
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Alliterative Abbreviated Adventure Review

Post by Baconlabs »

This game was entered into the 2020 Heart of the OHR contest, where it won 15th Place.

Alliterative Abbreviated Adventure, also known as "AAA" with a varying number of A's, can best be described as an odd experiment. It goes out of its way to mimic NES Dragon Warrior in terms of appearance and simplicity, yet it chucks many RPG conventions out the window and overcomplicates battles. Progress is strictly made with item trades, requiring hoards of enemy drops. Playable characters' action lists are unique per class, with at least one class lacking a basic "attack" command. There are more item types than I can keep track of, and magic spells are learned from them, with no clear indication of compatibility. I understand the desire to shake things up, but the end results are confusing and unintuitive. Some RPG conventions are established because they are tried-and-true cases of effective user interface, and intentionally breaking from that is a major faux pas not to be taken lightly.

This game has the now-patented Nathan Karr aesthetic to it, with a minimalist map design and color palette. Text boxes are somewhat meandering and it can be confusing to figure out what information the game's trying to convey to you, which is a major issue because this game operates on so many experimental systems that no player will be prepared for. Equippable items are ridiculously abnormal in that they're indirectly gated off from low-level characters due to harsh stat penalties; I've never seen so many negative modifiers applied to gear that's supposed to be better than what I'm wearing. Characters' action lists put their unique abilities on the top row (except the Fighter, who has no such ability) and squirrel away the basic attack command somewhere in the middle, which might not be an issue if cursor memory was an option, but as it is, battles become a slog through menus trying to locate the command you want, and with the random encounter rate as frequent as it is, the overall experience just feels exhausting.

There's nothing driving me to continue with this game. The premise is a paper-thin and there's no substance to the world presented in this game. It exists for the sake of existing. You fight for the sake of fighting. NPCs explain for the sake of explaining. This game exists for the sake of fulfilling some mad science experiment, and perhaps to prove some kind of point on behalf of the author, which was entirely lost in translation. There is no way to "repair" this game - the best that can be done with it is to clean up the ideas that have good potential (such as equipment that's indirectly level-gated and characters that contribute to a battle without a basic attack command) and apply those to an entirely new project.

Time Invested: 0 Hours, 47 Minutes
Rating: 1/10
Accolade: MICROSCOPE
Attachments
aaa0003.png
aaa0003.png (3.78 KiB) Viewed 4604 times
aaa0002.png
aaa0002.png (4.48 KiB) Viewed 4604 times
aaa0001.png
aaa0001.png (8.52 KiB) Viewed 4604 times
MICROSCOPE: The game's world is small, but its inner workings are dense.
MICROSCOPE: The game's world is small, but its inner workings are dense.
15 AAA.png (105.4 KiB) Viewed 4605 times
Last edited by Baconlabs on Wed Mar 17, 2021 9:04 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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