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Always on Your Day Off!


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Always on Your Day Off!

Mac/Windows

 

Author: Nicothodes

Level Range: 1-100

Version: 1.0.0

 

[composite=eyJ0aXRsZSI6IkFsd2F5cyBvbiBZb3VyIERheSBPZmYhIiwidGlkIjoiMTMyMDUiLCJ0YWdzIjpbImJlZ2lubmVyIiwic2hvcnQiLCJzaW5nbGV0b24iXSwiYmdhc3AiOnsiNSI6MCwiNCI6MCwiMyI6NCwiMiI6MiwiMSI6MH19]

Composite Score: 2.7/5.0

 

Best: 0.00% (0/6)

Good: 0.00% (0/6)

Average: 66.67% (4/6)

Substandard: 33.33% (2/6)

Poor: 0.00% (0/6)

[encouragenecro]

 

[/composite]

 

Keywords: Beginner, Short, Singleton

Edited by SylaeBot
Automated Sybot edit; worker IPB::csrThread/vanadium
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Here we have a lovely first effort. Technically sound, and even though the enemies may seem simple, it’s actually pretty tricky.

 

It’s honestly so short I need to put a big chunk in spoilers:

 

 

 

 

So my party member was a slith. Sliths do not like the cold. Everything in this scenario is cold. So when I realized that all of the goblins breathed cold... oh god. I died a few times. Then it just became a game of sneaking around corners, sling-spamming, and hoping none of them saw me.

 

 

 

It’s not the most epic thing that we’ve ever seen, but hey, it’s solid. It’s got a cool ending, too, though it might not be the one you expected. Here’s hoping Nico makes a few more. smileold.gif

 

Rating: [rating]Average[/rating]

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A sound first effort, which for me, could maybe have been a little more text-heavy.

 

The design of the scenario is good - nice use of custom terrain and frills is seen, and whilst it isn't Ephesian, it's better than some scenarios we've seen.

 

The combat was, even after the beta, a little on the unforgiving side, but this meant that tactics were required - a nice touch for such a straight-forward romp.

 

My favourite bit, apart from the twist ending was, of course

 

 

the secret cavern of the feral snowmen

 

 

 

but really, there wasn't anything here that detracted from the fun.

 

For me, the only thing, apart from length, stopping this from being a good scenario is the lack of any sort of flavour text. This is purely because I am a word-whore. Other players may disagree.

 

Score: [rating]AVERAGE[/rating].

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If Measle were younger, he'd make this.

 

It's a very rough affair. Ephesos sucks at fighting, and the goblins were easy. (You have a sling, and the goblins have no AI to alert their allies. Most of the time, they just run up on you anyway.) I disliked having to wall-bash to find stuff, but since there was so little terrain, I didn't care. Still, it took up roughly 20% of my gameplay time. :-/ Could have used some obvious sprucing up--was the "frill terrain" option even used?

 

The ending trick was a nice one. I was expecting something more climactic, but I suppose that's the point. Honestly, maybe I've misinterpreted the negatives. Maybe the minimalism is intentional: It all felt kinda delirious. Of course, it could be the result of being a first effort, but it fit too well with the theme, so it deserves applause. Still, that makes the only appropriate rating an [rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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REVIEW FOR ALWAYS ON YOUR DAY OFF! 1.0

The Summary

You play an adventurer on his day off who gets woken to fight goblins. Very short.

 

The Good

There's definitely a creative spark here. At any rate, there's certainly some interesting ideas at work. The main dungeon also was designed rather well.

 

Also, no bugs.

 

The Bad

Unfortunately (sorry Nico), here's where the review turns sour. The dialogue was incredibly sparse. It was like talking to automatons of some sort. Indeed, even the person that gives you the main quest has about 4 dialogue nodes with about 1 text field apiece.

 

Dialog boxes weren't much better, only appearing when absolutely necessary and providing the bare necessities to get the point across.

 

Also, I found combat incredibly easy. With a supplement of healing spells and a ranged attack more powerful than my melee, it was just a matter of picking enemies off one-by-one. Ice goblins were an interesting concept, but it ultimately felt flat.

 

Alright, now it's story time. I beta tested this scenario, killed the ice goblins, and moseyed off into the sunset. I sent Nico the report, and got back stuff apologizing about something she found with snowmen.

 

Wait, what?

 

As it turns out, half of the scenario's content is hidden behind secret passages. Meaning it's not only possible, but probable that a player could finish the main quest and miss all of the other content. As it was, it was interesting, but finding it involved about 10 minutes of searching and headbumping walls, followed by 5 minutes of cracking open the editor and scripts to find the stuff.

 

The Verdict - [rating]SUBSTANDARD[/rating]

It won't waste much of your time, but know going in that it is far from top-of-the-line.

 

Thoughts

Alright, two major things come to mind here. First: DO NOT hide plot-relevant stuff behind secret doors, and not inform the players. Saying, "There's a certain item you need in the goblin cave," would have sufficed, as would just giving the player the item after killing the goblin chief. But as it was, I managed to skip out of the scenario blissfully unaware I had missed something.

 

Major thought number 2: When forcing a pre-made party (or singleton), make sure to take character race into account. My first run-through, I took a Nephil (Missile and Dex bonus) into this scenario. Thus, what was supposed to be a character capable of handling the ice goblins turned into a fuzzy harbinger of rock-ridden doom. Combat was still easy without the nephil, but with it? It was rendered downright trivial.

 

Also, dialog and dialogue needs more than just the bare necessities. There's no life to it otherwise.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Always on your day off is a pretty short scenario from a newcomer designer. This has been encouraged in the community; making your first scenario a short one that is. Anyways, Aoydo (um... is the capitalization in the title intentional or is it a typo?) is a charming little scenario that proclaims to be for parties in the level range of 1 to 100. Huh, let's see how that works out.

 

Oh, the scenario completely wrecks my party. Why? It is not really a story-driven scenario. It does not matter who the PCs are. Anyway, the story begins one morning when a strange man has suddenly materialized into your home. He offers you a job. Apparently a distant retreat for writers is being plagued by ice goblins. Since the NPCs consists mostly of these eccentric writers their dialogue is very, very sparse if somewhat humorous. Nonetheless, after walking amongst these strange mumblers all I could think of was: "Why am I even helping these people. I am getting paid, right?" And speaking of dialogue the messenger's (the strange man I mentioned) dialogue does not change at all. You can ask him who he is about a hundred times and nothing will change. Not a big deal, but also not hard to fix.

 

The actual gameplay consists of killing the denizens of the two hostile dungeons: The ice goblins' cave, which are not that hard to deal with, and a hilarious bonus dungeon. It is inhabited by feral what!? Then there is also a hidden location you must discover in order to actually beat the scenario... No wait, no matter what you do you cannot win this scenario. Maybe that's why my party needed to be retooled.

 

To make a long story short, Aoydo is a fun little scenario, but it does not have any substantial content in it to justify a rating higher than:

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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  • 4 months later...

I'm with Donald. Nioca, your reviews take about as long to read as most scenarios take to play.

 

Anyway, the scenario is nice, and cute. Fighting snowmen! :-) Very hipster/indie. It's incredibly sparse. I don't want to insult the author, but, what even *is* there? I suppose she made it on her day off. ;-) Anyway, it does have a nice trick! It's very creative indeed. I hope people are capable of replicating tricks like that in the future. And anyway, it's not actively bad.

 

[rating]Substandard[/rating]

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