i just finished playing sylvie rpg, a fantastic bump combat action rpg full of charm and secrets and great boss fights. you should go play it right now in your browser if you're at all interested in any of those things!
it's great in so many ways that i don't even know where to begin, so i'm just going to start rambling and see where it goes.
i love its bump combat system! you can bump attack enemies from any direction and they don't have any invincible melee attacks that you have to worry about, so the only source of danger is the projectiles that they fire. but you get pushed back pretty far every time you bump into an enemy, so you have to be careful that you won't push yourself back into a projectile. it's a really fun and dynamic weakness to have to deal with! most of the usual methods for designing difficult action game combat encounters don't work in a game where enemies take damage every time they touch you, which is something i've struggled with a lot in my own bump combat action rpg (still in development). so it's always interesting to see how other designers work around it, and i love sylvie rpg's approach!
the combat even works great in boss fights, which cram tons of overlapping attacks and compelling narrative progression into such tiny arenas. the first and last bosses were my two favorites but i love all of them!
it has really satisfying rpg character growth too, despite using such tiny numbers for everything including experience points. i loved exploring its charming world full of giant girls and cute enemies and adorably higurashi-coded npcs, and its playful secrets were delightful to search for and discover, while still offering just enough hints that someone as uncool as myself could still find lots of them. it really captures the same magical sense of discovery as my favorite 1980s action rpgs. it's so hard to make an action rpg that works well as an action game and an exploration game and a rpg all at the same time, but sylvie rpg somehow pulls it off.
the manual was super charming too, and i somehow ended up liking the design notes (included in the bonus pack) almost as much as the game itself. you should really check them out if you enjoy the game!
as someone who is currently making a bump combat action rpg of my own, sylvie rpg is a huge inspiration in so many ways. i hope someday i can make a game as earnestly charming and secret-filled as this one.
i truly have no idea how it was developed in such a short time period either. one of the most important parts of solo game development is figuring out how to just make the important parts of your game without bloating your development time with tons of unnecessary polish, and sylvie is light-years ahead of me in that regard. i often think about how i could make my games much faster if i simply used lower resolution sprites with fewer animation frames, but even if i did that i would have a long way to go before i could make games as quickly as this. i wonder if any more bump combat action rpgs will release before i finish mine? hopefully this means that by the time i finish my game, there will be an audience of new bump combat fans who are hungry for more games...
anyway, sylvie rpg is the best new game i've played in a long time. sorry if this post just comes across as me saying "[game element] is [synonym for 'good']" over and over again but it's hard to express how much i love the game without spoiling things. so if it looks like your sort of thing you should really go try it for yourself!
