Overview:
Hey there! Just wanted to let you know that both me and my girlfriend played Conspiracy recently and I actually really enjoyed it! As a dev and avid fangame player, I went into this game, expecting to get a laugh out of it and thought it was gonna end up being an absolute shitshow based on the screenshots and my experiences with other games of this nature, However I must say, Pokemon Conspiracy is definitely one of the better fan games I've played thus far so kudos to you. In reality, this game is the definition of you can't judge a book by its cover as while some aspects such as the real pictures of people are awfully off-putting, I consider it a missed opportunity to not play because of that. Well with my basic spiel out of the way, let's get into the review!
The Negatives:
To address the elephant in the room, using pictures of real people is probably the biggest factor that drives people away from the game - I've already seen the posts about you updating the art for them though so I'm not gonna dwell on this for too long
The spritework is also fairly lacking, mainly due to an inconsistency with the pixel density in the characters as well as the fact that Leo changes races between sprite and mugshot - I actually went and fixed up a couple sprites while playing for fun - feel free to use if you like!
For the most part, the mapping is decently done - However, the lack of variation in buildings in areas such as Roseland can make traversing the world a bit boring at times. I would add multiple basic building types as well as create more distinguished areas for buildings such as the player's apartment, to improve traveling. I'll provide an example in the spoiler below with a screenshot of the Cafe Area from my fangame, Pokemon Present to help you visualize what I'm on about. As well, there's a lot of fucking grass. The patches can be rather long and a pain to traverse so I'd suggest reducing the amount!
There are also a ton of both grammatical and tileset errors which should be fixed.
A good majority of the NPCs can't be interacted with, especially in the train station - there's definitely space to add some witty dialogue here so I wouldn't waste it!
The game has way too many events in unnecessary spots - this lags many computers a ton and almost makes the game unplayable at some points - a great example of this would be the bridge in route one that was created entirely out of events - it would have made much more sense to add another bridge tile with maximum priority to allow the player to walk along it as opposed to using "always on top" through events the entire time.
The Positives:
First of all, your writing is exceptional! As a developer myself, I find it to be a really amazing feat when you are able to connect with characters and care about their well being. This was exactly how I found myself feeling with the interactions between Teala and the Police officer. You should be proud of yourself in that aspect for sure!
The Pokemon selection was diverse and allowed me to use some options I don't usually choose in games! I'm always a big fan of creating different teams as well so that's always a plus!
I, for one, loved your music choice! The soundtrack was definitely fitting and I felt it gave every area its own character! Also I would really appreciate it if you gave me the links to the Institute and Cermak themes, they were definitely my favourite!
While being challenging, I definitely had a fun time with the difficulty, being a former competitive player myself! That Leavanny was a monster tho Here's a screenshot of my final team from the demo, just after beating the battle house!
The majority of the sidequests were a lot of fun to play through and had decent rewards given from them! I especially enjoyed the throwdown which basically involved Bojangles dying from being a piece of ass and having Honedge carry the battle as well as the Battle House!
Any game that includes a Scooby-Doo chase sequence is already a 100/10 in my books
Conclusion:
Overall, Conspiracy was a lot of fun to play! I really wasn't expecting to get such a rich and enjoyable experience out of this game but I gotta say, you totally crushed my expectations man! Also this is my first actual review of a game so hopefully you don't find my criticisms too harsh or think they sound too arrogant or anything! Sorry in advance if that's how I come off, I don't mean it! I'm really looking forward to future updates for this game and if you happen to need some help with development, me and my girlfriend would happily give you a hand. Just shoot me a message in the dms. Cheers!
