Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands

Incredible. A game that is a true successor to Earthbound, not in style, but in being weird and avant-garde and FUN and all its own damn thing. Incredible work!

Fantastic humor, amazing music, and pure fun from start to finish. If you're on the fence about stepping through that portal, just do it. I had never heard of this web comic before but highly recommend. This one is for you Babby!

I like Deathbulge's humor from his comics, but even if we don't count that, the game is surprisingly good! The twists on the way some classic JRPG systems work (like the battle system or the item usage) already make it worth your time. It's fun, nice to look at and a really good game. I find it strange that it's not so well known: give it a chance!

Played the whole thing and had a blast, Ian is a cool guy! Hope they manage to make a sequel one day.

I was worried this would be a case of a passionate online comic creator getting in over their head, but this is actually a damn impressive RPG. The story is mostly there for jokes and character interactions, but those are often great, so not a big deal. Combat is basically a psuedo-active battle system where turns are determined by a speed where reaching the end pauses for a character's turn, only you can swap between characters when you reach your turn and there's a heavy focus status effects are found in four sections of the time meter. This is a simple change conceptually, but it adds strong push and pull between the player and enemies, which really fits the music battle aesthetic. It's not the hardest game in the world, and even a sub-optimal build can get you through most encounters (except the variant bosses near the end. Those require serious strategy and are hard as hell), so it's a pretty good entry level RPG at that. Overall, it's a funny and novel take on the genre that's worth playing.

It's both witty and decently challenging and build opportunities is pretty large !