I am 32 years old.

My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old.

When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing.

Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side.

With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay.

After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like.

Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends.

Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together.

Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that.

Thank you.

This game is very basic. And for $2 that's fine. I even appreciate the sort of roguelike elements and randomly generated layouts. But it falls into the old turn-based game pitfall of battles becoming "Get into a random encounter after 3 steps, have bigger stats, press A to attack, win." There's only one attack option and the only strategy is killing the lower HP or higher damage target first. That loop often led to me dying as I would just autopilot through standard fights without realising my health was low, the number didn't even turn red to indicate it, so I lost because I didn't give my occasional A press my full attention. And in my last attempt, I lost because the game decided I took too long. I found a really easy way to grind so I decided to gear up before going, like the game taught me. Then with no warning, game over.

The best part of this game is managing your healing items when you go off on an adventure and seeing how far you can go from a town safely. But the cost for a slight miscalculation of that is a game over, there's nothing that helps you get out of a sticky situation for that relief of worming your way back and living to fight another day. You just die.

Visuals aren't horrible, but I'm sure most will agree they're not exactly good. Bland pixel art with next to no animation and very basic polish was ignored like the sprite always holds a sword even if you've equipped a bow, axe, or spear. And the enemies don't even get the standard JRPG colour change when they're an upgraded version, it's the same sprite with a different name.

The game has potential but it needs a bucketload of polish and some significant changes. Like different attack options, I was in many situations where I was begging for something as basic as a weaker attack that hits many targets. The encounter rate should be lowered, there should be actual movement animations on the overworld, the pixel art could be seriously improved, many things need better visual indicators like low health, And just overall better juice / game feel would do this game wonders.

Way too simple and repetative. YOu have fight every 5 moves

To The Capital is a retro pixel JRPG ripoff.

The best thing about this one is that it's not just another rubberstamped asset flipped RPG Maker abortion. That's unfortunately the only good thing about it. At least the developer realised that game engines are important.

On to the basics:

The developer wasn't able to work out how to write a proper story or do any level design, so they decided to cover that up by using procgen algorithms to stamp out samey, repetitive areas. Developers must learn that procgen is not content. This game has no content worth mentioning as a result of this poor design decision.

Graphics are terrible retro pixel graphics showing the dev is lazy/incompetent or didn't bother hiring an artist. The gameplay is really bad... hell, the game was released in 2016. Why are people trying to make games look like they were made in 1990? I'd encourage the developer to ditch their computer and mobile phone and use stuff from 1990 until the repent and admit there's a reason technology moved on. They sure don't seem to have gotten the message.

Too simple. Doesn't seem very roguelike.

This is an... interesting game. A bit tricky, as you have to somehow get enough money for equipment and potions while rushing to get to the capital to deliver your important message. If you can juggle this correctly, you can win the game. You will need a bit of luck to do so, though.

The game is cheap, so it isn't a bad investment if you are wanting to try this sort of game. Also, it appears this might be the developer's first product. He also appears to be working on a sequel, which begins where this game ends...

It's breaking the main adventure map rule of jrpg: there should be safe road where enemies don't spawn. Other than that it's hold space simulator and it doesn't even try to involve player into it.

simple but good, recommended

Such potential. With some map tile, enemy, and character sprite variety (show the armor and weapon changes), some events, and more linear pathing, this could have really been something. As it is, abandoned, I had some fun with it for $0.79, but I can't really recommend it. There's no actual variety here other than treasure chest drops, dungeon layouts (all of which are short), and very minor (I'm talking going left or right) pathing differences on the world map. So basically you're paying $0.79 for a short, simplistic JRPG, and there's a ton of other ones on Steam that have to have something more going on than this.

Review copy provided by developer via Curator Connect

Failure states in games have an entire philosophy to them, owing to how disruptive they can be to enjoyment. On the one hand, no one wants to be stuck playing a doomed character, but on the other it can be fun to watch something you've built be toppled. To The Capital is an interesting study in failure states because of how frequent and how obvious they are. As an RPG-roguelike it's surprisingly deterministic for either genre, and that determinism can doom you half a dozen battles or more before the end comes. If it weren't such an otherwise-solid offering that might doom it as well, but its quirks make it a different sort of challenge instead of a bad one.

You are a royal messenger, dispatched from the southern border of the kingdom to warn the king that his council is compromised by traitors. Unfortunately for you, the council knows of your mission and has put out word that you are not to reach the capital alive. With only a few days before the coup is set to start, you must race to the palace to warn the king before it's too late. But rushing too fast will see you at the point of some very threatening swords, so arming yourself and growing stronger is the only way to ensure your safe arrival.

This balance between speed and growth is at the heart of To The Capital. As you get closer to your destination the monsters grow in strength, from rats and bears to skeletons and orcs to hellhounds and worse. You can't just sprint to the goal without slamming into enemies out of your league, but grinding out gold and experience too long won't leave you enough time to make it. The key is finding the right pace between towns and purchasing upgrades, as well as when to make the time investment in exploring the dungeons dotted around the map. It's not actually that tight of a deadline either, but until you learn just how long the game is you'll probably find yourself rushing to your death more often than not.

Your deaths will almost always be self-inflicted, in fact, because of how the random battles are designed. In fine RPG tradition To The Capital has random battles where you take turns attacking or using items against a number of foes. There are no skills or magic in this one, and no items besides healing options, so your only attack is your, well, attack. It does a set amount of damage too, with the only variance being occasional misses and double-damage critical hits. The same goes for your foes, which means there are virtually no surprises in store when you fight. If you do 7 damage and your foe has 16 HP, it will take you three turns to kill them with very few exceptions.

It's an even more rigid structure than that, actually. The random battles aren't even fully random, as they occur at exactly the same frequency depending on the terrain. Every seven steps on the road, you battle. Every five steps on grass, you battle. And in caves, there are a set number of battles that trigger every few steps that end with a boss. You can defeat the boss to get a unique item and the run of the cave (which always has at least three chests to plunder), but those encounters happen no matter where you are in the cave. So if you go spelunking unprepared, you may find yourself unable to escape. While the roguelike aspect does little in the randomized map, it does end your run when you perish which makes facing pre-determined battles a death sentence if you're out of potions.

These peculiar design choices make To The Capital more of a math problem than an RPG or roguelike. If you know where you're going, you know exactly how many battles there are along the way. You also know exactly how many turns most of those encounters will take to complete, and how much damage the enemies do every turn. So once you have the best gear you can afford at your level, the question is how many potions you need to survive to the next town. Get that one question wrong and you die and start all over. With damage and defenses and encounter cadence set in stone, the only variables are enemy composition and misses/criticals. There's absolutely zero room for improvisation or even strategy beyond the "correct" order to kill enemies in battle.

Does that make To The Capital a bad game? Absolutely not, just one that you need to understand the nature of before diving into. The RPG trappings are limited to battle menus, leveling up, and buying items in town. The roguelike aspect randomizes map and cave layouts, as well as items found in chests and as rewards, but nothing so dramatic that it changes the course of individual runs. You're always going to follow the same path to the same goal, using the same battle and gearing strategies, except when you get lucky finding items. For someone wanting a more free-form or deep game this will be hell, but for someone wanting a game they can "solve" it's an excellent candidate.

I was able to look past the repetitive battles and strategy simply because I wanted to beat it, to prove that I solved the puzzle. The clean pixel art and quality sound design make the game more inviting, though there are errors in the translated text like your unequipped gear being found under "Weapons" in your menu. I wouldn't spend dozens of hours on To The Capital but I am compelled to beat it, and the challenge is entertaining enough to make up for its shortcomings. Fans of RPGs or roguelikes might want to give this one a miss, ironically enough, but puzzle types will get something out of it.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!