NPCs for Playtesting

One of the things I setup in this project was a playtesting NPC. It just that offers free gold, items, levels etc, as well as party member prototypes that part of the story yet.

I did this for two reasons.

One, I think it's cool when games have semi in-character testing NPCs, in a tongue in cheek sorta way. WoW PTR does this pretty well.

Two, I tried to learn all the RPG maker stats and figure out the number patterns (rather than auto-balance with a plugin) so I'm curious to see how that worked out. And while the submission is locked at least you can rebalance the game yourself, kinda.

The challenge of this game and any in the genre is time though. This demo is pretty short, but it's still an RPG, it's like 30-60mins to do the story bit and "beat the game". But with the playtest crystal you can play it all sorts of ways - A large or small party, High or low level, You can make it tough or a steamroll. 

If you did run through the demo, I'd love to hear about what you did - and why! Or if something broke (like the boat).