Karakuri-kun: A Japanese Tale

Hi Jbo :)

Beautiful game and learning history is a very good thing .

Amazing work ❤️

A few comments and suggestions if you are still maintaining this game. 

I have played, and created, numerous RPG Maker games, but even I was unsure what to do for the first 5 - 10 minutes. Offering a basic tutorial and emergent tips will reduce this confusion. You can make emergent tips by placing transparent events over some of the items on the first floor with text messages so that players learn that they can interact with objects in the game. I make a couple of events near the starting location that trigger on Player Touch. As the player moves around and learns to click on the screen, the other objects trigger on Action Button. For example, the big red box near the front door. What is it for? Even if it is only decoration, it should have a text message letting the player know if it is important later in the game or not at all:  "You don't know how to open this, yet." 

Likewise, the door exit event should have an event page at the start of the game that explains why the player can't/won't leave the house (perhaps also add a Movement Route to have the player take one step backward).

Consider making a Player Manual.  Create a key item called Player Manual and add to party inventory at start of game. The key Item triggers a Common Event called Player Manual with 4 Choices - Movement, Combat, Main Menu, Items/Weapons/Armor - that lead to a series of text messages explaining the basics of playing an RPG Maker game.

bug fixes

On the second floor, the wall tile to the right of the Automaton mirror is still set to passthrough which makes it possible for the party to walk inside the walls. If you remove the recess in the wall here and make the wall flush, that will fix it instead of modifying the tileset.

After speaking to any of the NPCs for the first time, when I talk to them again they repeat the same dialogue. Seems you are missing a self-switch or variable setting in these events to trigger the next event page. 

Are the random encounters necessary?  At the very least, reduce how frequently they trigger.  I keep triggering random encounters every 5 - 10 steps.  I started escaping every encounter so I could continue playing the story.  They became so frequent that I finally quit the game.

this art is beautiful but the game's writing is very poor quality, especially for an "edutainment" product.  please consider working with an editor or at least a proofreader.

I feel rather silly, but I can't even get to the gameplay. Like after the first dialogue box I can't work out any of the controls, getting out of the house, anything. This game looks really cute and interesting, but what are the controls? Is there some kind of walkthrough or tutorial to get started?

Edutainment that really looks like a game. Cool.

But the Mac version won't open. Anyone else having the same issue?

I ran the Terminal fix "xattr -cr /<app location>" but it did not work.

Plenty of bugs. What to do isn't clear. Just wandering around until I finally encounter something I can actually do. This needs work.

First game of the bundle that I really want to play! Kudos. Atmosphere and setting is great. An opportunity to learn a couple of things as we play as well. Thanks!