The Cerebral Symphony
A downloadable game for Windows
Endorsements
Strong writing, clever system, interesting characters, and an engaging plot...this game is unreasonably good. It is probably the single cleverest thing I've played on rmn, and its ability to take itself seriously even while it's not taking itself seriously borders on the supernatural...some really phenomenal world-building and dialogue and mapping in kind of a weird package, and I think the community will dig it
-kumada
Overall I enjoyed the game because of the story. The dialogue is good, the characters are good.
-Link_2112
a crazy, unchained game...and one that I would strongly recommend to anyone wanting to try something different for a change.
-ganonfrog
LP by raikenjenova:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDOLxHMXxfE&list=PLd8tGajquAkEwoRAiZ1Po8F7YgDduApSf
Lowdown
-Begun as the side-project of a bored and depressed fifteen-year old, The Cerebral Symphony has evolved into a claustrophobic, poorly layed-out, passionately-written 2d RPG
-Chapter 1 came out in 2011, Chapter 2 in 2012, Chapter 3 in 2013, Chapter 4 in 2015, the full game came out in 2018!
-About 9 hours play time.
-Please send me any feedback as I am always tweaking and updating the download. If you send me enough, I will list you as a tester.
Story
Brad, a jock, trips one day (at a party, we can only assume), accidentally plunging himself into the hallucinatory world of The Cerebral Symphony where he meets a guy called Ivan, who you might wonder is a human metaphor for repressed teenage angst.
Join the schizophrenic, multiple-personality-disorder afflicted Ivan, whose destiny (and personalities) you can steer through his individual choices as he bumbles his way through his life as a renegade thief into a big war between the underground cyborg Mafia, the omnipresent, all-seeing Corporation and the corrupt, power-crazed Government over the six elemental stones that, when gathered together, bestow ULTIMATE POWER on their holder. Mwahahaha!
On the way you will meet Liz the ADHD werewolf, Jean the insomniac minstrel, Catherine the telepath with a firey temper, Carys the delusional young stage actress, Robert the narcoleptic doctor, Zak the homeostatically-imbalanced fighter-pilot, and Bain the accident prone Gladiator. You will decide whether in the final estimation it is Ivan's more "upbeat" or his "darker" pesonality that will win control of his mind as they battle with his more balanced, "pensive" side.
Story-driven and choice-based, The Cerebral Symphony is a distopian 2d RPG game with an emphasis on character development and fun, non-random, side-view, Final Fantasy VI style battles, made up of 5 chapters.
Featuring the Fully Completed MULTIPLE PERSONALITY SYSTEM(TM), where Ivan's in-game choices will affect dialogue and plot, alter the screen tint and interface colours and change his battle class and music. You only gain skills in the personality in which you fight! Your choices will affect the story!
Download
Install instructions
Download, unzip, double-click "RPG_RT", play.
Comments
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Yeah, this is definitely a poorly laid out game. First I got stuck because I re-entered that place with the elevator, which triggers the same scene as when you first enter it, and just freezes on the second screen for some reason. And that was in the part where I was just randomly sent to my room without explanation, but could leave, but they would not let me got to Symphaesia for whatever reason, so it seems like you really should have locked the player out from leaving the room in the first place. Especially since I had to look up a video on how to progress the story because the phone is almost invisible in that room. Lastly, we have the GOBOT, or whatever, area where you have all of the rooms to enter. I went into one of the rooms, but after clearing an event in it (I think it was the worker informational video), I leave the room only to be locked in place. So there are a lot of reasons to make me stop playing due to mapping issues.
Well, sorry! At least it was only a free game and one you didn't pay for... I playtested it a bunch but clearly not enough... You can always watch those youtube videos if you want to find out what happens in the story!
Interesting... I wonder if the problems could be with my computer then.
Could be! I will do yet another playtest and update sometime and fix the issues you raise and then post here to let you know when I upload it. I hope you enjoyed the bits of the game that you could actually play!