I wanted to take a look at DRPGs and try to capture some things about the subgenre that I thought were neat. To that end, I've gone and made two short stories which each have a different mechanical focus.

The first one is focused on trying to capture what it's initially like to play a DRPG. You're kind of confused and wandering around aimlessly, and stuck going to and from town, spending all your money on items to get a little bit further. The monsters are tough when they hit you, but not too tough if you're being mindful of your inventory and skills. That sort of thing.

The second story is focused on different elements than the first. The things I wanted to look at were: opening up shortcuts and finding shorter paths to explore, as well as what changes when your party has a wizard in it. I find that the experience is one where status effects are extremely powerful, and that your ability to explore is limited by the wizard's MP pool. Being mindful of your resources is again a necessity. Don't overextend yourself. Head back to regroup and recover your MP if it looks like there's a chance that things will get dicey.

Now, this game might come across as a bit difficult. Mostly, this is because I think that the constant resource juggling and vigilance you tend to see in DRPGs is really interesting, and that necessarily creates a certain level of difficulty. I've structured the game in the terms of a big resource puzzle, where the goal of the fights is to solve for the smallest expenditure of resources possible. My hope isn't for the game to be hard. Punishing if you're being careless and trying to rush things, but not hard.

In total, the game should come out to being around an hour, hour and a half long.

Anyway, here's some mechanics that are probably worth knowing about because trying to be clever and subtle's less helpful than just telling you what things do:

In part 1:

Big Swing: Does what it says, hits all enemies, costs 4 HP. Necessary for fights involving three enemies.

In part 2:

Sleep: Enemies won't wake up unless you attack them, at which point there's a 30% chance that they'll wake up. Costs 3 MP.
Paralyze: Completely immobilizes the enemy, can't be removed. Its use case is a bit more niche, but it's useful to remember when there's a group of three Gamboling Crates, since they have a bit more HP. Costs 4 MP.
Both Sleep and Paralyze, when they hit (they should always hit) reduce the enemy's defense to 0, which allows the witch to deal damage to them with a physical attack.
There's a coffee machine in the break room. It restores your MP. It is vital to completing the section. Make use of it.

In both parts:

You should be able to press F5 to make a minimap pop up. It bugs out if it's up when a combat starts, but if you press F5 again and wait a few seconds it'll clear the old map out.
You can save everywhere so rotate those saves and save often.

Trouble in the Subway, and other short stories screenshots