Half Hour RPG

Review

I just spent about 21 minutes and 7 seconds with Half Hour RPG, and it was a weirdly fun experience. It is basically a joke of a game that spends its entire runtime making fun of developers and the industry itself. The game follows one strict rule: no side quests, main story only. While players can talk to NPCs, these interactions are brief and often filled with profanity. Some elements are intentionally unfinished; for example, the readme.txt file simply tells the player that the developer still had to write a readme.txt.

I found the lack of polish actually worked in its favor. The game uses obvious placeholder assets and even calls them out, and the dungeon is a default template from Quest Maker software. In one instance, players encounter a developer who got stuck in an optional side quest, which ironically makes that quest mandatory to progress. I liked how it leaned into being purposefully shitty; it felt like someone put genuine effort into making something this bad.

Combat consists of turn-based boss fights reminiscent of old Game Boy Pokémon games. I just slammed the enter key the whole time and won without any real effort. Even though there is almost no lore, that lack of depth is essentially the point of the project. It feels like a small part-time project created over a few weeks or months. Given it is on sale for €2,09, I think it's a fine little curiosity. It can't really hurt to pick up if someone wants a quick laugh at the expense of game design.