Ok, I'm going to recommend the Mesmerizer Fangame.

[malymin]

made with nex3's grid generator

Download here from Itch.io.

Not for the story, really - there isn't much of one, and what story is there is pretty tongue-in-cheek. It doesn't really take itself too seriously, being more a love letter to the fan culture than anything else, and I don't mind that! I'm just letting you know that this isn't like... a serious psychological horror experience like you might expect from classic indie RPGmaker games, lol. That is a direction a Mesmerizer fangame could have gone, it's just that it's not what this project went with.

No, I'm recommending it because I think... it's pretty fun to play? It's very short, but it's a nice little freeware experience that makes me curious if Atena (the developer) will make more games (fangame or otherwise) in the future. "Undertale-like with deckbuilder mechanics" is, technically, not composed of any new ideas, but the combination feels pretty novel. Like, being an Undertale-like solves one common "weakness" of turn-based RPG combat, which is that defense turns are very passive, and turns it into an actual turn of gameplay in its own right. So the attacking turns, here...

Okay, so there's no basic generic attack like in Undertale/Deltarune. (Or like other, more normal turn-based RPGs, for that matter.) There's only "spells". You start with some spells already in your "deck", and you can buy and find more to equip over time. Each combat turn, you get a random "hand" of four spells from your deck, like cards. Some spells are buffs or debuffs, some are heals, and some are attacks. You build up 2 MP every turn, which you can spend to cast spells or save up for subsequent turns as you see fit.

You start with just Kasane Teto; after fighting Hatsune Miku, she "joins your party", but this isn't really treated like a standard JRPG party system. They don't have separate equipment slots, stats, or HP/MP. Instead, Miku's spells and Teto's spells pool together into the deck, and have an equal chance of being drawn for your "hand" every turn. Every battle, you start as Teto, and can only use Teto's magic - any Miku spells you've drawn can't be used. Once per turn, at any point during the attacking phase, you can spend 1 MP on "Baton Pass", to switch from Teto to Miku or vice-versa, swapping what selection of spells in your hand you're allowed to spend points on; this also heals a substantial amount of the shared HP bar, making it less risky to swap that it otherwise could be in a pinch. Needless to say, this setup makes attacking turns a bit more strategic than just "spam the same attack every turn."

(Also, you need to press a selection of arrow keys to execute each spell attack, so there's some analogy to executing attacks with spacebar presses in UT/DR there. Each spell has its own consistent arrow key pattern, some easier to execute than others; Miku's vampiric "Drain" spell, for example, is down-down-up-up, if I recall correctly. Very cute.)

Teto's spells tend to be cheap, so you can easily attack with her once or twice every turn; Miku's spells tend to be powerful, but more expensive, requiring the player to accumulate more MP. There's also a handful of spells both characters can use, but none of those shared spells are attacks. You can also spend gold on upgrading your stats in the menu, but I haven't experimented with that as much; the game lets you "refund" your upgrades if you get buyer's remorse, which is nice.

It's... surprising mechanical depth, to say the least! Knowing that Toby Fox himself got his start making romhacks and the like, I can't hold being "derivative" against this work. For what appears to be the developer's first finished game project (their Itch.io also has a Shikanoko fangame, but it's unfinished, and Atena's description says they initially didn't want to upload it at all due to its buggy state), made by an 18-year-old in the span of 3 months, it's a strong first showing. Also, the developer commentary on the final boss theme is pretty fun. ^_^

Comments

[stepnix]

putting vocaloid fans in an accelerator so they can come up with increasingly esoteric rpg elements

[malymin]

How can they evolve...