Your donations keep RPGWatch running!

This Way Madness Lies - All News

Show news in a year(yyyy), month(yyyy/mm) or day:
Show news of type:
Monday - November 14, 2022
Thursday - November 10, 2022
Wednesday - November 09, 2022
Tuesday - November 08, 2022
Sunday - November 06, 2022
Sunday - October 16, 2022
Box Art

Monday - November 14, 2022

This Way Madness Lies - Review

by Hiddenx, 17:33

Superjump checked out the comedy RPG This Way Madness Lies:

This Way Madness Lies Review

To be or not to be

Many of us are so many years removed from high school that we forget those once-important details: hanging out with friends, attending drama classes, taking tests, transforming into heroes, and fighting monsters.

That last bit may not have been a universal experience, but it's what the girls of the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society have to deal with daily. When they're not being quizzed on the plays of the Bard or hopping into other dimensions, these girls are just trying to live a normal life and make it to their next drama club practice.

[...]

As Imogen and her cronies put a stop to the troublesome Nightmare, I found that the game never overstays its welcome or lasts so long as to lose its unique charm. I enjoyed much of the game even more than Cosmic Star Heroine, and its bite-sized approach to high school life might feel less daunting to those gamers that are put off by Persona's bloated stature. It feels like an unearthed SNES classic in all the right ways, and best of all it runs great on the Steam Deck.

Thursday - November 10, 2022

This Way Madness Lies - Release Day

by Hiddenx, 07:00

The comedy RPG This Way Madness Lies will be released today:

This Way Madness Lies

Let us begin our tale, in the quiet city of Verona, Italy. A town for lovers... and giant, mutant flower attacks.

As the leader of the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society, Imogen is no ordinary girl! Sure, she goes to school every day and helps produce plays for the community, but beyond that, she's a magical girl! With her powers, she can teleport to alternate dimensions based on Shakespeare plays, fight back the forces of Nightmare, and still get back in time for dinner!

Join Imogen, Paulina, Viola, Rosalind, Miranda, Beatrice, and Kate on an epic adventure throughout the Shakespearean metaverse in this comedy JRPG!

  • Unique, turn-based combat!
  • Hang out with your friends!
  • Put on plays!
  • Shakespearean dialogue too difficult to parse? No problem with our unique Ye Olde English to New English translator! 110% accurate!
  • Multi-character unite abilities!
  • Teaches you while you learn!
  • Get a pet!
  • Pacing that doesn't waste your time!
  • Fun for the whole family!

We believe that world needs more bite-size turn-based JRPGs - short, self-contained games that you can enjoy over a weekend or a few play sessions when you want a change of pace from big epics. Something that's all killer, no filler. We estimate that a single playthrough of This Way Madness Lies will take around 4-5 hours, depending on difficulty & playstyle, and we hope that you will enjoy every minute! 

Wednesday - November 09, 2022

This Way Madness Lies - Review

by Hiddenx, 17:00

The Outerhaven checked out the comedy RPG This Way Madness Lies:

This Way Madness Lies Review - The Thespian Work is Done

Tuesday - November 08, 2022

This Way Madness Lies - Review

by Hiddenx, 18:42

RP Gamer checked out the RPG This Way Madness Lies:

This Way Madness Lies Review

This Way Humor Lies

Why the twin narrative pillars of Shakespeare and the magical girl genre have never previously found common ground in works of fiction is a question that scholars have shamefully only dared to whisper about on lonely winter nights deep in the bowels of dusty university libraries. It was left to Robert Boyd and Bill Stiernberg of Zeboyd Games to finally bring the two together, with a healthy dose of Eldritchian horror thrown in. Packed into a pleasingly tight seven-hour experience, This Way Madness Lies is an excellent blend of disparate genres, solid gameplay, and humorous writing.

This Way Madness Lies follows a group of third-year high school girls in the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society. The game doesn’t waste any time setting up the premise: not only are these girls accomplished thespians, they can also travel via dimensional portals to other worlds based upon various Shakespearean plays. These worlds are under attack from nightmarish monsters, and these young actors change into their magical girl forms to battle the beasts and rescue some of the most iconic characters in literature. Between their extra-dimensional duties, the girls attend an English Literature class taught by a stream of substitute teachers as the regular teacher suffers from an unending string of strange and unfortunate events.

[...]

Those minor quibbles apart, Zeboyd Games has provided a splendid experience from beginning to end. With a bevy of 50-100+ hour RPGs weighing down RPGamers’ backlogs and more always on the horizon, its smaller experience makes for a welcome, hilarious, and reinvigorating respite. With such great writing, beautiful art direction, and a battle system with just the right amount of depth for its length, This Way Madness Lies’ lovely bite-sized package is still as fulfilling an RPG experience as they come.

Score: 4.5/5

Sunday - November 06, 2022

This Way Madness Lies - Review

by Hiddenx, 17:39

The Escapist checked out the upcoming RPG This Way Madness Lies:

This Way Madness Lies Review: A Sailor Moon-Like RPG with Deep Combat

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if an RPG combined Sailor Moon magical girls with the collective works of William Shakespeare? Of course not, but indie developer Zeboyd Games fortunately did, and so we have This Way Madness Lies for review on PC. It takes a fun but bizarre premise, sprinkles on most of the gameplay mechanics from prior game Cosmic Star Heroine, and results in a pretty solid appetizer RPG to supplement your other gaming.

A Series of Stuff That Happens

This Way Madness Lies doesn’t so much have a story as it does a series of linear, disconnected events that justify getting into lots of fights. Six (eventually seven) Shakespeare-loving girls compose the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society at their school, where they put on different plays across the course of the school year. But at the same time, gateways starts opening to alternate realities that take place in the actual worlds of Shakespeare plays — and those realities are full of monsters for some reason. The girls use magical powers they’ve obtained to extinguish the monsters, solve problems for characters in these alternate realities, and shut the gateways between worlds.

[...]

The Review Verdict on This Way Madness Lies

This Way Madness Lies is the quirky, messy, quality RPG that could only be born in the indie scene. It doesn’t all fit together perfectly, and the story is simultaneously imaginative but also frivolous and insubstantial. However, the combat is excellent and demanding, and the pixel art does a lot of cool and impressive things (including full magical girl transformation cinematics). Overall, it’s no masterpiece, but the game succeeds at being what it wants to be — a bite-sized RPG that you can play and enjoy in small doses. You don’t have to be a Sailor Moon or Shakespeare lover to enjoy it, but it will certainly help if you are at least one of the two.

Score: 7.5/10

Sunday - October 16, 2022

This Way Madness Lies - Announced for November 10

by Hiddenx, 06:48

The Comedy J-RPG This Way Madness Lies will be released on November 10:

This Way Madness Lies

Let us begin our tale, in the quiet city of Verona, Italy. A town for lovers... and giant, mutant flower attacks.

As the leader of the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society, Imogen is no ordinary girl! Sure, she goes to school every day and helps produce plays for the community, but beyond that, she's a magical girl! With her powers, she can teleport to alternate dimensions based on Shakespeare plays, fight back the forces of Nightmare, and still get back in time for dinner!

Join Imogen, Paulina, Viola, Rosalind, Miranda, Beatrice, and Kate on an epic adventure throughout the Shakespearean metaverse in this comedy JRPG!

  • Unique, turn-based combat!
  • Hang out with your friends!
  • Put on plays!
  • Shakespearean dialogue too difficult to parse? No problem with our unique Ye Olde English to New English translator! 110% accurate!
  • Multi-character unite abilities!
  • Teaches you while you learn!
  • Get a pet!
  • Pacing that doesn't waste your time!
  • Fun for the whole family!

We believe that world needs more bite-size turn-based JRPGs - short, self-contained games that you can enjoy over a weekend or a few play sessions when you want a change of pace from big epics. Something that's all killer, no filler. We estimate that a single playthrough of This Way Madness Lies will take around 4-5 hours, depending on difficulty & playstyle, and we hope that you will enjoy every minute! 

Information about

This Way Madness Lies

Developer: Zeboyd Games

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: J-RPG
Combat: Turn-based
Play-time: Unknown
Voice-acting: Unknown

Regions & platforms
Unknown
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Released: 2022-11-10
· Publisher: Zeboyd Games