Shiner

Have you ever wanted to use an enemy-broken ass ability in an RPG game? This is your chance to do so, but first, you must defeat the enemy with the said broken ability. don't worry; if there's a will, there's a way, and this game is all about experimenting and trying out different strategies and failing and trying again with a different plan.
Unlike most RPGs, Shiner is a game where you have to go around beating up foes; success, you'll get to use any of their abilities to your benefit to fight more enemies, and so on. At first, this may seem easy to achieve but as soon as you exit the tutorial stage, you are met with harder challenges. The “basic” enemies become more like a bossfight that you might not be able to defeat the first time around. To be honest, you may lose a lot, but that's ok because this game is all about trial and error. Getting beaten up is actually useful to figure out their abilities so you can organise a plan to decide which opponent you can easily defeat to gather all their movesets to work your way up the ladder.
I'm not joking when I say this game is challenging. One wrong move could cost you so it is important to preplan and map out the abilities you'll need to use and in the right order. You can only equip up to 4 skills, and most of these skills can only be used up a certain number of times, so your options are very limiting, but that is what makes this game great for players who love strategy. Those who are not, don't be scared to try this game out. It may be discouraging to happen to lose up to 10 times in a row, but once you get the hang of it will feel the more rewarding things you accomplish.
Plus, there are a lot of fun ways to experiment with different skills, many of which are unique in the ways they operate, with some that may appear useless on their own, but once you figure out other skills combo off each other, then you might as well break the game. For example, there is one skill called ''Interpretation'' that makes it so for the rest of the match it make it so all your skills does 1 extra damage for each vowels in the name of that particular skill. So now you can imagine how a useless skill like “Your Opponent Suffers One Damage” that would have (obviously) dealt 1 damage per hit now does a whopping 28 damage per hit.
If this seems intriguing enough then allow me to move out of the way to not spoil the rest of the fun you could be having of a game with a brilliant execution of a neat idea.

If you've played some JRPGs, including some Final Fantasy games, you've probably "stolen" an attack or an ability from your opponent and used it to beat other enemies.
Shiner takes that idea and makes it the main mechanism of this JRPG/puzzle game hybrid. It's a short but meaty experience. The art is MS Paint-like but charming.
And OK, the story is bad; true, there is no save feature; but the mechanism works so well and the game is free and I recommend it.

Such an amazing game, it has so many things to do and tons of different combos with attacks which is awesome. The story line is also very interesting and also very sweet. Had a lot of fun playing this and it's completely free.

I'm a bit embarrassed to have taken so long after this one popped up on the roulette. Shiner is another in the catalogue that I've played previously, and it's still my favorite DigiPen game by far. I find the voice acting in particular to have a certain style that befits the charm of the entire game and is quite unlike any sort of prim and polished voice acting that makes its way into "serious titles." My favorite character is probably Bouncer, particularly because he has the word "RANCH" tattooed on his belly, and it's unclear whether he acquired this before or after deciding to be a bouncer for the church. Of RANCH.
The game is a Mind banter of accumulating abilities to defeat each successive opponent encased in a makeshift exoskeleton of Heart elements that compliment the experience, both coming together for a potent sub-textual "schoolyard play-fight" aesthetic; kids making up ridiculous characters with ridiculous abilities that make them "invincible," only for the next kid to one-up his defenses with infinite rockets...plus one.
A comparison to the engagement style of Pokemon would be superficial at best, since those games prioritize a "Land-over-Mind" philosophy. Various "Nuzlocke" hacks, however, present very similar motivations: precise tactical options of which only a select few will manage victory. However however, the high stakes rules of those games would more accurately place them in Nerve territory. By my view, this makes the game out to be a fairly original blend of genres, in my system of genres that no one cares about (yet)...certainly among DigiPen titles, if not all games.
Shiner gets an S for Solutions for Combat.

A charming, small game made by a bunch of students at a university.
This is a turn-based battle game (NOT a conventional RPG; you have no stats outside of HP) which serves as a sort of tutorial for RPGs as a genre, mostly by introducing the concepts of status effects, healing, and learning to change your loadout in order to defeat different opponents.
+ Teaches RPG mechanics in a manner that forces you to pay attention
+ Difficulty scales pretty well
+ Narrative is simple and a little weird
+ For a free student project, the music and sound design is pretty good
+ 2 (slightly different) endings, providing an incentive to replay the game at least one more time
+ Incredible as a learning tool, if you're trying to explain to someone unfamiliar with RPGs how video games work
~ Game requires mouse, no keyboard or controller support
~ Simple, hand-drawn aesthetic
~ Roughly ~60 minutes of gameplay
~ Voice acting is... a little rough. Some VAs are standouts, though.
~ Enemy abilities and stats are only explained after they've used them at least once; the ability's description then remains visible if you fight against them again. This essentially forces you to fight enemies twice. Some enemy abilities instantly defeat you and immediately end combat, forcing you to re-challenge them just to see what beat you.
~ You're not always meant to fight everyone in a room before moving on; sometimes you're expected to leave a room and fight other people to get better skills before coming back
~ The hints provided by the devs in the pause menu range from "This is how to defeat this enemy" to "Good luck lmao"
- NO SAVE FEATURE; beat the game in 1 sitting, or restart from the beginning
- Made as a student project, don't expect any updates or dev help
- Certain mechanics aren't explained very well, requiring you to pay attention to what actually happens when using a skill instead of relying on the given description
Don't go in with high expectations; this is a fun little gem, but it's clear the devs are relatively new, and while some of the ideas here are great, it's clearly meant as a demo instead of something to build a full game off of.

What a fantastic little puzzle/RPG hybrid! It's hard to believe that it was a student project!

nice little game, with it's main gimmick being that you can collect defeated enemies' abilities. pretty cool concept and really cute art style, combined with surprisingly amazing dialogue and banger music (the bar music slaps so hard)! definitely worth a try, considering the fact that it's completely free!