I'll be writing this post as I play along the game so as to give my first impressions exactly as they come.
First thing I noticed as soon as I opened the game: Instant ear rape. I had to mute the PC to get through the menu screen. I suggest you work on what kind of song/sound effect the player will encounter on critic portions of the game- the main menu is likely the single most important one (first impressions and all that).
Next thing I'd suggest is to be mindful of what kind of keys players will be pressing to return from menus. Most people check the options menu even before starting the game. ESC just throws you back to the story summary, which is unskippable (I'm aware you can fast-forward, but If someone already read the text, they want to skip it rather than FF it)
I like that you can kinda skate through the dungeon rather than be locked into every panel.
This is nitpicky, but the mandatory corridors are needlessly long, and the camera is angled way too low, feels like my character is depressed and looking at the floor constantly lol
The music in the dungeon is pretty nice, and the visuals are striking enough that, with a little more finesse in the art direction, it can feel very intimidating. I then got into a battle, died in one hit and lost motivation.
Overall, I can tell this was inspired by SMT back when they were true dungeon crawlers. I don't know how far into development this is or what is your scope, but the premise, even if not entirely original, is good. Old SMT had a great vibe, and more games like those need to exist, but this needs a lot of polish to get there. If there's one thing I'd suggest focusing on is presentation. Even more so than gameplay (smt didn't had a great one anyway). Work on the characters, their models, the level design and the game will be much more fun and enjoyable.
I played the game for about half an hour, and I have no idea if I'm playing it the way it's supposed to be played, more like I'm a blind kitten stumbling around. So, I picked the first quest to return an item(a book, I think) that was stolen by a monster, captured some monsters, but I wasn't sure if I should've captured them or just killed them to get the book, in case one of them had it(now I think none of them had it, and the one that did was some kind of special quest monster).
Eventually I got teleported into an area with a slime that heals your entire party, and there I stayed grinding for a while, but it wasn't fun and it didn't feel like the party was getting stronger cause the game could've spawned some skeletons, that could wipe it out or a cat shogun, who is impervious to any attacks except for counterattacks caused by the shields. BTW, when you capture a cat shogun, the same monsters that couldn't deal him any damage can easily damage when they're the enemies.
Speaking of shields, casting them costs a ton of mana, and there's no way to regenerate it except for having the healing slime heal you, which is strange, cause you have healing potions, but no mana potions(or maybe they appear later).
Also, I tried drawing the map of the level, but I kept making mistakes, so I gave up.
In conclusion: I don't know, I guess this game is just not for me.
Thank you so much for playing and providing feedback.
>cause you have healing potions, but no mana potions(or maybe they appear later).
You might have missed the terminals, but they sell Magic water items that restore mana. They can only be gotten there.
But I made the game hard on purpose so the player would explore more to try to find new ways to get stronger. I understand that you wouldn't like it. I made it to fit a niche and mostly that niche only.
Maybe, but I made the terminals pop up a lot in all the dungeons to make sure they could be easily found. I'm guessing you got really lost and couldn't find one of them or missed one or two somehow.I'll think about making some changes.
This really reminds me of the older SMT games, both setting-wise with all the demons & gameplay-wise. I also really appreciated your sense of humor. And I love the look of a lot of the enemy portraits.
Combat's tough-as-ball's but once you know how it's done it seems fair for the most part, and it's great that you can just restart a battle if you lose. And thinking about it, having your ass handed to you is probably the best way to really teach a player to run away from fights if they're too hard. I might've just been unlucky, but it took me a lot of tries to capture my first demon for a supposed 50% chance.
However I will beg you for a map--not necessarily a map that shows the entire floor right from the start, but at least one that gets filled out as you progress through the dungeon. Just something to make navigating a bit easier. I could take a screenshot of the dungeon layout when I'm getting teleported in but I'd rather not.
And a small nitpick: the camera just seems to be angled down a bit too much.
Here's a video of my playthrough. I hope it helps!
>This really reminds me of the older SMT games, both setting-wise with all the demons & gameplay-wise. I also really appreciated your sense of humor. And I love the look of a lot of the enemy portraits.
They are a clear inspiration for me.
I'll have to test out the camera angles more to figure out the best way to do it. Even tiny adjustments changes a lot of things with it, so I didn't want to mess with it too much. With the map, I didn't want to add a minimap to make sure the player got lost so they would explore the dungeon as much as they could. It's something I would have to think about since I have no idea how to implement it, but if more people really want an ingame map, then it would be something to heavily consider.
Thank you for the advice and for playing. I'll watch the whole video and take some notes on it.
I like the cutscenes that play when you interact with the statue, enter the dungeon, and defeat the dungeon boss. The premise is interesting and I do like the way enemies look during battle. The retry battle option is great especially for tougher enemies so at least I can try to retry the fight or run away which helps prevent me from being sent back to my last save. The NPC quests and NPCs that give items/spells good additions. They are useful and give some insight to the world. I also like weird hidden things like the heal slime with the different icon.
The maze seems pretty extensive for a first dungeon which made it a bit difficult to navigate. The repeating layouts made it really confusing. On the plus side this helps with leveling up and there's a a lot to discover, but it's a big maze for a first dungeon. Difficulty is very tough at the start, but after I captured a minotaur things became easier as well as learning when to run away rather than fight (especially for the oni). The final boss was a decent challenge with Harold being level 23 and my 3 demons being level 19-21. Also, I don't see an incentive to selling all my demons since a team seems more beneficial. Maybe selecting which demons to sell rather than selling them all would help.
Thank you so much for playing all the way and giving feedback. I made the first dungeon bigger to have more items put inside of it. It might be too big, but it's the second biggest dungeon floor in the game (The biggest can also be the final dungeon depending on what route you take). Most of the other dungeons have multiple layers or floors but the floors are smaller in size. But the demon selling only comes into play in the full/paid game where you can talk to wizard NPCs and pay them high amounts of money to get boss demons that you fought previously to become allies. So the final boss in the demo can be bought with gold in the next dungeon in the full game for example with all their skills and perks. I made the Oni harder to fight normally to force players to learn to easier escape or capture them, they have a multiplier to make them easier to escape from.
>Maybe selecting which demons to sell rather than selling them all would help.
It's mainly that way due to some RPGmaker's limitations with the base code and not allowing too many options on screen at once. Selling all demons at once was a way to make it easier. But I made it that boss demons that become allies through Wizards or demons got through special ways cannot be sold off in the main game, this made it so it's mostly demons you capture that can be sold and is mostly sold to get more powerful demons from NPCs. I should have had a way to showcase this in the demo, but that's why the mechanic is like that.
I'll take note of everything you stated and I'm glad you really enjoyed it.
Thanks for playing with the feedback. This demo is older than the current build, so stuff like the infinite potions, magic category being duplicated, and the loading screen crash don't exist in the current build. I lost the project files for the demo itself which prevented me from updating it. The lack of the minimap and how strong the enemies are is a design choice: to force players to learn how to use the shield spells effectively and to have a dreadful atmosphere at the start of the game. Lots of marked tiles that teleport the player at the start so there is always a way to get unlost and a way to stop backtracking. I made the first dungeon bigger in it's floor size compared to the other dungeons that have smaller floors but multiple floors. I made the other dungeons have more than the same textures for variety, it was a design choice to have the starting area feel dreadful and samey before introducing more varied content. Maybe that is a bad idea, but I think it works well for what I'm trying to showcase. But a lot of people are having the same problems that you stated, so it's probably worth looking into and to see if it can be better. I'll definitely think about it and how it could work better with the game.
Thank you, I'll try to look into everything more just in case I missed something. Yeah, some of the sound effects need some work. I never tested for the crashing when alt tabbing during the game over screen. But when clicking any button its supposed to bring up all the options to retry the battle. Thank you so much for the feedback and I'll look into it.
I died a lot. I thought the game was a joke game at first because it seemed like every enemy kills you quickly. It wasn't until I figured out how to use the defense spells that I could kill some enemies. Perhaps in the starting area, you can have a demo battle so you can get the feel of how to win before you enter the demon world. I also got lost in the maze early on, I think more texture variation would help that.
Overall I liked the atmosphere and humor in the game.
>Perhaps in the starting area, you can have a demo battle so you can get the feel of how to win before you enter the demon world.
I'm hearing this a lot, it's something I'll 100% add in future games. The texture variation or how most of the walls are the same is due to it being the first time using the engine with a lot of plugins that alters how the engine handles walls. There is more variations in the paid version starting with the third dungeon of the game. I wanted the first two dungeons to have walls mostly the same for a sense of dread while exploring since the MC/player is trying to adapt to the new world.
Thank you for your feedback and for enjoying the game. I'll take note of everything you said for future projects.
I've not played either of the games this is inspired by so I can't comment on how unique this game is, but I am a fan of the setting, humor and soundtrack. The starting soundtrack is a headache though, but everything I've heard afterwards was nice. All the character artwork was nice too, you got some very creative enemies. You've got a lot of spelling mistakes as well but that's solved with just one QA tester running through all the dialogue
>The starting soundtrack is a headache though, but everything I've heard afterwards was nice.
That isn't in the main game, the only reason it's in the demo is because I haven't been able to update the demo since I lost the files for it. (I had the demo and the main version as separate projects, I lost the demo files when I built a new PC.) The spelling mistakes are mostly fixed (the mistakes I found anyways) in the main game as well.
But thank you so much for playing the demo with the feedback.
This expreince was challenging because all the walls looked the same and it was hard to tell my orintation. I wanted to continute, but bascially the game crashed on me after the tutorial. Some day I'd like to go to Daemonica (the other world) and be a responcible soldier.
Sure thing. When I was actually entering the other world, a screen popped up with a red image, and it just remained stuck there, the music repeating. It wasn't really a crash per-say, but had the same effect.
I never had it happen before. After 3-4 seconds it's supposed to go to the first dungeon. It could be a bug with certain GPUs with how the engine handles videos. I'll look into it.
First off I really dig the music and the general vibe. They are hummable melodies but have some nice crunchy dissonance that fits well. The intro video is pretty funny and fits with the vibe. I also really appreciate the first levels gradually easing the player into how the game is played, it was very well done and the game makes intuitive sense for me.
I don't play much of RPGs so I'm not sure my feedback about the combat system is worthwhile. But it was pretty hard, the radiation pig and the jello slime mold both very easily killed me. Having a simple enemy when you are first spawned can be helpful.
Thanks for giving a gameplay video with the constructive criticism, it helps a lot with seeing how other players play. I think having an enemy show up at the start to show off the gameplay mechanics would be a really good idea. I wanted the start to be very hard to get players to figure out exactly what needs to be done to survive and then the game gets a little easier once the mechanics are all figured out. Mainly the mechanics on using the shields which are under the magic tab and how to use them effectively. But thanks for wishlisting! This was very informative.
This is the same demo as last demo day. It's because I forgot to export the demo only stuff as it's own executable before working and finishing the rest of the game.
If you enjoy the demo in any way, please wishlist and eventually buy the full game. Most bugs and things people wanted fixed from the demo was fixed here, the intro start up section especially.
Anyways, here is two Steam Keys for the first two people to check out this demo:
Comments
yeah its way too hard for me, also the title screen is very hard on the ear
btw u can still take an infinite amount of potions from the guy that gives em for free
I'll be writing this post as I play along the game so as to give my first impressions exactly as they come.
First thing I noticed as soon as I opened the game:
Instant ear rape. I had to mute the PC to get through the menu screen. I suggest you work on what kind of song/sound effect the player will encounter on critic portions of the game- the main menu is likely the single most important one (first impressions and all that).
Next thing I'd suggest is to be mindful of what kind of keys players will be pressing to return from menus. Most people check the options menu even before starting the game. ESC just throws you back to the story summary, which is unskippable (I'm aware you can fast-forward, but If someone already read the text, they want to skip it rather than FF it)
I like that you can kinda skate through the dungeon rather than be locked into every panel.
This is nitpicky, but the mandatory corridors are needlessly long, and the camera is angled way too low, feels like my character is depressed and looking at the floor constantly lol
The music in the dungeon is pretty nice, and the visuals are striking enough that, with a little more finesse in the art direction, it can feel very intimidating.
I then got into a battle, died in one hit and lost motivation.
Overall, I can tell this was inspired by SMT back when they were true dungeon crawlers. I don't know how far into development this is or what is your scope, but the premise, even if not entirely original, is good. Old SMT had a great vibe, and more games like those need to exist, but this needs a lot of polish to get there. If there's one thing I'd suggest focusing on is presentation. Even more so than gameplay (smt didn't had a great one anyway). Work on the characters, their models, the level design and the game will be much more fun and enjoyable.
I like the atmosphere and the creepy feeling it gave me lol! Looks like an interesting game, very experimental! Keep at it!
Thank you for playing, I will!
I played the game for about half an hour, and I have no idea if I'm playing it the way it's supposed to be played, more like I'm a blind kitten stumbling around. So, I picked the first quest to return an item(a book, I think) that was stolen by a monster, captured some monsters, but I wasn't sure if I should've captured them or just killed them to get the book, in case one of them had it(now I think none of them had it, and the one that did was some kind of special quest monster).
Eventually I got teleported into an area with a slime that heals your entire party, and there I stayed grinding for a while, but it wasn't fun and it didn't feel like the party was getting stronger cause the game could've spawned some skeletons, that could wipe it out or a cat shogun, who is impervious to any attacks except for counterattacks caused by the shields. BTW, when you capture a cat shogun, the same monsters that couldn't deal him any damage can easily damage when they're the enemies.
Speaking of shields, casting them costs a ton of mana, and there's no way to regenerate it except for having the healing slime heal you, which is strange, cause you have healing potions, but no mana potions(or maybe they appear later).
Also, I tried drawing the map of the level, but I kept making mistakes, so I gave up.
In conclusion: I don't know, I guess this game is just not for me.
Thank you so much for playing and providing feedback.
>cause you have healing potions, but no mana potions(or maybe they appear later).
You might have missed the terminals, but they sell Magic water items that restore mana. They can only be gotten there.
But I made the game hard on purpose so the player would explore more to try to find new ways to get stronger. I understand that you wouldn't like it. I made it to fit a niche and mostly that niche only.
I guess I failed to find the terminals in the first level. Wouldn't it make sense for enemies to drop mana potions on occasion?
Maybe, but I made the terminals pop up a lot in all the dungeons to make sure they could be easily found. I'm guessing you got really lost and couldn't find one of them or missed one or two somehow.I'll think about making some changes.
This really reminds me of the older SMT games, both setting-wise with all the demons & gameplay-wise. I also really appreciated your sense of humor. And I love the look of a lot of the enemy portraits.
Combat's tough-as-ball's but once you know how it's done it seems fair for the most part, and it's great that you can just restart a battle if you lose. And thinking about it, having your ass handed to you is probably the best way to really teach a player to run away from fights if they're too hard. I might've just been unlucky, but it took me a lot of tries to capture my first demon for a supposed 50% chance.
However I will beg you for a map--not necessarily a map that shows the entire floor right from the start, but at least one that gets filled out as you progress through the dungeon. Just something to make navigating a bit easier. I could take a screenshot of the dungeon layout when I'm getting teleported in but I'd rather not.
And a small nitpick: the camera just seems to be angled down a bit too much.
Here's a video of my playthrough. I hope it helps!
>This really reminds me of the older SMT games, both setting-wise with all the demons & gameplay-wise. I also really appreciated your sense of humor. And I love the look of a lot of the enemy portraits.
They are a clear inspiration for me.
I'll have to test out the camera angles more to figure out the best way to do it. Even tiny adjustments changes a lot of things with it, so I didn't want to mess with it too much. With the map, I didn't want to add a minimap to make sure the player got lost so they would explore the dungeon as much as they could. It's something I would have to think about since I have no idea how to implement it, but if more people really want an ingame map, then it would be something to heavily consider.
Thank you for the advice and for playing. I'll watch the whole video and take some notes on it.
I like the cutscenes that play when you interact with the statue, enter the dungeon, and defeat the dungeon boss. The premise is interesting and I do like the way enemies look during battle. The retry battle option is great especially for tougher enemies so at least I can try to retry the fight or run away which helps prevent me from being sent back to my last save. The NPC quests and NPCs that give items/spells good additions. They are useful and give some insight to the world. I also like weird hidden things like the heal slime with the different icon.
The maze seems pretty extensive for a first dungeon which made it a bit difficult to navigate. The repeating layouts made it really confusing. On the plus side this helps with leveling up and there's a a lot to discover, but it's a big maze for a first dungeon. Difficulty is very tough at the start, but after I captured a minotaur things became easier as well as learning when to run away rather than fight (especially for the oni). The final boss was a decent challenge with Harold being level 23 and my 3 demons being level 19-21. Also, I don't see an incentive to selling all my demons since a team seems more beneficial. Maybe selecting which demons to sell rather than selling them all would help.
Thank you so much for playing all the way and giving feedback. I made the first dungeon bigger to have more items put inside of it. It might be too big, but it's the second biggest dungeon floor in the game (The biggest can also be the final dungeon depending on what route you take). Most of the other dungeons have multiple layers or floors but the floors are smaller in size. But the demon selling only comes into play in the full/paid game where you can talk to wizard NPCs and pay them high amounts of money to get boss demons that you fought previously to become allies. So the final boss in the demo can be bought with gold in the next dungeon in the full game for example with all their skills and perks. I made the Oni harder to fight normally to force players to learn to easier escape or capture them, they have a multiplier to make them easier to escape from.
>Maybe selecting which demons to sell rather than selling them all would help.
It's mainly that way due to some RPGmaker's limitations with the base code and not allowing too many options on screen at once. Selling all demons at once was a way to make it easier. But I made it that boss demons that become allies through Wizards or demons got through special ways cannot be sold off in the main game, this made it so it's mostly demons you capture that can be sold and is mostly sold to get more powerful demons from NPCs. I should have had a way to showcase this in the demo, but that's why the mechanic is like that.
I'll take note of everything you stated and I'm glad you really enjoyed it.
Nice Strange Journey vibes. The first person dungeon crawling feels surprisingly good.
- I can get infinitely many potions from the Head Engineer.
- Game crashed when opening the Load screen menu
- I immediately got 1 shotted by a horde of skellis
- The Magic category seems to be duplicated
- The lack of a minimap in the dungeons is definitely a problem when combined with the same textures and repeating corridors
Thanks for playing with the feedback. This demo is older than the current build, so stuff like the infinite potions, magic category being duplicated, and the loading screen crash don't exist in the current build. I lost the project files for the demo itself which prevented me from updating it. The lack of the minimap and how strong the enemies are is a design choice: to force players to learn how to use the shield spells effectively and to have a dreadful atmosphere at the start of the game. Lots of marked tiles that teleport the player at the start so there is always a way to get unlost and a way to stop backtracking. I made the first dungeon bigger in it's floor size compared to the other dungeons that have smaller floors but multiple floors. I made the other dungeons have more than the same textures for variety, it was a design choice to have the starting area feel dreadful and samey before introducing more varied content. Maybe that is a bad idea, but I think it works well for what I'm trying to showcase. But a lot of people are having the same problems that you stated, so it's probably worth looking into and to see if it can be better. I'll definitely think about it and how it could work better with the game.
Thank you, I'll try to look into everything more just in case I missed something. Yeah, some of the sound effects need some work. I never tested for the crashing when alt tabbing during the game over screen. But when clicking any button its supposed to bring up all the options to retry the battle. Thank you so much for the feedback and I'll look into it.
I died a lot. I thought the game was a joke game at first because it seemed like every enemy kills you quickly. It wasn't until I figured out how to use the defense spells that I could kill some enemies. Perhaps in the starting area, you can have a demo battle so you can get the feel of how to win before you enter the demon world. I also got lost in the maze early on, I think more texture variation would help that.
Overall I liked the atmosphere and humor in the game.
>Perhaps in the starting area, you can have a demo battle so you can get the feel of how to win before you enter the demon world.
I'm hearing this a lot, it's something I'll 100% add in future games. The texture variation or how most of the walls are the same is due to it being the first time using the engine with a lot of plugins that alters how the engine handles walls. There is more variations in the paid version starting with the third dungeon of the game. I wanted the first two dungeons to have walls mostly the same for a sense of dread while exploring since the MC/player is trying to adapt to the new world.
Thank you for your feedback and for enjoying the game. I'll take note of everything you said for future projects.
I've not played either of the games this is inspired by so I can't comment on how unique this game is, but I am a fan of the setting, humor and soundtrack. The starting soundtrack is a headache though, but everything I've heard afterwards was nice. All the character artwork was nice too, you got some very creative enemies. You've got a lot of spelling mistakes as well but that's solved with just one QA tester running through all the dialogue
Final score: I loved the orientation video / 10
>The starting soundtrack is a headache though, but everything I've heard afterwards was nice.
That isn't in the main game, the only reason it's in the demo is because I haven't been able to update the demo since I lost the files for it. (I had the demo and the main version as separate projects, I lost the demo files when I built a new PC.) The spelling mistakes are mostly fixed (the mistakes I found anyways) in the main game as well.
But thank you so much for playing the demo with the feedback.
This expreince was challenging because all the walls looked the same and it was hard to tell my orintation. I wanted to continute, but bascially the game crashed on me after the tutorial. Some day I'd like to go to Daemonica (the other world) and be a responcible soldier.
knucleheads
Can you give more details about the crash? I never had it happen before on any machine I tested. But I mostly tested the Windows version.
Sure thing. When I was actually entering the other world, a screen popped up with a red image, and it just remained stuck there, the music repeating. It wasn't really a crash per-say, but had the same effect.
I never had it happen before. After 3-4 seconds it's supposed to go to the first dungeon. It could be a bug with certain GPUs with how the engine handles videos. I'll look into it.
I streamed it and just finished uploading the video of the game. You can find me playing it here:
Thank you, I'll watch it.
I don't play much of RPGs so I'm not sure my feedback about the combat system is worthwhile. But it was pretty hard, the radiation pig and the jello slime mold both very easily killed me. Having a simple enemy when you are first spawned can be helpful.
I just wishlisted, best of luck to you!
Thanks for giving a gameplay video with the constructive criticism, it helps a lot with seeing how other players play. I think having an enemy show up at the start to show off the gameplay mechanics would be a really good idea. I wanted the start to be very hard to get players to figure out exactly what needs to be done to survive and then the game gets a little easier once the mechanics are all figured out. Mainly the mechanics on using the shields which are under the magic tab and how to use them effectively. But thanks for wishlisting! This was very informative.
This is the same demo as last demo day. It's because I forgot to export the demo only stuff as it's own executable before working and finishing the rest of the game.
The Steam Page for the full game is up:
https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1987550/
If you enjoy the demo in any way, please wishlist and eventually buy the full game. Most bugs and things people wanted fixed from the demo was fixed here, the intro start up section especially.
Anyways, here is two Steam Keys for the first two people to check out this demo:
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W$NIH-AYZLQ-9C0H4
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