Conceptually the game seems pretty cool. I got through the first boss and managed to defeat her. It would be nice to always have a health and mana bar visible under the player characters on the field, and at least a health bar visible under the enemy characters.
Thank you for the feedback. I have received a similar suggestion before because it's possible to highlight all HP and MP bars by holding down the D button during the player's turn but perhaps it should be automatic whenever the targets are up.
Haven't played it yet and I'm saddened to see it's privated. If you're willing, I'd love to play it if you can unprivate the game long enough for me to download it
I finished the entire demo after about 2 hours of playing. I think this game is the most fun one I've played and one of my favorites. It's clear there's still a lot of work to do, but I have enjoyed what I've seen so far. I've also encountered a few bugs, some minor and some major. I'll leave the feedback in a somewhat chronological order - I haven't read any other comment so I will most likely reiterate a lot. >New game gives an Are You Sure prompt, when this is my first time playing. Probably dont need that until there is at least 1 saved game >Clicking the Dino makes a sound. Kino. >The face portraits are EXCELLENT. Don't like the dino one as much but the other two characters rule. Finnegan looks like he has malformed legs in the battle screen, though. >Clicked the how-to and encyclopedia to learn a bit. How-to is fine, no issues there. Encyclopedia needs to turn down the shine effect when mousing over a card, it's way too fast. It also need to register clicks instead of only mouse overs. I'd like to click a card, then move the mouse away somewhere else while I read. >2 minor bugs with Encyclopedia. Can scroll all the way to the bottom to se one of the final 3 enemies (the jaguar) with details, but his name is "???". Second bug is on goon jellyfish, saying "Skill A: Skill A: -skill details-" >Fire crackling/snapping sound much louder than other sounds
>First foray into fighting could be less confusing. Main issue stem from UI + communication. Unclear how much damage things do and how much they cost. More details could be great. Also perhaps an enemy health bar display when selecting a spell, instead of having to mouse over enemies one by one >So far, the story is interesting and more importantly it's ENGAGING. You have a good hook, likable characters and an interesting premise. I *want* to know what will happen next. Can't say that about many other games, mine included. Well done. >More UI confusion with Stats/Perks. How do perks work? Can I get a perk now? I attempted to figure things out myself without consulting any help, and I managed it on the next levelup. Some 'error' tooltips, such as "cant get a perk now, wait til level 2" would be helpful here. Maybe this is on me since I don't play this genre often and I don't know what the inspiration-game is like. >Hard to tell which perks I can select (and when). Figured it out later, but it shouldn't be so confusing at the start. As before, a tooltip or error pop up should fix this all right up. >Stats are clear, but the HP/Mana benefits should show on the portrait (in the stats page) as soon as I add a point. As it is, upgraded values only show up on refresh. >Incorrect tooltip when trying to proceed without leveling - "Dino has unspent skill points". Who's Dino? Of course I know, but they never refer to him that way otherwise. >The story still is a lot of fun. The conversations feel good and varied. I like the tidbits of information I learn from the world and the character dynamic. The little soundeffect grunts are cute too.
Now onto the Big Arena level. This one was tough due to difficulty spikes and a nasty bug. The first thing I'll mention is that I'm able to clear the road leading up to the boss with minimum effort and barely any damage received. But that boss fight is HARD. While I don't think my build is optimal, I've defeated everything else super easily. The bosses absolutely destroy me in 3 turns without any trouble. So I died, and got kicked back to the menu. Continue doesn't work - no big deal, I restart the game and it works now; I'm back to the textbox cutscene before the boss battle. Attempt #2, same thing. They absolutely destroy me. Well shit. Restart and back to the resting zone to check on my stats. Clicking continue there sends you back to the arena! Oops, but whatever. Except the cutscene never triggers, and the area where the boss is (which should be in color to indicate I can move there) is now greyed out. Well shit. I resign and do the gauntlet over again, then. Doing it all again means I now have 2 extra levels and one extra perk. Even so, the boss battle is still HARD. I ended up winning, but it felt like I won because the enemy waited often, while in the previous attempts they would try and focus fire my weakest guys and get them dead in 2-3 turns. This time I manage to kill the Angel on the other team, and she immediately respawns? What? I kill the jaguar next, and get a prompt the angel used a ceasefire ability. I figure this is intentional but very, very confusing. The cutscene triggers and the demo ends. At this point I feel like I either won by luck (AI didn't do well), cheated somehow, or the game bugged out. Since I was able to reach the ending I assume it was sheer luck, but I'd handle this whole end fight into a cutscene thing differently if possible. Very cool cutscene. I'm HOOKED. Wish there was more content afterwards.
Despite the bugs, everything else is great. Cool story and characters, interesting combat, fun gameplay. Only needs more UI work and ideally more abilities. It feels a bit lame that our abilities are always 1 Offensive and 1 Defensive. I think it would be better if we had 3-4. if that's too many, perhaps a loadout feature of some sorts? Either way, well done. I had a blast playing and I'll be on the lookout for more.
Thank you for playing until the end, and also for the feedback. The final boss has been called too easy by others so I decided to buff it but perhaps I went too far. It's a bit hard to balance something so far into the game. On that note, Ermine reviving is not a bug, that's a trademark Rebel Angel ability. Mosca can learn to do it as well if you unlock the right perk.
A lot of basic gameplay information such as how much damage basic attacks deal or how often you should expect to unlock a perk point is in the HOW book. A lot of people have told me that I need to display more information but I haven't found a good way to do it organically. It's one of my objectives for the next DD because things are only gonna get more complicated. I will consider displaying all the HP/MP bars and such when targets are up. You can already do that by holding down D but perhaps it should be automatic or at least a setting.
I have been thinking about adding more skills to characters since the initial idea behind the perks system was to have subclasses once you have 4 of them but I haven't implemented it yet. However, for the sake of keeping complexity to a reasonable level only boss enemies will have more than 2 active skills and a passive I think.
This is the first time someone has told me they were locked out of the final boss because the dialogue didn't work, thank you for bringing that up to my attention.
Finally, you are the first person to tell me Finnegan has weird legs which is indeed the case and not just a stylistic choice. Although technically you are the second because an anon once compared him to Gondola.
Beat the demo, I quite enjoyed myself. What music did you use? It's quite nice. Also sorry for the wall of text, this really is ridiculous, but I swear I don't repeat myself. At least it's comprehensive, I suppose...
Visuals: I like the pixel art, though I first miss-interpreted the Finnegan sprite as a monkey man because his armor was so uniform. Maybe add some contrast between the plates of armor or something? Character and enemy design is weird yet appealing, it really feels like a fever dream brought to life. Which I think is the right vibe given the setting of Purgatory. The home screen being 4:3 is weird since everything else is 16:9. The text during the home screen conversations and a few other areas I forget looks bad(present on main menu, but not as noticeable). It looks like an upscaled pixel font, where it's blurry in places and bulges sometimes despite looking like it should be blocky crisp pixels(see pic bellow). I forget how, but I think there's a relatively simple way of fixing it in Godot. I really enjoy the animated portraits, I miss when they were common.
Gameplay: I really like the bounce back and forth system, it's an ATB bar that doesn't waste UI space, and it effects the characters when they walk over hazards in real time. Took me a bit to get used to, but using wait vs attack vs skill became quite intuitive. While fun, on stage 3+ it became formulaic with how I dealt with targeting enemies. Perks may have helped but I didn't get any(see Bugs section). Stage selection is ok but doesn't have as much impact as a typical slay the spire like, since instead almost all landmarks are battles, with only level rests once (or twice) per stage. You can choose the stage hazard I guess, though I found they were fairly inconsequential, except for the desert that destroys my DPS and makes me question how much damage I can deal in a time frame. That said, I don't think it would be improved necessarily if you did do the standard trappings, like a boon landmark or whatever. Also on the last map got so big that I couldn't see all landmarks and couldn't scroll it, so I got worried it wouldn't scroll up and got railroaded into the lower path. Of the four stats it seems AGI may be the best, since not only do you act faster, but it also allows you more actions per minute, which increases MP generation rate for skills. STR seems fine, I put some points in it for Finnegan. ULT seemed lackluster, I tried speccing Mosca in it and I didn't feel any returns until I started speccing AGI. RES is probably fine, but I didn't touch it since I wanted to be more powerful not more tanky(which would probably help with Mosca not dying so much). Speaking of, I didn't game over at all until the end boss, and in which case only happened because Mosca was targeted and killed before she made the first rebound. It happened twice more after that, so I am very grateful for the save right before the fight.
Story: The setting works well to justify the gameplay, and the bestiary aids with extra details for those who read. I like the narrative of having an overarching goal of leaving Purgatory as well as the mysterious past of our main characters and the rivals they face. The characters having more philosophical talk was nice to have, and it makes sense given it's just a day in the life for them while they think about their position in the strange world. The last story hook was interesting, though in a way pretty obvious since the characters were bringing up points about how weird Purgatory is several times.
Tutorials/Information: I read the HOW book and still had some trouble following along in the beginning. HELLO text was distracting a bit. How my MP got drained in battle always felt random, it should get the same treatment as HP and come out as a floating away text on applicable hits so that I could at least figure which enemy is responsible(it's probably in the Bestiary, but I chose to ignore it since I didn't want to memorize a bunch). Combat actions feel too quick to start, by the time I register a new enemy move is being used it's already over. Having a description of the selected skill would be nice.
Bugs: No perks at all, got to level 7. Though for such a big error you probably released a new build I didn't get in time. When I died in the final fight the battle music kept playing upon returning to base and stayed until I got into the fight again.
Suggestions: I think it would help to display the hotkeys in battle somehow, so the the player remembers they exist(I forgot about D for a long while). HP/MP display with D should probably be a toggle or menu option that stays on forever if one wishes it. Maybe color code STR, AGI, ULT, RES with their respective icon colors when in text form? It would make it even easier to tell what formulas use what at a glance. If you want to be extra fancy, you could also have special colors for terms like SLOWS, XX%, X_SECONDS, etc. Several times I got the same encounter (including formation)back to back, might be worth adding an anti repeat method.
Thank you for playing. The music is all royalty free stuff, I intend to give credit to the sources when I finish the game or at least have a respectable project. On that note, the perk system not working properly is driving me crazy although you indeed didn't have the latest build because I fixed the music after a game over. It need an actual illustration in there too.
I will take your suggestions into consideration because, for once, the HOW book is really outdated and I think displaying information to the player in an intuitive way is something I have been struggling to accomplish.
Finally, on the topic of writing. I think Finnegan makes a lot of unnecessary observations which I think don't need to be explicitly pointed at, but at the same time it's in character for him to complain about everything so I just left that in.
I remember watching gifs and images of this in the /v/ threads and the back and forth walking really caught my attention, so I'm happy to finally give this game a try.
The walk and forth is really a fancy attack cooldown, but it is an intuitive representation while also allowing to do some fancy stuff like "area damage" or the mines that the dinosaur leave after using its special attack. It took me a bit to understand that waiting has its uses but once I did it made some battles much easier.
This game has little rng for damage, so I believe more battle information would be welcome. At one point I knew the dino did 12 damage and the warrior did 18, so I could tell an enemy with 42 HP could be defeated with 2 attacks from the dino and one from the warrior, making calculations easy and fun to do. That information felt hidden most of the time. Even HP information is hidden sometimes.
Speed felt incredibly more important than any other stat. Doing more stuff and earlier than the opponent is a huge advantage. Specially since all other stats felt unimpactful in comparison.
I read on the manual that one of the enemies "always attacks doing backstab damage". I think I haven't seen that during the game, receiving or doing it.
Sometimes I got unlucky and the oponents only bullied Mosca from the start before I could do anything about it. It also happened with the dino. I don't think I lost the warrior even once.
At the moment there is very little to do in the game. You fight, add some stats, maybe some perks and thats it. It makes the game feel repetitive.
The story was misterious, the way it was given didn't feel overwhelming and didn't distract from the action. Though the start was a bit rough with so many new terms flying around and 3 bizarre looking characters (no offense here, an undead warrior armed with copper, a giant fly that is an angel and a dinosaur is not a run of the mill party composition).
I won the last battle without losing a single unit. Maybe because I was lucky and all the damage was done evenly across my units. I think that there is a lot of space for experimentation with the mechanics you have laid down, it will be fun to see where you take the game. Nice work!
Thank you for playing the demo and your comprehensive feedback.
I just added some tooltips for skills during combat and attributes in the stats screen. I'm glad you didn't have issues with unlocking perks since that seemed to be a prevailing issue. You can always tell exactly how much HP a unit has by hovering over it while the targets are on, you can also show all HP and MP bars at once during your turn by holding down D. I really need to communicate certain mechanics better, but I tried to make the game easy to understand to begin with.
I think speed in general tends to be very important in RPGs so that's not strange, but I still have a lot to do in terms of balance. As an example, you are also not the first person to tell me the final boss is too easy, maybe I underestimated players. I don't want to obsess over it though because sometimes wildly unbalanced abilities are fun.
So far my main source of variety are new enemies and terrains with special effects. I think the player should encounter a new foe every 5-6 minutes which I think is decent. I also want each perk to offer something new in terms of gameplay. Some skills also interact with mechanics that haven't been introduced yet.
I don't take offense from my characters getting called bizarre. The inspiration behind one of the factions was a literal dream I had. The story takes place in a small pocket of a larger world so a bunch of loose actors together don't make a lot of sense in a vacuum, but hopefully I can shape them into something more coherent through smalls bits of dialogue.
Also, Mosca is supposed to be a Patagonian Bumblebee.
I don't really know if the final boss was too easy. Since there is not much you can do after losing a character, that disadvantage can snowball into getting crushed. I might just have spent my skill points/perks correctly. Enough testing should make things clear, but since that is the last fight in the game it might be challenging to get more data.
>Mosca is supposed to be a Patagonian Bumblebee Heey I have seen a lot of those in real life. Back in my home town I had lavander flowers in my garden that always had a ton of those buggers during summer, sometimes they even slept inside the flowers during the night.
Balancing is hard, and the game will only get longer. Although if people actually get through the ~1 hour long demo just to tell me the final boss was poorly balanced then I like to imagine that, at the very least, I was doing something right up to that point.
Also, I guess we are both from somewhere in the Southern Cone then. Alright.
Mouse allows selection in Menu, but not continuing on Dialogue. I'm assuming its a sort of Scanline-like Shader ontop of the Scene. It doesn't work well with a Pixelsize bigger then it. makes it clear that its all upscaled Art. Music in the Intro is also rather Annoying.
In the How-To book, the Texts shouldn't say Hello everywhere. Either show what the actual Text is, or if it changes, some unreadable Lines etc. can work well. Text for Ultimate needs to be scrolled, you should shorten that so it fits, its only 1 extra Line after all.
Says the Game can be exclusively controlled via Mouse, but it can't, see Dialogue above.
Music in the Campsite(?) is fine, its rather comfy there, but some of the Graphics feel not very fitting. Like the Chair i.e.
In Combat, you don't need a Skill Button. Just put the Skills right there automatically. And on hovering Skill/AttacK/Wait/etc, it should show the description and damage calculation inthe Info Window on the Left, instead of showing what happened previously. When resting I would also like Tooltips on hovering or something to know what the Stats do again precisely.
Mosca sounds and looks like a Bee, not like an Angel.
It would also be nice to get something after a battle, even if it just display a bit of XP or something.
In the Swamp Enemy healthbars disappeared after a while. Don't know why.
The Healthbars could be lower, the one of Finnegan almost disappears at the Top. Which also has a blue Line across it for some Reason.
Leveling feels way too slow. I only get a single Stat Point per entire Tournament Day.
If there are 4 Enemy Options a scrollbar appears to move everything a tiny amount, even tho its not needed. The entire Game should work scrollbar free I think.
When you Gameover, the Battle music doesn't Stop. You also can reenter the Fight screen, with your Party being place visually on the Field you ended, but logically on a totally other field.
I also never got any Perk Points, even 5 Levels in. But I can click on the Perks, which flashes them with color.
Level 6(?) The one where they talk about escaping over the Border etc. goes of Screen on the Top.
After destroying a Desert Soldier just as they reached the Attack border the Game froze. I'm going to end it here, without Perks or anything I can only see this getting increasingly impossible.
I appreciate the feedback, you are highly perceptive. Many of the points you mentioned are already on my to-do list, I just didn't have time to fix them in time.
However, others such as the perks should work as intended in the Windows build. If you downloaded the Linux one then that would mean 100% of the people who did have contacted me to tell me things don't work which is rather tragic. That version is no longer available for the time being.
Without perks I can believe leveling up feels too slow because they make up a large portion of the player's strength. You almost made it to the end of the demo anyways if you reached a desert battle in stage 5.
Finally, I must inform you that Rebel Angels looking and sounding like insects to varying degrees is intended, and shall persist.
I was on the Windows build. I kind of figured the Insect Angels were intended, I just thought it was odd to call them Angels. But it probably makes Sense in your World.
Wow, this game really surprised me with how much charm, imagination, and soul it has. It's a very fun game, I really enjoyed playing it. I just got through the first round and beat the rebel angel. I think you hit a very nice balance between complexity and a streamlined experience. I want to play this game all the way through when it comes out, because I am really into the world you're building.
Another person mentioned that there was too much text at the beginning. I can see that, but I personally liked it. It won me over.
Well done on bringing something fun and interesting into the world.
I was not able to record any footage of me playing in Wine, but I beaten the first angel boss (the first round). Your angel/insect girls are really cute.
It's interesting how you showcase the turn order by moving characters back and forth. I didn't find combat very deep. Every fight I just kept attacking lower hp enemies, concentrating on one target at the time, and healing whenever I had enough mp.
The art is charming.
I am most intrigued by the story. You got some interesting set up in purgatory with all these weird characters. I accidentally opened the same dialogue several times in a row. I wish there was a way to close it.
The combat system you have is really cool, really good visualization for the turn system. With it stopping in place once it was someone's turn it also removed the stress of having to be quick to press buttons that comes with the ATB system. The start was way too dialogue heavy for my liking, but that doesn't mean it's bad, I just don't care to read about story before feeling invested with the game.
Honestly I have gone back and forth about the amount of text at the beginning. It used to be more concise but then the main conflict of the story was too obvious.
Also, the combat system used to have some real time elements, but then it was way too easy to hug the wall to get rid of status effects which is the opposite of what I wanted.
Interesting combat. The way turns work feel like a more literal ATB system. Maybe I missed the tutorial prompt but I wish I could see what my skills do during fights. Also the animations are extremely fast, which is a good thing for replays but not for my first time playing. An option to speed it up or keep it normal would be nice.
I had a tutorial but it felt too condescending so it didn't make it to the DD build. All that remains is the HOW book in the main menu.
If you check the keyboard shortcuts you will find that the speed up/down feature is marked as disabled. It was a little buggy for DD but it's definitely something I want to add.
The animations are in fact super fast because I always found myself disabling all animations a few hours into RPGs, even if they are cool. However, I have been told they are too fast before so that's probably something I'll do in the near future.
Comments
Conceptually the game seems pretty cool. I got through the first boss and managed to defeat her. It would be nice to always have a health and mana bar visible under the player characters on the field, and at least a health bar visible under the enemy characters.Thank you for the feedback. I have received a similar suggestion before because it's possible to highlight all HP and MP bars by holding down the D button during the player's turn but perhaps it should be automatic whenever the targets are up.
Haven't played it yet and I'm saddened to see it's privated. If you're willing, I'd love to play it if you can unprivate the game long enough for me to download it
Sorry about that. I found a rather major issue and I'm a bit busy right now, but the game will be available again in time for the weekend.
I'm only replying to tell you that the game is available again. Sorry for the inconveniences.
I finished the entire demo after about 2 hours of playing. I think this game is the most fun one I've played and one of my favorites. It's clear there's still a lot of work to do, but I have enjoyed what I've seen so far. I've also encountered a few bugs, some minor and some major. I'll leave the feedback in a somewhat chronological order - I haven't read any other comment so I will most likely reiterate a lot.
>New game gives an Are You Sure prompt, when this is my first time playing. Probably dont need that until there is at least 1 saved game
>Clicking the Dino makes a sound. Kino.
>The face portraits are EXCELLENT. Don't like the dino one as much but the other two characters rule. Finnegan looks like he has malformed legs in the battle screen, though.
>Clicked the how-to and encyclopedia to learn a bit. How-to is fine, no issues there. Encyclopedia needs to turn down the shine effect when mousing over a card, it's way too fast. It also need to register clicks instead of only mouse overs. I'd like to click a card, then move the mouse away somewhere else while I read.
>2 minor bugs with Encyclopedia. Can scroll all the way to the bottom to se one of the final 3 enemies (the jaguar) with details, but his name is "???". Second bug is on goon jellyfish, saying "Skill A: Skill A: -skill details-"
>Fire crackling/snapping sound much louder than other sounds
>First foray into fighting could be less confusing. Main issue stem from UI + communication. Unclear how much damage things do and how much they cost. More details could be great. Also perhaps an enemy health bar display when selecting a spell, instead of having to mouse over enemies one by one
>So far, the story is interesting and more importantly it's ENGAGING. You have a good hook, likable characters and an interesting premise. I *want* to know what will happen next. Can't say that about many other games, mine included. Well done.
>More UI confusion with Stats/Perks. How do perks work? Can I get a perk now? I attempted to figure things out myself without consulting any help, and I managed it on the next levelup. Some 'error' tooltips, such as "cant get a perk now, wait til level 2" would be helpful here.
Maybe this is on me since I don't play this genre often and I don't know what the inspiration-game is like.
>Hard to tell which perks I can select (and when). Figured it out later, but it shouldn't be so confusing at the start. As before, a tooltip or error pop up should fix this all right up.
>Stats are clear, but the HP/Mana benefits should show on the portrait (in the stats page) as soon as I add a point. As it is, upgraded values only show up on refresh.
>Incorrect tooltip when trying to proceed without leveling - "Dino has unspent skill points". Who's Dino? Of course I know, but they never refer to him that way otherwise.
>The story still is a lot of fun. The conversations feel good and varied. I like the tidbits of information I learn from the world and the character dynamic. The little soundeffect grunts are cute too.
Now onto the Big Arena level. This one was tough due to difficulty spikes and a nasty bug. The first thing I'll mention is that I'm able to clear the road leading up to the boss with minimum effort and barely any damage received. But that boss fight is HARD. While I don't think my build is optimal, I've defeated everything else super easily. The bosses absolutely destroy me in 3 turns without any trouble. So I died, and got kicked back to the menu. Continue doesn't work - no big deal, I restart the game and it works now; I'm back to the textbox cutscene before the boss battle. Attempt #2, same thing. They absolutely destroy me. Well shit. Restart and back to the resting zone to check on my stats. Clicking continue there sends you back to the arena! Oops, but whatever. Except the cutscene never triggers, and the area where the boss is (which should be in color to indicate I can move there) is now greyed out. Well shit. I resign and do the gauntlet over again, then.
Doing it all again means I now have 2 extra levels and one extra perk. Even so, the boss battle is still HARD. I ended up winning, but it felt like I won because the enemy waited often, while in the previous attempts they would try and focus fire my weakest guys and get them dead in 2-3 turns.
This time I manage to kill the Angel on the other team, and she immediately respawns? What? I kill the jaguar next, and get a prompt the angel used a ceasefire ability. I figure this is intentional but very, very confusing. The cutscene triggers and the demo ends. At this point I feel like I either won by luck (AI didn't do well), cheated somehow, or the game bugged out. Since I was able to reach the ending I assume it was sheer luck, but I'd handle this whole end fight into a cutscene thing differently if possible.
Very cool cutscene. I'm HOOKED. Wish there was more content afterwards.
Despite the bugs, everything else is great. Cool story and characters, interesting combat, fun gameplay. Only needs more UI work and ideally more abilities. It feels a bit lame that our abilities are always 1 Offensive and 1 Defensive. I think it would be better if we had 3-4. if that's too many, perhaps a loadout feature of some sorts?
Either way, well done. I had a blast playing and I'll be on the lookout for more.
Thank you for playing until the end, and also for the feedback. The final boss has been called too easy by others so I decided to buff it but perhaps I went too far. It's a bit hard to balance something so far into the game. On that note, Ermine reviving is not a bug, that's a trademark Rebel Angel ability. Mosca can learn to do it as well if you unlock the right perk.
A lot of basic gameplay information such as how much damage basic attacks deal or how often you should expect to unlock a perk point is in the HOW book. A lot of people have told me that I need to display more information but I haven't found a good way to do it organically. It's one of my objectives for the next DD because things are only gonna get more complicated. I will consider displaying all the HP/MP bars and such when targets are up. You can already do that by holding down D but perhaps it should be automatic or at least a setting.
I have been thinking about adding more skills to characters since the initial idea behind the perks system was to have subclasses once you have 4 of them but I haven't implemented it yet. However, for the sake of keeping complexity to a reasonable level only boss enemies will have more than 2 active skills and a passive I think.
This is the first time someone has told me they were locked out of the final boss because the dialogue didn't work, thank you for bringing that up to my attention.
Finally, you are the first person to tell me Finnegan has weird legs which is indeed the case and not just a stylistic choice. Although technically you are the second because an anon once compared him to Gondola.
Beat the demo, I quite enjoyed myself. What music did you use? It's quite nice. Also sorry for the wall of text, this really is ridiculous, but I swear I don't repeat myself. At least it's comprehensive, I suppose...
Visuals: I like the pixel art, though I first miss-interpreted the Finnegan sprite as a monkey man because his armor was so uniform. Maybe add some contrast between the plates of armor or something? Character and enemy design is weird yet appealing, it really feels like a fever dream brought to life. Which I think is the right vibe given the setting of Purgatory. The home screen being 4:3 is weird since everything else is 16:9. The text during the home screen conversations and a few other areas I forget looks bad(present on main menu, but not as noticeable). It looks like an upscaled pixel font, where it's blurry in places and bulges sometimes despite looking like it should be blocky crisp pixels(see pic bellow). I forget how, but I think there's a relatively simple way of fixing it in Godot. I really enjoy the animated portraits, I miss when they were common.
Gameplay: I really like the bounce back and forth system, it's an ATB bar that doesn't waste UI space, and it effects the characters when they walk over hazards in real time. Took me a bit to get used to, but using wait vs attack vs skill became quite intuitive. While fun, on stage 3+ it became formulaic with how I dealt with targeting enemies. Perks may have helped but I didn't get any(see Bugs section). Stage selection is ok but doesn't have as much impact as a typical slay the spire like, since instead almost all landmarks are battles, with only level rests once (or twice) per stage. You can choose the stage hazard I guess, though I found they were fairly inconsequential, except for the desert that destroys my DPS and makes me question how much damage I can deal in a time frame. That said, I don't think it would be improved necessarily if you did do the standard trappings, like a boon landmark or whatever. Also on the last map got so big that I couldn't see all landmarks and couldn't scroll it, so I got worried it wouldn't scroll up and got railroaded into the lower path. Of the four stats it seems AGI may be the best, since not only do you act faster, but it also allows you more actions per minute, which increases MP generation rate for skills. STR seems fine, I put some points in it for Finnegan. ULT seemed lackluster, I tried speccing Mosca in it and I didn't feel any returns until I started speccing AGI. RES is probably fine, but I didn't touch it since I wanted to be more powerful not more tanky(which would probably help with Mosca not dying so much). Speaking of, I didn't game over at all until the end boss, and in which case only happened because Mosca was targeted and killed before she made the first rebound. It happened twice more after that, so I am very grateful for the save right before the fight.
Story: The setting works well to justify the gameplay, and the bestiary aids with extra details for those who read. I like the narrative of having an overarching goal of leaving Purgatory as well as the mysterious past of our main characters and the rivals they face. The characters having more philosophical talk was nice to have, and it makes sense given it's just a day in the life for them while they think about their position in the strange world. The last story hook was interesting, though in a way pretty obvious since the characters were bringing up points about how weird Purgatory is several times.
Tutorials/Information: I read the HOW book and still had some trouble following along in the beginning. HELLO text was distracting a bit. How my MP got drained in battle always felt random, it should get the same treatment as HP and come out as a floating away text on applicable hits so that I could at least figure which enemy is responsible(it's probably in the Bestiary, but I chose to ignore it since I didn't want to memorize a bunch). Combat actions feel too quick to start, by the time I register a new enemy move is being used it's already over. Having a description of the selected skill would be nice.
Bugs: No perks at all, got to level 7. Though for such a big error you probably released a new build I didn't get in time. When I died in the final fight the battle music kept playing upon returning to base and stayed until I got into the fight again.
Suggestions: I think it would help to display the hotkeys in battle somehow, so the the player remembers they exist(I forgot about D for a long while). HP/MP display with D should probably be a toggle or menu option that stays on forever if one wishes it. Maybe color code STR, AGI, ULT, RES with their respective icon colors when in text form? It would make it even easier to tell what formulas use what at a glance. If you want to be extra fancy, you could also have special colors for terms like SLOWS, XX%, X_SECONDS, etc. Several times I got the same encounter (including formation)back to back, might be worth adding an anti repeat method.
Thank you for playing. The music is all royalty free stuff, I intend to give credit to the sources when I finish the game or at least have a respectable project. On that note, the perk system not working properly is driving me crazy although you indeed didn't have the latest build because I fixed the music after a game over. It need an actual illustration in there too.
I will take your suggestions into consideration because, for once, the HOW book is really outdated and I think displaying information to the player in an intuitive way is something I have been struggling to accomplish.
Finally, on the topic of writing. I think Finnegan makes a lot of unnecessary observations which I think don't need to be explicitly pointed at, but at the same time it's in character for him to complain about everything so I just left that in.
I beat the demo
I remember watching gifs and images of this in the /v/ threads and the back and forth walking really caught my attention, so I'm happy to finally give this game a try.
The walk and forth is really a fancy attack cooldown, but it is an intuitive representation while also allowing to do some fancy stuff like "area damage" or the mines that the dinosaur leave after using its special attack. It took me a bit to understand that waiting has its uses but once I did it made some battles much easier.
This game has little rng for damage, so I believe more battle information would be welcome. At one point I knew the dino did 12 damage and the warrior did 18, so I could tell an enemy with 42 HP could be defeated with 2 attacks from the dino and one from the warrior, making calculations easy and fun to do. That information felt hidden most of the time. Even HP information is hidden sometimes.
Speed felt incredibly more important than any other stat. Doing more stuff and earlier than the opponent is a huge advantage. Specially since all other stats felt unimpactful in comparison.
I read on the manual that one of the enemies "always attacks doing backstab damage". I think I haven't seen that during the game, receiving or doing it.
Sometimes I got unlucky and the oponents only bullied Mosca from the start before I could do anything about it. It also happened with the dino. I don't think I lost the warrior even once.
At the moment there is very little to do in the game. You fight, add some stats, maybe some perks and thats it. It makes the game feel repetitive.
The story was misterious, the way it was given didn't feel overwhelming and didn't distract from the action. Though the start was a bit rough with so many new terms flying around and 3 bizarre looking characters (no offense here, an undead warrior armed with copper, a giant fly that is an angel and a dinosaur is not a run of the mill party composition).
I won the last battle without losing a single unit. Maybe because I was lucky and all the damage was done evenly across my units. I think that there is a lot of space for experimentation with the mechanics you have laid down, it will be fun to see where you take the game. Nice work!
Thank you for playing the demo and your comprehensive feedback.
I just added some tooltips for skills during combat and attributes in the stats screen. I'm glad you didn't have issues with unlocking perks since that seemed to be a prevailing issue. You can always tell exactly how much HP a unit has by hovering over it while the targets are on, you can also show all HP and MP bars at once during your turn by holding down D. I really need to communicate certain mechanics better, but I tried to make the game easy to understand to begin with.
I think speed in general tends to be very important in RPGs so that's not strange, but I still have a lot to do in terms of balance. As an example, you are also not the first person to tell me the final boss is too easy, maybe I underestimated players. I don't want to obsess over it though because sometimes wildly unbalanced abilities are fun.
So far my main source of variety are new enemies and terrains with special effects. I think the player should encounter a new foe every 5-6 minutes which I think is decent. I also want each perk to offer something new in terms of gameplay. Some skills also interact with mechanics that haven't been introduced yet.
I don't take offense from my characters getting called bizarre. The inspiration behind one of the factions was a literal dream I had. The story takes place in a small pocket of a larger world so a bunch of loose actors together don't make a lot of sense in a vacuum, but hopefully I can shape them into something more coherent through smalls bits of dialogue.
Also, Mosca is supposed to be a Patagonian Bumblebee.
I don't really know if the final boss was too easy. Since there is not much you can do after losing a character, that disadvantage can snowball into getting crushed. I might just have spent my skill points/perks correctly. Enough testing should make things clear, but since that is the last fight in the game it might be challenging to get more data.
>Mosca is supposed to be a Patagonian Bumblebee
Heey I have seen a lot of those in real life. Back in my home town I had lavander flowers in my garden that always had a ton of those buggers during summer, sometimes they even slept inside the flowers during the night.
Balancing is hard, and the game will only get longer. Although if people actually get through the ~1 hour long demo just to tell me the final boss was poorly balanced then I like to imagine that, at the very least, I was doing something right up to that point.
Also, I guess we are both from somewhere in the Southern Cone then. Alright.
Mouse allows selection in Menu, but not continuing on Dialogue. I'm assuming its a sort of Scanline-like Shader ontop of the Scene. It doesn't work well with a Pixelsize bigger then it. makes it clear that its all upscaled Art. Music in the Intro is also rather Annoying.
In the How-To book, the Texts shouldn't say Hello everywhere. Either show what the actual Text is, or if it changes, some unreadable Lines etc. can work well. Text for Ultimate needs to be scrolled, you should shorten that so it fits, its only 1 extra Line after all.
Says the Game can be exclusively controlled via Mouse, but it can't, see Dialogue above.
Music in the Campsite(?) is fine, its rather comfy there, but some of the Graphics feel not very fitting. Like the Chair i.e.
In Combat, you don't need a Skill Button. Just put the Skills right there automatically. And on hovering Skill/AttacK/Wait/etc, it should show the description and damage calculation inthe Info Window on the Left, instead of showing what happened previously. When resting I would also like Tooltips on hovering or something to know what the Stats do again precisely.
Mosca sounds and looks like a Bee, not like an Angel.
It would also be nice to get something after a battle, even if it just display a bit of XP or something.
In the Swamp Enemy healthbars disappeared after a while. Don't know why.
The Healthbars could be lower, the one of Finnegan almost disappears at the Top. Which also has a blue Line across it for some Reason.
Leveling feels way too slow. I only get a single Stat Point per entire Tournament Day.
If there are 4 Enemy Options a scrollbar appears to move everything a tiny amount, even tho its not needed. The entire Game should work scrollbar free I think.
When you Gameover, the Battle music doesn't Stop. You also can reenter the Fight screen, with your Party being place visually on the Field you ended, but logically on a totally other field.
I also never got any Perk Points, even 5 Levels in. But I can click on the Perks, which flashes them with color.
Level 6(?) The one where they talk about escaping over the Border etc. goes of Screen on the Top.
After destroying a Desert Soldier just as they reached the Attack border the Game froze. I'm going to end it here, without Perks or anything I can only see this getting increasingly impossible.
I appreciate the feedback, you are highly perceptive. Many of the points you mentioned are already on my to-do list, I just didn't have time to fix them in time.
However, others such as the perks should work as intended in the Windows build. If you downloaded the Linux one then that would mean 100% of the people who did have contacted me to tell me things don't work which is rather tragic. That version is no longer available for the time being.
Without perks I can believe leveling up feels too slow because they make up a large portion of the player's strength. You almost made it to the end of the demo anyways if you reached a desert battle in stage 5.
Finally, I must inform you that Rebel Angels looking and sounding like insects to varying degrees is intended, and shall persist.
I was on the Windows build. I kind of figured the Insect Angels were intended, I just thought it was odd to call them Angels. But it probably makes Sense in your World.
I feared it could be the Windows build so I made some changes that should hopefully prevent the game from not granting any perk points every 3 levels.
Are you devving on Linux then?
Mainly Windows, hence the lack of testing for the now discontinued Linux version.
Wow, this game really surprised me with how much charm, imagination, and soul it has. It's a very fun game, I really enjoyed playing it. I just got through the first round and beat the rebel angel. I think you hit a very nice balance between complexity and a streamlined experience. I want to play this game all the way through when it comes out, because I am really into the world you're building.
Another person mentioned that there was too much text at the beginning. I can see that, but I personally liked it. It won me over.
Well done on bringing something fun and interesting into the world.
Thank you for your kind words. I'll do my best to not disappoint in the future then.
I wanted to try out the linux build, but none of the buttons worked.
I recorded it
https://files.catbox.moe/22oaec.mp4
for some reason the game acts as if I had previous saves even thou I did not play it.
Windows version seem to work fine with Wine so I am going to post feedback on the actual game later.
Thanks for the feedback, the Linux version is definitely an afterthought compared to the Windows one. Sorry about that.
replying to you again so you see the new comment. I am mostly only playing linux and browser games, so you got lucky.
I was not able to record any footage of me playing in Wine, but I beaten the first angel boss (the first round). Your angel/insect girls are really cute.
It's interesting how you showcase the turn order by moving characters back and forth. I didn't find combat very deep. Every fight I just kept attacking lower hp enemies, concentrating on one target at the time, and healing whenever I had enough mp.
The art is charming.
I am most intrigued by the story. You got some interesting set up in purgatory with all these weird characters. I accidentally opened the same dialogue several times in a row. I wish there was a way to close it.
I wish there was a way to close the dialog too, it's on my to-do list.
You'll see more challenging enemies later, don't worry about that.
The combat system you have is really cool, really good visualization for the turn system. With it stopping in place once it was someone's turn it also removed the stress of having to be quick to press buttons that comes with the ATB system. The start was way too dialogue heavy for my liking, but that doesn't mean it's bad, I just don't care to read about story before feeling invested with the game.
Honestly I have gone back and forth about the amount of text at the beginning. It used to be more concise but then the main conflict of the story was too obvious.
Also, the combat system used to have some real time elements, but then it was way too easy to hug the wall to get rid of status effects which is the opposite of what I wanted.
Interesting combat. The way turns work feel like a more literal ATB system. Maybe I missed the tutorial prompt but I wish I could see what my skills do during fights. Also the animations are extremely fast, which is a good thing for replays but not for my first time playing. An option to speed it up or keep it normal would be nice.
I had a tutorial but it felt too condescending so it didn't make it to the DD build. All that remains is the HOW book in the main menu.
If you check the keyboard shortcuts you will find that the speed up/down feature is marked as disabled. It was a little buggy for DD but it's definitely something I want to add.
The animations are in fact super fast because I always found myself disabling all animations a few hours into RPGs, even if they are cool. However, I have been told they are too fast before so that's probably something I'll do in the near future.