kept smashing escape to navigate back out of menus and it would INSTANTLY QUIT THE ENTIRE DEMO!!! whoops
enjoyed the sounds.
I think you have a lot of scale issues. Turnbased games get tedius extremely quickly. and it’s difficult to orient yourself on some of the large maps. I would try and keep my rooms as small and my encounters using as few units as possible to still convey the same story beats.
I see, so this is the project you were preparing for by testing the engine earlier? At least this time it's easier to start as I only need to pick Fight.
The setting is somewhat interesting but it's rather odd, so before there are character interactions I would prefer to get a feel for it with some more show-don't-tell expositio-
>there is a yeti researched
W-well nevermind. Immersion went out of the window.
I wish mission objectives would have explicit actions rather than some arbitrary condition like waiting on top assigned to them.
What this game is good at is making me feel like the bad guy for ganking enemies and stealing their stuff like the murderhobo tactician I am.
Seems like I need to do a major spelling check for the game later.
>More Show don't tell
I went with a bunch of exposition at the start since there is a lot of stuff that has to be set up quickly, but some stuff not in the demo isn't all shown directly. But it is something I have to figure out the best balance overall for every part of the game.
>I wish mission objectives would have explicit actions rather than some arbitrary condition like waiting on top assigned to them.
I think I get what you mean, needs to be a bit more.
>What this game is good at is making me feel like the bad guy for ganking enemies and stealing their stuff like the murderhobo tactician I am.
Yeah I wanted to have the ability to do things the straight way or to do things more aggressive like a bad guy or being very protective like a good guy. So the player has the options.
>Yeah I wanted to have the ability to do things the straight way or to do things more aggressive like a bad guy or being very protective like a good guy. So the player has the options.
That's a great design, I love it. However I have no idea how to finish the mission without killing Yeti. I just loaded a save to check the briefing text and I don't see anything helpful except for getting the item, which doesn't end the mission. I also tried moving a few squad members to the entrance zone without success. And now that it's not in the middle of the night I started noticing the typos too.
And that show don't tell part is not really that important, it's just that I'm interested what the setting is like outside of military operations, and even a simple autoscroll through a city would help with figuring out what is ie. the technological level.
I played it through! The last time I played this game was when it ended right when the world was nuked, was cool to see that the story is going interesting places. Please take my feedback and suggestions with a grain of salt, since my only experience with SRPGs is cheesing some Advance Wars games and Shining Force 2.
A couple of the improvement suggestions I wanted to mention seem to have already been addressed in your comment below, but I'll still rattle them off:
Fullscreen option in the settings (I only saw your comment about F4 after beating the game, but those settings are where I searched for it, so I think if that's possible it would be a neat addition there).
I didn't get a confirm-to-quit prompt when I accidentally pressed Escape on the save menu, seems to not be there?
There didn't seem to be an option to save before the first social event selection after mission 1, but there was before the social events for mission 2. I think savescummers like me would love to have that for all the social event selections (even if the consequences wouldn't stick if we reset)
When Kraven took the Yeti's keycard, Urassik says he needs to have the keycard on himself, I took that to mean that you need to use the trade function with Kraven, but that was not the case since the keycard seems to have already been on Urassik.
You keep key items during New Game+, e.g. the bomb key and the yeti keycard (I mean not really a big deal for a demo but I guess I'd bring it up)
Opening chests is done by wait, other actions are done by info, could that be unified? Standing on the bomb also seemed unnatural to me while playing, I missed that you could stand on it the first try and wasted a round (although looking back I think I could have also undone the move).
If you have fast mode on for enemy movement, it will autoscroll through the final text on the prologue mission if your allies kill the final enemy.
I really love the mythology of your game, I feel it is a very strong part of what hooked me. The Diyu, Lord Yama, underworld lore is super interesting and I am glad that the game took that direction after the HIVE nukes. I also greatly enjoy the new unit characters you can spend free time with. I played through the game three times in a row to get all the social events, I liked them so much. My favorite is Smith, the most American man alive. In the same vein, I think the talk feature is a great addition for alternate gameplay routes, like talking to the Yeti to disarm the situation, I enjoyed doing that on my first run (much to Lei's dismay). Although I also tried to talk the dummy terrorist into please disabling the bomb, which he most pleasedly refused. I think you get a lot of interesting choices and gameplay experiences out of that feature, you also can't just use it blindly, that's why I like a lot how it was used in this game.
At first I felt Kraven and Urassik were the main pullers due to their movement range, but on my New Game+ playthroughs I only realized how useful the sniper is. I like how all the characters have their strengths and weaknesses and I can see how you could design more missions to take advantage of each one. Those are really good. Their personalities were wonderful too, the aforementioned most American man Smith, the sniper getting philosophical over movies, the scientist and the soulful machine talking about the science behind it all, I enjoyed spending time with them a lot.
All the branching definitely adds to the replayability factor, just on this base demo with two main missions, I got what felt like three different routes on my three playthroughs, with social events and other choices.
Also music-wise I want to note that the combat training BGM is a bop.
So yeah, all in all I had a lot of fun with this demo of the game as well, I love the story/mythology/characters and I love where you took it from the last demo! Keep it up!
It doesn't want to work, I will try, but it probably won't work too well.
>I didn't get a confirm-to-quit prompt when I accidentally pressed Escape on the save menu, seems to not be there?
I'll look into that
>There didn't seem to be an option to save before the first social event selection after mission 1, but there was before the social events for mission 2. I think savescummers like me would love to have that for all the social event selections (even if the consequences wouldn't stick if we reset)
I'll change that
>When Kraven took the Yeti's keycard, Urassik says he needs to have the keycard on himself, I took that to mean that you need to use the trade function with Kraven, but that was not the case since the keycard seems to have already been on Urassik.
I'll fix that, thanks.
>Key items saved
It's basically a loop for the demo's sake, it doesn't work like that in normal NG+ options. I set it up where it sends the player back to the start once beating the demo.
>Opening chests is done by wait, other actions are done by info, could that be unified? Standing on the bomb also seemed unnatural to me while playing, I missed that you could stand on it the first try and wasted a round (although looking back I think I could have also undone the move).
I was working on that just now to make it better since I discovered a cool workaround for it. I might be able to update it later
>If you have fast mode on for enemy movement, it will autoscroll through the final text on the prologue mission if your allies kill the final enemy.
I never knew that, I'll look into that, not sure how much I can do about it.
Thank you for playing and I really like that you loved it so much. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to write them well and to make them unique. The main reason I made the game was to have many different choices and making all the reactions to those choices. I'll continue working on it. Also your game was really really cool with how you implemented AI which allows for a lot more freedom, I hope you make more of that too.
EDIT: (I looked at the code and changed somethings in a new update.)
>i let the yeti go
That's a bug since for some reason doing certain things made it seem like the mission wasn't beat when it was, it is fixed in the current build.
>Sand tiles are hard to look out
I changed how sand looks like with something pretty quickly made that looks more like sand.
>Everything is named Info
That is mainly to state there is "information to be found", mainly since the event universal variable is called Info. I can edit it without any problems, but it means I need to add a bunch of custom stuff which I will end up doing to the whole game, it will take a while, but it will be done.
>Added more to the general tutorial dialogue for the UI
>Made hitting the escape button have a "confirm to close" prompt.
>Changed some spelling errors
>Revamped the second tutorial area to be smaller and more involved/balanced with the choice of supporting the allies or not. A lot less walking and more involvement right away.
>Fixed the bug that make the tutorial end repeat, you can now access the first two actual missions of the game.
>Space doesn't skip cutscenes, right click does now. Space doesn't do anything now.
Some notes:
Full Screen can be accessed by pressing f4, it kinda sucks though and I don't recommend it. It stays in the base resolution, changing the resolution requires me to recreate a lot of assets. Can't change the space to also work as a click, you have have to use left click to progress though stuff like normal. Please leave feedback if you can, it is greatly appreciated!
The main thing that I have been getting for feedback is that the tutorial with explaining the UI and more needs the most work. I'm 100% going to add more to it to explain every little thing more so there won't be any kind of confusion. Thanks for the feedback.
I played through your game and ended up taking a lot of screenshots because there were some minor spelling errors I wanted to point out. But I think I took too many screenshots and itch won't let me post my comment. So to not lose everything I put together, I put it in a google doc:
Thanks, I'll review it and make the edits. The tutorial of the game was the part that I haven't checked with much for a long while and I missed some stuff.
The game itself is pretty neat. The problem is, it's impossible to figure out what you're supposed to do input-wise, lol. The ESC key (my muscle memory default for closing menus in strategy games) quits to desktop, which is not ideal. For the phase changes, it'd probably solve all the problems me and the other guy mentioned by having a GUI appear on its own with the fight, end turn, etc options. It seems that already happens when you end your move, but not in other cases, which is confusing.
As for the design of the intro, it really wasn't appealing just taking turns to walk down a hall while you watch AI having fun fighting on the other wise of a wall, lol. Maybe that makes sense narratively, but feeding the player gradually bigger tasks rather than just moving around & spectating is ideal for a reason.
The UI and everything is really snappy & satisfying once you figure it out, though, same for the combat effects & all that. Tactics games aren't really my thing, so I didn't play a long time. Those were my first impressions, though.
Like the other anon said, I need to put in more stuff for the tutorial. I can't change the Escape key doing what it does, the space bar button will do a lot for skipping text and cutscenes. There is a boss fight right after the soldiers, but it was mostly to show a choice of saving the allies or not (things change if you are able to keep them alive), but I feel like I need to balance it out more or make it a smaller arena to make it more viable. But a better tutorial text to get people to get a grasp of the controls is needed.
A blue tile? Can you post video of this since I've tested on multiple machines and I never encountered this problem, even after downloading what I uploaded to make sure Itch.io didn't fuck with it.
I think I know what's happening, once the cutscene is done it shows like a menu. You have to choose the fight option to start your turn, if that is not explained it's hard to tell.
Comments
kept smashing escape to navigate back out of menus and it would INSTANTLY QUIT THE ENTIRE DEMO!!! whoops
enjoyed the sounds.
I think you have a lot of scale issues. Turnbased games get tedius extremely quickly. and it’s difficult to orient yourself on some of the large maps. I would try and keep my rooms as small and my encounters using as few units as possible to still convey the same story beats.
I see, so this is the project you were preparing for by testing the engine earlier? At least this time it's easier to start as I only need to pick Fight.
The setting is somewhat interesting but it's rather odd, so before there are character interactions I would prefer to get a feel for it with some more show-don't-tell expositio-
>there is a yeti researched
W-well nevermind. Immersion went out of the window.
I wish mission objectives would have explicit actions rather than some arbitrary condition like waiting on top assigned to them.
What this game is good at is making me feel like the bad guy for ganking enemies and stealing their stuff like the murderhobo tactician I am.
Seems like I need to do a major spelling check for the game later.
>More Show don't tell
I went with a bunch of exposition at the start since there is a lot of stuff that has to be set up quickly, but some stuff not in the demo isn't all shown directly. But it is something I have to figure out the best balance overall for every part of the game.
>I wish mission objectives would have explicit actions rather than some arbitrary condition like waiting on top assigned to them.
I think I get what you mean, needs to be a bit more.
>What this game is good at is making me feel like the bad guy for ganking enemies and stealing their stuff like the murderhobo tactician I am.
Yeah I wanted to have the ability to do things the straight way or to do things more aggressive like a bad guy or being very protective like a good guy. So the player has the options.
>Yeah I wanted to have the ability to do things the straight way or to do things more aggressive like a bad guy or being very protective like a good guy. So the player has the options.
That's a great design, I love it. However I have no idea how to finish the mission without killing Yeti. I just loaded a save to check the briefing text and I don't see anything helpful except for getting the item, which doesn't end the mission. I also tried moving a few squad members to the entrance zone without success. And now that it's not in the middle of the night I started noticing the typos too.
And that show don't tell part is not really that important, it's just that I'm interested what the setting is like outside of military operations, and even a simple autoscroll through a city would help with figuring out what is ie. the technological level.
I played it through! The last time I played this game was when it ended right when the world was nuked, was cool to see that the story is going interesting places. Please take my feedback and suggestions with a grain of salt, since my only experience with SRPGs is cheesing some Advance Wars games and Shining Force 2.
A couple of the improvement suggestions I wanted to mention seem to have already been addressed in your comment below, but I'll still rattle them off:
I really love the mythology of your game, I feel it is a very strong part of what hooked me. The Diyu, Lord Yama, underworld lore is super interesting and I am glad that the game took that direction after the HIVE nukes. I also greatly enjoy the new unit characters you can spend free time with. I played through the game three times in a row to get all the social events, I liked them so much. My favorite is Smith, the most American man alive. In the same vein, I think the talk feature is a great addition for alternate gameplay routes, like talking to the Yeti to disarm the situation, I enjoyed doing that on my first run (much to Lei's dismay). Although I also tried to talk the dummy terrorist into please disabling the bomb, which he most pleasedly refused. I think you get a lot of interesting choices and gameplay experiences out of that feature, you also can't just use it blindly, that's why I like a lot how it was used in this game.
At first I felt Kraven and Urassik were the main pullers due to their movement range, but on my New Game+ playthroughs I only realized how useful the sniper is. I like how all the characters have their strengths and weaknesses and I can see how you could design more missions to take advantage of each one. Those are really good. Their personalities were wonderful too, the aforementioned most American man Smith, the sniper getting philosophical over movies, the scientist and the soulful machine talking about the science behind it all, I enjoyed spending time with them a lot.
All the branching definitely adds to the replayability factor, just on this base demo with two main missions, I got what felt like three different routes on my three playthroughs, with social events and other choices.
Also music-wise I want to note that the combat training BGM is a bop.
So yeah, all in all I had a lot of fun with this demo of the game as well, I love the story/mythology/characters and I love where you took it from the last demo! Keep it up!
>Fullscreen in the settings
It doesn't want to work, I will try, but it probably won't work too well.
>I didn't get a confirm-to-quit prompt when I accidentally pressed Escape on the save menu, seems to not be there?
I'll look into that
>There didn't seem to be an option to save before the first social event selection after mission 1, but there was before the social events for mission 2. I think savescummers like me would love to have that for all the social event selections (even if the consequences wouldn't stick if we reset)
I'll change that
>When Kraven took the Yeti's keycard, Urassik says he needs to have the keycard on himself, I took that to mean that you need to use the trade function with Kraven, but that was not the case since the keycard seems to have already been on Urassik.
I'll fix that, thanks.
>Key items saved
It's basically a loop for the demo's sake, it doesn't work like that in normal NG+ options. I set it up where it sends the player back to the start once beating the demo.
>Opening chests is done by wait, other actions are done by info, could that be unified? Standing on the bomb also seemed unnatural to me while playing, I missed that you could stand on it the first try and wasted a round (although looking back I think I could have also undone the move).
I was working on that just now to make it better since I discovered a cool workaround for it. I might be able to update it later
>If you have fast mode on for enemy movement, it will autoscroll through the final text on the prologue mission if your allies kill the final enemy.
I never knew that, I'll look into that, not sure how much I can do about it.
Thank you for playing and I really like that you loved it so much. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to write them well and to make them unique. The main reason I made the game was to have many different choices and making all the reactions to those choices. I'll continue working on it. Also your game was really really cool with how you implemented AI which allows for a lot more freedom, I hope you make more of that too.
everything seems fine, the only thing i found weird is that the option to interact with map objects is named "Info"
also those black and bright yellow tiles are really harsh on the eyes
also i think the game softlocked on the second mission after i let the yeti go and grabbed the keycard, i had no idea what i had to do there
EDIT: (I looked at the code and changed somethings in a new update.)
>i let the yeti go
That's a bug since for some reason doing certain things made it seem like the mission wasn't beat when it was, it is fixed in the current build.
>Sand tiles are hard to look out
I changed how sand looks like with something pretty quickly made that looks more like sand.
>Everything is named Info
That is mainly to state there is "information to be found", mainly since the event universal variable is called Info. I can edit it without any problems, but it means I need to add a bunch of custom stuff which I will end up doing to the whole game, it will take a while, but it will be done.
Quick Update that is currently being uploaded:
>Added more to the general tutorial dialogue for the UI
>Made hitting the escape button have a "confirm to close" prompt.
>Changed some spelling errors
>Revamped the second tutorial area to be smaller and more involved/balanced with the choice of supporting the allies or not. A lot less walking and more involvement right away.
>Fixed the bug that make the tutorial end repeat, you can now access the first two actual missions of the game.
>Space doesn't skip cutscenes, right click does now. Space doesn't do anything now.
Some notes:
Full Screen can be accessed by pressing f4, it kinda sucks though and I don't recommend it. It stays in the base resolution, changing the resolution requires me to recreate a lot of assets. Can't change the space to also work as a click, you have have to use left click to progress though stuff like normal. Please leave feedback if you can, it is greatly appreciated!
made it to ying yang this game seems much more ambitious than anything I've tried to make yet i like the idea and the setting
Im not sure how I would do it but i think the menu system is a bit confusing
The main thing that I have been getting for feedback is that the tutorial with explaining the UI and more needs the most work. I'm 100% going to add more to it to explain every little thing more so there won't be any kind of confusion. Thanks for the feedback.
I played through your game and ended up taking a lot of screenshots because there were some minor spelling errors I wanted to point out. But I think I took too many screenshots and itch won't let me post my comment. So to not lose everything I put together, I put it in a google doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s7aeZBQQJW1pL88vIiiApZ2M85vKZKlZ3oVVttPVmdk/...
Thanks, I'll review it and make the edits. The tutorial of the game was the part that I haven't checked with much for a long while and I missed some stuff.
The game itself is pretty neat. The problem is, it's impossible to figure out what you're supposed to do input-wise, lol. The ESC key (my muscle memory default for closing menus in strategy games) quits to desktop, which is not ideal. For the phase changes, it'd probably solve all the problems me and the other guy mentioned by having a GUI appear on its own with the fight, end turn, etc options. It seems that already happens when you end your move, but not in other cases, which is confusing.
As for the design of the intro, it really wasn't appealing just taking turns to walk down a hall while you watch AI having fun fighting on the other wise of a wall, lol. Maybe that makes sense narratively, but feeding the player gradually bigger tasks rather than just moving around & spectating is ideal for a reason.
The UI and everything is really snappy & satisfying once you figure it out, though, same for the combat effects & all that. Tactics games aren't really my thing, so I didn't play a long time. Those were my first impressions, though.
Like the other anon said, I need to put in more stuff for the tutorial. I can't change the Escape key doing what it does, the space bar button will do a lot for skipping text and cutscenes. There is a boss fight right after the soldiers, but it was mostly to show a choice of saving the allies or not (things change if you are able to keep them alive), but I feel like I need to balance it out more or make it a smaller arena to make it more viable. But a better tutorial text to get people to get a grasp of the controls is needed.
I tried your game! I liked the settings and lore you were going for, I could get the unit to move though... I didn't know which key to press.
You have to click on the unit and then select the tile to move it to that tile.
(I probably should make the instructions for basic stuff like that more apparent.)
I did that and it's not responding.
Works fine on my end and with what I uploaded. You are clicking the plane in the first level, right?
Yes, I click on the plane, it shows me the tile movement thing, then i click on the tile and nothing happens.
A blue tile? Can you post video of this since I've tested on multiple machines and I never encountered this problem, even after downloading what I uploaded to make sure Itch.io didn't fuck with it.
I think I know what's happening, once the cutscene is done it shows like a menu. You have to choose the fight option to start your turn, if that is not explained it's hard to tell.
Ok, this 100% tells me I have to add more for the tutorial in general. Thanks for the feedback, I have to figure out the best way to do it.