I know that playing this game took me a while, but don't take it as a comment on the game, I've just been really busy and I wanted to play it all the way to the end before posting.
I've got to say the game is coming up pretty great, the music is by far the most memorable aspect for me and I keep thinking about some tracks after I close the game. The way some themes are used are pretty hype too, although I must admit I find the wilderness music more appealing than the city stuff, although that might be on purpose because that place is gross in general.
Gameplay-wise, adult Sarah is a jack of all trades, she can do pretty much anything and is only limited by being capable of taking a single action per turn. I think it's nice that you can choose what skills to unlock, but reclaiming the mariner set is far too tempting because it's the only one where you know exactly what you are getting ahead of time. It's also significant for the story and Sarah's personality. Her fire related abilities are also nice, I like that you can inflict the powerful burn status effect on everyone and then heal it on yourself with Watership Down, although that book seems more appropriate for Billy.
By the way, I was rather impressed by how Mosca's card was the only one available for a long time, I didn't expect it to have that much relevance. On an unrelated note, I wish the toaster robot had more to say, I tried talking to her multiple times but she only repeated her introduction every time.
This is the first time I played with the new exp system from like 4 months ago and I think it makes the game a lot easier since you now no longer need to fear losing a character to keep the experience. However, now that I had the chance to use Billy more I'm not sure what his role is supposed to be. Winter is a damage dealer that can heal in a pinch, Sarah can both spread and heal status effects and Winter's Canadian dad is a healer that can spread buffs and debuffs, but what is Billy's role? His taunt doesn't actually taunt enemies and his damage output is insignificant compared to Winter's. He also loses his one nice attack buff near the end of the demo.
Even if Billy could taunt enemies he is still far too fragile to stand that due to his low HP, the Winter family has got far better HP genetics it seems. Even though he is weaker, Blueberry Billy has a better defined role as a support. It would also be cool if page 13 anger had an in-game description because I don't know what it does.
I think difficulty could do with some balancing, just like last time I feel like some encounters can be defined by luck alone and multiple attacks for bosses increases variance even further. The difference between a boss trying to curse a curse immune character twice in a turn and the same boss inflicting self harm and dealing 800+ damage to everyone makes for a world of difference. That made for a cool story segment regardless.
On that note, the idea of having 2 separate stories playing at the same time was pretty cool and served to greatly increase tension so that was a good idea.
When it comes to the item system, I beat the whole demo without spending a single dollar on consumables and I'm not sure what to make of that. I also butchered some enemies and never used the items they dropped. I think I'm an idiot.
Finally, I think we might have a similar taste in literature or perhaps the volume of references is so big that I managed to get a bunch of them. The one about the Night Land caught me particularly off-guard for some reason. Perhaps because the end of the world scenario in that book is the opposite of what someone like Billy would expect, that is, the wilderness becomes uninhabitable and the only "safe" places are cities, or city, strictly speaking.
I wrote for a long time and this is coming out far too late so here's some fanart. I wasn't sure what style to draw her but I did it anyways. I hope you like it and this post is of some use to you.
Hello! Thank you for playing through it, one of the endings for chapter 1 is up too, another one is coming. So far you will only be able to reach them by using the cheating room. Thank you for your very kind comments.
“although I must admit I find the wilderness music more appealing than the city stuff, although that might be on purpose because that place is gross in general.”
The music is themed to the locations and will change with the chapters too, chapter 2 will have its own musical styling etc. I quite like the citysongs, but they are supposed to feel more oppressive and “modern”.
“but reclaiming the mariner set is far too tempting because it's the only one where you know exactly what you are getting ahead of time. It's also significant for the story and Sarah's personality.”
Once I have gotten further along the game is meant to be played several times, some of the choices are weighed to give points against different results and endings, this goes for the abilities too. Going full “bad choices” do give you the strongest Sarah at this moment, depending on how you set her up you can defeat her final bosses in two attacks or something like that, but it takes some optimization. Thematically reclaiming the mariner skillset is a way to put her on a brighter path, it is a requirement for the most “happy” ending.
“By the way, I was rather impressed by how Mosca's card was the only one available for a long time, I didn't expect it to have that much relevance.”
Yeah, I wanted it to have an impact, it will be usable by later characters as well in the future.
“On an unrelated note, I wish the toaster robot had more to say, I tried talking to her multiple times but she only repeated her introduction every time.”
An additional “social scene” is planned for her, like the ones you can get with Gordon and Sally. She is a part of the “Saviour Ending” for chapter one too and getting that ending will trigger her making a return in a future chapter.
“He also loses his one nice attack buff near the end of the demo.”
This is actually a bug I need to fix. His attacks are tied to his weapon category, he changes weapon category once he gets “Manhunter”. Your comments here are very appreciated, the combat system still needs a lot of work, the lack of descriptions for some skills will be fixed someday too, it is lack of polish. His role in the future will be more clearly multihit glass cannon. Anger stat keeps certain enemies from using special skills, not usable against most bosses though.
In general the combat system has improved, but still needs some real balancing.
“On that note, the idea of having 2 separate stories playing at the same time was pretty cool and served to greatly increase tension so that was a good idea.”
More of a hassle to set up than I initially thought, but I think it did give act 3 a unique sense of pacing. It also has another purpose, the “Billy parts” will be completely exchanged for another story depending on player choice once I am done with the new alternate act. It's a darker version you get with Billy´s father, Arthur, as a companion.
“When it comes to the item system, I beat the whole demo without spending a single dollar on consumables and I'm not sure what to make of that. I also butchered some enemies and never used the items they dropped. I think I'm an idiot.”
Game is beatable with minimal grinding and not a lot of item use, you can do some crazy things by using the items though, such as making child Sarah more or less unkillable. One of the key ideas behind the system is to make it intentionally very abusable, there are some things planted there for the purpose of breaking shit, not a lot of people have done so however. This goes for the entire combat system, not just the items.
“Finally, I think we might have a similar taste in literature or perhaps the volume of references is so big that I managed to get a bunch of them. The one about the Night Land caught me particularly off-guard for some reason. Perhaps because the end of the world scenario in that book is the opposite of what someone like Billy would expect, that is, the wilderness becomes uninhabitable and the only "safe" places are cities, or city, strictly speaking.”
Whatever you choose for the comparison at the beginning of act 3 you get actual information about the world and its characters, although poetically described. The Night Land is a very difficult book to read, but I did love it and it has influenced the narrative in some big ways. You will get to see more of how it is relevant in the future.
I am very thankful for your post, sorry for the late reply, working fulltime and using most of my freetime for the game is getting a bit hectic. The fanart is lovely.
Great style and music. Especially loved the track that was playing at the lake.
About the gameplay itself I’m not sure, was a bit too hard for me to just rush through it and focus on the story, but also not the kind of combat RPG I would be excited to grind. Maybe the atmosphere is just too good? In a game like Golden Sun I easily take a hard fight as "ok let’s spend 10 minutes grinding monsters to get stronger" but here it feels wrong. Indeed the one fight turned out to be more of a puzzle about using the right card; others I couldn’t figure out how to make easier. Some enemies never did anything much? But I think the equipment system and character classes are very flavourful.
Anyhow, very nice game. I will probably play more if only to see some more places.
Combat gets a lot more complicated later, act 1 just introduces some of the core stuff. It's a big boon to grind a little early, game can be cleared without it but it is much, much harder. Lots of things concerning the combat is still being worked on and will be polished when chapter 1 is completely done. Lots of balancing and stuff to do and animations to rework.
Never played this before or saw any gameplay, just the artwork you post. Also played a bit of Battledemons before, so i expected similar music (idk why, even from the artwork this has a clearly more emotional and profound theme to it).
Anyhow, i actually like that the music is slower and less lively than in Battledemons, it fits the dreamlike symbolic visuals way better that way. I guess this also has the custom NW.js engine in use as Battledemons, so nice going there, no bugs encountered in either game.
The only gripes with the engine would be the missing option for fullscreen, because im just not used to the small window, especially in that aspect ratio. However when just maximizing the window, it also feels off, because you can tell its made for the smaller resolution. So no easy fix there i guess.
Another slightly annoying thing was the red font on the gray dialogue box. Maybe its just me, but i found it hard to read sometimes.
Gotta say, im not very far into the game yet, i found the younger me with Sarah and have to think about how to progress. Combat seems pretty unforgiving, but i also chose the "let me figure things out on my own" option, so that may be the reason i perish lol. But im curious about the story and how things connect. Some things like Sarah being into aquatic life is a nice primer for the whole whale sequence later in her life that i already saw.
And to be honest, i was one of the guys who criticized the style way back, but seeing it in action is really a different thing. Bonus points for having a clear vision and staying the course.
It's actually not the same engine, would have been nice if it was. Battledemons was a collaboration I did with two friends, one them an actual programmer, this is something I am working on myself. Thus its rpgmaker, I cannot do any actual programming on my own. Forcing rpgmaker to do what I want comes with its own set of challenges. There is a fullscreen version but it is a different build for now, you can find it among the download options. There are also ways to skip ahead, instructions can be found in the devlogs, if you want to clear act 1 and then change to a fullscreen build. No save transfers yet unfortunately.
The game is long, about 7-8 hours now with the first chapter ending done, art has been progressively been getting better as I have kept working around the clock. I will rework a lot of old assets once I am completely done with chapter 1. Combat might have been easier if you did take the tutorial but here are some tips:
Check your inventory moods and cards make a huge difference, often situationally. Try to reach level five, grinding a bit early will make the later parts easier, but they can definitely be cleared without grinding. Healing skills can be used outside of combat. Curse works sort of like poison and can affect you outside of combat if you do not remove it.
After the lake, and hopefully getting to lv 5, you should head back to the tree and then head upwards to the hospital area. At the end there is a rope which you can use at the well. It takes you to the act 1 endgame, there are four acts in this chapter.
I have been thinking about changing the red color and eventually having different colors for names and other pieces of key information, this will be done when I get to polish.
Act 2 really ramps things up, concerning alternatives in combat and the pacing of the story, Act 3 even more so. Good luck, hope you play more!
Man im so dumb these days, of course theres a fullscreen version. I just downloaded the one i read as "Windows Edition" because of all the Linux talk lmao, will check this out this one then. Now that you talk about the curse things get clearer for me, but you may think about a proper status effect overview, because i was wondering what exactly damaged me outside of combat (or maybe i just missed that too). I figured out the cards after the second encounter or so and i pretty much used the "optimized" build without pressing the button to do it for me, except for one slot i think.
Anyway pretty cool stuff for not doing much programming on your part. Really admirable how you grind out your art too.
Curse is explained as a part of the tutorial, I want to add a status effect symbol outside of combat for it too at some point, but that goes on the polish list. I want to grind through all of the story content for chapter 1 before I seriously start fixing and improving things. There are a lot of small issues here and there, and some major ones, I will look over it properly when all of the story is in there.
Surreal atmosphere, especially when combined with the music. I chose to be a masochist and basically turned down the guide. The combat is kind of brutal at first but once you get the hang of it and use the dolls, it’s really fun. I also like the transition between scenes, from the surreal “bone field”, I think it was called, to the border warzone, the environmental storytelling is cool. Not a big fan of it usually, but since it was accompanied with the father telling me about his past, the “reflection” has some weight in my opinion. The enemy design is really cool. I like being given the option to be an asshole.
The writing and the characters are really great. Margarette is unlikeable and looks like she means to strangle me the first chance she gets. Sarah and her father are cool though. I also like the diversity of characters. There are some small details that make the game great; you can tell that a lot of love was put in the game. For example, the backpedalling after you run from a fight, not that I did that since it’s kill or be killed. Or the environment, the house, the fish and sea jellies drawings, the bed, so on and so forth. And again, I can’t stress enough how much I like the music.
It’s definitely more in-depth than battledemons. I have to try the other games as well, and play it again. I know you said there’s no rush to finish DoJD or BD, but I think I’ll do a playthrough and put them on youtube or somewhere. Love your work man. Cheers.
Would love to see youtube-videos, there are some major change ups coming up between the different acts, think you have scratched act 1 a little. Act 2 ramps things up, Act 3 goes full rollercoaster. Same with the music. Very curious to hear your thoughts if you do get further in. Act 1 is almost a tutorial when compared to the rest. There is bunch of foreshadowing both in the environments and in the writing, see if you can figure out how it all fits together.
I really like the art style, reminds me of the oldschool DOS games I used to play. Note about the title screen, the game title vs background needs more contrast, could use a shadow or more color variance. I like the various screen effects and the audio is great overall. In fact I really like the large variety of cool screen effects, images, npc character intros, little cinematic elements, unique text rollout effect etc. It clearly show alot of attention and care went into all these details and it really shows. Also the music is really great.
The games difficulty seems a bit steep in the beginning, not sure if its too hard though. I probably died about 6 times in the first 30 minutes of gameplay.
Don't have a ton to criticize to be honest, the games visual and audio style is great. Maybe the only things that would make it pop a bit more might be some more dynamic or parallax visuals within environments.
I think there might be a few bugs, I got stuck inside the lake for a bit.. don't know if this was on purpose, but I was walking around inside where the water is after using the ladder. Also it keeps saying that there might be a bug and something about infinite ladders. Im on a time budget today, but I think I'll play more this weekend and see if I have any more feedback.
There are quite a few bugs unfortunately, broken collision being one of the more common ones. The titlescreen will be completely overhauled at some point, plan is to have it change as a player progresses through each chapter and make it more representative of each part of the story.
Many people think it is pretty difficult in the beginning, a few have not, I have nerfed the enemies before, might consider doing so again. Once you get additional partymembers and more combat options it might be more clear how you can influence combat. It happens at the end of act 1. Infinite ladder bug can be triggered in the house, it's a way to "keep getting ladders". This is not something required but at least for now leads to optional secret content in the first chapter ending. There may be other secrets in there, and more coming.
Environments get increasingly varied and complex, I have grown a bit as an artist since I began, gonna rework a lot of the earlier ones, meaning those in the beginning of the game. It's a long ride if you are willing to stick with it.
I just realized that you are making both battle demons and dreams of joy departed at the same time, congrats on the excellent progress, and I guess you must be a glutton for punishment. I will keep playing this game and drop more feedback if anything stands out to me
Thank you, very curious to what you will think about act 3 if you get to it. Its a big departure. Just so you know, there is more divergent paths planned, one for the entirety of act 3 which would be the "darkest version" of the story, but its not done yet. If you play as a monster you will still get into the normal version of act 3 for now.
First time playing, I like the atmosphere. Wholesome family too. It felt more like an experience than a coherent story which is something that I really like. Polished. Love the art style and art. Honestly haven't played a lot of these types of games so I didn't manage to get that far (but I saved all fishies).
Comments
I know that playing this game took me a while, but don't take it as a comment on the game, I've just been really busy and I wanted to play it all the way to the end before posting.
I've got to say the game is coming up pretty great, the music is by far the most memorable aspect for me and I keep thinking about some tracks after I close the game. The way some themes are used are pretty hype too, although I must admit I find the wilderness music more appealing than the city stuff, although that might be on purpose because that place is gross in general.
Gameplay-wise, adult Sarah is a jack of all trades, she can do pretty much anything and is only limited by being capable of taking a single action per turn. I think it's nice that you can choose what skills to unlock, but reclaiming the mariner set is far too tempting because it's the only one where you know exactly what you are getting ahead of time. It's also significant for the story and Sarah's personality. Her fire related abilities are also nice, I like that you can inflict the powerful burn status effect on everyone and then heal it on yourself with Watership Down, although that book seems more appropriate for Billy.
By the way, I was rather impressed by how Mosca's card was the only one available for a long time, I didn't expect it to have that much relevance. On an unrelated note, I wish the toaster robot had more to say, I tried talking to her multiple times but she only repeated her introduction every time.
This is the first time I played with the new exp system from like 4 months ago and I think it makes the game a lot easier since you now no longer need to fear losing a character to keep the experience. However, now that I had the chance to use Billy more I'm not sure what his role is supposed to be. Winter is a damage dealer that can heal in a pinch, Sarah can both spread and heal status effects and Winter's Canadian dad is a healer that can spread buffs and debuffs, but what is Billy's role? His taunt doesn't actually taunt enemies and his damage output is insignificant compared to Winter's. He also loses his one nice attack buff near the end of the demo.
Even if Billy could taunt enemies he is still far too fragile to stand that due to his low HP, the Winter family has got far better HP genetics it seems. Even though he is weaker, Blueberry Billy has a better defined role as a support. It would also be cool if page 13 anger had an in-game description because I don't know what it does.
I think difficulty could do with some balancing, just like last time I feel like some encounters can be defined by luck alone and multiple attacks for bosses increases variance even further. The difference between a boss trying to curse a curse immune character twice in a turn and the same boss inflicting self harm and dealing 800+ damage to everyone makes for a world of difference. That made for a cool story segment regardless.
On that note, the idea of having 2 separate stories playing at the same time was pretty cool and served to greatly increase tension so that was a good idea.
When it comes to the item system, I beat the whole demo without spending a single dollar on consumables and I'm not sure what to make of that. I also butchered some enemies and never used the items they dropped. I think I'm an idiot.
Finally, I think we might have a similar taste in literature or perhaps the volume of references is so big that I managed to get a bunch of them. The one about the Night Land caught me particularly off-guard for some reason. Perhaps because the end of the world scenario in that book is the opposite of what someone like Billy would expect, that is, the wilderness becomes uninhabitable and the only "safe" places are cities, or city, strictly speaking.
I wrote for a long time and this is coming out far too late so here's some fanart. I wasn't sure what style to draw her but I did it anyways. I hope you like it and this post is of some use to you.
Hello! Thank you for playing through it, one of the endings for chapter 1 is up too, another one is coming. So far you will only be able to reach them by using the cheating room. Thank you for your very kind comments.
“although I must admit I find the wilderness music more appealing than the city stuff, although that might be on purpose because that place is gross in general.”
The music is themed to the locations and will change with the chapters too, chapter 2 will have its own musical styling etc. I quite like the citysongs, but they are supposed to feel more oppressive and “modern”.
“but reclaiming the mariner set is far too tempting because it's the only one where you know exactly what you are getting ahead of time. It's also significant for the story and Sarah's personality.”
Once I have gotten further along the game is meant to be played several times, some of the choices are weighed to give points against different results and endings, this goes for the abilities too. Going full “bad choices” do give you the strongest Sarah at this moment, depending on how you set her up you can defeat her final bosses in two attacks or something like that, but it takes some optimization. Thematically reclaiming the mariner skillset is a way to put her on a brighter path, it is a requirement for the most “happy” ending.
“By the way, I was rather impressed by how Mosca's card was the only one available for a long time, I didn't expect it to have that much relevance.”
Yeah, I wanted it to have an impact, it will be usable by later characters as well in the future.
“On an unrelated note, I wish the toaster robot had more to say, I tried talking to her multiple times but she only repeated her introduction every time.”
An additional “social scene” is planned for her, like the ones you can get with Gordon and Sally. She is a part of the “Saviour Ending” for chapter one too and getting that ending will trigger her making a return in a future chapter.
“He also loses his one nice attack buff near the end of the demo.”
This is actually a bug I need to fix. His attacks are tied to his weapon category, he changes weapon category once he gets “Manhunter”. Your comments here are very appreciated, the combat system still needs a lot of work, the lack of descriptions for some skills will be fixed someday too, it is lack of polish. His role in the future will be more clearly multihit glass cannon. Anger stat keeps certain enemies from using special skills, not usable against most bosses though.
In general the combat system has improved, but still needs some real balancing.
“On that note, the idea of having 2 separate stories playing at the same time was pretty cool and served to greatly increase tension so that was a good idea.”
More of a hassle to set up than I initially thought, but I think it did give act 3 a unique sense of pacing. It also has another purpose, the “Billy parts” will be completely exchanged for another story depending on player choice once I am done with the new alternate act. It's a darker version you get with Billy´s father, Arthur, as a companion.
“When it comes to the item system, I beat the whole demo without spending a single dollar on consumables and I'm not sure what to make of that. I also butchered some enemies and never used the items they dropped. I think I'm an idiot.”
Game is beatable with minimal grinding and not a lot of item use, you can do some crazy things by using the items though, such as making child Sarah more or less unkillable. One of the key ideas behind the system is to make it intentionally very abusable, there are some things planted there for the purpose of breaking shit, not a lot of people have done so however. This goes for the entire combat system, not just the items.
“Finally, I think we might have a similar taste in literature or perhaps the volume of references is so big that I managed to get a bunch of them. The one about the Night Land caught me particularly off-guard for some reason. Perhaps because the end of the world scenario in that book is the opposite of what someone like Billy would expect, that is, the wilderness becomes uninhabitable and the only "safe" places are cities, or city, strictly speaking.”
Whatever you choose for the comparison at the beginning of act 3 you get actual information about the world and its characters, although poetically described. The Night Land is a very difficult book to read, but I did love it and it has influenced the narrative in some big ways. You will get to see more of how it is relevant in the future.
I am very thankful for your post, sorry for the late reply, working fulltime and using most of my freetime for the game is getting a bit hectic. The fanart is lovely.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2030055335 (briefly quit cause I thought I would have to do the dialogues again)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2030064348 (finding the Autosave)
Great style and music. Especially loved the track that was playing at the lake.
About the gameplay itself I’m not sure, was a bit too hard for me to just rush through it and focus on the story, but also not the kind of combat RPG I would be excited to grind. Maybe the atmosphere is just too good? In a game like Golden Sun I easily take a hard fight as "ok let’s spend 10 minutes grinding monsters to get stronger" but here it feels wrong. Indeed the one fight turned out to be more of a puzzle about using the right card; others I couldn’t figure out how to make easier. Some enemies never did anything much? But I think the equipment system and character classes are very flavourful.
Anyhow, very nice game. I will probably play more if only to see some more places.
Combat gets a lot more complicated later, act 1 just introduces some of the core stuff. It's a big boon to grind a little early, game can be cleared without it but it is much, much harder. Lots of things concerning the combat is still being worked on and will be polished when chapter 1 is completely done. Lots of balancing and stuff to do and animations to rework.
Review time!
Never played this before or saw any gameplay, just the artwork you post. Also played a bit of Battledemons before, so i expected similar music (idk why, even from the artwork this has a clearly more emotional and profound theme to it).
Anyhow, i actually like that the music is slower and less lively than in Battledemons, it fits the dreamlike symbolic visuals way better that way. I guess this also has the custom NW.js engine in use as Battledemons, so nice going there, no bugs encountered in either game.
The only gripes with the engine would be the missing option for fullscreen, because im just not used to the small window, especially in that aspect ratio. However when just maximizing the window, it also feels off, because you can tell its made for the smaller resolution. So no easy fix there i guess.
Another slightly annoying thing was the red font on the gray dialogue box. Maybe its just me, but i found it hard to read sometimes.
Gotta say, im not very far into the game yet, i found the younger me with Sarah and have to think about how to progress. Combat seems pretty unforgiving, but i also chose the "let me figure things out on my own" option, so that may be the reason i perish lol. But im curious about the story and how things connect. Some things like Sarah being into aquatic life is a nice primer for the whole whale sequence later in her life that i already saw.
And to be honest, i was one of the guys who criticized the style way back, but seeing it in action is really a different thing. Bonus points for having a clear vision and staying the course.
It's actually not the same engine, would have been nice if it was. Battledemons was a collaboration I did with two friends, one them an actual programmer, this is something I am working on myself. Thus its rpgmaker, I cannot do any actual programming on my own. Forcing rpgmaker to do what I want comes with its own set of challenges. There is a fullscreen version but it is a different build for now, you can find it among the download options. There are also ways to skip ahead, instructions can be found in the devlogs, if you want to clear act 1 and then change to a fullscreen build. No save transfers yet unfortunately.
The game is long, about 7-8 hours now with the first chapter ending done, art has been progressively been getting better as I have kept working around the clock. I will rework a lot of old assets once I am completely done with chapter 1. Combat might have been easier if you did take the tutorial but here are some tips:
Check your inventory moods and cards make a huge difference, often situationally. Try to reach level five, grinding a bit early will make the later parts easier, but they can definitely be cleared without grinding. Healing skills can be used outside of combat. Curse works sort of like poison and can affect you outside of combat if you do not remove it.
After the lake, and hopefully getting to lv 5, you should head back to the tree and then head upwards to the hospital area. At the end there is a rope which you can use at the well. It takes you to the act 1 endgame, there are four acts in this chapter.
I have been thinking about changing the red color and eventually having different colors for names and other pieces of key information, this will be done when I get to polish.
Act 2 really ramps things up, concerning alternatives in combat and the pacing of the story, Act 3 even more so. Good luck, hope you play more!
Thank you for your thoughts.
Man im so dumb these days, of course theres a fullscreen version. I just downloaded the one i read as "Windows Edition" because of all the Linux talk lmao, will check this out this one then. Now that you talk about the curse things get clearer for me, but you may think about a proper status effect overview, because i was wondering what exactly damaged me outside of combat (or maybe i just missed that too). I figured out the cards after the second encounter or so and i pretty much used the "optimized" build without pressing the button to do it for me, except for one slot i think.
Anyway pretty cool stuff for not doing much programming on your part. Really admirable how you grind out your art too.
Curse is explained as a part of the tutorial, I want to add a status effect symbol outside of combat for it too at some point, but that goes on the polish list. I want to grind through all of the story content for chapter 1 before I seriously start fixing and improving things. There are a lot of small issues here and there, and some major ones, I will look over it properly when all of the story is in there.
dammnnnnnn, this is cool. I played it more than I thought I was going to I feel like it has pretty good pacing in the beginning.
Thanks! The beginning is probably the slowest part of the whole!
Surreal atmosphere, especially when combined with the music. I chose to be a masochist and basically turned down the guide. The combat is kind of brutal at first but once you get the hang of it and use the dolls, it’s really fun. I also like the transition between scenes, from the surreal “bone field”, I think it was called, to the border warzone, the environmental storytelling is cool. Not a big fan of it usually, but since it was accompanied with the father telling me about his past, the “reflection” has some weight in my opinion. The enemy design is really cool. I like being given the option to be an asshole.
The writing and the characters are really great. Margarette is unlikeable and looks like she means to strangle me the first chance she gets. Sarah and her father are cool though. I also like the diversity of characters. There are some small details that make the game great; you can tell that a lot of love was put in the game. For example, the backpedalling after you run from a fight, not that I did that since it’s kill or be killed. Or the environment, the house, the fish and sea jellies drawings, the bed, so on and so forth. And again, I can’t stress enough how much I like the music.
It’s definitely more in-depth than battledemons. I have to try the other games as well, and play it again. I know you said there’s no rush to finish DoJD or BD, but I think I’ll do a playthrough and put them on youtube or somewhere. Love your work man. Cheers.
Would love to see youtube-videos, there are some major change ups coming up between the different acts, think you have scratched act 1 a little. Act 2 ramps things up, Act 3 goes full rollercoaster. Same with the music. Very curious to hear your thoughts if you do get further in. Act 1 is almost a tutorial when compared to the rest. There is bunch of foreshadowing both in the environments and in the writing, see if you can figure out how it all fits together.
this game has a fucking vibe, man
you are 100% on the right track
the combat music in particular was amazing
Thanks, I appreciate it!
I really like the art style, reminds me of the oldschool DOS games I used to play. Note about the title screen, the game title vs background needs more contrast, could use a shadow or more color variance. I like the various screen effects and the audio is great overall. In fact I really like the large variety of cool screen effects, images, npc character intros, little cinematic elements, unique text rollout effect etc. It clearly show alot of attention and care went into all these details and it really shows. Also the music is really great.
The games difficulty seems a bit steep in the beginning, not sure if its too hard though. I probably died about 6 times in the first 30 minutes of gameplay.
Don't have a ton to criticize to be honest, the games visual and audio style is great. Maybe the only things that would make it pop a bit more might be some more dynamic or parallax visuals within environments.
I think there might be a few bugs, I got stuck inside the lake for a bit.. don't know if this was on purpose, but I was walking around inside where the water is after using the ladder. Also it keeps saying that there might be a bug and something about infinite ladders. Im on a time budget today, but I think I'll play more this weekend and see if I have any more feedback.
Overall, great job.
There are quite a few bugs unfortunately, broken collision being one of the more common ones. The titlescreen will be completely overhauled at some point, plan is to have it change as a player progresses through each chapter and make it more representative of each part of the story.
Many people think it is pretty difficult in the beginning, a few have not, I have nerfed the enemies before, might consider doing so again. Once you get additional partymembers and more combat options it might be more clear how you can influence combat. It happens at the end of act 1. Infinite ladder bug can be triggered in the house, it's a way to "keep getting ladders". This is not something required but at least for now leads to optional secret content in the first chapter ending. There may be other secrets in there, and more coming.
Environments get increasingly varied and complex, I have grown a bit as an artist since I began, gonna rework a lot of the earlier ones, meaning those in the beginning of the game. It's a long ride if you are willing to stick with it.
I just realized that you are making both battle demons and dreams of joy departed at the same time, congrats on the excellent progress, and I guess you must be a glutton for punishment. I will keep playing this game and drop more feedback if anything stands out to me
Thank you, very curious to what you will think about act 3 if you get to it. Its a big departure. Just so you know, there is more divergent paths planned, one for the entirety of act 3 which would be the "darkest version" of the story, but its not done yet. If you play as a monster you will still get into the normal version of act 3 for now.
First time playing, I like the atmosphere. Wholesome family too. It felt more like an experience than a coherent story which is something that I really like. Polished. Love the art style and art. Honestly haven't played a lot of these types of games so I didn't manage to get that far (but I saved all fishies).
Saving the fish or not saving them is an important decision, congratulations, you are on the path of becoming a good person.
I have a dream of a linux version.