I was one of the devs in yesterday's stream, since you stated that you wanna drop this project I've reflected more on your game to give a better feedback.
Since I'm esl I prefer ruminating on my toughts and then writing them out.
tldr, for what I'm about to write: Should you drop this project? If this is meant to be a commercial product, yes.
Imo you spread yourself too thin, but the real problem is that this game has not a strong gameplay idea. So, why it's a game to begin with?
Even with your post on the mining project, you dont start with the gameplay. Your "Concept" section it's story. For you it seems that gameplay is secondary to the story you wanna tell; that's a problem because you are not a director of a studio. You need to to actually code that shit.
There is no problem/shame to build a vn with some minigames in the middle. It can be simple, but it must always be solid.
Scope is killing you, you should design by subtraction. If you know the core of your idea, cut the fat from it and polish that core.
The good advice for your first game it's something you can finish in six months. This is a godlike advice because in the beginning you get better really fast, but also so you don't get chained by your old bad ideas.
Final note, how dare I to tell someone else to drop a project? If I can persuade him to do it (I have CH1 in my real life build), it means that this project was doomed to begin with.
This is my first time trying the demo but I was aware of some of the lore coming in. Obviously a lot of effort was spent making all of those background and story sequences. The EYE: Divine Cybermancy references lead me to believe the ESL spelling is intended, but anyone who isn't familiar with that game will think you outsourced the writing to India so you should probably fix that. Read a book in English when you have the time.
The setting seems pretty interesting at a glance and having characters from different backgrounds who are clearly at odds with each other from the get go was a good idea to organically introduce lore about the factions into conversations. Reminds me of the Morrowind Tribunal/Ashlander Dunmer dynamic.
I appreciate that you are trying to do something different with the combat with the lanes and all but sadly and, as others have pointed out already, the tutorial is broken and layered on top of a dialogue sequence. That's probably the most pressing issue with the game right now. After a couple of encounters I got the gist of it, but the full demo so far had like 4 fights in total.
Another issue is the UI in general. Some textures are layered on top of UI elements or don't disappear when you close menus and such leading to buttons not picking up mouse inputs. Buttons outside of dialogue sequences lack feedback when pressed too.
Furthermore, the text and icons are just far too small. Unless you are planning on having 20 vs 20 fights I think you can afford to make them a little bigger and increase the default zoom.
That is all I had to say, the setting looks interesting, but the game portion could do with a little more polish. Good work so far.
I can see you put a lot of effort into the storytelling and art, good job especially with the cutscenes, they build a nice atmosphere for the game. Gameplay wise, the overall playability could use more work. First time I tried to tutorial it seemed to bug out for me, I played on windows maybe related issue?
Second time, ok it worked. Still confusing somewhat but I figured it out eventually, I think, at least my actions seemed to be doing something and progressing the combat. I died a few times, maybe I just suck but it was frustrating not knowing how to play. Overall I would suggest considering first time player experience, because it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming the player already having as much knowledge as you do.
As a turn-based battle and dungeon crawling enthusiast... I appreciate what the game seems to be going for. I made sure I visited every available event and menu screen. I really liked the dialog system; it's easily the highlight of the demo. Bro, the hypertext-based lore popups? As I don't play AAA games made after 2010 -- one of them certainly must have implemented something like this since then -- this is officially the first time I get to witness this personally, on my own rig. It's such an incidental little detail but it goes a long way. Nice call on including it. Being able to chat up the crewmates from the menu is absolutely neat and has unlimited potential too. Unfortunately, the severe UX issues detract from the experience. Accessing the option screen from the main menu locks you in there unless the return button is at a certain position on the screen. The battle system... whew. Trying to click every single interactable object in sight got me farther than trying to follow the tutorial; it's not too helpful as is. I figured some stuff out, such as moving characters between sectors. I figured out that only red skills damage the enemy, which apparently leaves some of the characters as pure support units/sitting ducks. Is it a good idea having a sole character with 100 HP and the rest at 10 HP, dying in a few hits and unable to kill enemies (this is more of a balancing issue, but it's greatly amplified by the UX)? How do I revive my dead teammates (there seemed to be an option to do this on a certain screen on a certain town, but I think I needed money, which I never made in the entire demo)? What do any of the items do (I still don't know, but I enjoyed looting them on the dungeon)? HP values on the characters currently go below 0, by the way. I won two battles (apparently) but it did leave me confused and my JRPG itch unscratched. All of the other battles? COMBAT DONE. Implementing a battle log, I think, would be enough to clue the player in on what the h*ck is going on without having to change too much from the way things are now, but I believe things need to change from the way they are now. I say this as someone who despises casul handholding. Finally, I liked the dungeon crawling system too, but the UX issues followed the team in. I wish I could access the menu and heal fallen allies, or understand what was going on with the lockpick system. Having no apparent button to close the lockpick and loot interfaces forces us to figure out that we have to click the left third of the screen by ourselves; this could be handled better. Aesthetics: I like the art and the character designs. Very bande dessinée. Music was OK as a placeholder. Please revise the game's script. I would also suggest making buttons/clickable interfaces more obvious. TL;DR: the only thing that needs to be improved ASAP is the UX. The rest is pretty solid.
Playthrough: 30+ minutes. Got to the "Demo done... for now" screen (which softlocks the game)
Comments
I was one of the devs in yesterday's stream, since you stated that you wanna drop this project I've reflected more on your game to give a better feedback.
Since I'm esl I prefer ruminating on my toughts and then writing them out.
tldr, for what I'm about to write: Should you drop this project? If this is meant to be a commercial product, yes.
Imo you spread yourself too thin, but the real problem is that this game has not a strong gameplay idea. So, why it's a game to begin with?
Even with your post on the mining project, you dont start with the gameplay. Your "Concept" section it's story. For you it seems that gameplay is secondary to the story you wanna tell; that's a problem because you are not a director of a studio. You need to to actually code that shit.
There is no problem/shame to build a vn with some minigames in the middle. It can be simple, but it must always be solid.
Scope is killing you, you should design by subtraction. If you know the core of your idea, cut the fat from it and polish that core.
The good advice for your first game it's something you can finish in six months. This is a godlike advice because in the beginning you get better really fast, but also so you don't get chained by your old bad ideas.
Final note, how dare I to tell someone else to drop a project? If I can persuade him to do it (I have CH1 in my real life build), it means that this project was doomed to begin with.
This is my first time trying the demo but I was aware of some of the lore coming in. Obviously a lot of effort was spent making all of those background and story sequences. The EYE: Divine Cybermancy references lead me to believe the ESL spelling is intended, but anyone who isn't familiar with that game will think you outsourced the writing to India so you should probably fix that. Read a book in English when you have the time.
The setting seems pretty interesting at a glance and having characters from different backgrounds who are clearly at odds with each other from the get go was a good idea to organically introduce lore about the factions into conversations. Reminds me of the Morrowind Tribunal/Ashlander Dunmer dynamic.
I appreciate that you are trying to do something different with the combat with the lanes and all but sadly and, as others have pointed out already, the tutorial is broken and layered on top of a dialogue sequence. That's probably the most pressing issue with the game right now. After a couple of encounters I got the gist of it, but the full demo so far had like 4 fights in total.
Another issue is the UI in general. Some textures are layered on top of UI elements or don't disappear when you close menus and such leading to buttons not picking up mouse inputs. Buttons outside of dialogue sequences lack feedback when pressed too.
Furthermore, the text and icons are just far too small. Unless you are planning on having 20 vs 20 fights I think you can afford to make them a little bigger and increase the default zoom.
That is all I had to say, the setting looks interesting, but the game portion could do with a little more polish. Good work so far.
I can see you put a lot of effort into the storytelling and art, good job especially with the cutscenes, they build a nice atmosphere for the game. Gameplay wise, the overall playability could use more work. First time I tried to tutorial it seemed to bug out for me, I played on windows maybe related issue?
Second time, ok it worked. Still confusing somewhat but I figured it out eventually, I think, at least my actions seemed to be doing something and progressing the combat. I died a few times, maybe I just suck but it was frustrating not knowing how to play. Overall I would suggest considering first time player experience, because it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming the player already having as much knowledge as you do.
COMBAT DONE
As a turn-based battle and dungeon crawling enthusiast... I appreciate what the game seems to be going for. I made sure I visited every available event and menu screen. I really liked the dialog system; it's easily the highlight of the demo. Bro, the hypertext-based lore popups? As I don't play AAA games made after 2010 -- one of them certainly must have implemented something like this since then -- this is officially the first time I get to witness this personally, on my own rig. It's such an incidental little detail but it goes a long way. Nice call on including it. Being able to chat up the crewmates from the menu is absolutely neat and has unlimited potential too.
Unfortunately, the severe UX issues detract from the experience. Accessing the option screen from the main menu locks you in there unless the return button is at a certain position on the screen. The battle system... whew. Trying to click every single interactable object in sight got me farther than trying to follow the tutorial; it's not too helpful as is. I figured some stuff out, such as moving characters between sectors. I figured out that only red skills damage the enemy, which apparently leaves some of the characters as pure support units/sitting ducks. Is it a good idea having a sole character with 100 HP and the rest at 10 HP, dying in a few hits and unable to kill enemies (this is more of a balancing issue, but it's greatly amplified by the UX)? How do I revive my dead teammates (there seemed to be an option to do this on a certain screen on a certain town, but I think I needed money, which I never made in the entire demo)? What do any of the items do (I still don't know, but I enjoyed looting them on the dungeon)? HP values on the characters currently go below 0, by the way. I won two battles (apparently) but it did leave me confused and my JRPG itch unscratched. All of the other battles? COMBAT DONE. Implementing a battle log, I think, would be enough to clue the player in on what the h*ck is going on without having to change too much from the way things are now, but I believe things need to change from the way they are now. I say this as someone who despises casul handholding.
Finally, I liked the dungeon crawling system too, but the UX issues followed the team in. I wish I could access the menu and heal fallen allies, or understand what was going on with the lockpick system. Having no apparent button to close the lockpick and loot interfaces forces us to figure out that we have to click the left third of the screen by ourselves; this could be handled better.
Aesthetics: I like the art and the character designs. Very bande dessinée. Music was OK as a placeholder. Please revise the game's script. I would also suggest making buttons/clickable interfaces more obvious.
TL;DR: the only thing that needs to be improved ASAP is the UX. The rest is pretty solid.
Playthrough: 30+ minutes. Got to the "Demo done... for now" screen (which softlocks the game)
Main menu updates are lovely. Additional details on the introduction cutscene is lovely too.
Combat looks visually a lot more appealing than before, but I am sad to say it is still mostly incomprehensible to me.
Game froze after the raider spotted with radar battle. Happened twice, something may be amiss there.
i love your art but damn, even with the tutorial your game keeps filtering me. maybe i'm just a brainlet
thanks for the skip combat button, at least i got to experience the cutscenes lol
i really dig the atmosphere of the planet of cobalt sand, but the music gets kind of repetitive imho
btw you might want to give it an extra proofread, there were a handful of typos in the dialogue here and there