The good - Loved the manual, even though I've only skimmed it. It's been more than ten years since I've seen a new game manual and it did evoke some long lost memories of physical games. I enjoyed the premise and promise of exploration. The bad - Granted I didn't play long, the exploration was pretty much 100% fights. I did approach several settlements only to find sleeping opportunity in there (After a fight). The ugly - Fights are boring even by jrpg standards, there needs to be more happening, there needs to be more joy to process of fighting.
I silently hope that you've been focusing on world building for now, and you'll get to implementation of more polished game now, because the premise and passion visible in storytelling would make for a great game. Sorry if it sounds overly harsh, I'm honestly curious about next iteration.
Hey, thanks for setting some time aside to play and leave feedback for 18-28-38-48.
You see, I'm doing a lot of things simultaneously. System design. Programming. The manual. The tie-in novel. More recently, the future in-game quests and the logic that will govern them. My forecast is that, just as the various aspects of the project are in a similar state of incompleteness at the moment, at a certain point I can expect them to reach shipshape at about the same time as well. I hope.
Re: BAD – well, my main target audience is an intersection between hardcore JRPG enthusiasts who wouldn't mind even if the game were nothing but menus and combat (like Medarot Parts Collection, Mega Man Battle Chip GP or Pokémon Stadium) and TTRPG/board game players who'd like to try something different with their table. But more than a love letter to JRPGs, I want the project to act as some kind of apologetics for the genre too. Yeah, my vision is to have each player spend a lot of time on the battle screen (currently, other than fights, you can also encounter resources and treasure) but also to make it worth the while being there. Of course, as development advances, I hope to add more map events, questlines, characters you can introduce to each other and watch as they interact, and a dungeon-crawling mode that lets you explore the entire planet in first person (representing the basic world surface would take only 70 MB with .txt files; I ran the numbers before). For a miniature Planet Earth, there's plenty of inspiration available to fill in this world :D Keep in mind that multiplayer is supposed to be a huge chunk of the experience, so, maybe...
Re: UGLY – yup, sorry, the battle system really isn't exactly in its golden age right now. Once the basic game engine is working more or less perfectly, I expect development time to be spent almost exclusively on it. My vision is to have an overwhelming amount of build options available and directly reward the players that try the most obscure ones out. There's a lot to learn from games with well-received combat in other genres too, such as the fatal hits and intuitive tells in FromSoftware action games. Translating these into a turn-based format is a challenge I'm taking up. In that regard, the manual and spreadsheet are sort of a manifesto of what's to come ;)
Thanks again for the sincere feedback; I can't go on without people like you. I'm just a lone man devving as a JOBBY in my spare time, but this is my passion project, on which I expect to work for the rest of my life. It's a slow ride, and I'm taking it easy; so, my plans could well be a couple of years away from implementation. Who knows if it will take me until 2028 or 2038 to finish the game? 2048, maybe? Time will tell
While gauging sentiment, I once came across someone saying that the UI looks like a spreadsheet, which is funny, because the buttons, dropdowns, checkboxes and scrollbars seen in the engine are remade versions of Visual Basic controls as they used to look back in Windows 95/98/ME. I literally used my version of Excel to study the pixel art for authenticity. Welp, in its current state, the project is more of a simulation software than a standalone game, anyway.
On the other hand, I'm left with... not much to go from there. If spreadsheet = bad, do I just need to add a brighter color scheme? Or different borders, font choice or size? There's probably some sort of UI etiquette I'm inadvertently violating... maybe I should get with the times and include tap and scroll touch controls. Customization has been an essential part of the engine since the beginning, so now I'll definitely include support for custom UI graphics in addition to characters and database entries in case it's just a visual issue. If it boils down to unsalvageable UI design, I've got some studying to do.
Thanks for leaving feedback, fren! Sorry for taking so long to write back; was sorting stuff out IRL.
Literally says so in the project page that you don't need to read any of the PDFs before playing.
So... you tried fighting a cobra instead of retreating and it destroyed you? Just like it would play out in real life? It's called an "immersive RPG" for a reason :)
Comments
The good - Loved the manual, even though I've only skimmed it. It's been more than ten years since I've seen a new game manual and it did evoke some long lost memories of physical games. I enjoyed the premise and promise of exploration.
The bad - Granted I didn't play long, the exploration was pretty much 100% fights. I did approach several settlements only to find sleeping opportunity in there (After a fight).
The ugly - Fights are boring even by jrpg standards, there needs to be more happening, there needs to be more joy to process of fighting.
I silently hope that you've been focusing on world building for now, and you'll get to implementation of more polished game now, because the premise and passion visible in storytelling would make for a great game. Sorry if it sounds overly harsh, I'm honestly curious about next iteration.
Hey, thanks for setting some time aside to play and leave feedback for 18-28-38-48.
You see, I'm doing a lot of things simultaneously. System design. Programming. The manual. The tie-in novel. More recently, the future in-game quests and the logic that will govern them. My forecast is that, just as the various aspects of the project are in a similar state of incompleteness at the moment, at a certain point I can expect them to reach shipshape at about the same time as well. I hope.
Re: BAD – well, my main target audience is an intersection between hardcore JRPG enthusiasts who wouldn't mind even if the game were nothing but menus and combat (like Medarot Parts Collection, Mega Man Battle Chip GP or Pokémon Stadium) and TTRPG/board game players who'd like to try something different with their table. But more than a love letter to JRPGs, I want the project to act as some kind of apologetics for the genre too. Yeah, my vision is to have each player spend a lot of time on the battle screen (currently, other than fights, you can also encounter resources and treasure) but also to make it worth the while being there. Of course, as development advances, I hope to add more map events, questlines, characters you can introduce to each other and watch as they interact, and a dungeon-crawling mode that lets you explore the entire planet in first person (representing the basic world surface would take only 70 MB with .txt files; I ran the numbers before). For a miniature Planet Earth, there's plenty of inspiration available to fill in this world :D
Keep in mind that multiplayer is supposed to be a huge chunk of the experience, so, maybe...
Re: UGLY – yup, sorry, the battle system really isn't exactly in its golden age right now. Once the basic game engine is working more or less perfectly, I expect development time to be spent almost exclusively on it. My vision is to have an overwhelming amount of build options available and directly reward the players that try the most obscure ones out. There's a lot to learn from games with well-received combat in other genres too, such as the fatal hits and intuitive tells in FromSoftware action games. Translating these into a turn-based format is a challenge I'm taking up. In that regard, the manual and spreadsheet are sort of a manifesto of what's to come ;)
Thanks again for the sincere feedback; I can't go on without people like you. I'm just a lone man devving as a JOBBY in my spare time, but this is my passion project, on which I expect to work for the rest of my life. It's a slow ride, and I'm taking it easy; so, my plans could well be a couple of years away from implementation. Who knows if it will take me until 2028 or 2038 to finish the game? 2048, maybe? Time will tell
Overall it works fine but given the nature of the game I think the UI will need a lot of care and polish. Right now I'd call it serviceable.
While gauging sentiment, I once came across someone saying that the UI looks like a spreadsheet, which is funny, because the buttons, dropdowns, checkboxes and scrollbars seen in the engine are remade versions of Visual Basic controls as they used to look back in Windows 95/98/ME. I literally used my version of Excel to study the pixel art for authenticity. Welp, in its current state, the project is more of a simulation software than a standalone game, anyway.
On the other hand, I'm left with... not much to go from there. If spreadsheet = bad, do I just need to add a brighter color scheme? Or different borders, font choice or size? There's probably some sort of UI etiquette I'm inadvertently violating... maybe I should get with the times and include tap and scroll touch controls. Customization has been an essential part of the engine since the beginning, so now I'll definitely include support for custom UI graphics in addition to characters and database entries in case it's just a visual issue. If it boils down to unsalvageable UI design, I've got some studying to do.
Thanks for leaving feedback, fren! Sorry for taking so long to write back; was sorting stuff out IRL.
i don't really understand your game if i gotta be honest
i walked around and i was immediately destroyed by a cobra
do people REALLY have to read a bunch of pdfs to be able to enjoy it? this is going to severely limit its appeal honestly
Literally says so in the project page that you don't need to read any of the PDFs before playing.
So... you tried fighting a cobra instead of retreating and it destroyed you? Just like it would play out in real life? It's called an "immersive RPG" for a reason :)