-First time playing, the game exudes almost sickening positivity. It's alright I suppose. I have never watched or read a mouhou shojo, so idk how much of this is genre standard. I'm mainly interested in the mystery dungeon part since I have played many of those games.
-Holding space stops me from walking?
-When walking around, the character's sprite doesn't move smoothly with the camera. That is to say, it vibrates with motion.
-Not the most appealing, but the UI does its job. Reminds me of old GBA games.
-First encounter and it's already borked. One enemy was weak to lightning, so I did my lightning spell to focus him down first. He died, and then I switched the other guy to lightning weakness. However, my cooldowns aren't decreasing so...??? Nevermind, apparently I can move towards him to shoot a normal attack.
-Okay, going into the dungeon and the cooldown properly counts down, but it only happens when in active combat, alright.
-Got to level 2, both in the dungeon and in exp. So far I'm having a good time, the base combat and magic abilities abilities are simple, but I can see how it can get interesting fast. The different ribbons requiring certain levels or spell specs to equip is neat, though if it's a game where you can dabble in all elements, that seems like it won't matter by the mid game.
-Spell wise, it looks like lightning and fireball are the best, since one gives large range and the other give good cluster damage. At least it seems like enemies won't be in a straight line as much for ice to be useful.
-Only having food go down while in combat kind of defeats its purpose? Typically speaking, it's supposed to be a timer to urge you forward so you have to make decisions like stick around to 100% the level, etc. For a more casual experience, it certainly makes it less stressful.
-Beat the demo, RIP terrorists. I think the random magical weakness is an interesting enough idea, keeps you on your toes compared to a static weakness per enemy. Overall, fun for how early it is.
-Managed to save while in the cutscene for going into the swat van, surprisingly I can actually load the file and the cutscene still works correctly, impressive.
-There is an inconsistency in the dialogue. If you spam spacebar/esc/enter for the dialogue it must reach the end of the text to go onto the next one, but if you press the OK button it will happen instantly, regardless of text displayedness.
Space is one of the buttons to make you wait a turn, that's why it stops you from walking.
When walking around, the character's sprite doesn't move smoothly with the camera. That is to say, it vibrates with motion.
The sprite stuttering has been mentioned by others. I believe I found a fix now.
However, my cooldowns aren't decreasing so...???
Looks like this is a bug, cooldowns are supposed to decrease as long as you're in battle, even outside of a dungeon.
The different ribbons requiring certain levels or spell specs to equip is neat, though if it's a game where you can dabble in all elements, that seems like it won't matter by the mid game.
Yeah my idea is that instead of having stat requirements like in most RPG's (ex. a sword takes a certain amount of STR to equip), the requirements are based on what spells you have, so you can make a "build" around a certain element. I want the player to be able to specialize in multiple elements but not all 3. My current idea is that there will be "tiers" of spells so a piece of equipment might require a "tier 2 fire spell" etc. but you won't have room to equip a tier X spell of every element.
Only having food go down while in combat kind of defeats its purpose?
Food in this game serves to balance out cooldowns, otherwise you could wait a bunch of turns before each battle and have all your cooldowns refreshed (or purposely drag out battles to lower your cooldowns).
Managed to save while in the cutscene for going into the swat van, surprisingly I can actually load the file and the cutscene still works correctly, impressive.
I need to add more safeguards to prevent the player from going into menus mid-cutscene...
If you spam spacebar/esc/enter for the dialogue it must reach the end of the text to go onto the next one, but if you press the OK button it will happen instantly, regardless of text displayedness.
Space is one of the buttons to make you wait a turn, that's why it stops you from walking.
Just to be clear, I was talking about when out of combat, and it happened before the first encounter so I was a little confused. Unless time based things happen there, it seems kind of pointless to do that. Though I suppose it's more consistent with combat, so I guess it's fine either way.
Managed to complete the demo. Combat is really solid. I like the lightheartedness of the story.
Pressing "OK" while the text in a dialogue is being typed out skips the entire message instead of just skip typing like most games. Can get annoying to wait for the typing animation to finish if you're a fast reader.
The player's sprite jitters when moving. This is most noticeable in the overworld.
I think there's a minor text bug If you open a chest when your inventory is full. You get the message: "String not found: Not enough inventory space"
Seems like a missed opportunity not to have Cyan heal you before entering the first dungeon. I got almost softlocked on my first attempt cause I entered the dungeon with half health.
I'm a massive fan of the older Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games so I'll be sure to keep my eye on this one. Keep it up.
Good idea, I can change pressing OK to type the whole message first instead of skipping it.
Regarding the jitter: It's funny, I did notice a while ago that the movement seemed "off" but I couldn't put my finger on it and I was thinking I had gone crazy so I just ignored it lol. And now 2 people this DD have noticed it! Looked into a bit and I see other people complaining about this with Nez (the framework I'm using) I hope I don't have to write a custom Camera class...
Damn I thought I found all the "string not found" messages but you caught one! (I'm refactoring the game so all the strings come from external files instead of the code. If it doesn't find it, it prints that message)
Adding a heal before the first dungeon is a good idea.
1. Not sure which engine this is but having to install.´.NET runtime nearly made me skip the game.
2. I accidentally pressed Enter when choosing my element. No item was highlighted from the choice, so not sure which one got picked. I suppose Fire?
3. Would be nice to know what the elements do at selection time.
4. For dialogue I am always in favor of supporting CTRL to skip.
5. Something is off in the dialogue formatting. You can somtimes see the last word(s?) on a line flickering onto the next line.
Was fun enough to play through the demo. Without money/shops implemented a bit hard to judge in terms of progression. I liked planning out some turns to get characters into good ranges for AoE skills.
The game was made using the Monogame and Nez frameworks, so I'm basically enginedeving, so a lot of things are rough around the edges right now.
Monogame does have a way to "publish" the game which I believe will allow you to run without installing the .NET runtime, but I wasn't able to get it working yet (it kept throwing errors).
Points 2-5 are good suggestions. I actually had 4 and 5 implemented at one time back when I was using Unity, but haven't re-implemented them in the new framework yet.
pet peeve of mine, one should be able to progress the text in a box by pressing anywhere on screen, not specifically on the ok button.
when moving left or right, the up and down movement keys are ignored. this leads to pretty unpleasant movement on the grid
while moving, the character sprite looks kind of blurry.
now i'm kind of nitpicking, but imho until you get a professional artist to draw the art for you, i would just stick to a screenshot for the thumbnail. the current one is kind of soulful, but it doesn't really make people want to click on it to download it, and it also doesn't really communicate to the player that the game is an old school 2D rpg.
Comments
-First time playing, the game exudes almost sickening positivity. It's alright I suppose. I have never watched or read a mouhou shojo, so idk how much of this is genre standard. I'm mainly interested in the mystery dungeon part since I have played many of those games.
-Holding space stops me from walking?
-When walking around, the character's sprite doesn't move smoothly with the camera. That is to say, it vibrates with motion.
-Not the most appealing, but the UI does its job. Reminds me of old GBA games.
-First encounter and it's already borked. One enemy was weak to lightning, so I did my lightning spell to focus him down first. He died, and then I switched the other guy to lightning weakness. However, my cooldowns aren't decreasing so...??? Nevermind, apparently I can move towards him to shoot a normal attack.
-Okay, going into the dungeon and the cooldown properly counts down, but it only happens when in active combat, alright.
-Got to level 2, both in the dungeon and in exp. So far I'm having a good time, the base combat and magic abilities abilities are simple, but I can see how it can get interesting fast. The different ribbons requiring certain levels or spell specs to equip is neat, though if it's a game where you can dabble in all elements, that seems like it won't matter by the mid game.
-Spell wise, it looks like lightning and fireball are the best, since one gives large range and the other give good cluster damage. At least it seems like enemies won't be in a straight line as much for ice to be useful.
-Only having food go down while in combat kind of defeats its purpose? Typically speaking, it's supposed to be a timer to urge you forward so you have to make decisions like stick around to 100% the level, etc. For a more casual experience, it certainly makes it less stressful.
-Beat the demo, RIP terrorists. I think the random magical weakness is an interesting enough idea, keeps you on your toes compared to a static weakness per enemy. Overall, fun for how early it is.
-Managed to save while in the cutscene for going into the swat van, surprisingly I can actually load the file and the cutscene still works correctly, impressive.
-There is an inconsistency in the dialogue. If you spam spacebar/esc/enter for the dialogue it must reach the end of the text to go onto the next one, but if you press the OK button it will happen instantly, regardless of text displayedness.
Thanks for playing! Glad you had fun.
Space is one of the buttons to make you wait a turn, that's why it stops you from walking.
The sprite stuttering has been mentioned by others. I believe I found a fix now.
Looks like this is a bug, cooldowns are supposed to decrease as long as you're in battle, even outside of a dungeon.
Yeah my idea is that instead of having stat requirements like in most RPG's (ex. a sword takes a certain amount of STR to equip), the requirements are based on what spells you have, so you can make a "build" around a certain element. I want the player to be able to specialize in multiple elements but not all 3. My current idea is that there will be "tiers" of spells so a piece of equipment might require a "tier 2 fire spell" etc. but you won't have room to equip a tier X spell of every element.
Food in this game serves to balance out cooldowns, otherwise you could wait a bunch of turns before each battle and have all your cooldowns refreshed (or purposely drag out battles to lower your cooldowns).
I need to add more safeguards to prevent the player from going into menus mid-cutscene...
Good catch.
Just to be clear, I was talking about when out of combat, and it happened before the first encounter so I was a little confused. Unless time based things happen there, it seems kind of pointless to do that. Though I suppose it's more consistent with combat, so I guess it's fine either way.
Managed to complete the demo. Combat is really solid. I like the lightheartedness of the story.
Pressing "OK" while the text in a dialogue is being typed out skips the entire message instead of just skip typing like most games. Can get annoying to wait for the typing animation to finish if you're a fast reader.
The player's sprite jitters when moving. This is most noticeable in the overworld.
I think there's a minor text bug If you open a chest when your inventory is full. You get the message: "String not found: Not enough inventory space"
Seems like a missed opportunity not to have Cyan heal you before entering the first dungeon. I got almost softlocked on my first attempt cause I entered the dungeon with half health.
I'm a massive fan of the older Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games so I'll be sure to keep my eye on this one. Keep it up.
Glad you enjoyed the game.
Good idea, I can change pressing OK to type the whole message first instead of skipping it.
Regarding the jitter: It's funny, I did notice a while ago that the movement seemed "off" but I couldn't put my finger on it and I was thinking I had gone crazy so I just ignored it lol. And now 2 people this DD have noticed it! Looked into a bit and I see other people complaining about this with Nez (the framework I'm using) I hope I don't have to write a custom Camera class...
Damn I thought I found all the "string not found" messages but you caught one! (I'm refactoring the game so all the strings come from external files instead of the code. If it doesn't find it, it prints that message)
Adding a heal before the first dungeon is a good idea.
1. Not sure which engine this is but having to install.´.NET runtime nearly made me skip the game.
2. I accidentally pressed Enter when choosing my element. No item was highlighted from the choice, so not sure which one got picked. I suppose Fire?
3. Would be nice to know what the elements do at selection time.
4. For dialogue I am always in favor of supporting CTRL to skip.
5. Something is off in the dialogue formatting. You can somtimes see the last word(s?) on a line flickering onto the next line.
Was fun enough to play through the demo. Without money/shops implemented a bit hard to judge in terms of progression. I liked planning out some turns to get characters into good ranges for AoE skills.
The game was made using the Monogame and Nez frameworks, so I'm basically enginedeving, so a lot of things are rough around the edges right now.
Monogame does have a way to "publish" the game which I believe will allow you to run without installing the .NET runtime, but I wasn't able to get it working yet (it kept throwing errors).
Points 2-5 are good suggestions. I actually had 4 and 5 implemented at one time back when I was using Unity, but haven't re-implemented them in the new framework yet.
pet peeve of mine, one should be able to progress the text in a box by pressing anywhere on screen, not specifically on the ok button.
when moving left or right, the up and down movement keys are ignored. this leads to pretty unpleasant movement on the grid
while moving, the character sprite looks kind of blurry.
now i'm kind of nitpicking, but imho until you get a professional artist to draw the art for you, i would just stick to a screenshot for the thumbnail. the current one is kind of soulful, but it doesn't really make people want to click on it to download it, and it also doesn't really communicate to the player that the game is an old school 2D rpg.
Thanks for playing! Those are good quality of life suggestions, I'll see if I can get them implemented.
I think the blurry character sprite is the same issue as the jittering which another user mentioned. Definitely will look into getting it fixed.
I'll probably redo the capsule image again in the future, maybe I'll combine artwork + a screenshot.
Changes since last DD: