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Verloren's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound/Music | #19 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Art / Graphics | #20 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Overall Fun | #24 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Controls / UI | #31 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
-The main menu, the combat screen and the victory screen have been reworked and now use brand new busts.
-Added a new introduction more interesting than the black screen there was before.
-The title screen picture has been improved
-Added a new loading picture
-Added 2 new illustrations
-Added some more story content
-Added a "Transform" command to quickly switch the mode of the main character's weapon
-Being defeated now gives you back all MP/TP/Items/Equipments you have at the start of the fight
-A lot of other minor changes
The full details of the change since the last Feedbackquest can be seen in the game patch-notes (Feedbackquest 6 was version 57).
Genre #1
JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG
Rating #2
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Comments
First, congrats for making this game. It feels ambitious, and you’ve executed it very well. I played for a bit more than an hour. Save/load doesn’t seem to be working (related to the permissions problems from before I guess), but if I do play more I’ll update this feedback accordingly.
What I liked:
Although the scope is big, there seems to be a clear overall vision and the game is directed towards that.
The intro story is quite dramatic, but leaves questions unanswered (intentional I guess?). I do want to know what it means and how Angel discovers it.
The characters and effort put in to make them unique and memorable.
Battle music that sets the right mood for a fight.
Special effects in battle. I can see a lot of effort went in here. Temporal Rift effect in particular is very cool.
The little bits of conversations with other students that explain the world, characters, battle systems, etc.
Teleportation crystal. Nice and natural movement mechanic that exists within the game world itself.
What could be improved:
In the initial intro ‘Esc’ should go to a menu. Right now it progresses the dialogue.
Option to skip the initial cutscenes would be useful for a second playthrough onwards.
One should be able to access the pause menu from a battle.
In the intro I thought I was Helen? Why am I controlling the Captain’s character? This felt a bit odd.
History of the Tower of Knowledge excerpt: hard to read as the text colour is similar to the background colour. Same for Quest text against the scene background. Maybe have a panel behind this text.
For the Student who says “Edwin, I bet 100 chips...”, the dialogue is triggered automatically when you run into them. Instead this should be triggered with Space like the others.
Found it odd to keep finding cash lying about: at home (in a shelf I think; the one where the father explicitly mentions is ok), in the gymnasium, etc. Would be nice to complete some task and gain cash instead. (Maybe this is how it is in RPGs, if so then it’s ok. I don’t play these a lot, just felt off to me.)
The battle system seems too detailed and tedious for this game. Is this kind of system standard in this genre? I can see the battles and character skill progression is a core part of the story, so I guess it's ok as well.
Overall this is a big project, and you seem to have made a lot of progress. Wish you the best!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 🧚🧚🧚
Concerning the save/load issue: could you describe me what problem exactly you had? Given the game auto-save itself each time you change map, you wouldn't have been able to progress much if it was just the permission issue.
To follow up on your comments:
-I didn't understand what you meant with "In the initial intro ‘Esc’ should go to a menu. Right now it progresses the dialogue." Do you mean you would have expected to be able to access the main menu during cutscene/dialogues, like in a visual novel?
-On a second playthrough, you can skip most of the intro if you have the achievement you get at the end of the intro (as those achievements are global data). Dialogues can also be skipped using the shift key.
-There is no pause in battle, but the battle won't progress if you don't select an action either, so a pause button would be redundant.
-Seems like you were a bit confused by the change of character. May be their battle portrait should be less dark so one can easily understand they are controlling someone else?
-I will have to try using different text colours
-That student had the wrong trigger for years, and I never noticed it. Thank you for catching that. 🧚
-It is quite common for heroes in RPG to get stuff by just searching through random place (to not say stealing). There are already a few optional quests who give you cash when completed.
-Concerning the battle system I would say (from my biased point of view) that the game is somewhere in the middle in terms of complexity for a JRPG. What elements exactly gave you the impression it was too complex/tedious? The combat tutorials? The starting enemies?
That's definitively weird you can not load any save file.
I added a new build who I hope will fix the issue.
Following a previous save file, reached the end of the current version! Terrain work keeps being great and there's plenty of awesome special effects like the animals moving around the forest, very nice balance of plot/combat/puzzles/exploration. Didn't manage to beat the special optional forest battle at the end though, they just kept curbstomping me. ><
Couple things that I'm not sure if a bug or intended:
-The first time going explore the Dark Forest, we're supposed to have the fancy monster-repellent, but swamp tiles would still trigger encounters which would often one-shot Angel who was usually at 1 HP because of said swamp tiles.
-The metal slimes which usually would reduce physical damage to 1 (and thus take 3 hits to die) would take 3-digit damage from a character attacking them with a scepter and die right away
Now for some more personal comments:
-The new main menu, although nicer-looking, felt a bit worst gameplay-wise because I couldn't go left to loop around to reach the "save" option faster, meaning I needed a lot of presses each time to save the game.
-Some later bosses feel too-limited puzzles in that there seems to only be one correct solution and the game mechanics will prevent any other way of defeating them, like the bronze soldier that starts by casting their mega-reflect that's so hax it's dispel-immune and even Angel is scripted to call them a cheat if she tries to use dispel on them, with the only way to actually defeating them seemingly being tricking them into casting shadow on themselves. Ditto for the mom battle where she opens with her ultimate and the only right move seems to be to defend right away, then needing to spam vampire to keep up with the following damage race. Thankfully death in this game places the player right where they lost ready for another go (also what's up with multiple single parents rising their kids to become combat machines while not properly explaining their origins?). Either way, although it's fine for a boss to have some super-weakness to cheese them, IMHO they should still be defeatable through other means.
-Hidden money on the dungeons often felt pretty disappointing being just 1 or 2-digits worth of gold.
-The tone shift from "charge into a goddess's realm and challenge her to single combat!" to "go collect some regular berries" felt somewhat abrupt. Like there's even the dangerous monsters roaming around in the same area, shouldn't they be the main priority and collecting berries the sidequest? At least make them fancy magic berries that even gods enjoy?
Some particulair details I loved:
-Puzzles just popping an help manual if you screwed up with them too many times.
-The lottery prize prediction being real and giving enough gold to basically buy whatever I wanted (also fortune fairy out of nowhere, hope we get to see more of her in the future). Actually got around trying new clothing for Angel!
-Prisioner just walking around unconscious and tied up along the party.
-All the pseudo-italian, nice to see the distant foreign land actually have a more foreign language.
-Fabiana rocks, hope she'll stick around with Angel longer than average!
Keep up the great work!
Thank you a lot for reaching the end, it means a lot to the fairy community. 🧚♀️🧚♀️🧚♀️
To follow up on your comments:
-The repel doesn't prevent you from getting surprised by monsters when your hp drops to 1 in dangerous terrain, no. The smell of your blood becomes stronger than the repel at that point. Initially there were random encounters in that forest, but players just keep ignoring them because it distracts them from the puzzle and the gameplay with just a single Angel isn't that interesting. So I had to find another reason to make the player worry about the poisonous swamps.
-You probably dealt the metal slime a critical hit. They take full damage from physical critical hits, it is their main weakness.
-In the new menu, you would have wanted to be able to go from the "item" section directly to "game end", like in MV default menu? If it is a very good suggestion, I will add that in the next big update.
-Those two combats have in common that you are controlling only a single character who has no way of grinding/rearranging their skills, so the puzzle approach seemed the most appropriate. Don't worry, the next bosses will be more traditional.
-I guess you are thinking of the stacks of gold in the ancient village? They are more there to tell a story about the inhabitant who had to flee the village leaving the little they had than being actually valuable.
-It is. I wanted to reduce the scope a little after the Earth Realm.
-You can also see the pink-haired fairy if you create a new game or if you complete the secret quest of chapter 4 (at the inn of the Sabina region)
-Fabiana won’t be leaving the party anytime soon.
The fairy council had three questions for you:
-Did you have any problem with the puzzle in the depths of the earth dungeon (the one with the jewels you have to place around)? It is a brand new one that replaced the old puzzle which was considered by most players as too difficult, so I would like to have your impressions on it.
-Did you buy the mage apprentice outfit at the casino for 400 casino chips? 🧙♀️
-What does your achievements page look like? (It can be easily accessed in the extras)
Again, thank you a lot for going this far. 🧚♀️
I thank the Fairy Council for the clarifications!
-The jewel puzzle took me a bit to work out at start but then managed to solve it neatly as soon as I noticed that each room required a different number of gems, and then by the end I had more gems that were required for the last room so I could leave some behind, felt pretty nicely balanced to me.
-Yes, Angel spent most of her time as a pretty soldier of justice during this run. :P
-Achievements:
Story: All but the "maniac" difficulty and a hidden one.
Battle: All but the extermination missions and bestiary ones.
Exploration: Only "Pious", guess my Angel ended up quite religious.
Secrets: Only Artist.
Love the new updates, keep it up. The added Fairy explanation at the beginning definitely helped, and the graphic is looking more market standard in order to compete with other RPGs.
Thank you fellow fairy for the VOD. 🧚
Each indie game contains a sparkle of the author’s soul. And especially in RPG, you feel an invisible connection with the author, and this is beautiful. It is something that a player can’t really ever get when playing a standard AAA game.
Your game is filled with love and care from the very first scenes. If I were a student and had a handful of free time, I would definitely spend many hours exploring your universe.
I had only around 40 minutes today, so I didn’t progress far and ended up somewhere in the school (or was it the dorms?). At least I explored every single shelf to check its contents, and I had enough time to get myself acquainted with the setting.
The battle system looks more or less common to other games from that engine. But it’s the story that actually caught my attention. I appreciated that the intro wasn’t packed with repeated battles, and instead, I could immerse myself into the narrative.
It’s an RPG Maker, correct? I’m not an expert on that engine. So, I’m unsure if I should give credit for the visuals in the game or if you were using an asset pack. Nevertheless, everything feels very well put together. Every detail matters. It feels that you really live in this world. This immersive atmosphere of a well-thought-out world and the intriguing story are the key strengths of this game.
Best luck!
It is nice to see people appreciating the world and the story, usually people prefer the battle system.
For the graphics, it is a mix of engine default resources, RM community made resources, asset packs, commissioned works and a bit of my own (notably most of the title screen was made by myself).
Since it is a feedback jam, do you remember something you would have put in the "things that could be improved" category? 🧚
Hi. I tried on my Mac (MacBookAir 2024, macOS Sonoma 14.5) as well, and unfortunately wasn't able to run the game. First I was prompted to install Rosetta, which I did, and post that I got this error:
Update: I tried the $Verloren mac test.zip file as well, and got the same error.
Well, suddenly there are a lot of Mac users out there. ^^
From what I can see, the game is trying to create the initial config file, but doesn't have the permission to do so.
I just checked the permissions on the linux I use for the deployment of the mac version, and Verloren.app only allow writing only for the owner of the file (the save folder allows it for the owner's group). You wouldn't happen to have tested it without having the user privilege? Or may be the permission were altered somewhere in the process.
In any case, giving the write permission to Verloren.app and/or the save folder should solve the issue, from the limited understanding I have for Mac apps.
So it does look like a permissions issue. I tried searching online and got a bunch of solutions which didn't work, and finally one that did, which was simply moving the game to the Desktop folder (I was running it earlier from Downloads). The game starts up sometimes now, which is an improvement. Will play and let you know my feedback.
Happy you manage to find a solution.
If like MontyOnTheRun you happen to be stuck on the loading screen, I updated the mac build to fix this issue.
Tried running the Mac version, but it seems to never leave the "Chargement..." screen.
Macbook Air 2017 running fully updated MacOS Monterrey
Let me know if you have alternative builds for testing :)
Thanks for the post, as said on the game's page I don't have a mac (and I don't know enough anyone who does), so such feedback is very valuable.
Important question: did the game display any kind of error (like for a missing resource)?
I will try rebuilding an updated mac build, hoping it solves the issue.
No - and I even tried running from the console, to see if any error message would be displayed.
I can help you test on Macs - I have plenty of older models, as well as a modern one (this test was done on a modern-ish laptop)
After checking with the author and trying some things, I finally got the game to run and, friends, let me tell you, it is very well produced.
Pro-tip: it requires MacOS Catalina and x64. In order to run, you need to place the .app on the Desktop and open it with a right click > Open (if you intend to use MacOS, of course). Also works fine under Apple Silicon.
I have to be honest that it is not my usual kind of RPGs...and that's fine; if you hated my game, you will love this :P
More seriously now, it's quite engaging, very consistent graphics (no assets that look out of place).
Some cons (already shared with the author, but in a lot of places, kind of a personal opinion): sometimes, I think there's too much story - in particular, the intro is a tad too long for my taste.
I also struggled a bit with the name entry screen, as it seems to be made with mobile devices in mind. But I quickly adjusted.
Other than that, congrats on the nice work!
Thank you for going outside of your comfort zone and giving me your first impressions. 🧚