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Starlight Destiny's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Fun | #16 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Sound/Music | #25 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Controls / UI | #35 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Art / Graphics | #48 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
Ranked from 4 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?
Added new areas advancing the story, been rebalancing enemy stats, new party member, new items, fixed several minor bugs.
Genre #1
RPG
JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG
Rating #2
Family Friendly
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Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 7! My name's Hythrain and I'm one of the hosts and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!
Oh man, my favourite parody RPG game. XD This ended up being the second last game I played this time around, and I'm glad it was because I forgot how ridiculous it was.
I can see some passes have been made to improve the game. Things I felt like should exist didn't anymore, while some parts felt easier and others felt harder from what I vaguely remembered. As such, I'm going to address things I noticed that felt like they should be addressed. They may be things I brought before. I don't remember at all. XD ADHD is funny.
While I do appreciate the strategical aspect of changing gear to have the right spells, I also think that this system doesn't work if you can't change equipment mid-battle. Instead, what I think you should do is open up more equipment slots to allow the player to equipment more items on them. This is especially important if you're going to have spells that do no damage at all.
Second, there were a lot of aspects about Azuli that I liked that I don't recall from before. She has several support effects that I absolutely adore seeing given what her character is. I think the only thing that's missing is that these effects should be improved over time. For example, in the beginning the debuffs just do basic level while the buffs are also basic level. However, over time Azuli improves her gear which improves these effects, making them stronger buffs or letting her deal damage to the enemy while applying a debuff. This way she'll also be shown getting "stronger" to show her own personal commitment to protect Flor.
Third, I felt like some buffs and debuffs were absolutely broken for different reasons. First, the defense buff the minotaurs have was so powerful that Azuli couldn't damage them. She dealt 0 damage. This is usually a result of a damage formula that puts the effects of buffs in too early. At the same time, there were buffs and debuffs that seemed to do nothing at all, likely because the formulas aren't using them. In my experience, when I see these two specific problems at the same time in RPG Maker, it's physical damage being too affected and magic damage not being affected at all. So you should look into the damage formula and correct it, making sure all buffs and debuffs are represented yet also not making them work at the raw stat level.
This now brings me to the finale of my feedback: the game's combat itself.
In the past, I didn't judge this game's RPG Maker combat because I had seen it as just a parody game. I had assumed the plan for this game was to just let it remain as a jokey parody and to use the feedback from it for future games. However, if you're actually continuing with this project then it's time to address this: you need something unique to your gameplay. Right now, you're just a cookie cutter RPG Maker, complete with most of its faults. You need to look into doing something with your combat to stand out. It's time to break the RPG Maker mold and let yourself flex into something that works for you. What could that be? Up to you. You can even do it just visually. I can throw you an idea if you want.
Hi, thanks a lot for your continued critique!
Adding extra equipment slots is something I specifically wanted to avoid so things don't end up with the actors with huge skill lists in battle (nor managing long equipment lists either). I do agree however that it can kinda suck to run into a battle and realize you've got all the wrong skills equipped. An alternative for that would be the ability to change equipment with a cooldown of several turns before the actor can change items again. So that way the player wouldn't need to prepare everything before each battle starts but wouldn't be able to cherry-pick the items/skills every turn either, how does that sound?
Really happy to hear you liked the Azuli updates! And yeah, the basic plan for her is to give her stronger/better skill choices through new items as the game goes on.
Buff stacking keeps being troublsome I see, need to work more on that...
And yeah, this started as a one-off for another jam but then I ended up enjoying to keep working on Starlight Destiny. Agree that the combat could use a bit more shinyness at this point, although I would prefer to not make it too complicated mechanics-wise. Got some half-baked options in my head on how to spiff of combat while keeping things simple, but if you've got an idea already ready, I'm all ears!
Thank you very much for your help again!
Being able to change in combat can help, though I still think there should be some additional slots. Not a lot, either; only one or two. Would it be possible to add one more equipment slot and convert some of the items to that? Maybe make it that this slot explicitly doesn't do damage? The reason why I'm asking for this will make sense once I cover Azuli.
As for making combat unique, here's an idea that focuses more on the visual side. First, we need to change some names. MP is going to be renamed as Energy while TP will be renamed something else. I don't know what yet, but it should be something unique to Azuli. I thought "Anger" or "Rage" at first but these don't feel right. Maybe "Temper" or "Passion"? I'm going to use Temper because I think this might better reflect her and the use behind her actions.
HP, or Health, will be displayed differently by remain in a numerical sense. However, MP and TP are no longer shown as numbers unless you're choosing the attack for that character. Instead, TP is only shown when you're choosing for Azuli while Flor (And likely Lang, I've still not done anything with him) will emit auras that change based on how much energy they have remaining:
0-10% energy: no aura.
11-35% energy: faint aura
36-60% energy: medium aura
61-85% energy: strong aura
86-100% energy: Intense aura
Next, we're going to remove skills for others. For now on, Flor can't use Attack while Azuli can't use Guard. This'll make sense in a moment.
When Flor's turn comes up, rather than a menu coming up it shows an image of a staff (You could even make it that this staff changes appearance based on what she has equipped). On the staff are small pieces of wood that stick out and glow (alternative idea: make it coloured rings based on what is equipped to Flor. So instead of the items being equipped to Flor, they're put on the staff). These represent your skills (so no glow = no skill in that slot). You can still navigate them the same way (arrow keys, mouse, etc) but now when you have one selected it'll give extensive information about that skill. It'll state the name of the skill, the energy needed for the skill, the power of the skill if applicable, the type of skill via an icon (so if it's healing, it'd be a green + or something. If it does Fire damage, it'll be a flame. If it's just a buff/debuff, it'll be arrows), a text description of the skill that tries to connect back to the monster it belonged to, whatever status effects it may apply and the chance of applying said status effect. At the top of the staff is a numerical listing of how much energy Flor has left. Lastly, for when Flor can't use her skills, at the bottom of the staff are options for Guard and Items. When using Guard, she generates a small about of Health and Energy, usually enough for one turn. Oh, also Flor has a set energy of 100.
For Azuli, for her she'll still get a menu but it'll look very futuristic. It's meant to look like it's on her suit, maybe on her arm. It could also be like a cybernetic vision thing. Like Flor, it lists all her abilities flat out starting with attack. Highlighting one causes a secondary screen to appear. This screen gives the details for the skill. Since Azuli doesn't use magic, all of her attacks are just doing physical, non-elemental damage. As such, she doesn't need as much info. However, what she does need is some of her skills having higher costs while the amount of Temper she generates increases. So here's how we do that: every time Azuli does a basic attack, she generates 15 Temper. Every time she's attacked, she generates 10 Temper. Every time Flor is attacked, she generates 20 Temper. Yes, she should generate Temper when Flor is attacked. This is part of why she loses Guard. She cares more about Flor than herself, and should be more focused on helping Flor and killing enemies than on taking care of herself. Her group buffing skill now takes 20 Temper. Her dual attack skill now takes 15 Temper. Finally, she gains a starting skill that costs 100 Temper called "Temper, Temper." She'll do several attacks at once (I'm thinking, like 10) that hit random targets. However, their accuracy is reduced to give a higher miss chance (if the standard miss rate is 90%, this should be 70%). Cheer Up also restores 100 energy for Flor (if this can be used on Lang, it should only be 40 for him). Now, Cheer Up and Temper, Temper are baseline skills. All her other skills are based on her equipment. This is why I want that one extra equipment slot: Azuli has four other skills but only three equipment slots. She needs a fourth slot to allow each ability to be upgraded. Her weapon affects her dual attack, while each slot covers its own support skill. For example, upgrades improve the strength of the debuffs/buffs she applies and later on can do damage or heal at increased Temper costs.
For Lang, I'll leave that one to you. XD
I hope this gives an idea of how easy it can be to make combat more unique feeling. This is purely just a visual idea, yet its presentation makes it feel wholly different.
Welp changing names is easy, changing the battle UI and making it different for each character, now that's something I had never tried in RPG Maker and been kinda avoiding, but I guess I should try it out at this point.
You bring a lot of interesting ideas and suggestions on the graphics and base mechanics, definitely will think about, try to implement and test them. For now here's a rough initial draft of the customized battle HUD that changes between characters:
Thanks once more, that was a big help!
It's a good rough draft, yea. I'm honestly now excited to see how this turns out. :)
Gave v45 to Mr. Kuro. This time he beat the game.
Bit late reply but thank you once more!
For context, I already played the first two "chapters" that were available at the last FBQ.
It seemed like they didn't change that much, so I loaded my old save file and continued chapter 3 to see where the adventures of space-Flora, space-Angel, space-Edwin and the new space-Fabiana are going.
🧚What I liked in this game:
-The absurdish writing
-The new bgms
-The fairies are still there!
-There are now treasure chests for the fairies, too!
-The new direction of the combat. In the previous version, combats were slow and grindy with the elements having no noticeable impact and ailments having a key role to victory. However in v42 chapter 3 the battles were way too hard, as enemies were too bulky to use this approach. The additional of bigger elemental weaknesses, new equipments among which the busted healing staff or the ones who give the part a full strength/magic buff, and stat boosting items allow to break the enemies' bulkiness.
🧚What I think could be improved upon:
-The game need more polish (see the bug section)
-The moon, void, sun and plasma sector are either very easy if you have the right magic or extremely tedious if you don't. Given it isn't immediately obvious you need to ask the glasses for that info, it is very likely a player will have to experience at least one tedious version. I did for the moon sector (the fire ring not working against the ice traps let me think that clue was for enemies elemental weaknesses), and let me say you that this experience was horrible. I should the game would benefit a lot from having a more balanced approach (more challenge if you have the good magic, but less tedious if you don't). In the moon sector for example, you could add 'checkpoints' were you would be teleported to instead than at the start.
-The spaceship sprite is in a very different art style than the rest of the game
-The timer for enemy to respawn is still way too short. I could argue than for the enemies of chapter 3, they should not respawn at all if defeated until you change map. There are already enough battles as it is.
-I had to play with a keyboard as selecting enemies with the mouse is nearly impossible.
-It would be nice to see the icon of the lot you get in treasure chests, as sometimes it isn't obvious if it is an item, a weapon or an armour.
🧚Random bugs I noted:
-The fire ring doesn't help you as the moon sector contrary to what the student says you.
-Volley fire hit the party twice for some reason
-The ion ring gives you spark as skill instead of Tonitru
-Space-Fabiana doesn’t enter the party with full life
-Multiple offensive skills like spark or tsunami can be used in the main menu (for no effect)
-Force field can be used outside of battle, allowing the party to start with magic defence buffed at max.
-Ice traps from the moon sector teleport you on a student
-The text of the clue for the genetically modified alien web is cut
-Using the flurry skill (or any other one who hides the interface) to kill an enemy with a death trigger (like during the gates battles) is... interestingly bugged.
-Buff/debuff seem to sometimes fail now?
-Some passabilities in the moon sector seems badly set
-There are some inaccessible building on the space map that have an animation suggesting they can be visited.
-...
🧚Random thoughts (neither negative nor positive):
-There is really a secret Pretty Pyro season 2?
-The final gate boss is really easy as you can either stall the fight by not attacking him (which gives you the time to full buff your party and accumulate a lot TP).
-I tested briefly the start of the game, and it seemed quite easier, which is a guess a good thing I guess, given it was quite grindy before.
Seems like I forgot to speak about the hack terminal battles:
-I like the settings of them
-I like the fact that the enemies get stronger as their allies are defeated.
-They are also very big difficulty spikes which wasn't a real problem for me, but I can easily imagine some being blocked by them.
-They can become unwinnable if you kill the enemies in the "wrong order" and end up with a single very tanky enemy who is buffed by most of the 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 stars buffs at once and has a good aoe physical skill (Angelus Aegis is probably the worst in that regard).
-It isn't exactly obvious which enemy must be killed first, as the buff they give on their death seems to be arbitrary assigned to each enemy. One won't know the correct kill streak unless they try the battle at least once before.
Thank you very much for the in-depth review, glad to hear you're enjoying it and that the combat system updates are working better, I've been thinking and working on the numerous details you brought up and released an hotfix dealing with the main bugs! Some clarifications:
-For the sun/moon/void/plasma, I'll need some more time to think how to balance the terrain obstacles better (your suggestion for the moon sounds nice, but need to figure how to implement it in an efficient way code-wise), although I did fix the "warping on top of student" and expanded the NPC advice to point out that fire magic will help deal with the local enemies but not the local terrain.
-Replaced the ship sprites, hopefully new ones will fit better.
-Also increased the respawn timer and enemies in chapter 3 should not respawn if defeated until the player changes maps (or rests at the central space spot).
-The selecting with mouse is something I still need to work on because I'm using a lot of code to change sprite sizes and that seems to conflict with the mouse selection.
-Went around adding icons to the treasure chest item rewards.
-Fixed volley fire and Flurry, the combat animation plugin works in funny ways.
-4th party member now gets a full heal before joining just in case.
-Went around making the battle skills and temporary buff items useable only in actual battle (there's no Force Field skill/item, I assume you meant one that has the shield animation?)
-Suspect the buff/debuff missing was due to some hidden combat code that wasn't working properly, should be fixed now.
-Moon movement should be working more properly now too.
-The inaccessible space buildings should be accessible now, really need to improve mapping skills.
-Oh, nice of you to notice Pretty Pyro's in there, but that's mostly just a cameo (still plan to go back and finish that one, season 2 will be real to complete the cycle!)
-Still need to think of a way of making the gate boss battle more challenging.
-Early game feeling easier is definitely working as intended!
-Speaking of boss battles, the hack terminal ones ended up bugged in that the enemy buffing should've been the same regardless of which order you take them out (also removing weaker buffs when applying the stronger ones). Should be fixed now, but "arbirtrary buff stacking so that final enemy can end up too powerful if you take them out in the wrong order" sounds like something fun that could be implemented for later/extra bosses.
Thanks once more!
(Feedback fairyloading)
Is it normal I have so many equip slots or is it a bug due to the fact I reused my old save?
That's definitely a bug from using an old save because she has the "Draconic Envoy" class when it should be Martial Maiden. I recall earlier versions of the game had her character slot use Draconic Envoy class, something I experimented with during the initial game development before the 4th player member actually became playable. I suppose that if you're using an earlier save, she got stuck with the old class too that has those whacky move slots.
You could restart the game from scratch, or if you wait a bit I can upload an hotfix that stealth-changes her class to Martial Maiden when she joins and at the main space healing spot.
I can do the fix myself if it is as easy as giving her the correct class.
Great! I tested it just now and changing her class should fix her equipment slots, the stats should be corrected too since they have different progressions between the classes. Just seems like any permanent stat booster that was used on her would be lost when changing classes.
Was going to say the game looked like last time I tested it with mid-game enemies way too strong, but it seems like I was on the old version 42 while you were sneakily updating to version 44. I will wait until you are done with updates, then.
Was having some net problems at the end of the deadline and couldn't upload the version 0.44 before the deadline finished (and seems like I managed to delete version 0.43), that's how that happened, sorry for the trouble!
However the version 0.44 is the one that I intended to submit to this jam, so feel free to try this one out. Unless any new big problems are found, my plan is to take more time for the next update so I can make the next main areas and story segments, otherwise I fear getting stuck making only small changes when the main plot isn't finished yet.
In that case I will try version 0.44. 🧚
I love your games! I skipped this Jam due to no significant updates made yet (v0.031 is not officially released), but I would like to rate you once again! And just a reminder, alongside with Pyro, Cryo, Anemo, similar wood spell should be called Dendro.