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A jam submission

Echoes of the Stars: RPG DemoView game page

A 2d stylized, single-player, story-focused, hack and slash, spectacle action RPG.
Submitted by Alchimia Studios (@AlchimiaStudios) — 16 hours, 25 minutes before the deadline
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Echoes of the Stars: RPG Demo's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Art / Graphics#54.7504.750
Sound/Music#94.5004.500
Controls / UI#353.7503.750
Overall Fun#423.7503.750

Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Genre #1

RPG

JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG

Rating #2

Family Friendly

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Comments

Jam Host (2 edits) (+1)

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!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

At first I thought I would be reviewing this on just its gameplay, but as I rolled into the last 10 minutes of it things rolled in directions I didn't expect. Fallen and Descended and liches and two seemingly cosmic beings who are trapped? That got my curious. So allow me to speak on the combat and then I'll cover the story.

What's presented is an action RPG with two characters that can level up. You're capable of switching between the two characters. Each has their own sets of abilities and their own health and mana/MP levels. To ensure the other character isn't standing around, you have an auto-fight feature in the character currently not being controlled.

However, it's obvious that the programming for all of this is very primitive. Rather than separate levels, the party shares a level. Rather than be based on proximity to a fight, the autofight is based on solely on if the enemy is spawned. Meanwhile, spawns in some areas are based on when you pass a certain point. After that, the enemy remains spawned if you return to the room. This means if you backtrack, the other character will go start fighting all the way through the arena. Also, it seems that when you're not controlling them, the second character can't get hurt. Also, the floating eye enemies ALWAYS will dash to the right rather than "away" from the player.

And this is before I get into things like the combat design, how useless the archer character is save for one thing, and how a lack of proper combat programming makes several fights (including the boss) predictable and easy to do.

There are a lot of elements that need to be overhauled. That said, given the perspective you're going for with your game, there's one game I can point to that might be able to give you ideas for combat - Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Not Re: Chain of Memorie, the 3D remake, the original on GBA. Combat occurs on a similar plain design as your game does, and Kingdom Hearts has always traditionally been an action RPG like yours. It's a great game to view at to see what sorts of things you can do with your combat.

This gets me into your story, and the first thing I wanna say is... the voice lines are so slow. Some of them feel like they're dragged out way too long. The lich in particular has one line with an insanely long pause. While other parts were just so slow that I skipped dialogue to get through more. I think the only section I didn't rush was the last scene. Speaking of that last scene, an interesting tale you're weaving here. It starts with two eternal cosmic beings who are like gods. They are trapped in this realm for some reason, and freedom for one means freedom for both. Yet one side has reason to not let the other one free due to how one spends their time just trying to destroy the realm they're trapped in while the other tries to nurture it, to the point where she banged a mortal and popped out a baby to create a bloodline that held strong powers of light that could be used to protect mortal kind.

I bring this all up because... I feel like this story begins too far into it. I'm assuming what's revealed is just for demo purposes and that, in reality, the game's start will be before where it begins here. Just in case, though, let me act like this is the intended start and ensure everything gets said.  Starting the game earlier in the actual story prevents having large holes left that the player may wonder about. It's okay to have one or two holes, but there were quite a few that should be filled. Starting earlier could also be used to help establish its world and rules more before the player first meets the two gods, which would make their reveal as figures be all the more important since you'd have far more understanding of how the world operates when they do first appear.

Overall, I am intrigued and want to see more. I hope my suggestion for a game to look at helps out.

Edit: I realized some other things I should've brought up about gameplay: while I'm not a fan of the notion of being equipped with 6 different weapons, if you're going to do this then at least ensure people can read the stats on equipment that is currently equipped. Right now, a player needs to rotate through all their equipment to ensure they're replacing the right weapons. Also, the set-up for spells should 100% be changed as well as possible to read up on each ability does.

Jam Host (3 edits) (+1)

Welcome to FeedbackQuest! I am one of the co-host streamer manager here. I found something that is similar to a bug issue, Rin's bow doesn't come up when no enemy is present, sometimes the key prompt does not come up near the bridge for me to shoot it down, that might be an issue for smooth playthrough. Also find myself smashing buttons trying to locate the interactive key, so I suggest a key prompt with the letters on screen to interact with object would work better. Overall beautiful game, a lot of heart, keep it going.  Pretty much 5 stars except control. Ganbatte! :D 

I played your game slightly, due to time constraint not very deep into it yet. 1:44:43 Echoes of the Stars

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for the feedback and bug report!

(+2)

Tried the demo for Feedback Quest 7. Pretty fun overall, love the character design and the voice acting! Some of the enemies felt a bit like damage sponges. The sandwich minigame isn't intuitive--I just spammed buttons until I got it to work. Otherwise, pretty good!

I found a graphical glitch in the Castle, which occurred when I went into a corner. Can send the clip if you'd like. Also, several times the characters would keep running in place or there was a sound like they were still running during cut scenes.

Keep up the good work!

Jam Host

Do you have a VOD somewhere would love to see it attached to your comment. :D 

(+1)

I uploaded it to youtube; this link starts at the exact switch over!

Jam Host(+1)

awesome, I added your VODs to FeedbackQuest playlist. :D Thank you so much!

Developer(+2)

Thank you for playing! I think I've tracked that bug down now, I appreciate it!

(2 edits) (+2)

Hello, I tried out the demo and I have some thoughts. First of all, the voice acting caught my attention and I started to get invested to it. It was a good start to a demo in my opinion.

In terms of battles, I think the damage needs more "feedback".  I'm no expert in action battle, but it doesn't feel 'good' as in some other ARPG like kingdom hearts. Also it feels like enemies have too much HP and the demo feels slow.  And overall it feels repetitive in the first few minutes.

And finally the game had a weird bug at door '4' where my party suddenly stand together at a corner and cannot move. It was resolved by changing character.

Hope these help your further development.