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Verloren's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound/Music | #2 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Art / Graphics | #2 | 4.250 | 4.250 |
| Controls / UI | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall Fun | #4 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I played for about an hour and even though I'm not really a heavy story player, it was a lot of fun. However, it was very easy for me to get lost at the beginning while playing because the levels look similar
Lots of background story that gives a nice idea of the game world. I really really liked that. When I have a little more time, I will definitely continue playing.
The floors of the tower being too similar was actually a point brought up during the last feedbackquest. To remedy to that, I added some signs next to the stairs to highlight the main places of the modt confusing floors. I guess I could add some more. Which were the floors you had the most trouble to differentiate?
In any case, I would be super happy to read your feedback concerning the continuation of your adventure.
I put a bit more than an hour into this game. Art and sound design on point, nice animations setup, I'm jealous for my own game! The combat system seems interesting, Haven't seen a lot of CTB battle systems so no strong opinion either way. Was curious to experiment with it more, but there wasn't enough combat early on to really judge..
I agree with the other comment about the opening cutscene tho. I liked the story it presented. But even though it's action packed and flashy, it still just FEELS long, since It's not very interactive and doesn't try to teach you any gameplay. By the time the player can press buttons, It's with a different cast of characters, in a different setting, in a different time period.
The cutscene sold me on "Wizard Mom fights Big Castle Government". You got me, I'm interested in that story now! I connected to THOSE characters, Wizard Mom, her snarky pursuers and the world you displayed there...
But the transition to the intended setting (the wizard school) totally lost me and according to the description on the page, that's what the game is actually about. With a bit more than an hour, I care way more about the story in the cutscene than I do anybody/thing I met in the school area. Slice of life school anime are not really my cup of tea. But Wizard battles certainly are. A dilemma of personal taste, perhaps.
Hopefully the story threads together later on, but that's all the time/energy I had for now!
I don't know how to answer without spoiling too much, so let's just say that the "anime school life" setting lasts until the start of the competition after which the game starts in another direction. From your comment, I guess that the intro and the game pitch don't do enough to suggest that there is way more in this game?
Hmm, It sounds like I just needed to get a bit farther in, I'll have to come back to it if I can. The curse of RPGs, they take time :)
One quick thing could be to put a message up after the "epic" part of the intro, explaining "And so 18 years peacefully passed.." or something, before opening at the "am I late for school" part. It took a minute to realize what sort of jump in time/setting had happened.
Yeah, that is why I try to play jrpgs either 3 hours or until the end before giving my advice, as jrpgs are hard to judge correctly/fairly in a short amount of time.
Great game but I thought the intro was a bit too long and confusing. I'm not sure who am I supposed to be, what am I doing here, who are these other people and I can't even control my character during all those scenes. A skip story button would probably be very useful too.
Hello Magno,
I have a little question following your comment: if a story skip button existed, in which situation would you have used it?
When replaying the game or if a player wanted to skip the story altogether and just sample the gameplay (which I think would be very rare).
My personal experience:
I played your game twice. The first time I went as far as the first introduction of the baby. By then the story was taking so long I decided to quit, it didn't hook me to keep investing in it.
The second time I just skipped through dialog (and that's when the skip story would've been extra helpful) so I could actually play the game so I could make a more accurate assessment to rate the game.
Fun fact, the intro is the only part that can be skipped. It however requires to have the first achievement, who is unlocked... after finishing the intro, following the traditional visual novel approach of not allowing the player to skip things they never saw before.
I thought a while ago about adding a skip button, but I lacked the usage cases needed to justify working on that rather than keeping the current skip dialogue + fast forward combo. Verloren is a linear game, it doesn't aim to be highly replayable. It has achievements but there are there mostly there to highlight the game's secrets. The main reason someone would want to replay parts of the game would be to see how the events change following a different player choice, which isn't exactly a situation where a skip would help.
Concerning people wanting to skip through the cutscenes to go straight the gameplay, I'm a bit confused about how such feature will really appeal to that kind of players. Let's imagine the best case scenario with a player who don't care about the story but loves the gameplay. What would keep them motivated to continue playing if they skipped everything about the characters and the previous events? It is a genuine question, I don't have an answer to it, it is pretty hard to me to imagine someone playing like this.
In any case, thanks for your replies. 🧚
The problem is not having a story is having too much all at once. I like what I saw in a game design video that mentioned that games are interactive media so you need player interaction. Maybe you could let the player fight some soldiers by themselves? Explore 1 or 2 rooms in the castle? You don't need nor should give a lot of freedom but just enough so we can get a brake and play for ourselves.
And I think if you start collecting player input and add a skip button you'll see more than a few players skipping the occasional scene especially if it's not something that is hooking them up, if it looks long, slow, and repetitive, if you can get a TLDR version. I'm not saying it's your case, I'm just saying it's nice to have the option.
Changelog since the last Feedback Quest event:
TLDR:
-Added VN-style illustrations
-Added new artworks for some key items
-Added 2 hours worth of gameplay at the end of the game
-New feature: the costumes. They allow you to change the appearance of all the playable characters
Full changelog (last Feedback Quest event was version 42)