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Star Chaser's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #98 | 1.650 | 2.333 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Please see Teal's play-through video, as well as her review of the game in the video description:
Thank you for playing our Demo, it was a lot of fun watching the stream! Unfortunately we missed watching it live, so we couldn't offer any help at the time, but we do recognize that a lot of the critique is something we need to work on, such as ensuring Quests are fully working as our next priority and such. If Teal is looking to retry the Demo (or anybody is interested in trying it), we would advise that you download the provided walkthrough in case you get stuck, and that the Intro is not skipped, as it explains some of the more detailed aspects of the combat system
I mean this as respectfully as possible, but I think that your use of an installer is probably why your game still has so few ratings. As RPG Maker games are portable and fully self-contained, an installer seems extremely unnecessary. At best, people would consider it to be an unnecessary layer of annoyance for a game that is presumably only 20 mins to 1 hour long. At worst, people would consider it to be pretty shady (especially since the installer asks for administrator privileges).
It also doesn't help that there aren't any screen shots, the cover image gives no indication of what the game is about or what type of game this even is, and you didn't write a synopsis or description. So for those of us that are less cynical, there's nothing there to draw us in or make us curious enough to want to go through the hassle of using your installer, especially since there are 118 other entries to play. And for those of us who are more cynical, there's nothing there to convince us that the game even exists at all, and that this isn't just some low effort attempt to spread malware or something.
Please don't misunderstand though. I'm not accusing you of doing anything nefarious. I'm just explaining what is probably going through people's heads when they choose to pass up your game. And I'm not saying this stuff to put you down, but rather to give you advice for future jams.
Completely understandable! We made the choice to use an installer to cut down on file size for people who may have slower internet speeds and such, as well as making things easier for users who may not be using the Itch app (which is itself a kind of installer). Again, however, we aren't sure what's going on with the requirement for Admin access, or prevent players from swapping installation locations, and we only wish we could fix that without having to wait for the Game Jam Judging period to be finished
Not a fan of the installer since it doesn't let you choose where to install and asks for administrative permissions for one install option.
The story just feels a bit convoluted. Where did the demon appear from? Passability issues, such as in the lab, hidden area... can't go further.
Game doesn't tell you where to find the horn you need and if you checked the ruined house before, you might not check it again.
Looks like the game ticks using a parallel event, which is fine except it doesn't tick in battle or menus, so you can end up with over an hour of playtime and still not trigger the end.
I managed to save mom, then next cutscene, I failed to save her?
You don't seem to be able to repick your class if you don't like it.
After battling in the ship, you have ships as party members in non-ship battles.
The changing of characters was honestly annoying. Just auto set our parties when we leave if you don't really have much of a choice. Or, since you have those pilot systems, make it so that you have a formation menu where you can set your ship vs land party members and have the game automatically set them for the appropriate areas.
The temple is almost completely messed up. A few seconds of playtesting that area could have found the issues.
You can't see how much gold you have, so you have to guess or remember how many mimics you killed (because the gold on the walls don't tell you that they are gold or how much, so you don't know which is gold, if any).
Looks like you used an event to represent the player and a light as the player in the mines. This looks odd because your light moves, then the event follows. You might want to change the movement appearance to be a bit longer so it feels less like the light is moving first and change the event to move a bit higher in frequency.
The guy just kind of takes your gold ore and then... ?
One of the islands can't be visited at all.
The moment of silence is like 15~20 seconds of silence?
Eventually I just kind of gave up on doing anything and waited for the time to run out because the game really doesn't tell you what you are supposed to be doing.
Thank you for this feedback, and we will definitely be revisiting how we provided information to the player. We've received similar bug reports and issues in the past, and will be putting a lot of attention to rebuilding and rethinking aspects of the project. To elaborate on some of your concerns:
1) We apologize for the installer issue. Unfortunately, as uploads are locked for the duration of the judging period, we ask that players email us at gamespeppermint@gmail.com for a zip file if they are uncomfortable with the installer itself
2) The demon in the tutorial was chosen as a bit of a joke, as the cliche "tutorial enemy" that you often need to fight in RPG games. Upon feedback from various users, this will be revisited in the future. Could you please elaborate on what the passability issues are, such as in the lab or hidden areas?
3) Thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will revisit this segment of the opening in the future to make things clearer to the player
4) This was chosen so that players are not pressured to quickly navigate through battle or through dialogue, as opposed to an external function that could limit player experience. In retrospect, we should have limited the play length to compensate, but did not consider this at the time
5) Correct. The mother being saved (spoilers) was actually a hallucination. This comes back multiple times throughout the story, and is meant to reflect how Aarn (who is a child) is deeply affected by his loss and self-imposed failure, and so, straight away at the beginning, is already negatively affected by this occurance
6) Correct. We decided on this, as well as our class selection method, to help reflect that, although this is Aarns story, he's just a participant rather than being some kind of cliche "Chosen One" or such. Rather than getting to min-max his class or such, the focus was more on experiencing the world and adventure
7) Unfortunately this was a limitation of our experience with the engine. Attempting to hide the ship party members or keep them separated caused numerous issues with gameplay and other bugs
8) We apologize for the negative experience. As previously stated, we don't have a lot of experience with the engine, and couldn't find a smoother method to add this functionality. We also were unable to find a reliable method to have two different formations, although this is high on the list of priorities moving forwards
9) Could you please elaborate on the issues you found? We haven't found anything, but it is very likely we aren't sure what to look for, or how to recreate this
10) The Ores on the Wall are Key Items that are gathered for different Quest Lines in Dargon. The Gold Ore does not count towards your G count
11) Unfortunately this was another casualty of lack of experience. We added the light system during the final day for atmosphere, and were unable to optimize before shipping. This is something that we have already fixed, but, as previously stated, we are unable to upload the new build during the judging period for this Game Jam
12) If you are referring to the King taking your Ore, this is correct. He's not a good person, and only wants your help for a new personal swimming pool
13) Which of the planets cannot be visited? There are only 3 available planets in this Demo
14) Yes, the prayer quest line is supposed to take the player a long time. This was intentional, but will be revisited in the future
15) Thank you for raising this issue. We are definitely planning to revisit how we direct the player around the game, however, this is tricky to do due to the Open nature of this project. Unfortunately, we had to remove key aspects of the Main Quest that we originally concepted for the Demo, which would have provided more of a focus for the player
It would feel better for the player if you could better choose your class since what class you get might not feel like it fits them. (Like I didn't feel my class fit me at all because it is the opposite of my personality).
It would be better if it was more obvious that the cutscene was a hallucination. It really isn't apparent.
There is a very simple way to do it. Remove the wrong characters from the party. Use something like what you have to assign crew members. Have a slot for ground party members and a slot for ship party members. Enter an area where you need a different set of party members and the game can remove party members 2-4, add the first 3 party members of the other party based on the assigned party, remove the first party member, then add the 4th party member. If the slot is blank, then it skips that slot. It is so simple that you can almost do it without a plugin or script.
Just try walking around. The only things that are solid in the temple are space, water, and the pillars near the start. (and technically the ship and the player).
What I mean by gold is the gold ores. You need 50, but the game doesn't show you how many you have.
The moment of silence is long enough that it feels like the game just froze.
There is an easy way. Just look at games like open world games where you have a defined goal while still being somewhat open. They almost always have some sort of quest tracker that tells you what your important goals are. You can do this with key items that tell you what your current goals are, hidden items to mark completed goals, a plugin that shows you quests....
Another thing: Clean up the menu clutter. You have a ton of menus and you can easily condense them if you are using plugins anyways.
Have one menu for formations that just lets you deal with your ships and crew. (each module or w/e can just automatically reset or the ship could show you inactive slots and let you move crew out, but not in. This would make reorganizing much easier for the player). In that same menu, you could set up your ground party and then you just need an event or script that searches for these things to change your party.
You could then add a menu that lets you look at your questlines and see completed/in progress/all or whatever.
Thank you for your feedback, and there are certainly a lot of things we agree with. We will certainly improve the hallucination sequence, as well as adding to the class selection so that the player has more control over the final product
We'd also like to thank you for your suggested method in regards to the formation functionality. As we said, our team is very new to using RPGmaker, so we will certainly test the system you recommended to us, and we would like to apologize for the issue with the Temple. As stated, we can't seem to replicate the issue (even testing just now), so we aren't quite sure what's going on there, and will likely just redo the entire Temple area anyways. In regards to the moment of silence taking so long, we recognize that this is an issue, and will work to fix this in the future
You should be able to see the Gold Ore in the Key Items tab. If this isn't working, we are again confused as to what is going on, but will go through and recreate the system, as we probably missed something crucial somewhere without realizing
Unfortunately, a lot of what you have requested was content we removed from the Demo to avoid spoilers for the main game. We decided to take the gamble that the Demo would function better as a mechanics Demo instead of a gameplay Demo, and, based on community feedback, this appears to have been the wrong move. We apologize for this oversight, and plan to create a new Demo, that focuses on gameplay and addressing our player critique, once we are able to upload the next iteration of the project
The unfortunate truth of this project is that the menu clutter is actually the product of a lot of testing and optimization. The project itself has a lot of customization for the player to use, such as crewmates, matelots, item equips, crafting, and so on, and we found that the game became a lot easier when we grouped certain things together for the player to examine. That being said, we also fully take the blame for the difficulty in building your matelots and such, this was due to a lack of experience with creating our own plugins, and we could not add customization functionality inside the extra inventory screens, rather than forcing everything into the main Items screen
We apologize for the lack of Quests. As previously stated, we removed a lot of the Main Quest things from the Demo, and this removed a lot of the Quests we had originally working. Upon our redirect into a mechanics Demo, we removed certain menu options, such as a Journal (in which Aarn would write a diary, and the About information could be located), as well as a Quest screen
However, the most important thing, is that we would like to thank you for your feedback. We at Peppermint Games pride ourselves on our transparency and openness to our community. Although the community is still very small, every interaction serves as crucial feedback and important information for us, and lets us work with you to build a better product that everybody can enjoy. Your feedback on Star Chaser is not only crucial to helping us plan the next steps in our project, but it is also helping us adjust our design process and help prioritize future projects. Thank you, again, and we hope to continue interacting with you both on this topic, and on our other projects, so that we can constantly grow and improve
Gold Ore shows up, but you turned off the count for key items, so the number doesn't show up. So whether we have 1 Gold Ore, 50 Gold Ore, or 99 Gold Ore, we don't know.
Ah, we understand now. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, we must have missed a setting when setting up the plugins, and apologize for the oversight
Unfortunately I won't be playing this because it has a strange installer that insists on installing things on my C drive.
Yes, the game was packaged into an installer to provide a smaller download for users, as well as a more reliable method of providing updates. Unless there is something going on with your computer settings, however, there should be nothing preventing you from changing the installation location to something more of your preference. We suggest ensuring that the account you are using the computer on has admin access, and, if the problem still continues, please contact us at gamespeppermint@gmail.com, where we can provide a zip file of the game for your convenience
It doesn't let me choose. It goes straight to installation on my C drive. I tried both the options for "all users" and "just me" and it works the same way, whether I give it administrative privileges or not. The only options I have are (in order) "next" and "install". That's it.
In that case I'm afraid we're not sure what's going on there. There weren't any reported issues with the installed files themselves causing bugs or issues, so it should be fully safe to install it to your C drive. However, we understand that you may be reluctant to do so from an Indie developer, and would ask you to please email us at:
gamespeppermint@gmail.com
so we can create a new installer for you, or send you the zip file directly, whichever is your preference
Got stuck at both the nightmare fight and the spaceship part, base idea is good though, although i don't understand the 45 minute restriction
Hi, could you please elaborate what you mean by the spaceship part? Also, we added a 45 minute restriction to attempt to incentivize players to try different approaches, quest paths, and so forth, rather than limiting player choice to just your weapon/armor types
Well the first part with the ship in the forest WAS broken, because it kept on resetting, but it fixed itself overnight
Glad to hear that it seems to be working now! If the issue continues, please email: gamespeppermint@gmail.com, and include what steps and conditions you noticed the bug under, so we can attempt to replicate and resolve the issue