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Born of the Solstice's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #19 | 4.105 | 4.105 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I'm not usually a fan of ARPG games, but this one was a lot of fun. Using a controller felt intuitive and the movement was smooth. It was also very straightforward getting from point to point. I will say that it felt a bit too dark in most areas.
Suggestion: Lighten up the game. I actually found the controls pretty great.
We're glad you enjoyed our game! I was scared that you were going to run into a game-breaking bug mid-stream, but making it past that was good luck. We're going to update the game to be lighter along with patching that game-breaker and a multitude of other fixes.
I couldn't make a video on this game but I had to at least leave a comment on how much I liked this game. It reminds me of the old days I played similar games on the GBA!
I do feel RPG maker isn't a good mix with this gameplay style but I adore the effort to make it work! There's a kinks to work out but I think you can find work arounds!
Just a few remarks:
With all that said, I loved it! Keep it up!
I (=Luna) died on the first enemies xD I tried to hit the ESC button, so she could use the grapes/berries that was left behind by the enemy to restore HP, but apparently it doesn't work when there's enemies around?
Some of the enemies are also cut in half when idle.
That's a problem with using an active battle system. We're working on that for the next update or two. In addition, the update will feature a tutorial battle that is designed to never be lost, so you can learn the combat without fear of first-fight game over.
Yeah, I'll try again when the updated version is out. I was able to catch some Let's Plays and it looks really good btw. Kudos to you two!
I was hoping to make such ARPG games for myself but when I found this game, this is such a masterpiece. The control seems fine (I love spamming dodge everytime) and the story seems great when it's all about Sun and Moon. I wish to see another game like this :3
I'm glad you liked the game! After the judging is finished, we plan on updating the game to include Sol as a playable protagonist and bring more areas to explore. We've already got lots of changes in the pipeline.
I enjoyed playing this game very much. :) I already see that bugs have been pointed out to you in the comments so I won't dwell on it.
The highlight of the game, for me, is the story: the two main characters are really well done, I was so intrigued at one point in the plot for their interactions. All other game elements such as music or game mechanics are fine, in view of the limited time I think you did a great job!
Thank you very much for playing the game, and I’m so glad you enjoyed it! :D
I must be dense but I have no idea where I'm supposed to go next. I think I'm supposed to go to a cave but there doesn't seem to be one in town and every time I try to leave I get a message telling me not to go too far. Seems like a pretty cool game so far, but really dark, as in hard to see. I felt like I was breaking into the library after hours, for instance. Love the music, and the graphics are very nice besides being too dark and all.
Well I found the way into the cave. I swear I tried to go that way several times though and it was blocked. XD
it’s all good. Yeah that area is way too dark. That needs to be fixed. Sorry about that.
The day/night cycle is really nice. I like that the music is muted at night. It's a bad idea to leave this game running while you eat some fries tho. The woods fill up with enemies quickly. Couldn't figure out how to use the potion to heal. I did figure out to press 1 for fireball, but the rest I haven't figured out yet. The battle engine is fun, but I wish I could block. I'll give this another go soon, I just wish there was a way to save cuz the first time I just wasn't paying enough attention and got to aggressive and died. The second time I probably should have just reset instead of trying to fight that many enemies. But I didn't want to lose my level and items and abilities. Ah well, better luck next time I hope LOL.
I see. When you press Esc and hit main menu from there it will bring up the menu where you can save. Thanks for playing it!
Oh I was worried that would take me to the start menu. XD I should have tried it at least once LOL.
ANNOUNCEMENT: There is a bug in the second boss battle that could result in freezing the game. To avoid this, rush to the very top of the screen between each wave of enemies. There are 4 waves.
If you see five enemies in a wave, you're in the clear for that round. If you see fewer than five enemies spawn, you will have to reload an earlier save. Loading an autosave made during the fight does not work.
This game has an interesting topic. I really enjoyed the beautiful graphics and the creation of the 2 reincarnated characters of Luna and Sol. The very fun combat system and the bosses were short and sweet but to the point. I love the choice of music and the dialogue wasn't too much and quick to the action. Nice job overall!
Thank you very much! I’m so glad you enjoyed it! It was fun watching you. :)
All the positive and negative aspects of the game have already been described in detail before me, so I will only say from myself that I really liked your game. Very sincere, light (in terms of perception, atmosphere), and beautiful.
I would also like to note that I liked your characters created in the generator. As far as I have noticed, not everyone manages to create beautiful, organic characters, but you have more than succeeded!
Thank you for a great game, it will be one of the examples of what I (and other developers) need to strive for in terms of quality :)
Thank you so very much for your kind words and I’m so glad you enjoyed the game!
Nice splash screen, and I tend to like voice acting in RPGs. Clicking off the screen during voice acted cutscene can cause the game to freeze and go to a blank screen. The character moves too fast. This is like the first game ever that I've decided to turn OFF auto-dash.
The maps are a little dark, it wouldn't hurt to brighten them up a bit, you can still portray 'night time' by adding a blue tint. Movies and games do it all the time and it can work quite well, much better than just making the game overly dark. That's more of thing reserved for horror games.
It's not clear where you're supposed to go at the beginning, a little help from the game would be nice. Like for example a light in an area that the player should be heading to next. since the map is so dark.
I like the shorthand menu, which leads into the traditional Scene_Menu screen.
I like the accidental teleportation thing, I used it in my MV title "The Legend of Driftwood" as well. Not sure if it's a trope or used in other games (I'm sure it's been used before) but I liked your execution of it.
Some of the dialog is boring to get through, but there are moments where the story is good. Just a note with the whole "one was born from the light of the sun and one from the glow of the moon thing", the moon glows because the sun's light is reflecting off of it, as I'm sure you are aware, but it just kind of sounds ridiculous the way it's delivered.
There's a lot of talking and dialog before you get to any action and that's an issue I have with this game. You need to show, not tell. Get straight to the action at the beginning of your game. Then you can deliver the dialog after you invest the impatient player.
The game does give plenty of money and potions are not expensive, so there's not a huge issue with a few wasted items, but I want to suggest a system that you could implement in the future. Look at how Secret of Mana and Secret of Evermore lets you use items in combat with a radial menu, that would fit nice in here.
There are too many animations on the screen at any one time during combat, and it's hard for they eye to track what it's supposed to be watching. The enemy gets completely drowned out and you can't even tell if it's dead yet so you just spam attack like crazy until everything stops. The fire animation shouldn't play every time you hit something with your sword, that's overkill. Also the enemy AI seems too basic and all the enemies are just thorny punching bags mostly. Try to make them feel different if you can.
The maps are pretty, but a little too dark at times.
I like the boss battles with this system, it kind of has a Crystalis vibe to it. (An NES classic Adventure Action RPG). One of my favorite games when I was a kid, so nice job bringing a hint of nostalgia. Unfortunately one of the boss battles locked me in the game forever... I am forever trapped by Eridanus... no seriously... I'm forever trapped, there's a game breaking bug here.
Nice job with the music and sound design, I really like your choices. This game has potential and I'm glad you submitted a project to the game jam. Well done! :)
Thank you very much for playing it and I really am glad we could bring you some nostalgia. And yes the maps were definitely too dark and definitely needs to be brighter. Thank you for those suggestions with the blue tone. That’s a great idea. And yes, I think the speed was too fast. That’s definitely my doing. I adjusted the speed for testing purposes and forgot to change it back. I agree the enemy AI needs improvement for sure. And I’m sorry you ran into the bug near the second boss. That doesn’t happen often and I’ve already figured out a way to fix it. And yes, a better way to display where you need to go would be helpful. Planning on adding in a minimap to fix this for future updates and possibly disable the fast travel map in the menu. And the story needs some work for sure. There are definite plot holes that need to be addressed which was mostly caused due to lack of time to enhance the story as much as we wanted. I agree on there being too much dialogue in certain cut scenes. Agree on the animations. Glad you brought that up. The radial menu sounds like a fantastic idea to help enhance the battle system. As there are times players would like to use more than one tool. Once again, thanks for playing it and thank you for the excellent feedback. Given me some stuff to think about for sure.
Hi, I played your game.
The story is interesting! I assume it takes inspiration from the Chinese/Japanese folklore of the Star-Crossed Lovers? I like how the characters' dynamics change over the course of the story.
The combat takes a while to get used to, but it was fun! Although, the enemy being stunlocked after a combo can be easily abused by the player by button mashing. Also, I don't know if this is a bug or if I missed something - when Luna's HP goes to 0, she can still walk around and grab items, but as the player I can't access the menu screen.
Overall a fun action RPG with a lighthearted story; all it needs is more polish. Thank you for the experience!
Thanks for playing it! Yeah that bug definitely needs to be fixed with the player dying and not going to game over. It will eventually game over after Sol is defeated. Thanks for your feedback! Have a great day!
Definitely somewhat fun, I recognize some of these effects so I assume you used plugins for a lot of stuff.
Unsorted list of issues:
No way to return to default settings, this means you can't change the window screen color back to default because of how the plugin is set up.
The menu sound choice of not having a sound when opening it, but having a sound when closing is a bit weird. Might want to consider adjusting that.
The map is a bit annoying to get to, as are some of the other menu options. Might have been worth hotkeying the map.
The skill assignments are really weird since they give you controller prompts even on a keyboard. Keyboard controls are a bit awkward. Hard to attack, dodge, and use your skills. QWE would have been better as an option or what might have been better would be the ability to customize your controls.
For the UI, might want to consider adding a fade option.
When running, the default attacks show up behind you. One the of the weapons, the Astro Dagger, has no attack animation so you can't attack with it.
The boots of Magus have Lunge attached, but it isn't mentioned.
Some passability/layering issues such as in the tables/flowers in the library, the fish net and nearby object in the river area, the monument in the cave, and the chandelier shadows.
How is the old man able to just teleport between dimensions?
During one of the cutscenes, only some enemies show their nameplates, so it looks weird.
Mushroom sprites are messed up.
Items can disappear during cutscenes, maybe have an auto-pickup? Some later enemies seem to not drop gold and some of the earlier enemies seem to stop spawning.
You can't use a gauntlet with the spear, but you can use a gauntlet with every other non-Sol weapon?
The Major just goes poof when you fight Minor and only appears after the cutscene. Also, the bears don't aggro you immediately even though it would make sense to.
The tentacle monster looks a bit weird on the wood. Might have been better to have the fight on shallow water instead.
The volcano area is really dark for being a volcano full of glowing areas.
One of the maps looks really similar to another map, making it hard to recognize as a different map.
Enemies can spawn while in the menu.
The control guide disappears fairly quickly.
The spikeball is pretty OP to the point that Giga Shock isn't that useful because you have to sacrifice the HP regen for Giga Shock and the spikeball basically does about the same thing as Giga Shock except smaller range.
You can walk on the sky.
Enemies seem to only attack on four planes instead of 8, so you can easily dodge by staying diagonal.
Seems really weird to just randomly have a Japanese word.
In the post-game area, you are invisible.
Thank you for streaming the game, and we appreciate the honest review! We're definitely aware of the multiple bugs you listed, such as weapon animations and graphical issues, but time constraints kept those from being ironed out. Hotkeying certain things like the map is definitely a good idea. That is now on the list of things for the update. As for the skill keys, we tried to change the UI to show numbers rather than controller inputs, but could not do that in time. We are aware of many collision and layer issues, and we're very glad you pointed out some that we failed to notice in testing such as the net at the river west of town. We'll take care of that for the update. The water boss arena was created on short notice. My co-developer specifically suggested what you said to add shallow water, but we couldn't find any tileset that suited our vision. We can definitely change the lighting on the volcano path, that's an easy fix. And the invisible players at the end was our mistake. We forgot to change the transparency back after the transition. A lot of items we have in the game are admittedly unbalanced. We wanted to make it so the player could get to the end in under an hour, but certain tactics can potentially shorten it to under 20 minutes, such as using the highly overpowered Spike Ball. We plan on weakening that attack by either doing less damage per hit, or making it roll much faster. As for the creative choices, Lee has a connection with the Moon or Sun clan depending on who you're playing as (Sol will be playable in a future update), and therefore has been taught powerful magic. The enemies in the volcano deliberately don't drop money so you can't cheese skipping the boss fight (you can refuse twice or have too little money in order to fight it). In conclusion, yours has to be the best review we've seen so far. It's in-depth but does not antagonize, and it shows you put thought in how it can improve. Thanks again for playing the game! Have a great day!
I am trying to learn how to give better feedback.
On thing you might have tried would've been to take the beach tileset and add a B/C/D/E or such tileset with the purpose of a single tile with a darkening/lightening screentone-like pattern (look up how manga artists use screentones to shade and such). Have that as a passable 'grass/brush' tile and then have that on a higher layer than the water. This way, it will look like lighter/darker water and your character can walk on/in it with only half of their body showing so it looks like they are walking through water that is high, but not so high that they can't wade through. You might need to add some border tiles as well, but those would be pretty easy once you have a pattern to use.
We're in the process of fixing as many issues in the game as we are being told. The water boss arena specifically is getting a lot of much-needed attention, in that waves will be ever so slightly shorter and there will be shallow water to make the tentacles not seem as out of place. The rest of your points will be addressed, but we decided to handle the major game-breaker first. Thanks for your feedback!
I like the character designs and overall aesthetic of it, as well as the music, especially in the forest and in the final area. This game is pretty cute and reminds me of Secret of Mana in its gameplay design. However, I quickly found that it is very easy to annihilate all the enemies and bosses by setting Sol to aggro them while you mash attack at a diagonal angle; they can't do anything. Overall, this does have good potential to be expanded upon, but I do recommend improving the enemy AI. The sparks are there for something truly special.
Thank you so much for your review. Yes I acknowledge that the enemy AI definitely needs to be improved. We didn’t have much time left to improve it as much as I wanted to. And there are certain skills that need some nerfing to make them less OP. Thanks for trying it out.
No problem! I'd love to see a full-on take on this game. Mana-style action RPGs are something I crave. Looking forward to your future projects.
The most accomplished game I've played so far since the submission deadline ended. Nice design and gameplay work, rich and varied environments, a nice sound ambiance and a rather interesting story, a game I'll keep aside to finish it until the end (I restrict myself to 20 minutes per game to be able to evaluate as much of them as possible).
On the negative side, I would say: some small collision bugs (for example, you go through a suspended net), not easy to play without controllers (but not impossible), and too dark light at the beginning of the game (it took me at least 10 minutes to find the cave, finally by chance).
But a nice achievement, congratulations.
Thanks for playing and thank you for your honest review! Yes we tried to find a majority of the collision issues and it was dark in a lot of areas in my experience too. We were more focused on looking for game breaking bugs for this go round but that is something that we definitely plan to fix post contest. I want to eventually add a way for the player to choose to play in the sunlight or the moonlight.
I completely understand the difficulty of going into so much detail in so little time. Your suggestion to choose the sunlight-moonlight atmosphere (a nod to the two heroes) is a good idea. So I look forward to playing the final version of the game.
Good luck with the jam.
I love how this game turned out! It could have been a tad longer, but it shows we put our hearts into making it! I wish we could have fixed EVERY bug, but it's better to get something out than to miss the deadline.
Thank you very much!