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Touch the Stars's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #65 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Cute art, although a little clunky. Nothing was really explained in battle as to the Sync ability, so I don't think it was properly implemented. I got a soft lock when I picked TigerLilly and wasn't able to go back on my save to try a different path. Perhaps give the player an option to save OR put the auto save at the choice.
Suggestion: Give some sort of tutorial for the combat, and test your game for bugs! I really hope you continue this because I like the idea of 30 something magical girls getting back into it after decades of living regular lives.
Yeah, Synchronise was a really clunky compromise to something I couldn't think of a decent implementation for and I ended up having to frantically shoehorn something in there at the last minute that I didn't have time to finish or put in a proper explanation for. It was messy, and the new way I've come up with to do it is so much easier to understand that I don't know why I didn't do it in the first place.
I'd intended on having an optional tutorial battle at the beginning, but again ran out of time before I could. Everything that's wrong with this was me not having time to put in things I had in my head, and having to go to bed 3 hours before the end so I wasn't able to do one last bug pass. The game breakers were embarrassing, to say the least. I'd meant to turn autosave off and forgot before I submitted.
The improvements coming in the next version are going to make the experience so much better it's not even funny, and I hope you'll give it a play when it's ready. :) Thanks for judging it!
Let me know when you have a version ready!
Just so you know, in the version you were able to play, only one synchronise ability worked; if you'd had both Tauria and Sagittaria use the Brave command and queued up Synchronise on both along with their respective elemental skill, they'd have combined into Volcano. It's a shame you weren't able to do that one because the action sequence human did for it is super cool. All of the dual tech action sequences look amazing, so it's gutting that the jam didn't get to see them. I'll be fixing that soon though!
The first scene made it very obvious what kind of game this was. Some issues exist.
Definitely feel like the transformation scenes could have been done better as well. Either by animating it or by making them feel more alive and flowing instead of just fitting them in place.
There are really just a lot of fights. It seemed like you could have adjusted them for fewer, but harder fights. You can end up fighting back to back and end up with a relatively black background for fights fairly easily.
Lots of buildings to block your view with no real way to tell where you and the enemies are.
Not sure why you were let go so easily when you haven't really been useful in years. Why did the doll suddenly power up your badge? Might want to add some extra lighting when the doll flashes to make it more obvious what the doll does. By that, I mean fix the lighting so that it is easier to see the badge during the scene. Right now it looks like the light is just an add white instead of add color so it just looks like someone messed with the brightness and contrast really poorly.
If you talk to the third girl first, the game just breaks. Stopped there.
Synchronization never seemed to work. I tried using all of them and two of them. Neither did anything and just wasted a turn.
Bravely Default's brave system is a bit broken for a lot of games, but autobattle works fine here.
For being experienced, your party starts off low level. This is something some games do, but it can feel a bit unnatural without a reason. Might have been more natural if you started off strong enough to just wipe out groups without a problem, then became weaker due to years of inactivity.
Seems odd how a few of those mechs cause a problem when they are so easy to defeat. Even with one hero down, it felt like you could have kept going. Felt a bit forced that they just quit after one problem.
Thanks for giving it a play!
Yeah, Kytt wants to do full animations for the transformation sequences, she's going to start working on that once her hand heals from surgery.
I agree on the fights. I'd intended to customise each kind of mech for a particular role and balance the stats, but I ran out of time before I could.
Already planning on doing outlines for when you're behind foreground objects so you can see where things are (though I might just take the foreground layer out entirely, as it doesn't have the same effect as it did when I thought of it, and I may in fact redesign that entire scene and do a proper city map you can explore rather than a "hallway")
There is actually a very good reason for all that stuff happening, but the cutscenes which explain it are later than the bugs that break the game, so nobody's seen them yet and it probably seems like a lot of coincidence. Hopefully you'll play the update and you'll be able to get the payoff for that. I agree with you on the lighting, I fired all that in really rapidly near submission time and I didn't get to do as much with the scene as I wanted. I'll be revising that for the next version.
Yeah, *none* of the girls work. I tested the scenes individually but not as part of the whole game (didn't have time because I had to go to bed earlier so I could drive my wife for her surgery appointment) and Tigerlily's scene was done in about a minute in a frenzy just before I submitted, so I didn't notice the passability bug that soft locks it. These issues will all be fixed in the update.
Synchronise was a last-minute thing. Initially my reason for using BTB was the fusions, but I didn't realise you can't do fusions with abilities from different characters, and it was a dual tech/triple tech system I wanted. I figured out a way to do them, but I didn't want the player to just spam combo attacks so I put that in there so that you'd have to use Brave and queue up Synchronise along with the elemental ability. The only one that actually works in the current game is Volcano, though. I'm redesigning this entirely; not using the BTB system any more, the elemental attacks have a TP cost, and combos only require you to be using the elemental abilities in the same turn. Synchronise is gone completely, and the girls will also have a unique mechanic each to fill in the turns you can't use their elements.
Covered the Bravely Default issue above.
I've already set the intitial levels for the girls to 5, as CruelGamer made the same point. I didn't think of this at the time, as Jane's line was just a throwaway joke and I didn't think through the implications of it, but you're both absolutely right; the team has been active for a while, and starting at level 1 makes no sense.
Had I been able to properly balance the system, Ancient Automaton would have been a lot harder and the mechs would have been a mixture of easy and challenging. Hopefully once I do that balance pass it'll feel more like the former is a serious threat. As for them quitting after one problem, I had tried to hint with Tigerlily's dialogue that she's been getting disillusioned with the whole thing for a while (she's usually pretty standoffish but she's being particularly mean to Louise, I may have to crank that up a bit), and Louise's "failure" was just one thing too much for her. Tauria's reaction was definitely forced because I needed to get the scene over with, but when I go back to designing the end of the scene I'll either add more dialogue or just fade it out on Louise stammering and then do the newspapers, so you know the Zodia Girls disappeared but don't know exactly why.
The exact nature of Louise's inability to do their quad attack is a major plot point that will come up again later.
Despite the problems already reported by other players (unfortunately, the scenes with the three friends are buggy), this is an entertaining game. I applaud the willingness to do it with self-drawn characters and maps. It gives a very personal touch to the game that I really appreciate.
As far as the storytelling goes, I think a 20 year ellipsis is a bit much for a comeback. But if we keep it, and even if the image of Louise's face seems to have aged a bit (she's what now... 38-40?), maybe some more physical changes could be good (hair color or style, different makeup, more or less weight...).
So too bad we can't already know the conclusion of the story now. Nevertheless, I can't wait to play it again once the game is optimized and finalized.
Thanks for playing it! I'm glad you found it entertaining. We definitely focused more on the story than anything else, so that's the part I'm concerned about not being well-received.
We might bring it down a notch from 20 years, as you're right that the changes to Louise's face don't indicate someone who's around 36 or so. That said, Kytt really went up against the deadline on it so we weren't able to do as much with the art as we wanted. XD
I've already got a few changes in mind that should make the overall flow a lot smoother, and iron out some of the wrinkles in the plot pacing and progression. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the next version. <3
Hi Trihan,
cool transformation sequence. As an uber male it made me feel kinda weird, but I am sure girls love it. Only thing topping that would be a full animation.
Later I had to hold back my man tears during the crazy cat lady part. And then the game broke, somehow... With Gemina being invisible and then it went full black screen visiting another character.
I would say your game is more like a visual novel than an actual rpg. And Gentleman defiantly needs a monocle, mustache and walking cane.
Anyways, keep up the good work.
We had intended to have full-on animation (and Dragonbones armatures for the battlers) but as I'm sure you can imagine it soon became apparent that we wouldn't have time! Other than Sagittaria, we had to make the other battlers static, but we'll be totally overhauling the art for the update. I'll probably stick with the comic-book style though; we may in fact lean into that and incorporate it into the rest of the game.
Yeah...the problem is that I playtested it in sections, and when I came to the last 3 hours of the jam, I was about to test it in its entirety and it was getting really early in the morning. I had to drive my wife a couple of towns over for carpal tunnel surgery, so I made the executive decision to go and get some sleep rather than risking being a zombie for the drive, meaning I had to just submit what I had and hope for the best. Turns out that in the transition to Jane's house I forgot to change the character graphic back to Louise, and for Anna's house I'd been testing something on the map and forgot to turn the sodding autorun back on that starts the event there.
It's definitely more of a visual novel ATM; I focused mainly on the story and cutscenes and had no time left to implement much in the way of gameplay (and the main gameplay aspect isn't even playable right now due to the autorun issue) but I'll be vastly expanding that in later updates.
I agree with you on The Gentleman! He actually had a mask originally but then Kytt realised she forgot to draw it in the facesets, so we had to remove it. We'll probably be toffing up his design somewhat for the next version. :)
Thank you for playing! We hope you'll give it a try once we iron out the issues.
Yeah, I noticed the save file after submitting it. Couldn't do anything about it at that point, so there it stays.
I wasn't looking for the disclaimer to be a good sign, just to be an honest admission that we ran up against a deadline and had to compromise on what we intended.
Yeah, the battles aren't balanced at all. The robots are only meant to be minions, and I didn't have time to do anything more than give them basic stats. They weren't supposed to be really tanky though. You can sort of game it if you end up against a large number of them by just running away and getting back into the battle until you have fewer of them.
There shouldn't be autobattle. It should be an option you can choose, but it shouldn't be on by default so that's definitely a bug I'll have to look into.
Yeah, the escaping is an issue I also identified after submitting it. When I go back over that I'll implement a delay to make sure you can get away if you need to. But I'll be pretty much overhauling that entire section anyway since I have more time now.
Again, the level thing is something I'd probably have thought of if I hadn't been rushing to finish things. Now that you've pointed it out, I'll probably start them at level 5 or so in the next version.
I might have missed some face replacements; the originals were a lot smaller than fit comfortably into the message box so Kytt resized them. If there are some that are different sizes that's likely my bad, and I'll be reviewing those for the update.
This was Kytt's first time doing pixel art, and with a month to get everything done and recovering from carpal tunnel surgery she couldn't get everything 100% coordinated. I also had a few times where I didn't communicate my requirements to her all that well. Now that there isn't a deadline we can take our time on the art and make sure it's consistent. Personally I think for her first ever video game jam and her first time doing that style, she did a fantastic job, but you're entitled to your opinion and obviously you're coming to it not knowing either of us or our experience.
It feels rushed because frankly it was. Executive dysfunction kicked in hard a few times and I ended up wasting too much time in the early days (despite having a really concrete idea of what I wanted to make). It got to the point where I literally just had to throw things in there so that they were there, but for the next version I'll be going over everything a lot more carefully, expanding the events so that they're not all happening at once, and making sure it's all balanced and engaging.
I'm sorry to hear you didn't have much fun with it. Hopefully you'll replay it when we've sorted out the issues and let us know if it made a difference. Thanks for the feedback.
Was there anything about it you *did* like? XD
Interesting take on the magical girl genre along with awesome art, sprites and battlers! Would be cool to see the synchronise skills fully implemented after seeing some of the WIP of those action sequences.
It's a shame there are game-breaking bugs because a sandwich-making puzzle sounds both intriguing and delicious...
Oh man you should see the other combo skills, the action sequences human did are *amazing* and I'm so gutted I didn't get to fully show off his work. Thanks for the great comments! Kytt will be happy to know you liked her art. :)
Hi Trihan, finished the game or at least as far as I could. (When I picked Anna the game froze.)
I really loved the intro, the dialogue, and ooh those transformations were such fun.
Some bugs/things I noticed:
A shame there's game breaking bugs, as I was really intrigued by what I've played. I hope you'll continue working on it :)
Yeah, unfortunately Anna's house is the map with the autorun I forgot to turn back on so it's not possible to progress after that. Did you to Tigerlily? I didn't manage to test the cutscene there to see if it worked properly. I know that Louise's sprite doesn't appear when you go to Jane's.
No, I didn't. I straight up wanted to go to best girl Anna/Sagittaria. I actually didn't save, so I can't go back to the point where I made the choice either ^^;
Oh okay, yeah the doll disappearing wasn't super clear to me.
I liked some of the music you used too btw. Hope you change the battle theme though.
Yep, that's another thing I didn't have time to sort. XD
I'm a fan of the magical girl tropes. The beginning cutscene was fun and entertaining! Here's some feedback:
It was a cute game. I enjoyed it! Also good job with the graphics! I love it when people put effort into making their own custom art.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely take it on board. :)
Thanks for the praise on the artwork! Kytt keeps thinking it was rubbish and I'm trying to convince her that people love it but she's her own worst critic.
Great work Trihan - the artwork is very cute and the music is nice. Looking forward to seeing what you'll be making next!
Thanks JD! I lucked out on finding that music for sure. Keep your eyes peeled for an update to the project that expands the story, fixes the bugs and implements the battle mechanics I had no time for. :)
Fun wee game