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A Fool's Errand's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #34 | 3.545 | 3.545 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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I beat this pretty easily. A few issues.
When you transition, you can see your character in a black screen for a moment. Instead, add a fadein on the transition target and pop your character in before the fadein there instead of fading in first then transitioning.
Spikes cannot kill you, so you can just be at 1 hp and run all the way to the final save room, then teleport back and farm the first floor with the gear you've collected.
The vending machines make it very easy to accidentally buy an item.
It is, in theory, possible to beat the game in two days (of 7) if you buy the right items the first time around.
The pistol upgrade has the wrong skill attached.
The first floor is the best place to farm for levels because it is easy to kill the enemies and with enough defense, the enemies can't hurt you. Especially if you have the thorn armor or the demon gear.
Didn't see any use at all for collecting all four cards, not sure if there was anything regarding that or if they were actually useless.
The shotgun is honestly pretty weak for how late you get it.
The healing items seem best used outside of battle and only when you are farming. Otherwise, it is better to stay at 1 hp and keep thorn on.
One of the enemies has an absurdly high counter rate, making thorn armor almost necessary as a way to kill it, but you only get thorn armor as a random drop or in a later chest.
You can die in the tutorial-if you end the tutorial with 0 hp, it games over. Maybe have an event that checks if the player's hp is 0 and heal them if it is. Or have an invincibility state, revive the player AND full heal after the battle, THEN remove the invincibility state.
incredible art!! how did you learn to make pixel art like that?
incredible art!! how did you learn to make pixel art like that?
I just tried your game and died before reaching even floor 10. The spikes really did me in and a battle finished me off. I gotta agree with Drifty on this one, it seems hard for the sake of being hard. The lack of money and the heavy pricing made me quite nervous to even spend anything.
Some small bugs:
I do want to say that I really like your art; it's quite amazing what you've accomplished in one month. I was also impressed with your world building. I felt like I got a pretty good grasp of it, even though I only played for a bit.
Thank you, I'm happy you gave it a shot, The spikes didn't have invinceibility frames and are probably the hardest part of the game because I didn't have the time to fix them. In terms of money, the balancing of the money was really held back because of some of the armor and weapons you can get slightly later in the dungeon, if you're able to get past the first hump the game gets almost brainlessly easy. The main things that I ended up buying in my very rushed playesting was healing items, so compared to the other items they end up being extremely cheap. Sorry you had a tough time with the beginning of the game. I'm working on an update to the game so if you're interested than make sure to check again later!
You play as a police officer in a cute pixel art world. There are tons of pseudo-secrets and interactable events.
The sound effects could of been picked better and they become grating very quick especially if you don't immediately turn them down.
Giving enemies counterattack leads to unnecessary frustration and the battle system is ultimately imbalanced.
The 'Save Room' should have been called 'Safe Room' where you restore HP/EN. Because of all the spikes you have to dodge you end up with 1 HP even when your using all your items. Super hard for no reason. I don't know how you're expected to do this without save scrubbing and avoiding all combats after you have no items or HP and no way to restore life except by passing the day, but that involves backtracking through several maps and cutscenes and is also limited to only 7 days(Times you can recover HP).
There's no 'reset puzzle' button so when you get yourself stuck in the blocks you just have to end the game and load, and if you happen to save the game in that position, well you better start a new game because that file is now borked.
The items you get don't make sense level wise. The cost of some items is too high and some are too low, it all feels arbitrary. You should get stronger items as you go deeper, not weaker gear. Also why no healing items? When you lose all you HP to spikes over and over you have to run from every fight and when you fail to or get ambushed, you just die. The whole save scrub again try again is not a fun process. Sure you can buy a few healing items in town, but you don't get nearly enough money to get what you need.
This game suffers from what many RPG Maker games suffer from, stingy design. Instead, you should be generous to your players and give them more for their efforts.
Congratulations on submitting a project to the game jam, that's something you could look at as a victory no matter what reviews you get. Another project to add to your portfolio. Thanks for participating.
Thanks for the criticism, In terms of the puzzles there is a way to reset them, you can go to the "up" stairs and press last floor, and then go down again, which will also reload the room, but I understand that's a really weird way that should be communicated to the player. In terms of balancing I understand your complaints but I atleast hope you understand that balancing is a tricky beast as another player who played the game thought it to be way too easy specifically because of the items I gave the player and whatnot. Also the spike issue is one I noticed after the jam, it's supposed to only do 5 damage but I made the common mistake of not implementing invincibility frames. Thank you for playing and I hope you'll revisit the game sometime as I have a major overhaul of the balancing and a lot of bugfixes to make the game better planned fairly soon!
Finished this one in a single sitting that took me about 45 minutes. Absolutely adore the graphics of this one and the theme of the game jam was very uniquely interpreted. Music was also great with an absolute banger of a track playing within the dungeon! Only had tiny gripes with the game like the anticlimactic ending sequence or graphical issues like the hero being visible during some screen transitions or the head of a NPC vanishing behind a door. But all in all a really good game. Well done!
Thank you so much! I'm happy you enjoyed it.
An interesting game with nice pixelated graphics (I really like the change of view in the city) and a storytelling worthy of a real TV detective series. The music selection is also well suited to the theme.
However, I find that the game lacks a bit of "life", the NPCs are too static or wander aimlessly... like me after receiving the mission from my boss. Too bad, because the potential is there. Nevertheless, I'll keep this game under my hat to play it again later.
Note: evaluation made on the 20 minutes I give myself to test each game of the contest.
Sorry you got lost, the point of that section was to look around for the criminal nearby but I definitely should've given the player more hints, thanks for giving the game a shot and I hope you'll revisit it sometime, I plan on doing a remake later down the line to make things more clear to the player and also to fix bugs that resulted from rushing and whatnot.
I would definitely come back and play!
Sorry you got stuck. In the part of the city called "Main Street" you can go to the "UPD" Or Utopolis Police Department, which is where Toil was getting called to go into, when you find the blue building with their logo, go inside and go in the back to talk to the cheif, hopefully what he says should tell you what you need to do.