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Sephira Tale ~First Outing~'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fan Favorite | #56 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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There was some cool stuff about this game - the scion lore, animal characters, beautiful environments, colorful characters all created a nice land to explore. Saw a few cool action sequences in there too, which I always love.
However, I feel like it was hindered a lot by the combat and exploration that made it feel frustrating to try to get from point A to point B. A list of things worth addressing in future projects.
- Beginning troops have 3 enemies
- Enemies take 2 or more hits to defeat so you have to wait for a loooong time to beat them all.
- Cast animation slows combat down even more.
- ATB slows it down even more
- Running from enemies usually results in an immediate battle
- Large maps mean getting to another end of the map without battling could result in 30 enemies following you, and getting stuck fighting all of them
These little problems add up and made the game a bit frustrating to start out. Hope that's helpful!
Thank you for the feedback, this will be useful information to work with!
I really loved playing through this. At first I thought I'd play around 1 hour of the game only to find out it's now been 4 hours since I started! You did a great job, your game has really gotten me hooked! I did encounter an error that forced me to exit the game. I'm not sure what caused this, as I was really just grinding levels but something like "Type error "list" not found" and i'm not sure why it did that? it happened near one of the waterfall areas, if that helps anything. All in all, really polished game like everyone says. I love the battle animations too! well done!
This game has beautiful mapping and design. I love the action sequencing and the moves feel natural. Very big outworld maps, can get lost and sidetracked because the enemies are chasing you like you stole their rent money. a little on the easy side and bosses should've had BOSS music. Not really a long game or if you know what u r doing. some dialogue isn't really necessary but u can feel the murderous tones from the sephrians and boaths. great lore and story just wish the enemies weren't so aggressive!!!!!
Might be the most polished touch the stars game jam game I've seen so far, I can't see any stars in the game though.
Yeah, I tried to bake the theme of having been space travellers in the past, but time pressure had forced a lot of the theming to be crunched to make the time.
I do plan on going back and elaborating on a lot of the narrative later on.
Catgirls - my only weakness! Arg
Reina - great taste in female name picking, that's also one of my favs.
Cool mapping and great open spaces, even without parallax mapping. That must have been a pain I imagine ^^
Whats up with the interior house maps? I have seen almost the exact layout in another game here. Were they auto generated?
The bad: Maybe I m too stupid for rpg maker combat, but your enemies are waaay to strong for the start of the game. But that happend to me in a ton of games here. So hey that's maybe a me problem^^
Edit: also you should upload more screenshots
I am guessing that because of time constraints, we loaded a pre-made map that came with MZ in order to populate the house interiors.
As for the combat, I am guessing that I didn’t do a good job of conveying some of the mechanics, including the skills learned and what they do. From what I have seen of people playing through my game, they missed just how powerful I made my skills, making the basic attack as a way to generate AP.
Thank you for playing through my game, I appreciate your feedback a lot. I’ve been collecting them, and plan to work on my game more once voting and judging is over, so expect updates a little down the line.
What I liked:
I love that you took the time to create original characters, and your opening scene was excellent. I really want to know how that was done! I love the look of the menu and battle! How the character actually moved into attacks! Everything is very pretty! The music choices seem to fit the situations well.
What I didn't like:'
I'm sure you'll be horrified to find out that there's a major glitch! Every time a battle finishes, the player attempts to run up and to the left for several seconds. This keeps you not only keeps you from being able to avoid other creatures on the map since it forces you to run by them, it makes it so that battles take much longer than they should, and it really makes the combat feel tedious (which is sad, because the rest of what you did with the battles was so cool!) This isn't the only movement glitch in the game, and it felt sluggish in response to commands. Apparently, this glitch comes into play when you load a save file as well. On experimentation, I've discovered that this can be overcome once it starts by pressing all the movement buttons at once . Weird...
I've gone through the first hour, and I don't see a single mention of stars, or the touching of them (or anything I'd consider to be an interpretation of that). This is a major flaw because that's an absolute minimum for what needs to be in your submission. I also am not super excited by the writing. While I've certainly seen worse, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate that you took the time to play through my entry.
If you could go into more detail on the writing, I’d be happy to hear it.
In regard to the writing, there were a few things I found troubling:
Firstly, it seemed as though you couldn't decide whether you wanted to do massive exposition dumps all at once, or you wanted to rush through with no real explanation. I'm guessing the latter probably came when you noticed a time crunch. I can sympathize. Either way, things didn't seem to flow evenly in the way things were going.
Secondly, you weren't subtle with your inclusion of politics in the game. Maybe you thought you were being subtle, but it was rather obvious and, in my opinion, in bad taste. The biggest problem about this is that, in my experience, people who do this sort of thing have a tendency to focus on that one criticism and ignore all other valid criticisms. As much as this was a little off putting to me, I could have let it slide if the story felt consistent, but it didn't. It's possible to tell a good story that also includes these elements (The book Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein comes to mind), but you have to be careful, particularly in a contest, that you're not alienating your audience.
There are other issues in the plot that I had, but I have a feeling that those stem from one of the first two problems (or more likely a combination of the two), The main example which sticks in my mind (probably because it was around when I stopped playing) was the completely illogical blockade after the big battle at the library. The guy as much as said that he didn't like the authorities, then said he was worried about letting them pass because they might be spies. I thought, "Hate to break it to you bud, but if they're spies, you're already screwed since you just openly admitted you sympathize with the enemy."
I don't know how experienced you are as a writer, but I really hope this doesn't discourage you from continuing to practice and hone your writing. I consider myself a decent writer today, but I've been practicing for over 20 years and I still don't feel I'm up to the level of some of my favorites. It's possible to consistently improve and become truly great, but it takes time, effort, and a willingness to look at the flaws in your writing with a desire to be better. That's how I've improved (you should have seen some of the stuff I was writing when I was 15. I thought it was great at the time, but looking back on it now it was quite awful, and no where near as good as what you've written in this game)
Ohh this is great. This gives me a lot to work with, and hopefully once judging is over I’ll give my writing a once-over and rethink some of the concepts. This pretty much came from me messing around and letting things flow from there.
As for the politics, I wasn’t trying to be subtle.
Again, thank you for giving my project a once through. It’s a big first for me in a lot of areas, and I very much am aware of my limitations. I appreciate it.
Yup. Same here! First time I've ever managed to finish a full game. Made a lot of mistakes, and as a result I learned a lot! Good luck in your future endeavors, and in the competition!