Hey everyone!

Now that it's been a while and mostly everyone has gotten some feedback, what are some things you wish you could have done better or adjusted in your game?

Personally, I really wish I had balanced my game to be a bit harder(near the end). As I realized I had overcompensated for the difficulty my playtesters had originally dealt with. Things like gaining currency and defeating monsters became overly easy near the end, and I wish I had had the time to go back and adjust those further.

I also, of course, wish I had come across the bugs found. Many could've been easily fixed if I had found them while playtesting. Specifically one poorly implemented tutorial dialogue which will go unseen if played through normally.

If I've learned anything from this jam it's to get things at a playable state a lot earlier on so I can get it playtested more thoroughly.

Something that I wish I could have done better, is to balance the battling system, especially at the beginning.  Also to fix the many spelling and grammar errors found in the game. Lastly, I wish I thought of putting in a hint system in each town before submitting, so players have some help with direction.

Of course, noticing and fixing the 2 big progression block bugs so everyone and the judges can experience more than just one dungeon and 2 towns of the game XD

I think I was so focused on making a full game that, everything else became so minimal of a problem to me. 

Definitely gonna work on fixing all these problems plus any more after judging is complete.

Honestly, I should have made keywords noticeable instead of relying on the player to figure it out. I definitely didn't expect people to ignore the tutorials. I should also have slowed down the pacing of the game a lot (though it couldn't really be helped with the weird limitations of the jam and how my game worked).

Definitely wish I had started earlier instead of basically halfway into the jam. Jam happened at a really bad time since there was another contest I joined at the same time and some IRL stuff delayed me by a week. My artist wasn't available for the last bit of the jam, so there was some stuff that I had to drop that would have made certain things more obvious.

I do wish I had implemented the alternative way of doing crafting that I was considering and figured out a way to deal with the issues resulting from not using plugins (ie, skill/item screen returns to field after every item use. Couldn't figure out a way to get around that without using a plugin.) Also wish I had just given up on changing the battleback when I knew that it was absurdly difficult without plugins even in previous versions of the engine.

I definitely put a bit too much focus on the secret elements of the game that most people didn't encounter because they skipped those elements instead of venturing out and trying things.

I almost cried in excitement when I saw people started to play my very first game. It is an amazing experience. Thank you all for your support and encouragement!

I just wish I had dedicated more time to playtesting and balancing. It's not awful but there's definitely points that are too hard or too easy that could have easily been fixed if I just spent even 1 more day with playtesting.  

Pretty much everything for me comes down to time management. I should have spent time learning how to use MZ before starting my game. A lot of things I thought would be easy or "just like MV" proved to not be. I never figured out how to correctly do half the things I was trying to do, and instead of removing all the things that weren't working, some of them I just left because I needed those things (a purple gas overlay, a weird font, etc). I spent a lot of time trying to do parallax mapping for it not work and look ugly. And because things weren't working out and I was spending so much time trying to do things that didn't work, I got discouraged and stopped working on it off and on. I really should have spent more time writing things out on notepads when not actively at a computer working on the game. I should have managed my time better by making a schedule and sticking to it, and if something was taking too long, to just move on to doing something else. And really I should have chosen an easier idea to execute in the time given. On another note, I really need better air conditioning! If it's going to be this hot every summer from now on, I won't get any work done without serious air conditioning of some kind.

I would've started at the beginning of the jam. This extra time would've made it possible for me to add battle backgrounds, more playtesting, which would lead to more balanced combats, solve small passage bugs and translation problems...
And I wished I could make the battles more interesting. Adding new powers and giving proper recompense when powerful enemies are defeated. Working better on the Stellar Keys system to add more usable keys.
Well, that was my first complete project. Making it was one of the best experiences of my life. A lot of people actually liked it, so I hope I can do better in future versions. I'm already planning to make a last update for this prototype after the judging period ends.

Congratulations to everyone for making so far! Completing a game is a big challenge.