I really enjoyed this one a lot, and IMO it's a huge level up design wise from your previous work. The start was tough, just as warned, but once you get a few buddies and the systems start opening up it's a ton of fun. I really liked the heart and soul mechanics: it's a cool way to let the player experiment with builds without having to feel pressured about investing skill points, and it also makes each new enemy you encounter exciting (I get to use those skills? I get to summon HIM?! was how I constantly felt playing it). I managed to beat the final boss with a party of level 9 and 10 characters by keeping him constantly debuffed while buffing my own party's speed and having an AOE heal available almost always. I never had to stop and grind, either, though I suppose it would've made things a bit easier overall, haha.
The lore was cool: I love these kinds of settings and the scientific approach the game takes to the in-game mechanics, and of course the motif of fate being inescapable, even if the player tries to take the most seemingly kind way out, things still go like that... I was a little bit moved. Great work on this game!
Thanks for playing. As you noticed, the game was built bottom-up/mechanics-first instead of top-down/lore-first, while also attempting to keep some of the item-description-lorebuilding feel from the first game.
I am glad to see the excitement of meeting new enemies, as that was the original intention. I initially planned for a more complex system where you can fuse souls with hearts, which means you cannot unequip souls once you fused it into a heart, but certain combination of heart and souls will transform the heart into a unique heart. However I figured it would be too complex to code and too complicated for a 1-hour game.
As for the motif, the core theme of Fate is still the same: "everything you do is ultimately meaningless, and the game was rigged from the start, but you press on anyway" (shamelessly borrowed from Dark Souls, I know--the goal is to induce that 'sinking feeling' when the credits roll.) Unlike Light, since Snow is designed to be lighter on the lore I tried a more direct-approach, narration-style ending at the end instead of leaving it up to the players to piece out everything themselves.
I am glad to see it was enjoyable, and again thanks for playing.
The heart and soul mechanic was well made and the difficulty spike inside the ice cave ensured that reanimation must be utilized wisely in order to survive. I had trouble at first but once I obtained more souls with better skills, the battles became easier. I love this sort of progression! There's a good variety of soul skills and I found myself switching hearts and souls quite frequently.
I mostly only raised ATK, DEF and HP through level ups and managed to reach lvl 20 before fighting the boss. My final loadout consisted of Rose Heart, Fungus Soul A, Crow Soul B, Rose Soul A. Heals were too good to pass up. Murder of Crows just absolutely murders every enemy. And Crown of Thorns helped me deal with the egg sac battles where I was caught off guard by the crows. Oh god those crows. My final team consisted of a support Rose Fairy, a tank Stone Knight and an aoe dps Whale.
The small bits of dialogue here and there at the start were amusing. And I found it rather humorous that both pressing the button or not led to the same outcome, which really showed the immutability of Fate. Well, at least the MC lives in the former choice. Good work on this one, I enjoyed it!
Thanks for playing. I am happy to see the intended difficulty spike worked, and the battles becoming easier as you get stronger and have more options. I hope the bosses were balanced as I didn't have much time to playtest them.
(At least I hope it would be better balanced than my previous jam entry, where the final boss was never playtested lol)
My personal strategy was wolf critical glass cannon + rose fairy healer/support with two gigatanks/support, human and stone knight.
Comments
I really enjoyed this one a lot, and IMO it's a huge level up design wise from your previous work. The start was tough, just as warned, but once you get a few buddies and the systems start opening up it's a ton of fun. I really liked the heart and soul mechanics: it's a cool way to let the player experiment with builds without having to feel pressured about investing skill points, and it also makes each new enemy you encounter exciting (I get to use those skills? I get to summon HIM?! was how I constantly felt playing it). I managed to beat the final boss with a party of level 9 and 10 characters by keeping him constantly debuffed while buffing my own party's speed and having an AOE heal available almost always. I never had to stop and grind, either, though I suppose it would've made things a bit easier overall, haha.
The lore was cool: I love these kinds of settings and the scientific approach the game takes to the in-game mechanics, and of course the motif of fate being inescapable, even if the player tries to take the most seemingly kind way out, things still go like that... I was a little bit moved. Great work on this game!
Thanks for playing. As you noticed, the game was built bottom-up/mechanics-first instead of top-down/lore-first, while also attempting to keep some of the item-description-lorebuilding feel from the first game.
I am glad to see the excitement of meeting new enemies, as that was the original intention. I initially planned for a more complex system where you can fuse souls with hearts, which means you cannot unequip souls once you fused it into a heart, but certain combination of heart and souls will transform the heart into a unique heart. However I figured it would be too complex to code and too complicated for a 1-hour game.
As for the motif, the core theme of Fate is still the same: "everything you do is ultimately meaningless, and the game was rigged from the start, but you press on anyway" (shamelessly borrowed from Dark Souls, I know--the goal is to induce that 'sinking feeling' when the credits roll.) Unlike Light, since Snow is designed to be lighter on the lore I tried a more direct-approach, narration-style ending at the end instead of leaving it up to the players to piece out everything themselves.
I am glad to see it was enjoyable, and again thanks for playing.
The heart and soul mechanic was well made and the difficulty spike inside the ice cave ensured that reanimation must be utilized wisely in order to survive. I had trouble at first but once I obtained more souls with better skills, the battles became easier. I love this sort of progression! There's a good variety of soul skills and I found myself switching hearts and souls quite frequently.
I mostly only raised ATK, DEF and HP through level ups and managed to reach lvl 20 before fighting the boss. My final loadout consisted of Rose Heart, Fungus Soul A, Crow Soul B, Rose Soul A. Heals were too good to pass up. Murder of Crows just absolutely murders every enemy. And Crown of Thorns helped me deal with the egg sac battles where I was caught off guard by the crows. Oh god those crows. My final team consisted of a support Rose Fairy, a tank Stone Knight and an aoe dps Whale.
The small bits of dialogue here and there at the start were amusing. And I found it rather humorous that both pressing the button or not led to the same outcome, which really showed the immutability of Fate. Well, at least the MC lives in the former choice. Good work on this one, I enjoyed it!
Thanks for playing. I am happy to see the intended difficulty spike worked, and the battles becoming easier as you get stronger and have more options. I hope the bosses were balanced as I didn't have much time to playtest them.
(At least I hope it would be better balanced than my previous jam entry, where the final boss was never playtested lol)
My personal strategy was wolf critical glass cannon + rose fairy healer/support with two gigatanks/support, human and stone knight.