Sup. I played for a couple of hours and had a few thoughts:
- The manual is legit very cool.
- Titlescreen is very snazzy. I like the subtle wave effect on the title.
- Intro cutscene was short and sweet. It doesn't tell us much, but it kicks off
a bit of intrigue.
- Good for showing the controls in the game! For an RPGM jam, it's totally
unnecessary, but for other people that will play in the future, it's always a
good thing to include.
- I like the separate animations for running, idle and walking. Adds a nice bit
of extra life to the game.
- Same for the varied footstep sounds.
- The item shop's inventory is quite unorganized. Ordering them by type (healing
items, weapons, ammo, etc) would look a lot nicer and be easier to navigate.
- I like the graphics. It's a bit rough and amateurish, but the amount of detail
is really nice.
- The RTP sound effects are much louder than everything else. Consider reducing
their volume so they're more consistent.
- The wolf enemies make too much noise! Having them howl constantly is really
annoying. I'd really suggest you give them a subtler noise or just get rid of
it.
- I love all the bits of lore strewn about like the graffiti, abandoned tanks,
messages left by wanderers, etc. I admit I don't really understand what's going
on, but I'm enjoying figuring it out with being interrupted by an exposition
dump.
- The moving platform in the northern dungeon could be faster. It's annoying to
wait for it to come back around.
- The big sliding blocks are a pain to get through. Maybe make the timing more
lenient?
- Really appreciating the autosave function lol.
- Combat is simple but works fairly well with RPGM's tile based movement. It's
pretty clunky, but once you get into a hit-and-run rhythm it's fun!
- The difficulty could use some tweaking. I couldn't find any enemies that
dropped money, except the robot that shoots missiles in the southern dungeon. I
mention this because I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong because after
the infected and wolf monsters, everything felt too strong. I couldn't afford to
buy a bunch of healing items without grinding on the robots and likewise for new
weapons/armor. I ended up going north and running past the obese infected until
I got the laser pistol. After that it was more manageable (and I found money in
boxes and chests in the dungeon) until I encountered those moving block things
that instantly kill you. I lost my patience there lol. But once I got that
pistol things really started taking off and I felt like the game was getting
into its stride. Before that, I was having fun wandering, but it was a bit
discouraging to not find any money for upgrades and running into monsters that
were too strong.
I understand wanting an open world game, but I felt too
powerless without an achievable goal to get stronger. My only viable option was to
stumble upon that northern dungeon and get the laser pistol.
If you want my advice, I would make the game linearly force you to explore the
northern dungeon so you get a side arm and a source of money and THEN let you
explore the wider world. Give the player some tools to work with first.
Anyway, very ambitious game with some rough edges, but fundamentally a fun game.
Keep working on it and you'll end up with something great!