To be clear, I'm really not big on JRPGs, so everything I say should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Additionally I played for about 40 minutes and then apparently got locked out of progressing as the game is freezing when I try to go to the library basement. That being said, hopefully I can give you something useful to work with...
Bugs?
- The game froze when I went to the library basement. I reloaded a tried again with the same issue, so it's looking like I'm locked out there.
- I had a ghost opponent drop to 0% health, without dying. It died on the next hit, but thought it was odd that it was still alive at 0%.
- Party members can clip through most things, including the top wall in the Common House if you go to the top-right corner.
UI/UX
- Are you able to add an options menu? Being able to adjust the volume, see key-binds, resolutions (looks like you addressed this in an earlier comment) would be really nice.
- The prompt that pops up when opening your first chest feels really out of place and is too large. There are no similar prompts and the game tells you twice before that point that space or enter can be used to interact.
Gameplay
- Some sort of journal or quest log would be really helpful. I played over 2 session and when I came back for my second session I couldn't remember what I was supposed to be doing.
- Having no real information on the enemies makes it hard to make good decisions.
- The attack "Zap" claims that it stuns enemies, but I don't think I ever got any sort of notification or indication that an enemy was stunned by it.
- The Harpy was very easy. I likely would've beat it on the first round if not for Blank missing his attack. I'm not sure if that's the intention, but I thought I was in for a tough battle and was surprised how easy it was.
Dialogue
- The old man telling the player to use Alt+Enter to "use their full vision" feels really off to me for a couple of reasons. 1) The game started in full screen, so it was really telling me how to exit "full vision". 2) The following dialogue clearly spells out the buttons and what they do. While it's a clever way to provide tutorial prompts in universe I think it needs to be consistent.
- "Welcome! All the rooms are full but the Taveri..." Is that a typo, or is the "n" cutoff.
- "The woods reall are flooded."
- I think Aris' first dialogue is out of order, something about her name popping up half-way through the conversation felt odd.
- When you talk to the Magistrate the first time there is no indication of who is talking so it is kind of hard to follow the conversation... I think I figured it out, and Blank's dialogue doesn't have any indication. Still weird to me.
- There are a lot of rough areas, I assume you are working on most of those so I won't mention the individual items, but it was a little jarring how many oddities there were.
- The magistrate's pool is constantly moving around, not sure if it's supposed to, but it doesn't look right.
- All signs morph when reading them, which I thought was odd.
Misc.
- I find it very odd that there is no interaction with the huge blue (negative color) character (statue?) at the entrance to the town. It stands out so much, but there isn't any apparent way to interact with it.
- There was a guy looking for Pickles (or something like that) near a pond in the Town. I think the animation after the conversation with him happens too quickly, I really couldn't track what was happening. I assume he jumped in the water, jumped back out, and ran away, but it was hard to tell and looked odd.
- When the Harpy shows up Blank and Kirin approach it but Aris stands still. Additionally, it felt odd that they move without user input, but don't initialize combat immediately.
- I found the chest with the Seed of Strength and the intractable log bridge in the Woods, I really like little hidden details like that!
Unfortunately as someone that doesn't care for JRPGs I can't really give you objective overall feedback. I do feel like the Everlight has some promise as a unique game mechanic, but most of the rest of it felt too similar to the JRPGs I played 25+ years ago. Not saying that's a bad thing, just that I'd like to see more of a twist on the genre or unique gameplay element. It
I think it's awesome you've stuck with it for 13 years and I hope it crushes it when you finally release that 1.0!