What is it with haroldjam 2024 and impossibly long games haha...
I've completed two of the three zones and already clocked in over an hour. Looks and sounds nice, premise is just a better execution of my World of Harold crossover in terms of gameplay loop, so I'm pleased to see all the characters, and the intro is lovely, but story past that is just a few character intros and fun fake harolds, I have yet to see more of the plot. Wish I could have seen more interaction from the characters but alas the game is already way too big.
As for gameplay... There's a really cool gameplay loop here, and the "turn mana" system is a lot of fun, but between me not playing the earlier games, the sheer complexity of how many parameters and buffs and debuffs and skill effects and resources I had to maintain each battle, skill masteries which didn't seem to do anything, as well as both not having any sort of autosave (game overs in a jam setting are painful) and me not knowing there was a shop or inn so I had to stress with 2 potions and no heals for a while, all combined to a stressful (even if mechanically rewarding) experience.
Going into a bit of detail, the tutorial for binding equipment to your characters wasn't great so I accidentally avoided the mechanic for one entire zone (i didn't even have an Equip menu option!) and having started with the Future first the holes in the wall for shops looked like the other non-interactable holes and terminals and machines in the wall, and I couldn't parse the signs as signs. I only wrote all this so you know what to avoid in the future.
My only wish is that the game had simpler combat and 70% less roaming enemies. Combat seems pretty deep and customizable but while I would gladly play a longer game, it challenged my patience as a jam game.
Viewing post in Harold Between Worlds 3: Harolds in Time jam comments
Hey Nate, thanks for playing and for the great feedback! Sorry a lot of the design elements were unclear and stress inducing.
Regarding the story, unfortunately it's all at the beginning and end. You can probably figure out the point in the development cycle where we realized that A) there wasn't time for more character scenes and B) the game was already too long for more of them anyways.
Tutorials were absolutely a weakness of the game as I had to assemble them hastily on the last day along with the entire endgame, basically.
I should've left Autosave on in hindsight. I though "save everywhere" was good enough, but that was probably a poor assumption to make.
Skill masteries are very subtle and only add a few extra points of damage to lower-tier skills. The effect is more pronounced on State-granting skills (or should be anyways) as well as the higher EP skills. Might have been too subtle especially in the jam format where you almost never get past skill level 3. Lessons learned.
I'm glad the consensus is that this system would be better for a long-form game since as you have discovered by now, evaluating that option was the point of making this prototype.
Much appreciated input as always.
--moogle