Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 7! My name's Hythrain and I'm one of the hosts and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

Pokemon meets Stardew Valley. That's what this is. While it's certainly an interesting concept, as a demo I felt there were too many bugs and issues for the concept to be fully experienced and judged properly. So I'm not gonna do that. Instead, I'll just give details on the current execution of each half individually.

As a farming sim, it starts off a lot like I remember Stardew Valley starting: with a rundown farm that you'll be spending time cleaning up while waiting on your first harvest to grow. However, instead of having energy for a day and needing to rest to do more activities with night time always being sleepy time, this has a 24 hour clock and you can sleep whenever you want. An interesting idea that I know is born to help the Pokemon side, so rather than judge it let's look at its pros and cons.

Pros: Gives you a 24 hour game cycle to play with, leading to new options on how to do gameplay.

Cons: Needs an absolutely perfect balance of energy drain from tasks to energy gained from sleep ratio.

I point this out because right now, I think the energy gained from sleep is too good. While it's currently pretty spot on for how much sleep you'd need on average, the amount of physical tasks you're able to do with that sleep isn't at the level that this game lets you actually do. Look at it like this: if I didn't do any farming activities in game, how long would my character's energy last? It has a small burn but it'd probably go for 24 or more hours in game, right?

I think a better balance would be that if you go to sleep BEFORE dropping below 20% energy, it takes a max of 8 hours to regain your energy. If you go drop below that 20%, it could take 10-12 hours of sleep depending on how low you go. This would make a lot more sense I think.

I also think that you should make it more accessible to get farming stuff done right from the start. If I, say, want to spend the first several hours of my game only working on my farm and focusing only on the farm side (since building the farm side would be easier when you have less mouths to feed), the game should encourage that by letting me access what I need to do it without embarking in battles. However, you seems like you can't get seeds or anything else until you go to the first town, which puts you through some battles.

Speaking of battles, let's do that now! For ease of use, I'm going to refer to certain things using Pokemon turns.

The intro battle is silly, to the point where I question why you would include it (since even your character knows it's a bad idea). That said, I actually almost beat it! RNG favoured me for several rounds and I got within one turn of winning. I have to wonder how the game would've responded if I HAD won.

As for normal battles, because of my long RNG fight in the first round, my monster ended up getting poisoned. Despite then spending several days on my farm, resting a lot during this, the poison never cleared off. In addition, when I proceeded forward to try and get more farm stuff as well as to try more of the battle gameplay, I ended up losing in the first "trainer" battle. Instead of outright resetting me to my home in order to revive my mon, because I can't do battles without a mon, I was able to just... continue moving on from there. I couldn't go past the trainer, with there being a message about how you can't fight without a mon, but I was now on my own to traverse back home. Through grass. And potential battles with wild mons.

Thankfully I encountered none. When I returned home and went to sleep to revive my mon, it wouldn't revive! Uh oh. What am I gonna do? Now thankfully I did think of a workaround that DID work, but that shouldn't be the case. If sleeping in bed doesn't restore your mons, you need something in your house that VERY clearly does.

I also hit a bug when trying to catch a new mon, where the fight wouldn't end.

Lastly, since this game is a fusion of monster collecting and farm sim games, I don't think parts of your UI work well. Some things are very small and hard to read. I can't do so now, but I can try to come up with examples of how to address this if you want.

Thank you for trying the Chronomon Demo! 
From what I understand, balance and accessibility are the main things to work on. Putting your feedback into notes here. 

Do you have any suggestions on how to get seeds without entering the first town? I have yet to come up with anything reasonable lol. 

I'll also work on energy and sleeping. I like the concept of forced sleep hours. Choosing each hour might be unnecessary.

You make a great point on the first battle - now I have to test that out. I think the first battle can act as a tutorial in hindsight so you get the chance to skip it. I'll code that in to allow the player to choose.

Yes please to pictures for the UI where you wanted larger text and would love a link to the stream

Here is a link to the VOD.

On getting seeds, that's easy: Delivery service. The player has a computer for their mons, so have it that they can use the computer for limited ordering (and maybe later on the player can unlock expanding it). When they walk outside, a small cutscene plays that shows someone driving off and a package left by the door. You could call it Azamon.