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My thoughts while playing the game.

+ = I liked it

- = I didn't like it

* = Neutral/suggestion

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+ Beautiful title screen. I love how the background is animated and the options are arranged nicely.

+ Lovely art, as always

+ No text; the story is told entirely in pictures. Fascinating.

+ The battles are even a simple "Simon Says" game. Creative!

+ You don't kill enemies; you transform them into "good" creatures. Cool!

+ Huh, so the battle commands can be literally any combination of keys on the keyboard, whether they're directions, numbers, etc.
 + Later discovered it's limited to just arrows and 1-4, which makes it manageable

+ No on-map movement and no text makes this a very VISUAL novel. I still think it's cool.

+ In fact, no on-map movement means the plot keeps moving instead of having to figure out where to go and potentially getting stuck or confused.

- This looks like a stage select screen, but pressing a number key doesn't seem to do anything, and pressing the arrows didn't seem to do anything either. How do I navigate it?
 + At least you did add menu tooltips that indicate how to open the menu so I can save the game and adjust audio options if I wanted.

+ I noticed that the battle backgrounds scroll. That's pretty cool. Especially since they aren't too distracting. I guess they make up for the fact that the battlers are static; it adds motion that would otherwise be missing.
 + Also, they're not TOO busy, so they don't distract from the action that I'm trying to see and pay attention to.

* I see 2 icons at the bottom center of the battle UI; what do they mean?

+ Oh NOW I can choose a different stage with the number keys

* The game is so linear and I can't tell what the advantage of doing the stages in a different order would be, so I don't see the point in having the stage select.

- The last boss seems to be hard for the wrong reasons

  • Much longer than the other enemies, requiring I remember for a short time a random sequences of arrows and numbers
  • Getting even 1 wrong character means I take damage; nothing mitigates it
  • There's no decision making involved or strategy, making the process kinda monotonous, especially when retrying
  • There's no way to replay the prompt, so if I wasn't paying attention then I get to just eat damage
  •  There appears to be a revive mechanic if I lose, but it gets thrown at me suddenly so it took me off guard and I failed

+ Cool little epilogue at the end

+ I haven't remarked much on it, but the music fits the mood of the game well

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Summary

This is a simple game with some creative mechanical concepts and beautiful art. The final battle served to highlight the problems with the system, but overall I think this is an impressive entry. Nice job, Berry!

(1 edit) (+1)

Thank you for your feedback. I will cover a lot of the negative points and a few of the neutral points based on what is provided and give you my thought process on why it ended up the way it did. Granted, I will try to make improvements for next time and take your feedback into account.

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+ Beautiful title screen. I love how the background is animated and the options are arranged nicely.

+ Lovely art, as always

+ No text; the story is told entirely in pictures. Fascinating.

+ The battles are even a simple "Simon Says" game. Creative!

+ You don't kill enemies; you transform them into "good" creatures. Cool!

+ Huh, so the battle commands can be literally any combination of keys on the keyboard, whether they're directions, numbers, etc.  + Later discovered it's limited to just arrows and 1-4, which makes it manageable

+ No on-map movement and no text makes this a very VISUAL novel. I still think it's cool.

+ In fact, no on-map movement means the plot keeps moving instead of having to figure out where to go and potentially getting stuck or confused.

I am thankful you were enjoying the visual aspects of the game and the unique aspects of it all.

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- This looks like a stage select screen, but pressing a number key doesn't seem to do anything, and pressing the arrows didn't seem to do anything either. How do I navigate it?

+ Oh NOW I can choose a different stage with the number keys

* The game is so linear and I can't tell what the advantage of doing the stages in a different order would be, so I don't see the point in having the stage select.

I'm going to cover this in 1 section since they correlate to the same issue. Namely that I wanted at least some semblance of free choice instead of keeping it linear. It also helps to teach the player to use the 1,2,3,4 keys to choose. And while the order can be done in different order, each flower can represent recovering the memories of one of the characters, order be irrelevant. Though that being said, I can see why you would think it be arbitrary than meaningful. Duly noted.

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 + At least you did add menu tooltips that indicate how to open the menu so I can save the game and adjust audio options if I wanted.

+ I noticed that the battle backgrounds scroll. That's pretty cool. Especially since they aren't too distracting. I guess they make up for the fact that the battlers are static; it adds motion that would otherwise be missing.  + Also, they're not TOO busy, so they don't distract from the action that I'm trying to see and pay attention to.

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Little UI stuff like that is something I like to put for convenience sake.

Its all I can do with the time I have, as the only artist and with the pressure of time, I had to cut down on a lot of things including animations and the like. So the best compromise I can do is the scrolling battlebacks.

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* I see 2 icons at the bottom center of the battle UI; what do they mean?

That was supposed to be a mechanic to spice up the gameplay a little more by having abilities that allow heal actions and reduce speed of the simon says timing. But time constraints had to halt all those because I don't want to risk any bug breaking issues. An excuse yes but it would be nice if I could implement that mechanic someday. 

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- The last boss seems to be hard for the wrong reasons

  • Much longer than the other enemies, requiring I remember for a short time a random sequences of arrows and numbers
  • Getting even 1 wrong character means I take damage; nothing mitigates it
  • There's no decision making involved or strategy, making the process kinda monotonous, especially when retrying
  • There's no way to replay the prompt, so if I wasn't paying attention then I get to just eat damage
  •  There appears to be a revive mechanic if I lose, but it gets thrown at me suddenly so it took me off guard and I failed

I apologize that the last boss is a bit tough and unfair for you. I will admit that the game does get very hard at that point and I didn't have all the time to iron out all the kinks and details.  There was supposed to be an ability to undo and reset at the cost of using an ability for the characters but again I don't want to risk breaking anything. Though it would have been an easy fix. And I will admit that the damage does get brutal at points. My apologies if the final boss is a detriment to the experience. I will attempt to be better (hopefully) if I ever make a boss structured simon says like this.

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Summary

This is a simple game with some creative mechanical concepts and beautiful art. The final battle served to highlight the problems with the system, but overall I think this is an impressive entry. Nice job, Berry!

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Thank you very much for playing, I will admit it was rough at the end but I was able to create an impressive entry for you to enjoy. After the last game you've reviewed, I was worried you would be disappointed with this entry too. Glad to see my worries were unfounded.