Wholesome: The Last Word
by Daybloom Project
Hey there Daybloom Project, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I was asked to judge your game in round three of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.
The story suffers from grammar issues and the font is a little blurry.
It would be better in my opinion if you allowed the player to save anywhere as there is a lot of dialog and cutscene.
I can see that you've taken some elements from other games such as Undertale and Earthbound.
I like that you've decided to use a lighting engine.
There are a lack of options for a game like this. I didn't like that I had to hold down the shift button for the majority of my time playing. Allowing an auto-run setting in the options could easily fix that.
I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games, but I can appreciate the amount of work that went into these puzzle rooms.
The battle mechanics are very well done. The player is given many skills with unique functionality and ways to win in combat.
I landed a critical hit with a special move accidently one-shotting a bee against my actual intentions. I guess my pacifist run is done. The critical damage multiplier is too high. I'd recommend upping the critical hit rate, but lowering the critical hit multiplier from 3x to 2x. More critical hits, but less damage when a critical hit lands.
There's like a half second of unnecessary padding every time you open a chest. It's not much, but it kind of feels like unnecessary padding after opening twenty something chests.
The music and sound effects were selected well and I really enjoyed the boss battle music.
Nice job with selecting animations, but I think that if you would've picked a few more it would have added value. Almost all of the restorative magic and items use exactly the same animation.
The last boss fight is really out of whack and all of the enemies being able to paralyze you really make for a frustrating experience. I think the paralyze rates need to be toned down quite a bit. I spent more turns unable to act than actually acting, and when I do get my turn it's mostly damage control, using the items gained through-out the adventure just to revive and heal.
The main menu shows room for two actors, unless you scroll down to see the third actor. I feel like this could be reworked to show all three without having to scrolling down to see Reno.
The story makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever and I found myself saying "What?!" multiple times. The puzzle gameplay was pretty good and there were a variety of well designed puzzles through-out the game.
The battle system was fleshed out and mostly balanced with the exception of trying to win the last fight violently, which was quite a challenge and it took me three tries. I'd say I got really lucky the third time with a charm landing and sticking for multiple rounds.
I one-shot a creature early on while trying to 'weaken' it and at that point I decided to just fight creatures going forward. I started out doing a 'wholesome' run however I ended up beating the game with a "Noxious Ending".
I think that you've done a pretty decent job at making a game jam project and you should be proud. Well done on making it to round three of the IGMC 2022. I hope to see what you come up with in the future.
-Drifty