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(-6)

Hello,

This past weekend I played your game. Overall, there is a glimmer of something interesting in this game but it has a lot of rough edges.

This game caught my attention based on the striking art and polish in the looks of the game. It definitely seemed like a cut-above-the-rest when compared to other RPG Maker games. There was also some impressive foresight in including a warning (and option to disable) about copywritten music for streamers, big, big A+ on this one, thank you! However, things quickly started falling apart.

First, a major pet-peeve of mine is games that don't give you a chance to check the options menu before starting the game. Game developers should know - and allow - players to adjust the game to the way they are most comfortable playing before they start playing. Though, once I was in game, I realized the reason why the option menu was missing from the title screen: there really are no options, which is just strange. There are so many things that could and should be in the option menu to ensure players are able to play the game comfortably: from allowing for faster turns and animation, to rebindable keys, to volume sliders, plus countless other things.

Once the game begins, a proper tutorial is never given to the player. Another A+ design decision is allowing the player to access a written tutorial at any time from the menu. This is great for returning players or players who may have forgotten some nuance in the design after the tutorial. However, this is not a substitution for a proper tutorial. A proper tutorial should walk players through the controls of the game to help them get to grips with the controls and nuance of the mechanics. This is also a great place to include an option in your options menu to either enable or disable tutorials for players who either wish to figure it out themselves or players who have already played the tutorial once.

Next, there is a strange disconnect in the first combat encounter. After witnessing our protagonist use physical violence to solve his problem, our first mission in a tactics game is...to not use violence and make our way to an objective.
I really felt like I was missing some sort of key bit of information because enemies hit like a mac truck making me want to avoid them at all cost. This is why a proper tutorial would have helped me feel more confident that I was playing the game properly. The second mission seemed virtually impossible to complete simply due to feeling underpowered. Am I expected to grind deaths to get EXP to complete the fight? Surely not, that seems like a daft way of overcoming the challenge presented in the game. Considering other commenters on this page were able to get past the second mission, I can only assume I was playing the game incorrectly; again, this is why a proper tutorial should have been implemented.

If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.

(+2)

Thank you for playing! I'll take your considerations into account for future updates!

(+1)(-5)

Thanks for replying. I also wanted to inform you that it was brought to my attention that you used the POP Horror Tilesets in your game. Since your game currently lacks any sort of file encryption (even if RM encryption is easy to crack) you are still effectively enabling piracy of the tileset by distributing a commercial product freely with your game. Personally, I don't care, but it could land you in hot water (sort of like everything else in this game). I would recommend using file encryption right away. You are already playing with fire with the excessive use of copyrighted IP, let's not also play with gasoline while while we are at it.

(+2)

Did your Xbox break, bro? Because you sound like someone who has never played an indie game or a tactical RPG. What options? It's an RPG Maker game - the options that the engine allows to adjust are all there. Most games made with it don't have options at all and it has always been the norm for the format.

 And a game doesn't need a tutorial when everything is self-explanatory. You didn't miss anything, you just went alone against two people and got your ass kicked. You could ask the nurse for help to even the odds, bait them and beat them one-by-one, intimidate them or just do what you did if figuring out any of those is too much for your console-pampered brain. Same goes for the second fight - you're not underpowered, you just aren't supposed to run up to the enemy and attack until you win. It would be a bad tactical game if it worked.

Please fix your Xbox and forget this site exists, go play some nice games made with you in mind... unless you love embarrassing yourself, which would explain why you'd also stream it.

(+2)

Hey!
It's great to hear that the Lonely League has such passionate fans.

I've been a PC gamer for my entire life, growing up on Roller Coaster Tycoon, Start Craft Brood War, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 & 4. Tactics games use to be one of my favorite genres, but admittedly over the past decade or so I burnt myself out on them. I'll be the first to admit I am not the best at them, just something I enjoy, so I definitely appreciate you helping me understand where I went wrong so that I can improve my gameplay should I decide to return to this game in the future.

I do appreciate you taking the time to tell me what engine the game was developed in. Though I do stream games built in a variety of engines, the main focus of my streams is to help other RPG Maker developers with their own game, so I often pick out a few RPG Maker games to stream.

As an RPG Maker developer myself, there does tend to be a misconception that it is impossible to add options to the game, however that is untrue. The game I am currently developing contains a plethora of accessibility and difficulty options that can easily be adjusted to tailor the game to the player's preference. RPG Dev's would be mindful to include plugins from Yanfly, such as Options Core (which makes adding options a breeze) and Keyboard Config (which will add rebindable keys)
Most RPG Maker devs often don't include options simply because the engine itself is designed with archaic design choices that do make adding options more difficult, but it is by no means impossible. At the very least, however, you have to go out of your way to out-right remove the engine's default options of: Always Dash, Command Remember, and audio sliders for BGM, SFX, and Menu UI. The reason I encourage developers to include tutorials and options is so they can foster and even wider range of passionate fans like yourself. It can be a little bit un-inclusive if the game is uncomfortable to play or difficult to understand. I am certain - just like any developer - he likely wants as many people to enjoy his game as possible, so it only serves to benefit this game and anyone who enjoys it by making the game accessible to the widest audience possible.

Take care of yourself, and keep fighting the good fight!

So you are familiar with PC gaming and are no stranger to RPG Maker. Then your choices are even more bizarre.

Picking free games by solo devs and roasting them on a stream called "Itchio dumpster" is how you HELP them? Gee, go help Blizzard or Koei-Tecmo, they really could use someone to set them straight and they actually can afford to have a few employees to do nothing but address your UX nitpicking throughout the entire development cycle.

 Of course it's not impossible to do this or that even on RPG Maker, but first of all, it's time consuming. Making The Lonely League as it is took 3 years of work, me and a handful of fans were following it for all that time, wondering what it will be about and how will it play, knowing Calunio's unique style. So I'm not so sure you're as familiar with gamedev as you claim because you don't consider that every new moving part is likely to add bugs, which due to the way the engine is built might be a pain in the ass to track or require ridiculous workarounds to fix. Something a player would take for granted or only 1 in 50 would use can take dozens of hours to integrate, test and fine-tune, and then it can break something who knows where and good luck tracing it back to the wonky plugin you spit-glued to an archaic engine so that 3 people out of 150 of those who'll ever play it can rebind keys. And then someone like you will ridicule the game for not accommodating their ultrawide monitor, AZERTY keyboard, Steam Deck, color blindness or RPGM interpreter on their phone. The difficulty is fine as it is, too - it could use some balance tweaking here and there, but making it easier or harder fundamentally would ruin the only thing it's built on and makes it fun - the principle of "thinking before you act", which is all it takes to win in that game. Everything is there - enemy stats and abilities, interactive objects on the map, your own strengths and weaknesses, and all there is to do - keeping those in mind and not doing dumb things, and even if that fails, you can always grind consolation XP. The game doesn't require reflexes or ability to memorize attack patterns and react to them under pressure, it doesn't need to accommodate to common limitations of many gamers. The only thing it requires is thinking and paying attention, and if that's not your strong suit, might as well watch someone play it on Youtube for you.

 There is no limit on how many options you can add, how inclusive and accommodating you can make your game, and those things are not fun to work on and come also at an expense of additional actual content the game could have gotten instead or time it takes for it to be ready for release. A big company can dedicate some junior employees to those tasks, especially when the company owns the engine they make their games on and has all the freedom to tweak it to their needs; a solo dev has to prioritize, and it's not like I myself happened to be happy with everything in TLL and think that since it worked for me your pet peeves are invalid - I play with a controller and controller mapping is downright random with no way to fix it, no on-screen button prompts to remind players what does what at any moment either, but I just got over it and finished it just fine. I didn't showcase it on a stream as something I fished out of a dumpster, found petty reasons to complain about, read character lines from first to last in a ridiculing tone and then claim I'm helping the dev to be better at making games.

 Man, I doubt you helped the dev much, but you sure helped me to not feel so bad about never managing to finish a game of my own and putting it out there.

Hey again!

Great to have you help clarify more points for me.

It sounds like you may have taken this stream rather personally. I'm sorry to hear that. Before continuing this discussion, I would just like to know if you are responding on the developer's behalf, part of the development team, or if you are responding on your own accord?
I'm always careful to ensure I represent the games I play accurately. My review was made in fairness, and if the developer feels I have misrepresented their game, I will gladly issue a correction in my next stream.


Take care of yourself!

(+1)

I'm just a fan who followed Calunio's work on-and-off since 2010's and more closely after release of Therapist. All opinions are my own, no one asked me to get into this.