Speaking of, I also really liked the nuance added to Billy’s character at the end, and the apparent parallels between his childhood and Sarah’s.
- I am happy that this gets through. Once the game is a lot bigger and new chapter are added it will be pretty clear that one of the points of the story is more or less character study. As so most characters wont fit neatly on the spectrum of good/bad, and those that will (Arthur) will be the exceptions that clarify someone else. Billy was never evil, he was a hurt man who loved his daughter and did the best he could. He never intentionally harms Sarah, he was acting in what he thought would be her best interest. His own father is the opposite, carelessly enjoying hurting others and with a grandiose sense of self.
The dark path will be just one of many once I am finished with it all, I want some serious replay value. There are 8 hidden stats managing your "personality", in time I want these to change which dialogue is available to you, meaning slowly changing Winters personality in the direction you are pushing him, and letting this influence events. The dark path will be awful, and I feel bad sometimes when I write it, but the game is not called Dreams of Joy Still here ;).
I did notice some of the things I mentioned in my previous comment aren’t fixed yet (mirror disappearing, Swagger bar not being visible in the Strats menu, young Sarah’s collision in the hidden pond), but I understand they might take some time. As for some new issues I had:
- These are still on my list. I took part in jam this weekend and the people who have played my game went from 10 to 40. I have tons of feedback and bugs to get through. I am juggling this with my need to make new stuff too.
I found another instance of sprites transforming when interacted with from the wrong angles: the chest in the room below the Hunter’s Camp momentarily transformed into a completely different chest sprite when I opened it from behind. I haven’t noticed this with any other chests, though.
- Thanks for pointing these out. Hopefully an improved workflow and understanding of how rpgmaker handles sprites at least will make it so I dont repeat these problems in the future.
- I forgot to ask this in my previous comment, but is there any way to reach the red slime things in the room below the Camp? They really look like they should be able to be fought or otherwise interacted with.
- Not at the moment. One of the things at the bottom of my list is adding more secrets. In this instance there will be an "invisible" path, but I dont have a good reward for it yet so I have not removed the collision and opened it up.
- I’m very confused about how Swagger carries over between combats.
It is SUPPOSED to carry over as long as you are on the same map, and reset every transition. I am guessing this is pretty wonky at this moment.
- The Euthanasia never used the healing move she had in 1.5 when I fought her this time. Is that intentional?
Healing triggers once she is below a certain health-threshold, most people destroy her with crackerlacker and jack of the torpid before it has a chance to trigger. If one wants to face her early she becomes a real challenge. Perhaps low-level running could become a thing.
- A minor one, but the bosses’ health bars seem to go a bit offscreen while you’re attacking them, making it harder to tell how much HP they have left.
- I will add looking over them and adjusting the placements to my list.
It also seems like boss minions, like the Majestic Deer’s organs and frozen Sarah’s jellyfish, don’t have health bars of their own, which makes the mechanic feel pretty inconsistent, but that might be intentional.
- It got too messy when they had them since the enemy sprites are so close to each other.
- The computer on the Southern Fields tower is pretty broken. Someone already brought up the background being stuck on the screen, but on top of that the AI chatlog file won’t open at all.
- AI chatlog is just not written yet, since it is a hard piece to get right. Its a conversation between Billy and an AI-chatbot where he asks the bot for advice on how to propose to Anatea. The background bug is now fixed, it was a stupid mistake on my part.
- The second paragraph of the message on top of the path to Anatea’s grave seems to be missing one or more letters at the start.
- I will check it out.
- It seems like when you talk to the Sarah instance in the Frozen Lake, she’ll refer to Winter as James regardless of what first name you actually gave him. Don’t know if that’s intentional.
Its not, will fix, thank you.
- In the Frozen Cavern, to the right of Sarah’s memory of Anatea in the hospital, the entire wall is missing collision, allowing you to walk into it.
- Will fix this too!
I also felt like the difficulty spiked a lot towards the end, with the Spirit of Rebellion and the Jackalope both being able to one-shot my party members on a whim; but I didn’t fight a lot of enemies that run, so maybe I was just underleveled, and either way I managed to beat both of them in 1-2 tries each.
This is intentional, and by the end you should be able to buy a couple of remembrance and remembrance all from MR.TV.
And I don’t quite understand rebel Sarah’s role in the story, particularly the way she attacks Winter and hardly acknowledges it after you beat her.
Spoilers: The world you are in as you are going through chapter 1 is created out of Sarah and Billys emotions and memories, though the main focus is Sarah. You can view it as a speedrun through the key points of her life. Everything you meet represents something , some of this is obvious, other things less so. Spirit of Rebellion is the end point of Teen Sarah, what she ends up as after going through what Margarette and Billy puts her through. In act3 you will continue playing as her for a while, seeing what happens once shes freed herself from their influence and gets out to experience the world. The motif of fire she has is also in opposition to young Sarahs motif of water and fish. The ocean represents freedom in a way to young Sarah, and sympathy. The fire also represents freedom, by burning the past, but not sympathy.