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This looks quite promising! The Undertale influences are apparent, but I think the Gameboy Pokemon aesthetic and the differences in the combat system help it stand out. The combat on its own was quite fun to figure out, I can’t wait to see in what ways the bullets can be interacted with in future fights, and what exactly it means to "show mercy". The avatar selection fakeout with one of the options being a full character with their own agenda is a pretty novel idea, and story-wise I’m very interested by the implication that Despra has already killed at least one other pacifist. The musicians' voices being the instruments they play is a neat touch, the easter eggs are fun to find, and the music is pretty good!

If there’s one major criticism I have, maybe the whole “violence vs mercy” theme is too on the nose at the moment? The way Despra just goes on and on about how pathetic pacifists are and how cool murder is actually broke my immersion a bit, almost feels like the game’s trying too hard to mimic Undertale. But then again, maybe that’s intentional, and I don’t know how exactly you could make it subtler.

I also found the easter egg where Despra crashes the game if you skip too much of her dialogue a little frustrating; mostly for the purposes of testing the demo, but I imagine it might also be an issue in repeat playthroughs and speedruns of the full game. I do like the idea of her being mad that you’re doing that, though, so maybe she could instead skip ahead to her violent phase with unique dialogue?

Finally, around halfway through the unique restart cutscene, Ally’s sprite suddenly moved downwards at startling speed and went offscreen. She wasn’t visible for any of her remaining lines, including one where her jumping SFX played, and she snapped back in place at the very end, so I imagine it’s not intentional.

Overall though, I’m excited to see how this game develops from here! Hope this feedback helps.

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback!

I'm glad you enjoyed, and that you picked up on some of the story implications! There's a lot that the demo-demo sets up for the full game, like first impressions that will be used later. For instance, I did want the "violence vs mercy" thing to be on the nose, so that 1) the player can underestimate Despra and the game in general at least a little bit, so they can be surprised for what it has to offer later and 2) I'm using the whole "violence vs mercy" thing as kind of an outdated and old concept, and this game will touch on themes of older concepts like those being obsolete (like how the whole aesthetic is based off of an outdated yet classic Pokemon gen). A little spoilery, but yeah... I'm experimenting with using those Undertale-like qualities to make a point later on.

I'll look back at Despra's easter egg, I partially wrote it in to troll speedrunners lol. And as for Ally, I knew about that bug and I thought I had fixed it... I was praying it wouldn't show up in this release but here we are!

Anyway, I hope this clears some stuff up. The next release is the actual Demo, which isn't coming soon, but it's coming nonetheless!

Very interesting, thanks for clarifying the unsubtletly was intentional! I guess that's that gripe dealt with, can't wait to see how you handle those themes!