Oh, this game gives me a lot of retro jrpg games!
It looks quite polished, but it has a few little things that make the experience less exciting.
-
I stuck at the first screen for some time, pressing Space, Enter, clicking the start button. I’ve read the instructions, but I thought that J was only an in-game thing, like you press E for interactions in games, but you rarely use it to activate a button like “new game”. A text like “Press J to start” would help me out there.
-
I couldn’t get pass the first zone. I got stuck in the wall after collecting the second key in the first section of the game. :(
I’ll try this game out again to see what else it has to offer, but I’ll continue with my thoughts nonetheless.
-
I don’t know if we get a new party member after that section or not, but I’m not sure guard action function is clear to the player. In most games, guard is only useful for a party, so a weakened (and focused) party member could survive while the other members are trying to save them. If the game has a single party member, the guard feature may not have an intuitive usage.
-
The first 10+ battles are quite simple and repetitive. This is not a show stopper for a game of this genre, especially for a game jam, but it would be much easier to handle with a faster battle loop (faster start and finish sequences). I think I managed to beat everyone with a simple shoot-until-they die tactic without using anything else (I don’t think that I reloaded once, even with 3 enemies).
-
The in-game UI is quite good for a jam game! The only extra touch I was missing is something like a tip saying what you’re hovering above. This would help me to understand the stats, for instance. I don’t need the numbers/etc, but knowing that it’s “power” or “defense” would be helpful. I ended up increasing everything by 1 point because it wasn’t clear what I’m doing here. :D You could partially solve this issue by providing a mini manual on the game page (like list the stats with their icons, names, and mechanics).x
With that being said, I’m going to give it another go because I like RPG games. :D
Also, please describe what was your core idea with this one? It’s hard to design an RPG game, so I’m interested to know what you were trying to build (like what are the main ideas behind the game).
