good morning! i bring ill news - reaching the first sanctuary room on level 19 crashes the game! i have a save file right outside, and entering that room will always crash the game. there are some other minor things but i'll save that for the full proper review
262 days ago (+1)
Oh man, there's nothing special about that rest area so it must be some kind of stupid oversight.
I'll fix it as soon as I get off work. Thanks for the heads up.
262 days ago(+2)
Rejoice! I fixed the issue, and it was so stupid that it made me wonder how come my ancestors didn't get eaten by cave lions.
The updated version is live right now because I literally wrote more text for this post than for the fix.
Thanks again for telling me so fast, I would have probably taken a nap or something if I didn't know I had to fix a crash.
261 days ago(+1)
i have beaten the demo. i remember reading about how you felt like writing was giving you a hard time, and i can tell you that i greatly enjoyed what is there. i'll again refrain from saying anything too specific so anyone here doesn't get spoiled, but i think you tackled Enkidu's part of the plan well - he went and we as the viewers are left in the dark like the characters (instead of now playing as him or something similar).
so here's some bugs for you to get triggered by.
Haydn has a lot to say despite not being in this conversation. where did he learn to speak, anyway?something to consider (that might be a pain) is a "back" button for next - to go back one slide. i did accidentally double press next and i wondered if i could go back ,but evidently not.
something about the game really doesnt like be using the windows snip tool. might be a new OS thing (11) but i had to mess around with it to be able to actually capture the screen. i don't think this is tied to the game (maybe godot?) but it's worth noting that screenshotting is hard.
Peter's attack sound is really weak compared to his visuals/damage/abilities. he's a big guy with a man-sized halberd/bardiche/naginata thing, and when he swings it it makes a weak swing sound. at least give him finn's blunt swing sound.
xanadu solider animation is a bit weak, noticeable when he's an ally. i think speeding it up x2 might fix it?
last level map (Finn / Gaz's side) is confusing. it feels like i'm zoomed in or that the bottom side of the screen is cut off.
Finn's attack is also slightly too loud when compared to everyone else's.
silly issue: i noticed Mosca got 1-turn-KO'd when faced with the first desert assassin encounter (For me it was assassin + 2 audience members). i also noticed finn was rather weak - until i realized they're level 1! probably something to do with saves or whatever, but they remained level 1 until i reached a holy ground and leveled them up. you probably wont ever have this edge case in the actual game, but perhaps a mandatory "level up" screen should be imposed on the player if the game detects a character is level 1 at a late stage of the game.
"...amount of champions increased geometrically" says the Taurian Knight to Finn. kind of a weird expression - does he mean exponentially? maybe i'm ESLing it.
at the last fight (for which the intro was very cool, by the way) - i killed 30 foes, which unlocked the dreaded 4th lane bug, where enemies started spawning beneath the bottom-most row. i didn't want to mess with it more so i bit the dust there. maybe you can reuse the timer mechanic, where after a certain time the fight auto-ends saying you held out long enough.
perhaps tied to the 4th lane bug, but ending the demo, your dev-avatar shows up and softlocks the game! he has nothing to say, auto/escape/next don't work either. my only option is to alttab and close it. i'll never know what message you may have had for us, a pity.
as always, you know what you're doing, so simply keep doing it.
261 days ago (+1)
Thanks for the feedback.
A back button would be easy to implement I think, I already have something similar for the combat journal. Perhaps some sort of archive like VNs have could work too. I'll consider it.
I don't have Windows 11, but I blame Windows 11.
Sound effects could be better in general, I agree. I can't think of many that I really enjoy hearing. I think the prionosuchus chirp is my favorite.
I'm still adding animations so I'm thankful for any comments about them.
All of the "machine" levels have a predetermined layout which led to that section in particular being just a little too vertical for the camera. I'll look into it.
One of the compromises that I made with the method that updates save files is that it respecs characters. I made it this way so I could more easily re-balance them and also because I'm generally incompetent. This update Finnegan got a buff to his maximum resistance.
If you ever find yourself in that situation you can level up/respec from the orb at the main hub, although you can only do it at the start of the level to discourage players from min maxing every single encounter.
Geometrical is correct in this context. If champions increased exponentially there would be thousands of them after 12 years.
Finally, I think I probably messed up something during the final transition, but restarting the game should fix it if you really want to read the message. Just continue the save file as normal and it should take you to the last main hub.
Thank you for the feedback again.