Franken is a very funny, tiny, retro RPG! It takes inspiration from very early final fantasy and dragon quest. It took me two hours to stream, and everyone coming along for the ride was laughing the whole time!
AfterglowAmpharos
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For the readers: This was a lovely short platformer. Use different spells to hurt shadowy cat-shaped monsters. Collect kitties you find along the way. Upgrade spells, upgrade your kitties' buffs, and buy hats.
Accessibility options include:Hold button or toggle button to fire. Toggling scary stuff, camera shake, visual effects, flashing, player outline. Descriptive audio, repetitive sounds. HP multiplier, boss HP, free shop items, hover duration, death pits, knockback, timer duration.
For the dev: Bug report!
I turned on "safe death pits" in the options but there's one tile in endgame where you missed - I can fall and die, and it's obscured by a cloud in a forward-windy area.
You can watch it in action here, 2:30:50 - 2:33:20 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1798221394
So far, this is excellently tutorialized, refreshingly uncomplicated, and perfectly charted and designed for rhythm play. And it's adorable!
One tweak I'd suggest: When doing the tutorial for a minigame, when I get some early/late timings, the tutorial advances anyway. I would prefer if I got the chance to perfect my timing before the game moved on.
I have a suggestion! How about a toggle option for a soft audio beep when it turns green, and a boop when it turns red? Then players could play with their eyes closed when they're sleepy or using their imagination, or if they're multitasking with doing something "fun" on the computer or with a partner or with a toy! Lots more utility!
Wait, drinking a potion *out of battle* actually has the bonus effect kick in when you enter your next battle? That's... that's cool, but it's so contrary to how RPGs work that I never would have expected it. Maybe that could be explained somewhere in-game if there's room for it?
Similar suggestion for Guarding, I don't think I ever read in-game that it heals you a little.
Thank you Quetzalli
What you described with the health potions restoring 10% later still doesn't break even when it comes to the damage that these cave monsters deal every turn (not to mention stronger foes later). So I'm using a turn to heal, then losing more health than I gained. It's an objectively net-loss way to use my action.
You're right about using them out of battle, though.
Compare the Heal magic spell, which heals a good chunk of HP, more than the damage I receive during one turn. I've been using that, but when I face 3+ foes, I run out of MP before the fight's over and then I get killed.
I bought the first three badges, I don't have the 5 required to buy any more because I can't win these cave encounters and I'm too low-level for the black cat.
What do you mean by auto-defeated? I'm not sure what that mechanic is, I haven't been exposed to it.
Finally, if your suggestion is to go back to the first level and grind, that is a good sign that your game needs rebalancing, as a rule of thumb. Ideally, a player should be at a decent level to face whatever they come across so long as they clear out every screen they go through (you know, they don't actively go around enemy encounters).
Been doing all of that. Except the potions, they're not useful. It takes one turn to heal ~20HP and the next attack takes 50 or 60 HP, so it's a net loss every time.
It's easy to get slaughtered within just a couple turns when the solo hero goes up against one Plague Plant and two Lurker Snakes, which is a lot of the mandatory fights in the Lv5 cave.
I hope in the future you can find a way to rebalance things, give us a second hero earlier, or add difficulty select menu.
Hello! I just streamed your demo for a small audience. If you want to watch the play-footage and see my reaction, you can find footage here.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1453570033
If you don't have time to watch that, I understand! I'll just give you my feedback, features that I think would improve the game.
1. Sound effects are very loud compared to the music, in some cases jarringly so. Please A) lower the volume of the sound effects by default and B) give us an options menu where we can adjust the music and sound volume independently.
2. I encountered a crash when encountering the masked cat, which you can see in the footage. Just in case that helps you with bugfixing.
3. I had absolutely no idea how to defeat the electric enemies. I struggled in the upper floors for quite some time, until someone in stream chat looked it up for me and told me that it's possible to throw lances. I had never used that skill before. To fix this, I think you should include a reminder to players that throwing lances is possible, possibly in one of those books lying around?
4. When electric enemies zap the player, the player often becomes stuck inside one of the suits of armor, with no means of escape.
That's it! Thanks for your demo!
Ooh, loving the new quality-of-life features!
I have an idea for another one (which should be very little effort to include). Mouth transition 3. The same as 2, but the jump isn't as high. I suggest this because I'm transitioning from another PNGtuber method where the jump is small, and I'm finding Veadotube's jump to have a little too much motion.
I wanted to ask for a couple hints. What can I use the lost pouch and the snail juice for?
Also, I have two issues to report:
1. When I play the downloadable version 1.2.1, the snail woman's first button reads "Not all arguments converted during spring formatting."
I am still able to buy the first item from her and watch her first scene. However, I'm not able to buy a wrench even with 3000 coins.
2. When trying to buy the bat hair in either version, the conversation goes like
"Five..."
"Thousand??"
"Hundred."
"Oh. Still pretty expensive."
But then the button to actually buy the bat hair is 5000, not 500. This is not only misleading but it forces 3-4 days spent doing nothing but grinding. D:
1. That's heartening to hear!
2. That's alright, I can get around it by downloading Krisp on my own and setting it as the microphone input for veadotube-mini. However, most of your audience won't know to do that, and so they won't have any noise cancellation. Hopefully you're able to attach one in natively.
I couple issues I noticed:
1. Between syllables or words, my character's mouth flaps open and shut wildly, because of the fluctuating mic level during that.
2. Character opens mouth for tapping noises or background noises.
Feature suggestions to solve these issues:
1. Character's mouth stays open for a couple frames after the mic has fallen silent. (it's an optional feature, a slider for how long to stay open afterward)
2. Include a noise cancellation feature like Discord has (they use Krisp) or like OBS has.
I enjoyed my time with this puzzle platformer. The mechanics make sense.
I found a small sense of delight when I discovered that the duo could attach with blue fella on top, not just blue fella on bottom, giving me options and expanding possibilities.
One thing I found unintuitive: when the shell switches are introduced, they have to be stood on constantly or else they turn off. Later in the game, a shell that looks exactly the same no longer follows that rule.
If a live reaction would be useful for you, you can watch a video of me playing it here. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1058833315
I enjoyed this game very much. I played it on stream.
In addition to the time mechanics advertised on the box, I can also rewind time to any checkpoint I save at, which means I can go back to any of them and do something different than I did last time, and this creates a forking-pathed list of alt timelines that I can go back to at will. "oh in this timeline i got the heart, but i didn't turn on the machine..." etc.
When I rewind, I lose physical upgrades (HP, energy, buttons pressed), but keep information (passwords, new moves, better guns). Midway in the game, I was making routes that started me at the beginning of the timeline and used all the moves/guns I had so far to collect all the HP/energy upgrades I knew about so far, all in as little time as possible so I could use the rest of this timeline exploring and progressing.
I have one criticism: the puzzles with red doors shutting behind you are VERY unclear in what their win condition and mechanics are. That puzzle needs to be made WAY more clear.
1. I didn't realize until after banging my head against a puzzle for a long time that I can charge-shot any door and reset the puzzle.
2. I didn't realize until after banging my head against a puzzle for an even longer time that it is not necessary to end the puzzle *at the exit door.* That is incredibly unintuitive. I kept trying out routes that would have gotten me trapped after all the doors were shut, and I thought intuitively that was a wrong answer. But no apparently that's... the correct answer? That made no sense.
I'm enjoying the heck out of this game. The portraits and the full images of the 'mon are very cute. The petting games are just right, I think. Basically what I have to do is pet different body parts and see what works and what doesn't. And with no meter, I have to study the facial expression and the speech reactions I get, which I actually think is more better than a meter. It feels more like a real intimate experience. I feel like I'm really getting to know these characters, thank to the above and thanks to the dialogue.
I actually don't much care for the combat in the dungeons. It seems too repetitive and I get kidna bored and I wish I could just skip it. But that's ok, I don't like the combat in any of the canon games either. I'm just not a guy that finds combat engaging in general.
The puzzles were fantastic. The exploration was fantastic. I really enjoyed figuring out how to get around the world map. The quality of life additions were great. The button remapping options, too. The audio details impressed me. The collectibles were well-hidden. The palettes were fun to use, including the pride flags.
One thing that was a source of frustration was mixing up the buttons, which I did often. I would often jump to my death when I was trying to confirm a speech command on the wheel. Jump and confirm share a button, and when I was pressed for time, I would OFTEN press jump while the wheel wasn't up, when though I thought I was doing it right. That's what I mean by mixing up my buttons.
This game fits the theme very well.
Once I got that ricochet upgrade, there was no going back, my lab was not salvagable... Oops.
I do think there's an issue of conveyance. For example, I didn't understand why the bullets started ricocheting in later levels, when I never chose the ricochet upgrade. Can you make it more clear that every upgrade is paired, so it comes with a pro AND a con?
Can you include some way for a player to check what the controls are? I bought the "pause fire" upgrade and promptly forgot which keybind it is and had no way to check. It could be in the corner of the screen at all times, or on a pause screen.
Good game! I 100%ed it today.
BTW, every cutscene you view is unlocked in there gallery later on, so you can focus on the gameplay to unlock stuff and save your JO session for once everything's unlocked, if you prefer it that way. I'd recommend it, since the reflexes and strategy in this game isn't exactly easy.
Three times now I've encountered a bug where I try to sell a Focoid to the female shopkeeper in her tent. When I hit the Z button to select the Focoid, instead of bringing up the Confirm/Cancel menu, my cursor arrow turns black, and that menu doesn't pop up. And this press, nothing happens in the game at all no matter how many buttons I press.