itch.io

Finally got around to playing this again after the updates, and I've gotta say that this is incredible. More wonderful lore, more enemies, more characters, cool interactions between certain characters; this is fantastic. Even what I'm assuming to be secrets (breaking out of boundaries, specific character interactions between the player and a certain npc, etc.) are a joy to uncover. Honestly, I can't wait for there to be more content.

Also, it's nice that there's a Steam page for it. It sorta has that "official" feel to it, y'know? At least, I know some people have preconception about games on Itch.io, so hopefully having the option to play it on Steam will encourage more people to give it a try.

I can't really think of specific areas to improve upon at the moment, to be honest. The only thing I'm curious about is the frequency of unexpected events. Maybe it's because I was playing the game a long time, but it seemed to happen more frequently than I expected.  Perhaps I'm just that lucky (or unlucky depending on the context...)

Either way, really I'm just hungry for more content, and I eagerly await whatever you come up with next. Seriously, you've done a wonderful job so far, and I wish you the best in developing this game (or other stuff if you ever choose to do something else).

Fair enough! Makes sense that escape remains a last-ditch attempt to not die rather than a reliable option. In hindsight, I can't recall any rogue-like game where avoiding combat all-together was ever a viable strategy. Most of the time you either get stuck in a situation where you MUST defeat the foe/foes in the area before moving on, or the game punishes you for doing escaping (like how retreating in Darkest Dungeon causes stress on all the party members). Thank you for the response!

Also, if you have the time, I'm curious if you drew inspiration from any particular game. 

Fantastic game. Seriously, when I got to the end I was craving for more (especially since I had gotten a really good setup that run before I got slapped at the end). 

The general vibe of it is nice, and it doesn't feel too difficult once you get a feel for the strategy of the game. I'm surprised by how fun it was considering how much is in the game itself.

Out of all of the game elements, I would say the weakest one is running away. I think it's in part due to how running away from combat inherently has a negative consequence of you getting nothing. Combine that with the fact that you are likely to take a bunch of damage while trying to escape, choosing to fight just feels like the better option every time (Excluding enemies where you can't fight them and are forced to run away). This is especially so since you can get an item that makes the next combat encounter easier.

Also, something to keep in mind is shops and currency. I didn't run into the issue too often, but sometimes I'd end up with boatloads of money with no way to spend it since I kept getting into combat encounters rather than shop encounters. It's not so bad now, but I'm not sure if the same could be said if/when the game gets expanded. Just something to keep in mind.

Overall, fantastic demo! Really excited to see where you end up going with it and I wish you the best of luck!

The sounds were also quite nice. Combined with how little you can see, I think it plays well into the player's imagination of what could be out there. In a way, you make the player scare themselves. Pretty neat trick.

The last segment when the player gets to the bottom was a bit lacking, however. It's just a big red box. It would've been nice to see something there. With that being said, it was creepy to have it suddenly jump to the android with the baby face on it. For some reason the face reminds me of the guy from "Discover My Body".

I also wish there was more on the scavenging side. I kinda get similar vibes to Iron Lung with this game in terms of the feeling of exploring an unknown world. In Iron Lung, however, the player isn't just pressing a button that brings them to the next location. They are watching the radar to make sure they don't bump into anything as well as using the camera to get a look at their surroundings.

I feel like it would've been nice to maybe scavenge some materials from nearby locations. Perhaps we could've also taken some of the fallen androids with us to later get turned into more materials (not that that would've happened since we are supposed to die down there).

Overall, I think this was a pretty nice game. I wish you the best of luck in any future projects you work on.

Edit: Feel free to ignore the ending of the video. It really only talks about the same stuff as I did here in less detail.

Ah, I just saw a comment regarding the lack of location for the first destination. It looks like there's a bug where the first location is not displayed where it should be (I'm assuming it's supposed to go after the colon at the end but it's just blank)

I like the atmosphere, but I don't believe there is any indication as to where to stop the lift. Was I supposed to fire off signals every ten meters?

No worries. I was able to get around it anyway, so it didn't affect the experience. The game was fantastic, and I can't wait for any other games you all develop!

So I encountered a bug where after the Made In Unity splashscreen is done the game is stuck on a gray screen and doesn't do anything. What fixed it for me was getting rid of the saves in the save folder:

C:\Users\YOURPCUSERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Nth Circle\Model Employee\NaninovelData\Saves

In my case I just moved all the saves to another folder. Afterwards, I started the game to make sure it works. After that, I closed the game and then copied my most recent save back into the folder. I also renamed the save from "GameSave069.json" (no, this is not a joke) to "GameSave001.json". Finally, I booted up the game, and it seems to run fine.

I should also mention that I think the version I am running is before patch 1.03, so I'm not sure if this method would work for it. With that being said, the bug I was encountering still occurred with both versions, so yeah. Maybe I made too many saves?