That would be an awesome move but it's a ton of work for someone working alone on the game. That said, stay tuned because something similar may happen this year!
I get your point. From my point of view, nudity is enough to be tagged as NSFW. I understant that if you're looking for sex games, the game will end up out of your range and you'll be disappointed, and I'm sorry about that. I still hope you had fun playing it!
I just realized that the gif doesn't really reflect correctly the animations, it's actually way more fluid than that. I'll make sure the next ones will be better!
That's absolutely correct, it will also be the case in the final product. This is not a sex game, if this is what you want to know. No need to apologize! Many players came up with the question, and even though this answer seems to trigger mostly frustration, it's a totally assumed decision from my side.
That's a great idea too. I'm currently testing different solutions but haven't got much time to work on the project lately. I'm considering running a poll on Twitter with different haircuts once I have 3-4 ideas that I like.
That's quite deep characteristics and background you're mentionning there!
Aria was originally designed with inspiration from a comic ( which is also named "Aria", btw ). Except for the skin and hair color, she has a very similar look ( outfit, haircut mainly ), and I could imagine that if the comic was to be animated/filmed someday, she would have a voice similar to the one in RoT. There was no real idea or image to convey, the game was mainly designed to be a love letter to retro games with a little reference to a comic I've been reading for a very long time now.
With the new design I aimed for a more Tyris Flare-oriented visual. The only thing I'm not a fan of in the original character is the haircut, that's why I tried different hairstyles. I really didn't think a second about what you mentionned in your message about hair grabbing, my only goal being making her look good (and sexy) looking, while considering it must be feasable in medium resolution pixel art without being a real problem to animate.
I understand the point. The thing is, I wanted a fresh start for the character and try to change a maximum of things on her. As I said, it's still WIP but it's the approximate direction I want to take.
Thanks for the thought! As I mentionned in an earlier post, it's all still very WIP, I'm trying to work on the animation every now and then to improve it and make it more dynamic/fluent.
Nice to see the progression of the development over time!
Controls are fluid, artworks and animations are absolutely fine and I appreciated that there are new animations/art since the last demo.
I haven't encountered major issues. A very minor thing I noticed is that when you go to the next stage, if your healthbar is not full it triggers the healthbar animation just as if you get hit. It's a bit scary when your healthbar is low but has no impact on actual gameplay.
I found it slightly hard to kill enemies without getting hit at first playthrough. Maybe I'm just bad ( that's a serious option :D ) but when I got my attacks buffed with powerups and was able to kill enemies in just two hits the difficulty felt just right.
Regarding powerups, I was barely able to pick them up. Do you have to actually press a key to get them? Or can you pick them up just by touching them? And do you lose them when you get to another stage? I felt like the basic enemies were getting stronger from a room to another, just like the powerups were lost after I finished a previous stage.
Nice work overall, looking forward to seeing what's next!
Thank you! There will also be a dash ability, included in the next major update with the shielding ability but it's still very WIP at the moment.
Yes, I'll make more games in the future ( if I ever finish this one already, lmao ), and I can promise that if it happens it will be more explicit!
I will consider an upload on Newgrounds for the next update, probably around late February/March, but as I have no fixed schedules/deadlines, these dates may change a bit.
First, thanks for the feedback! It always helps to have inputs from players. Before I continue, and maybe you are aware of it, this is more like a tech demo than an actual gameplay demo. There is still a long way to go, but thanks to players like you the gameplay can be slightly adapted in order to get the best gameplay experience. Also, I'm not a professionnal dev, just doing this as a hobby, all on my own, so I learn a lot from feedback like yours.
The borderless fullscreen by default was an awkward choice from my side, I agree. I haven't considered that the resolution could be an issue for players, and this will definitely change!
The game is meant to be hard. Although, it's quite a challenge for me to balance it properly. I chose to go with these difficult sword hitboxes and I keep trying to balance them almost every gamedev day. In the future though, there will be a defensive ability-ies that will allow you to have more balance between these precise attacks and defensive mechanics. (This tweet will give you a hint: https://twitter.com/BigBeaverProd/status/1483253865713741827 )
About the explicit content, well, players usually are disappointed with my answer, but there will be no explicit content in the final game beyond nudity. The two reasons are that I started the game with the objective of making clothes destruction upon taking damage or dying only, and that I did not feel like making more for now. This is my first public project, and I understand it's meant for a niche audience, but I'm still doing it as a hobby and not as a profession. I hope you understand that point of view. Once the game is finished, I will consider making a SFW version, maybe by limiting the clothe destruction to the underwear level only, but that's just an idea, not a promise.
In the future though, once I'll have some experience with this project, I totally consider making projects with more explicit content!
Thank you very much for these useful thoughts! ( Don't hesitate to follow me on Twitter, and you're right, the VA is amazing! You can check her Twitter too: https://twitter.com/GinaGaloreVA )
I'm aware that the current controls are not everyone's standard, but be sure that in the final version there will be more controls available. The reason behind this is that not every characters' moves are implemented yet, therefore the controls will need adjustment too at some point.
