Very well designed visuals. Love the original character art and the filter on the backgrounds was creative.
The HUDS for character relationships and location choice were all so clean and smooth. It's all presented impeccably.
What I struggled with was the visual novel genre, it just isn't my thing. I also felt like the text didn't really make much of an impact on me. It seemed like a lot of small talk and the characters felt a bit lacking in personality. Also some choices lead to very short and uneventful single text boxes.
Personally I would have liked to have seen a more targeted focus on the really cool lore concept of combining with the person you're closest with in the afterlife. It took a while to pop up and then faded away again (I wasn't able to finish the game due to a large backlog of games to get through).
However, it's an impressive entry in many ways. Well done!
Hi I streamed your game on my twitch so here's my impressions :)
Very polished. I was super impressed that you made this with an older engine like XP. It honestly was so clean looking with recent animation DLCs and scripts for things like Octopath weaknesses and such. You really kept XP up-to-date and modernized and that takes work.
Deep systems and a lot of skills to play with. Perhaps a tad to many combat options from the get go but better too many than none for sure.
Gorgeous mapping with great touches like the stone structure giving way to natural cave!
Hi I played your game on my twitch as requested and I wanted to give you my thoughts.
I was so impressed by the battle sprites! I loved the attack skills they used, it all reminded me of fighting games which I adore.
Some of the visuals are gorgeous and the HUDS are presented very well. Menus and such were very clean. A lot of options to adjust too.
I think the problems I had with it were story based and the due to the challenges of writing in a foreign language. The story just felt disconnected and a bit too random for me to get into.
This dev worked his butt off to create a mountain of content for so many outcomes. Each scene was so creative, I couldn't believe how many responses there were for dying the same way!
Some real laugh out loud moments, even if not all of the 4th wall breaking was to my taste. Honestly the game won me over with the dedication shown. The fact that he wrote all this as a non-native English speaker is so impressive.
Oh my gosh the environmental abilities were honestly so beguiling. I had so many wow moments in this game. I did get stuck quite a few times but I made it out, though I couldn't quite defeat the boss (just through my own fault).
Creative battle mechanics, smart use of animations to create a visual spectacle. Good mapping. A lot of explanation of characters' backstories that really adds to their motivations.
Heartfelt story that slightly became tarnished by the ending.
Overall, this shows a great deal of potential and it was a fun game!
Hello, I hope you're all enjoying the contest so far!
I will be streaming some of the games over on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/huntingswan so if you would like your game to be played then please comment below. Alternatively, I have a discord which anyone is welcome to join https://discord.gg/nGCFmrh
I'll be streaming most days at either 12PM or 2 PM UK time. I can't promise I'll be able to stream all requests but I will do my best to at least try them and give a rating. :)
The conversation sections and the battles are both supposed to contribute to the final ending outcome (I programmed 4). So I could imagine if you did well in the conversations but still lost the battles you could get the 'good' ending. However, to be frank, I think I may have also made an error with the variable adjusting so one ending overwhelms the others.
Originally I wanted one more day/night cycle, with you confronting a particularly harsh theater critic as the final boss. But I ran out of time :D
The setting of this game is atmospheric and sinister yet realistic and grounded. I loved all the world building about the bureaucracy of the dark experiments being conducted.
Mapping was great, really immersive, only broken by a few passability issues.
And it has combat! With fun little mini games that add extra interactivity! The monster sprites are too adorable.
I wasn't too great at the puzzles but that's par for the course for me ;)
Overall: a wonderfully impressive project to be proud of!
