itch.io

Thanks, appreciate the feedback and stream. I think the core idea is good but I wasn't sure where else to take the game beyond a scripted short narrative. Might return to this game down the line and flesh it into a more procedural and open-ended experience.

Just watched it, yeah there's a lot of polish to go. Most likely will abandon this game since I can't think of making it anything beyond a 10 minute novelty.

Didn't think about that with the trees, that's a good point. 

Why don't you try putting the demo out on steam as well?

very minor but can you make the dollar sign position consistent? for shop it should go in front of the number. otherwise immersion is ruined

Really like the sound effects and music, and the premise is unique and cool. Nice work on the art and models, they fit the theme very well. Can't say I love dodging projectiles with tank controls + static camera, as the perspective throws you off along with needing to re-orient after every attack. The input remapping was a big bonus, the default controls for keyboard were too dated/non-standard for me. Additionally I understand that for pacing the tutorial the standard enemies take some time to kill, but it makes the pistol feel very weak and IMO they have too much health. The premise is cool enough that I don't mind if the combat feels clunky to me

Should work now

Uploaded a new file that looks like it works now

Think I fixed it in case you wanted to give it another try

There was an issue with the dialogue system where the dialogue end signal was silently failing, reupload should work now

Some of the art is a little rough around the edges to me but it lends itself well to the style of the game. The unique style and environment definitely pull you into the game, which is what RPG maker style games are about for me since IMO its hard to do much with the combat systems (renaming health/mana and the equipment system are novel and do big favors for the game's art direction but don't change the underyling formula). Not to say that's a bad thing, for this game I think keeping the combat aligned with regular RPG expectations is a good idea and pouring the rest of the focus into the world, characters, and narrative is the right approach. And this game definitely draws you in with its aesthetic, nice work!

minor thing also - icy is mispelled as "icey" on the enemy wraith description

One day I will be able to run your game, unfortunately the game crashes in the opening area with the priestess. Here is the log in case it helps:

USER ERROR: Node not found: ".." (relative to "Node").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Node not found: "visuals/man/Human_Skeleton/Skeleton3D" (relative to "/root/main/loading/ExpositionRender/SubViewport/frostspirit/frost_spirit").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Node not found: "visuals/man/Human_Skeleton/Skeleton3D/CHANNEL_ORB/ChannelOrb" (relative to "/root/main/loading/ExpositionRender/SubViewport/frostspirit/frost_spirit").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Cannot open file 'res://scenes/items/weapons/Claymore.tscn'.

   at: load (scene/resources/resource_format_text.cpp:1638)

USER ERROR: Failed loading resource: res://scenes/items/weapons/Claymore.tscn. Make sure resources have been imported by opening the project in the editor at least once.

   at: _load (core/io/resource_loader.cpp:273)

USER ERROR: Node not found: ".." (relative to "Node").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Node not found: "visuals/man/Human_Skeleton/Skeleton3D" (relative to "/root/main/loading/frost_spirit").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Node not found: "visuals/man/Human_Skeleton/Skeleton3D/CHANNEL_ORB/ChannelOrb" (relative to "/root/main/loading/frost_spirit").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Node not found: "visuals/man/Human_Skeleton/Skeleton3D" (relative to "/root/main/loading/fire_spirit").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

USER ERROR: Node not found: "visuals/man/Human_Skeleton/Skeleton3D/CHANNEL_ORB/ChannelOrb" (relative to "/root/main/loading/fire_spirit").

   at: get_node (scene/main/node.cpp:1620)

Error. Could not load Resource: res://scenes/items/weapons/Claymore.tscn

USER ERROR: Index p_index = 0 is out of bounds ((int)data.children_cache.size() - data.internal_children_front_count_cache - data.internal_children_back_count_cache = 0).

   at: get_child (scene/main/node.cpp:1511)

USER ERROR: Node3D node not defined in the pinned point, this is undefined behavior for SoftBody3D!

   at: _update_cache_pin_points_datas (scene/3d/soft_body_3d.cpp:719)

USER ERROR: FATAL: Index p_index = 1095713294 is out of bounds (count = 2614).

   at: operator[] (./core/templates/local_vector.h:161)

Really like the visuals and 3D/2D pan effect, very nice and pleasant. Sound effects and animations are on point and the controls feel good. Having a timer with the actual time in the top corner might be nice instead of just the bar since its a time trial style game. Having a setting to change the mouse inversion on the break jump would be nice but is more of a small QOL thing. One problem I had was that the levels and targets in the background could muddle up the real targets in the foreground. Would prefer not rendering those targets on the next level at all or bringing their alpha down more.

mobile kino

I was using keyboard/mouse and would tap x repeatedly, did I miss something obvious?

Appreciate the feedback, yeah I really need to rework the early game to get off the ground faster. Balance wise more enemy variety and stronger enemies are needed, will have to create more varied rooms as well to run around in. Dismissing heroes is planned for later updates for sure

Thanks for playing - yes the longer term vision is to have a meta progression system to unlock more abilities, classes, and items for runs so agreed there. I think the idea of growing a village is a good one, I might steal that. For this DD I wanted to try to nail down 4 classes but have 5 more planned. 

Thanks for playing, appreciate the feedback

Thanks for playing, agree on the pacing. I've thought about opening the map up more, especially once larger numbers of enemies spawn. Will need to experiment and see if it feels better. Will also fix the gold issue (its bugged but supposed to go to you after level is complete)

Pulling the download until I can fix it

Very polished mechanics that are easy to pick up but have fun and challenging depth given the level designs. Controls feel great and responsive. IMO there should be infinite transformations allowed. Because of how easy it is to restart at the circles it doesn't incentivize me to be smart about using my limited 4 abilities, instead I just clear the enemies, restart, do the cat platforming to pick up keys, and restart whenever I need another jump boost to reach something. The limit of 4 just seems very small given how fun it is to swap and ruins the momentum for me to be switching back and forth and then realizing I have to stop and restart the level because I ran out of swaps. For the same reason, no need to have the mana potions since getting a refill by restarting is quicker and simpler

Bit strange to have auto-attack be bound to a key and then make the target arrow disappear; I think it would be best to just have the character attack automatically when close to enemies. There's no visual feedback of when auto-attacking is on, so its not clear if you have it enabled or when the next attack is available. Might be useful to have a timer showing when the next basic attack comes up similar to the big attack. Without any visual feedback, attacking feels about the same as moving, so some kind of animation would also be nice. A range indicator may also be useful

Didn't understand how the trade system worked, I think a tutorial would be useful here. Also seems to be a bit of a clash in the art style between the portrait in the top left, the 3D model characters, the 2D billboard items, the trade portraits, and mix and matched fonts. Compared to how many footprints get left behind, I feel like the character movement and sweep speed are too slow as well.

Haven't played balatro but I think this has been my favorite demo so far. Very polished across the board, the sound effects/music/animations/UI is very clean and satisfying. Some of the effects I wasn't clear on at first but playing it out after a few rounds makes it make sense. Very easy to pick up and makes you want to keep playing one more round. Hope there's a steam release in the future.

Found the graphics very charming. Lot of polish on all of the menus and other UI elements. Getting used to the combat speed was a bit tricky at first and I can see where fans of faster action may not like it, but for me the timing makes it more challenging and interesting. Maybe I didn't understand the controls but switching lock-on targets between nearby enemies didn't seem to work. 

Agree that the early levels are too long. It seems like the pace can definitely be sped up both in terms of movement and round length. 

Yeah I need to scrap that whole UI if I move forwards with this game. Believe it or not it used to be even worse before a couple more iterations. Need to swap the font.

No, but I realized about a month into development that SNKRX already existed. After watching SNKRX gameplay I actually changed the snake movement because I realized it worked better than direct grid movement.

I actually slowed down the movement because projectiles, enemies, and players were moving too fast to actually react, but moving fast definitely feels good. 

Agree on the wall interaction, need more time to determine the best way to interact with it.

Had a tough time balancing difficulty and round length from early to latter rounds and wanted to have the pace of each wave pick up as you advance but I agree the early round is too long as is. As for enemy health, after you upgrade abilities and take items they die mostly in one shot.

I originally gave the ability to equip multiple abilities on a character instead of just one, but felt that you lose character diversification and build variety when doing that. The idea was to build the snake with specific characters in specific slots doing specific things,  otherwise it seemed more boring to just unlock everything on every character and immediately explode the level. Of course I can see how that just points to poor design on my part; probably could spend more time balancing around this by allowing the player to use multiple abilities but locking more abilities behind deeper skill trees so that you could really only invest in a handful but still use multiple abilities.

Thanks much for the feedback, this is very helpful

The gold at the end of the level is actually bugged, there is logic to move it to the player after the round ends. I'll be sure to fix that. Agree that the directional feedback should be added, I'll look into that next.

Appreciate the feedback,  I had a tough time getting the balance right between early and late game.  I think a lot of the abilities are overtuned, but I also like that you can have a number of powerful combinations. I'm going to try seeing what happens if I make the walls deal damage to incentivize the player to avoid hitting them.

Doesn't work on some W11 comps (stuck after dialogue sequence), still working on fixing

killer whale op, any way to predict his surfacing?

Really cool concept and a lot more depth than I was expecting. The hints are very useful given the game's complexity, and it onboards you quickly without flooding you with too many things at once. However, occasionally it wasn't clear to me what needed to be dragged where. Looking forward to playing the full version; wishlisted on steam

The floaty jump physics and momentum make it a real frustrating challenge. Got filtered by the hammer early and had to give up

Had a lot of fun playing through this, wouldn't have been able to beat the final boss without the second attack upgrade. Big fan of your other games so it was cool to see you make a non-tactics game

Ah, yeah I just watched the recording. Haven't seen this bug before (where the camera won't follow you between rooms), any chance you could send me the game logs so I can take a look? They would be under C:/Users/<your name>/AppData/Roaming/Islandware/NinjaRPG

Thanks for playing, enjoyed your stream a lot by the way. Do you know which area you were in when it happened? (e.g, in the forest labyrinth or in the village/town)?

Reuploaded with some more polish and updates based on the feedback below. Most notably, I balanced the rooms so that traps are less frequent/fast and enemies and traps are placed in more fair positions. Also, enemies now wait 1 second before chasing you to give you time to react (but now move a little faster to compensate)

Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed! 

Good catch on the typo, will fix that. I considered showing all moves at the start but wanted to give some surprises for when the player unlocked them, but for a small game like this I think you're right that I should just show everything up front. I added some text and icons after leveling up that stay on the HUD after leveling up telling the player to checkout the menu to see the new moves (right side of the screen), but it can be unhelpful because it doesn't say what they unlocked and can be easy to miss. Appreciate the feedback!