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Slow and steady wins the race, as they say. Good work, and best of luck for 1.3

I feel both envious and ecstatic.

Envious because I am in the process of writing the same kind of story. Ecstatic because that's a really, really good game, with much more content and fluff that I expected. 

I'll give a full review once I've finished the game, but for now I have a lot of fun.

I played a few games on the current version (1.6.5), and my opinion will be closely similar to the more recent ones.

This is a gorgeous game. Colorful, dynamic with a lot of camera work you'd expect from an AA game. The character design is great (the eye candy is a nice bonus), with voices that fit them (kudos to the main cast). It would definitely have a mainstream audience, if said eye candy was toned down a little.

On the gameplay itself, the hits feel really good to land, especially the grabs. However, the fixed camera makes the action hard to follow when the characters are on the far side of the screen. It's not really fun when you get hit from nowhere because you are in the middle of a far away melee, especially since there's no guard or counter.

The boss fights are reallly good, however the goblins are really horrendous to fight because of their way of fighting, the lack of targeting system, and the layout of most of the rooms. I would prefer them to be like the gnomes from Golden Axe: bonus enemies that are only on the screen for a limited time, and the player can choose whether to conserve their life or chase them to try getting more points.

Finally, I must agree with some of the criticisms about the credit system. I get that it is to emulate the arcade machine feeling. But the chapters are so long, and the difficulty so high, that it is more an exercise in frustration than anything. It is also a flawed emulation of an arcade cabinet in itself, since at this point a player would simply put in more quarters to continue playing.

I fear that you might chase away the audience that is mostly interested in the cool character action, the game's visuals, or more generally seeking a casual entertainment. 

If you do not want to part with the credits system, please at least divide the episodes in verses, or/and allow us to define the amount of credits in the options. Allowing the player to spend their crowns to buy credits could also be an option, since it has a direct cost for the player.

Congratulations on reaching 1.0 and your goals. You can be proud. :-)

Hello. First of, this is a nice game, And I'll be sure to follow it.

However, I am a little confused: how do you access the Dragon Slayer side story?

Sugarcube is a nice tool, and does stuff like save management easier than Harlowe, but it requires more know-how to use its more advanced functionalities.

And Twine's UI having no syntaxic hightlights for Sugarcube makes coding cumbersome.

So thank you for taking the time to help beginners get the hang of both Sugarcube and Twee. :-)

Renamon would benefit from either starting with or learning a multi-target skill at level-up, considering that she faces very quickly groups of enemies, and enemies have high HP for the moment.

Corruption skills cosuming MP makes using normal skills unavailable. Considering that 2 of the corruption skills require 100 TP, which takes several turns to pool, I think it would be better if corruption skills did not use MP, and worked with TP in the same way as "limit breaks".

I think the game would benefit from a weakness system, to speed up battles. You could go with the usual four elements, or you could go with Cybersleuth's triangle (base < virus < vaccine < base). 

Related to the two paragraphs above, you could make it that normal skills are unavailable while in "corrupted" state, to give the player some thinking room as to whether they should rely on skills or on corruption skills.

Having Renamon start at 1HP after a game over is too harsh, in my opinion. As it currently is, it is easy to enter a losing loop where the gold you get goes to potions instead of skills or gear, until you're out of potions and gold.

Finally, I think that it would be nice for the slime and the slime wall to have game overs, like the slime boss, and it would be nice for the slime clone or the wall + clone combo to have their own grapples. As a general rule, you can't go wrong with more grapples and more scenes, seeing those is why most people will play your game.

I can see where the inspiration came from, and I like that. There should be more games of that style :-)

Good luck to you for the development.

It is always interesting and heartwarming to read a developer who still has his feet on the ground.

As you say in the last part of the journal, you should use what you learned and the experience you gained to make something new. This is also what personal projects are for, no matter their nature. I think both your psyche and your audience will be even more thankful about it than if you force yourself to update the "monster".

I think these changes are for the best. While open world is always a nice thing, easing the player to the setting is good thinking.

This has really good potential. Platforming is reminiscent of Sonic and feels nice. Animations are very good.

The things I feel would benefit the game would be having some mechanics better explained/hinted, like the enemy bouncing, and having enemy grabs.

With that being said, I will follow the development of this game with great interest. :-)

That's a damn good game.The game looks good. The scenes are varied, the difficulty is challenging as one would expect of that kind of game, but beatable.

My completely unreasonable wish list for even more fun:

* Group attacks from enemies (at least from the same kind of enemies?)
* The ending felt a little abrupt. While I understand the intention behind it, how about a boss fight, or a "final wave"? After all, all these experiments must be put to use. ;-)

I really like the game. It hits all the right kinks for me, and as a fellow writer I definitely appreciate the attention to the world building. I can't wait to see more. Don't burn yourself out with all these routes. :-)