This game was really super fun! It reminds me of Flash games I would play for hours on weekends.
By the end-game with the glider the game became really fun. I love the tighter controls and mobility it offers you after you obtain wicked height with the rocket. Diving down to swoop back up into catnip is also very cool.
It kinda contrasts with the balloons, where you have very little control over where you're aiming because of the floatiness. It's fun in its own right, but the skill necessary to pilot the glider well is a lot more fun imo.
One thing that might improve the game overall would be to expand the FoV, since at high speeds (the base level of speed before the glider) everything is a blur and you can't maneuver yourself too well. Also I feel like the music is layering over itself?
This was a good game! I'm excited for your guys' other projects!
I'm glad to finally see your writing attached to a game at last, Indigo! This was a neat little project, and I'm obviously inclined to love any visual novels.
Sensei struggling to sleep on his day off and fearing he's wasting it is a relatable set-up for two branching dialogue paths. I'm glad we get to meet Kayoko through one of them, too. Her route is cute, and referencing her early Momotalk events put a smile on my face. I'm glad you also made her CD bigger than just the clever joke about leaving it pristine. It felt game-accurate!
The smoking gun was another intriguing part, and I feel like you handled it pretty alright. In my deluded fantasy version of this, I'd love to see it be something that drives a narrative through multiple story beats.
On that note, however, I wondered why you opted not to use any sprites at all. It occurred to me that you might not have had access to the sprites (and hence the NVL mode throughout), but if you were using it as a statement, that's also pretty cool. At any rate, here is 1 and 2 for BA sprites if you ever want to use them. The alternate option in the choice menu not leading to any interactions with students was also a little jarring IMO. I can understand writing issues, but I feel like it's better to just not have anything at all if that's the ultimate result.
Don't let my critiques get you down, though. You made a game, and that's the hardest part! It gives me hope to see you go back to that older story about Alice you had last year.
This is well-polished for an "incomplete" game. I've been a fan of these sorts of puzzles since I first got my hands on a Nokia cellphone 17 years ago, so it was nice to see something like this.
The custom graphics are all pretty and I love the added visual flair for things like Sensei moving. Plus, you even included Koharu and [REDACTED] for the final level, so I can definitely see the intent to do even more with it.
I liked the little dialogue that there was too! If it gets finished or fleshed out I'd love to see more of it. It was a fun little game.
And 2 months later we've finally finished everything up. I hope this isn't aggressive marketing but I felt bad leaving this comment hanging for so long.
That was pretty fun. I'd love to see an expanded version of this game/the characters at some point in the future!
If anyone is looking to adapt the game in the future, I'd suggest making the NPCs less flat (there were some scenes where I couldn't see the NPC until their turn), allowing me to switch between characters if I haven't done anything, and maybe some camera controls.
I'm also a little confused about how the enemy AI works... There were a lot of opportunities for them to have attacked me but then they just skipped their turns. I can see that they'll move towards my characters, but they randomly choose to attack or not. No spiderwebs or anything.
It's been some time since release and I hope everyone involved is still as proud now as they were at release. I hope my review (and this comment) are not awkward. I'm just always a sucker for these sorts of reflections on family and heritage.
Perhaps this is an annoying question to ask about Chinese-American media, but was Emily or anyone else on the staff inspired by Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club? If not, I would highly recommend reading it. I've heard mixed reviews on the movie adaptation though.
Hey there! I will admit that my TTRPG skills are severely lacking, but I have a group of friends that have been super into this stuff since middle school. I'm definitely going to propose playing this with them when I get back there.
I can't offer much in the way of critique but take that as a good compliment (I'm more used to stuff like Risk and Pax Porfiriana). This is a faithful replication of Kivotos into a traditional game environment. If this is just a WiP, I'm sure the final version will be even cooler!
And this is the last one I needed to review! Results will be out soon. Thank you so much for participating!
Hey there! Thank you for your submission. As a fellow VN dev, I feel a personal attachment to this one!
With positives, I think you did a good job with using basic Ren'Py code to create a cohesive, living environment with characters changing expressions, bouncing, and reacting. A little goes a long way in this sense, and it felt like BA!
The plot was also pretty fun to follow! Low stakes though it may be, for something like a GDD game being played in real time, it works well. The character interactions are also pretty fun and generally accurate to how they canonically are.
As for my criticisms, I will say that you could have cut out some unnecessary dialogue that pads the script out, especially with scenes like Yuuka talking to herself about her affections for Sensei, a lot of Midori and Momoi's arguments, and even some of Yuzu's fears about the twins being dead. It gets a little repetitive after a while if you're just repeating the same idea - i.e. "I love Sensei."
Aesthetics-wise, I would have lowered the characters down a little more to mimic the BA style, putting each sprite's default position at about thigh-level. It might just be what I'm used to in VNs though.
Great work in total! I can't wait to see more of your projects in the future!
All good. I'll say that the stealth part was clear to me, but after doing this a few times I was just inclined to keep running through the parts I did a million times.
I don't quite understand. Can I ask for a more detailed explanation on this if possible?
Basically, as you're hitting a robot, it'll keep firing into you, even before death. It's usually kinda random for what rate they'll shoot at, but if you don't get caught it doesn't happen. Might be a skill issue.
The post-mortum firing is also fine in that case, cuz if you fix those other bullet issues it'll be a lot more comfortable.
Hey there! This game looks incredible. I almost didn't believe what I was seeing at first! All the BA art is your own work and it is great. The attention to detail is just spectacular. It felt like an SNES title!
I think the sound design is also pretty good, and your integration of Hoshino's lore is really fun.
That being said, I should make some criticisms on the gameplay. It's really hard to gauge how far your punches go in general, as you have such a tiny range, but it's nearly impossible to gauge it when facing up or down and they're obscured. Having tiles on the ground might help give a sense of depth for this.
Then there's how the drones fire. It's a little weird to me that all the obstacles are kinda not really there. Sometimes they block their view, sometimes they don't. But the bullets don't stop for anything. Even if you hide behind a wall, meaning if you're spotted from far away it's game over.
The drones also have this tendency to fire during takedowns (which should probably be shorter anyway) and a little after they die, which can screw you over. This gets particularly annoying when I get killed and have to redo everything, including getting the drops. You could make a big improvement by replenishing health with these pick-ups, I'd say.
As it stands, I've been playing this game for 2 days and I couldn't beat that crowded room because of the bullet issues.
It might seem like a lot of criticisms, but that's just because this is such a cool game idea and I want to see this go as far as possible. Reading your devlogs makes me hopeful I'll see a version with guns someday. Stay tuned for results on Sunday! This was incredible!
Hey guys, thanks so much for the submission! I know you guys had some difficulties getting things up, but I'm glad to see the finished results!
The game has some really great sprites! It feels very Doom, from the sideways glances, the gun movements, and the environments.
With that said, the map is a little hard to see. It's small and you can see all the enemies easily enough (though they're also quite small). Also the reloading (I think you have to reload to fire to begin with?) is a little unclear. For a game of this size, it's fine, but distracting.
I also think the guns disappear with the movement in places. I couldn't seem to fire them. Might've been the reloading? A little confusing, again.
Still! This is a very cool Doom clone, and you guys should be proud! Stay tuned for final results on Sunday-ish.
Hey man, great job. The game looks gorgeous. I perked up in my seat seeing that intro with all the in-game humour (including the 2AM code poster in VSPD HQ).
The sprites and their animations are a real testament to your talent. The sound design is funny, and though the gameplay is simplistic, I was actually able to kill one VSPD student. I guess the other one has the Blender cube or something.
Fun game! It follows a narrative and resolves well. You show a lot of promise being able to put everything together.
Expect an announcement of final results by Sunday-ish!
Yo, this was a super cool entry! I'd been looking forward to it from the beginning and all throughout your progress updates.
There's a lot of good things to say here! The game is superb. No bugs that I noticed, solid gameplay, cool environments, and the variety you put in the art really shines. It makes the environments look distinct, and keyly, like Trinity during Vol. 3. I'm a huge fan.
The additional BGMs, and updates improved the game significantly. I like knowing when I got hit, when the enemies fire, when I fire, and the fleshy punching and breaking noises are cool. I only wish you gave the dying Arius students some sort of death rattle, but maybe that'd be too much. Maybe like a random crit noise?
My only criticisms are minor. Obviously the difficulty is necessarily quite low since you can just mow through everyone, but with that said, the walls should be a little higher because I can cheese a few mobs over walls. Then the punch and gun animations should probably be a little lower because it looks off seeing them in the middle left. It would also help the punch look more natural.
Spectacular job overall, dude. Be very proud of your work!
Hey Tomp23CZ, thanks so much for your submission! This felt like a real game the GDD might have made - very Atari-like. The difficulty being determined by actually changing the window size was also a fun little quirk.
That said, there was a lot you could still do to populate the game a little bit. I'm not certain if there were differences between Momoi and Midori, but it didn't seem like there were. Speed, length, intensity, etc. could have varied the game a little bit. In that vein, I strongly recommend using backgrounds, SFX, and a BGM for your next games just to add some easy flavour.
I look forward to seeing your next titles! Stay tuned for the rankings on Sunday.
Besides that, there is this site that has a bunch of RPGMaker-esque sound effects that might be useful (look under "Anime Like" for rough approximations): https://taira-komori.jpn.org/anime01en.html
The VFX like the chattering sounds when the characters laugh I asked around for and I'll try to tell you later, but if you can extract the sounds from the L2Ds, this site (https://apis035.github.io/bluearchive-spine/) is good
This is a really great runner game with a competent amount of gameplay and polish! I sat forwards in my seat, which is always a good sign for these arcade-y games.
Hello friend! Thank you so much for your time and attention.
Jonter and I are still working on making the project something we can truly be proud of. We don't have a great timeline on when it'll be out, but I will make an announcement when it's all improved. Shouldn't be before the New Year, certainly.
This in-depth feedback means a great deal to me! Thank you so much.
For a game that's barely half an hour, you've touched on the themes I hoped would work and the worries I had very much in a helpful way.
The final version will be cleaner, and while hopefully the addition of expressions and the final CG will grant more emotional impact, I will try to flesh out interactions a bit more.
I think there's a lot of competency on display here gameplay-wise. There's enough interesting variety in enemy types to play with to make it obvious that you knew what you were doing. The only downside is that it's a little bit difficult to gauge trajectories and stuff.
The structure of the game is nice though. It reminds me of those old Kongregate titles I used to play when I was younger.
This is a very beautiful game. The presentation is amazing at all level -- it really reminds me of a childhood fever dream I had with all the vivid bright colours beaming down on you.
If there's one complaint I have, it's that the dialogue would have benefitted from some extra pacing. Obviously there's only so much story and art that can be produced in a month, so I'm not saying extra story lines needed to be written, but simply extending some of the dialogue by splitting longer pieces with a few sentences into multiple, shorter ones could have made the interactions feel a bit longer. The quickness does make the ending feel odd and out of place.
Still, gorgeous game. I would love to revisit it again!
