Windows.
Max Stern
Creator of
Recent community posts
There's a lot of effort put into this, but IMO it's far too complicated. There are far too many buttons and options to pick from for each combat (exemplified by the addition of stamina-consuming dodge on top of everything). Complexity should be introduced gradually, and overall complexity should be toned down to something more like Hades.
Lack of main menu music is odd. The text is all Engrish. There should be a health bar on the character itself, not just the top-left of the screen. I died 20 seconds after being swarmed by the green guys. Enemies should spawn off-screen where you can't see it happen. The in-game character art is better than the portraits, which make it look like a patreon erotic game.
Overall it's a mediocre Survivors clone. I'd say the music and presentation are the strongest parts.
The game starts windowed but goes fullscreen after file creation. Loading screens show the main menu (because it's loaded underneath?). Text boxes are advanced using escape? Why is space not mapped to anything? Default mouse sensitivity is way too high. The game is really choppy, has regular frame hiccups. No reticle? The game does not teach you how its shooting mechanics work. The sound effects are very clearly stolen from Half-Life. Every door being a separate loading zone is really lame, since the cells are tiny. I don't like how complex the controls are. Only having a laser sight when aiming with the RMB is bizarre, and made me think blind-firing was the intended method.
The presentation and atmosphere is great, but the game is (likely purposefully) frustrating to play. I would have much preferred if it played like System Shock 2.
During character creation you can outline the child's sex options, which is odd since it's not selectable. Advancing text using space/enter is standard in Renpy, which should be used here as well. The text box is hard to read, should be higher up on the screen. It especially clashes with the comic book style, as you can't read the text and look at the panels at the same time. The objects you have to click on the map screen are too small - the hitbox should be larger. I would also appreciate if you could navigate it using only the keyboard. I noticed my PC heating up from playing this, likely caused by a lack of a frame limiter.
I am not familiar with WEGs nor care for this subject matter, but this has some of the best presentation and writing I ever seen in a visual novel. Very impressive work. Though I can't help but feel this would be much more successful if it did not exclusively focus on such a niche fetish.
My specs are fine, the cursor was felt choppy so I assumed the game was running at low FPS. For enemy countermeasures, I'm not talking about advanced tactics. This kind of mech combat is meant for 1 vs 1, or a low amounts of enemies. It does not fit Vampire Survivor-like enemy spam, as the player does not have the mobility for that. You either need to be way faster than than the enemies/projectiles, or have something like an i-frame dodge roll (though I don't like those in 2D games).
I don't think listing feedback will be useful, since the presentation is professional and you are clearly already set on the product as-is. However, these are the thoughts I had while playing:
The few sentences at the start where MC describes his year can be removed (it's better to show his mood than describe it). I feel like the concept of monster girls should be introduced with more emphasis, as for the average reader it's a bizarre concept (see: Monster Musume, Nekopara). It's not obvious which character is currently talking. There should be an animation, or grey-out for the non-speaker. I feel the monster girls should have distinct non-human names, as this also adds to the confusion. I know this kind of textbox is common, but I prefer it when it's higher up on the screen for ease of readability. I like the music incorporating church bells. I don't like the descriptive text walls explaining the setting. It's better to communicate information through action/visuals. The religious theming is very unique and cool, definitely a highlight. However, it is unclear what it has to do with the monster girl gimmick. Maybe the two concepts come together later on, but it's not obvious how. I played a while, but I did not see the main conflict or goal introduced. What is the MC trying to achieve? In dating sims the goal is to get the girl, but it's made clear that is not the case here. For a story to be interesting it needs its conflict introduced a early as possible. The combination of using a specific real life religions and people (e.g., CS Lewis) together with the fantasy setting is bizarre. The point of fantasy settings is to abstract away specificities like that. It would make sense if this was a story about the modern people who only look like animals (like in cartoons), but that is not the case here. I played up to the part with the slime girl in the library after the basketball game.
I like the small filesize, very based. However, it should come organized in folders. Framerate feels low (30 fps?). The ingame graphics look great and very colorful; feels like the menu should match it instead of being monochrome. I think the enemies should wait for you to approach them in the first stage, to give the player time to mess with the controls. Boost should be mapped to spacebar instead of shift. Gamefeel and juice is awesome, but paradoxically, the actual gameplay feels like shit. If there is a strategy to the combat, is it not obvious. You need to have some sort of obvious countermeasures for enemy units.
It's obvious a lot of effort was put into presentation, but ironing out the basic gameplay should come first. Whatever you have right now can attract players, but it will not retain them.
Feels like there an option for 1920x1080. Walking around should have diagonal movement. Collision doesn't have the correctional sliding that's common to games in this perspective (does Gamemaker not come with this physics feature?). I don't like the sound effects for examining things. I get it's trying to be quirky, but there should really be more context when you start the game (e.g., who are you?). Having so many identical/pointless environmental descriptions is a waste of the player's time. If you examine something, it should be worthwhile. There should be a run button. I don't like using asterisks to describe actions. Saying words should use quotation marks, while descriptions of actions should be plain text. The rock puzzle was not good, as there were no hints nor reason to think examining the rocks later would be different than earlier.
The overall idea behind this isn't bad, but the execution is unimpressive. The artstyle generally works, but these types of character-focused games benefit from detailed/expressive character art. See: Omori. None of your characters have facial expressions. The writing relies too much on the player being familiar with this genre, making characters behave more like aliens than people. Compare the writing to something like Your Turn to Die. Despite the premise sounding interesting on the surface, it has no hook in practice. Being lost in the mountains was done interestingly in Remember11. From the little that is present here, you don't seem to be a very good writer. My favorite part was actually the character portraits, despite them being unexpressive.
First impression of this game is that it's very odd. Feels like there should be a marker for the mouse, as it feels wrong move it around without feedback. The game defaults back to windowed mode every time you alt-tab out. The tutorial animals are way too small and easy to miss. The very first tutorial message with the panda is baffling and I have no idea what it's trying to say. The shooting is not intuitive at all. Combining the shooting together with the platforming doesn't mesh, as the mechanics don't complement each other in any way. Breaking the targets instantly whisks you away to the next stage, which is very jarring. Seeing future stages in the background makes it more confusing, as it makes you think there are more targets in the stage. You really should be able to move using the arrow keys as well as WASD. Walljumping is awful. Precision platforming in this game in general is bad. Shooting only being possible by destroying single-use targets is bad, since it means you cannot practice it.
On the upside, presentation is great. I'm just not sure why you felt this gameplay was worth all the effort.
Presentation is top notch. Characters lack variety, though, all being petite girls/guys and one bishounen. The Japanese VA confused me, since this is clearly a Western game. I think the cube should be transparent, or there be some other way to improve visibility, since only 3 faces of the die are visible at any one time, but you need to know all 4 cardinal sides to play correctly.
The game progressively becoming harder at the timer passes is brutal. At some point you become stuck and have to watch yourself slowly be boxed in to death. I get that's how Tetris works, but this puzzle is far less intuitive and less user friendly. Overall this is a very difficult style of puzzle game which I don't see reaching mass appeal. The presentation is amazing, but I don't think this gameplay type justifies the effort.
Options should be available in the main menu before starting a game. There should be control redundancy (e.g., menu confirm should also be mapped onto space/enter). Why does the game only render in a small square leaving 1/3 of the screen blank? Walls of text are an awful form of tutorial and should be replaced with something else. The writing is not very good, but probably good enough for this style of game. Action combat using classic RE controls feels awful, so I'm really not sure why you're leaning so heavily into that by adding a dodge move. The music is good. There needs to be a more obvious way to know what's interactable and what isn't, since 90% of the environment is superficial. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to cast spells, so I quit at that part. The choice to start combat off with two minibosses is quite odd.
The presentation is good, but these kind of retro RE clones are plentiful. You'll be competing with games like Signalis, so you'll need to improve on it a lot to succeed in the market. I'm not sure what the selling point is supposed to be, since it appears to be a fairly generic classic Resident Evil clone.
Menu theme needs a different soundfont, current one sounds like ass. BG darkness should be something the designer decides, not the player at startup. The opening narration keeps switching between worldbuilding lore and personal character motivation, which makes it confusing. I don't even know who the protagonist is. You badly need an editor, sentences like "Not hearing Rim my ass anymore will be a breath of fresh air " are extremely confusing. Giving unique stand-out traits to generic NPCs (unless they are meant to be recurring characters?) is bad writing. The player should not be presented with unnecessary information. Going through the tutorial and parsing the text feels like work, complete anti-fun. It's better than it used to be, but the battle menu is still incomprehensible and takes far too much effort to decipher. No normal person would ever finish the tutorial. There is an immense amount of effort put into this game, which is a real shame, as it has no audience.
Actually was useful. I know lighting is janky, but the game uses Godot's built-in lighting system, which is limited and requires tricks to achieve this much. For circle/square lights, I could make all of them square for consistency. The control mixup between interact/pickup is confusing, so I definitely need to do something about that (maybe introduce a separate tool that picks up items?). As for encouraging passivity, that's how Darkwood does it. The only difference is that Darkwood enemies drop items, while husks currently do not. Later builds will give a reward for clearing nights faster.
Nope, still doesn't run. Getting a code error:
_______________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object obj_dicesys:
buffer_read argument 1 invalid reference to (buffer) - requested -1 max is 0
at gml_Script_TranslationSystem
############################################################################################
gml_Script_TranslationSystem (line -1)
gml_Object_obj_dicesys_Create_0 (line -1)
For a while I was unable to start the game, because pressing "continue" would also press "achievements" right after, looping me between the changelog and achievement menu. The hitboxes for the buttons the menu suck. I suggest using creative commons music instead of this awful 5 second loop you picked. There doesn't seem to be a way to quit to menu after you start a game. The gameplay is not intuitive at all, and should start with a tutorial. Normal players will not click "tutorial" before starting a new game, so you should account for that. The tutorial you currently have implemented is also the worst kind, as nobody wants to read walls of text. The mechanics/graphics have to be more intuitive, as it just feels like random nonsense.
Main menu is odd. I'm guessing it's eventually going to have the girl's wireframe model rotating around? Love the art-style, real Deus Ex vibes. It's way too dark, though. It either needs a flashlight or to brighten up the level. The melee weapon is not satisfying and should be replaced with something else (with an alt fire). When getting extra ammo it should tell you that, as otherwise it sounds like you're picking up a new weapon. The boss fight at the end was lame, did tons of damage that's hard to avoid, and can only be beaten by cheesing. I quit the next level once I found a keycard lock and got PTSD. All the darkness hurts my eyes.
Overall excellent presentation and game feel, but I would personally enjoy it more if it was more of an Immersive Sim / Deus Ex-like. It almost feels like a stealth game.
My apologies for the rough state of the demo. I've been busy so this is just a quick and dirty trash heap to show progress. Most people should skip this one.
The main change is that it now has (some) music and sound, and is more indicative of the direction I'm taking with the game. Full controls:
WASD/Arrows = Move
IJKL = Interact
IJKL [Hold] = Use Tool
E = Confirm/Swap
E [Hold] = Drop Weapon
Spacebar = Cancel
Spacebar [Hold] = Sprint
Controller support included.
Having sad piano title music was an odd choice. Why is the start button bigger than the others, but text the same size? The textbox is too low on the screen, should be a bit higher and more centered. The intro music is also odd and doesn't loop. There needs to be a sound effect to indicate new text appearing. The intro text needs to be condensed to the most important information. I don't need to hear filler information about what food the cast is having in something so narratively important.
The hitbox for the "back" button in the controls menu is messed up. Character text is again hard to read, it's too high up and causes eye strain. Teaching the player the game through the bee girl giving exposition is not good. Players learn better through doing than reading. The tone of the game is just odd overall. The music and setting is clearly trying to be melancholic, but the visuals are bright and not depressing in the slightest. I honestly think dialogue would be better if the protagonist was silent and you could only hear his thoughts described in 3rd person. If the game is melancholic, why is the battle theme so action-packed?
The first combat is too complicated. it should start off simple (e.g., controlling a single character only), and gradually increase in complexity. Characters should start with one/no skills and gain them over time. As it is, the combat is completely overwhelming to a casual player. The combat is clearly inspired by Medabots, and you should take note of how it did it. Maybe this combat gets good when you learn it, but the introduction is awful and made me quit at the second fight (which looked the same as the first).
The game is filled with style and soul, but the style is odd and inconsistent. The gameplay does not sell itself and is introduced poorly. For the UI the biggest issue is eye strain, as it's really bad (besides other problems like the mana bar not being clear). The writing is amateur but it looks like there isn't much of it, so it doesn't really matter. There's a lot of effort in this, but I do not see it being a commercial success.
You can't resize the window or go fullscreen. There's no menu or way to pause the game. Because it locks your mouse, you can't quit the game without ALT+F4. The controls only stay on screen for seconds, not giving you any time to learn them. The actual gameplay is confusing, as it's hard to tell if you're damaging enemies or taking damage. The capsule art is a political shitpost, but the actual game isn't, which is tonally inconsistent.
On the plus side, it's simple, easy on the yes, and has small filesize. It's something.
This game is not good. Menu navigation controls are a mess, and the overall combat and platforming is not fun. Outside of presentation everything about this is bad and has no chance of market success. It feels bad to say this, but I don't see any future in this product or the developer's other endeavors. Even at 0$ it'd be a tough sell.