itch.io

Great start to a game. Small bug where switching between areas causes autoaim to forget what it's set too. Looking forward to what this becomes.

A very common bug in games and software is when the program takes raw keystrokes and interprets them through a qwerty layout regardless of what keyobard the computer uses. Most people, developers included, will understandably never notice this bug because they use the querty keyboard andso experience no observable buggy behavior. I use a non-qwerty keyboard: (played in firefox browser, though potentially elsewhere) Lording of Hearts has this bug. 

Eg, Pressing E on my keyboard doesn't attack the nearest enemy, but pressing Y (which is in the qwerty E position) does, and so on.

Bug: at least one of Sofia's abilities (Girls you recruit get +x/+y) don't correctly interact with the items donut (if you would buff a girl, buff yourself instead) and empty can (double the effect of any buffs you give). If that's working as intended, the wording, "in combat" might be added to the items to clarify their interaction. If it's not, it's likely that it also effects Sofia's other out of combat buffing abilit (Girls get +x/+y when you change their abilities.)

I'm stuck on the ensnare puzzle of genies and bottles 2. I don't understand what i'm supposed to do.

I just finished your alpha and its a lovely game so, have some notes.

Being locked out of taking any action while in another action (jumping, falling, whipping, parrying) feels awful and is probably a big part of why I felt the game wasn't consistently responding to my inputs. Animation cancels for whip and parry would be nice.

The major other issue I had with the game not feeling responsive to my inputs was jumping: when you run off a ledge in real life you obviously can't jump on thin air, but in video games, one of the things that makes platformers bareable to play is a bit of coyote time, so players can jump as a frame or two after they're off the ledge. This just makes the game feel more responsive because when your platforming and you press the jump button but it doesn't jump, it feels like the game ate your input.

Lastly, during the second boss fight's second stage, its possible for her to spawn on top of you while preparing her impaling attack (if your standing all the way to the right. Having a check for that and spawning her on the other side of the room would be helpful in preventing cheap deaths to an unblockable three damage.

Same problem, both from itch launcher and in browser.

It'd be nice if the dangerous area prompt gave level appropriateness information.

I can't read what the items for sale in cla-min's shop are. Is there something I'm missing?

I meant to include this in the original comment, but one thing I like in your game that darkest dungeon doesn't do is the visual initiative order: being able to predict which monsters will move before my next character's turn instead of being forced to guess is more fair gameplay-wise. Plus it really meshes well with the TTRPG aesthetic and mechanics you've got going on in the game.

I think the biggest thing you could do to improve the game at this point is work on creating better visual clarity about the game state. You list darkest dungeon as one of your inspirations for this game, and I myself drew that connection while playing it, but there are a few things DD does that your game doesn't do quite as well and I thought I should point them out for your consideration.

First, visual clarity: with darkest dungeon, all your characters status effects are in view. You've the health bar, the stress (analogue lust) bar, status effects, and so on, always visible just under the character's sprite. Without that, it's difficult to get a good handle on what my parties current status is, especially during battle when the character portraits disappear. I feel this clarity is a must.

Second, the camera moves around a lot. Like, a lot a lot. It does so in DD too, but I find it frustrating when DD does it too much also. Not every move needs to change the camera in my opinion. This is of course just an opinion which like all the rest of my feedback, you're free to consider or ignore.

Third, the map shows too small an area for me to find useful for navigating. You don't have to take the DD approach of showing the whole map if you don't want to, but I want to know about more than the hallway or room I'm currently in.

Fourth, one of the things that makes navigating the hallways of DD easier is that your always moving left to right, regardless of whether your facing north, south, east, or west, moving right means moving forward. This is a feature you kinda implemented in that your characters are always on the left side of combat, but your character moving left to go west, while more diagetically consistent makes for confusing gameplay in my opinion.

Fifth and finally, I loved the game and look forward to whatever you choose to do with it.