Thanks for the comments everyone! I'll take all your feedback into consideration as I worked towards Demo Day 10! I'm glad everyone seems to like the story/dialogue since I'm really not used to writing...
Sorry about the Items menu - it's just a placeholder at the moment (since Items aren't actually implemented yet). I've fixed the crash when leaving the ninja fort (but haven't uploaded a new build). I'll try removing the "monsters get a free turn when you enter fight mode" thing (it was just meant to make it harder but it is a bit annoying).
Since the tutorial seems to have fixed the issues that people had in Demo Day 8 with not understanding how to play, I'm going to focus next on getting the gameplay as smooth and fun as possible (which likely means revamping the skill microgames or removing them). Once that's all sorted I can probably start working on the actual world!
- This art... - Make the angels start flashing when they're about to disappear (I thought I could be smart and stay on the same angel for ages) - I like the physicsy platforming (with the rotations), made for some interesting situations when the wings arced up - Pretty good for a nightly game - I got to 60 then stopped
- It would be nice if the environment was more animated (e.g. the water) - Guitar riff on power slide when? (sounds when?) - Took me a moment to notice the 'pile of sand = crab' thing... although I guess that's just me being silly, but maybe make it slightly lighter/glowier than the normal sand to make it more obvious? - The "you woke up" sequence is great - Cute animations - The hermit things aren't that bad, not sure why someone was complaining about them before
- You've done well to present the immensity of space
- Page Up/Page Down should move the zoom level in pre-defined increments, right now it zooms too much
- I think targeting a ship should highlight the ship
- The space background could use some work (a really nice dynamic background would really make the atmosphere)
- In the tutorial, I locked onto the nomad, rammed it to death (didn't realise you had to do that... I was looking for a shoot button) and then tried locking onto the farm ship but only 4 coloured empty boxes appeared at the top instead of the previous list of ships
- That 'boink' sound when ships are destroyed is a bit out of place
- Flying a small fast ship is really fun
- I like the big "laser lines in space" thing in huge combat zones, reminds me of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
- Don't feel bad if you don't get much feedback, you're working on a really huge/complicated game, a lot harder than a simple rhythm game or something to get into
- You really need to add the visual/sounds for taking/receiving damage... I know it's just a demo, but adding just placeholders for either of those would improve the game 10x!
- In the bombing mission I'm not sure what sort of strategy you need to use to not die (since you can't exactly dodge right)
- I didn't realise you needed to get the circle indicator over an enemy (turning them pink momentarily) to make your missiles home in (at least I think that's what it does)... it'd be good if you mentioned this somewhere (unless i missed it sorry)
- The actual flying mechanics seem solid and work pretty well
- I think I'd reduce the # of missiles it takes to destroy a ship and if possible make it more difficult to get behind an enemy, so it feels less like missile-sponge-gameplay and more like those scenes in movies where they get behind a ship and one-shot them
- I think you need a better explanation of what you're doing right when you start the game (when you're placing units) - I thought the game hadn't loaded the textures/models correctly when it was just showing black and a few tiles, and then I tried soloing the fight with just 1 dude - When your turn ends you need to select a facing direction... is that so you can avoid being attacked from behind? Just seems a bit weird as I wasn't sure what it was doing - The action is a bit slow - if possible I'd speed up almost all animations x2 - I like the cel shading aesthetic, although I think the grass looks a bit out of place - I think a cleaner, more solid colour look would be better - Does Chivalry do anything? - Overall it looks like you've got a solid base for the SRPG mechanics to work from, mostly just needs a lot of polish and user friendliness improvements - Wow did you make your own engine?
As always your title screen pixel art looks really nice.
I game over'd on Night 4 due to running out of time. I think you need another way to scale the difficulty as the nights progress (although I guess this is just for the demo).
I'd be interested to see how the game would play with: way longer time limit, 2+ enemy dudes, only 1 villager girl at a time, and some way to affect the movement of the other characters (e.g. lure the enemies away while you trap the girl). Or something. Just more a "stealth game" compared to the current "frantically mass leech hordes of girls".
You've really captured the classic pixel art aesthetic well.
I can't really tell what the enemy dude is doing when he catches you. It sort of looks like he's holding something up but I can't tell what it is... maybe it should be a cross?
The girls really like running across the bridges towards me at the start.
Nice relaxing atmosphere, although I felt that some of the music didn't fit that well (e.g. the music with the more modern "beat").
I accidentally sold my fishing rod while trying to figure out the shop interface (I tried dragging my fish onto the 'sell' button instead of putting it in the 'sell slot', which made them disappear temporarily and sold my rod). I'd change it so you can't drag things onto the sell button, and move the 'sell slot' outside of the grid into its own spot above the sell button (or maybe somewhere else). Also the rod probably shouldn't be in the sell slot by default...
One thing I noticed the first time I played this - I thought the enemy spawners were actually something I should try to grab (since they look a bit similar to the pantsu/spawn-point glowy things and I didn't realise they spawned enemies). Maybe tone down the effect on the spawner or make it look more evil-ish.
I played this and found it enjoyable. There's some weird (shadow?) rendering issues in parts of the level, and holes in the terrain, but I'm sure you're already aware of this. I tried to jump on top of the wall thing across from that high up area with the extra ammo... but I couldn't do it. Not sure if it's possible, but I've always liked that sort of platforming challenge in FPS games. Also please add a murder room filled with enemies for testing purposes.
Pretty impressive for one of the few 3D agdg games!
Thanks for the video. Sorry you had so much trouble with the controls (I tried to explain them on all the signs near the starting point). Here's the main things:
During combat you use the SPACEBAR to time hits and deal bonus damage / block more damage (this is when you see the shrinking circle!).
To target skills (like Heart Action Blast) you need to use the MOUSE.
I'll hopefully have a tutorial ready in my next prototype.
