Hey, DrawnSimplistic, I wanted to let you know that I found this game randomly on my own and I recorded a playthrough (I assume it ends when the "Chapter 1" title card shows up?) and, if you're okay with it, I'll eventually upload it to my YouTube channel. However, I'd like to give you some of my thoughts here as feedback.
What I like about the game:
- The hand-drawn art looks good and stylish, particularly during battles, I like how there are variations to the characters' poses.
- Interesting subversion of the good vs. evil trope from the perspective of the traditional villain's role.
- The QTEs are a nice addition to the RPG battle system, so it isn't simply button-mashing all the time.
- Vivi's design is grade A prime waifu material, if you don't mind me saying.
What I think might need improvement:
- Font is a little hard to read in text boxes, it looks fine as the title, but the letters are too pixely and thick so they tend to blend in together in longer sentences. A cleaner font would be nice.
- The beginning is a little slow and aimless in terms of story, I felt like I was just doing menial chores and killing time for most of it (other than the one interesting battle on the lower floor). Maybe add some sense of urgency, tension, and/or foreshadowing in the background in order to build up to the climactic turning point when the "heroes" are introduced.
- Speaking of which, more context about the game's universe would be nice. I would avoid full-on exposition (because that's bland), but rather I'd like more subtle hints and clues about what's going in the rest of the world, especially early on, to give players an idea of why we should care about the characters in the first place (for example, what even are demons and how are they different from any other story about demons? How does the rest of the world perceive them? What reasons do humans have to attack the demon lord? Why does everyone treat their work like boring office jobs?).
What I think could be added, but not super necessary:
- The tileset on the overworld is generally a little dull compared to the character art, particularly during Liv's section, there could be something more to liven up the world like maybe adding a few frames of slight animation on some objects?
- More tactile feedback from the QTEs techniques to make it feel more fun. If possible, play the sounds and animations of the attack immediately when you press the buttons rather than after you do it. For example, like Mario RPG's action commands, or Mother 3's rhythm combos.
- The anger and fear status effects are an interesting concept, but there was no incentive to use them all that much, at least from what I've noticed. Maybe adding more depth could give a reason to use them, for example, being in different emotional states could unlock different moves or something similar.
- My very subjective super ultimate nitpick: The character sprites on the overworld have heads that are slightly too wide, it looks off when compared to their full body art, because they look like people from Hidamari Sketch. But maybe that's just me.
There you go, those are my thoughts from a complete nobody who has no idea how to develop games at all (so, of course, take everything I said with a grain of salt). But hey, I felt compelled to write down my thoughts because I think Devil's Riposte has some potential and could hopefully turn into a very interesting little RPG in the future. I assume there's going to be more, because it stopped on quite the cliffhanger. Anyways, thanks for reading!