Just finished Act 2. I really loved everything about this.
First I wanted to start off with the bugs I have encountered, which was the bug at the name menu when not entering it with the keyboard (I used a controller) and the bug in the hunting tower, but as I can see now in the comments, I still had the older version that did not have the fixes for that. Also interesting that there's more info on hatred/love now, I was wondering about those values during my playthrough (but saving all the bunnies kept the love train going, I made it through lovingly). Also funnily enough I always assumed the infinite ladders were a feature not a bug.
The story is the biggest draw for me, it immediately hooks you with the mystery of the black-haired woman, and then seamlessly transitions into telling the story of the Sweich family drama. Beat-for-beat there's memorable scenes playing out, I think the first one that really made me go "whoa" was the border war scene, that was wild. And yeah, it kept moving forward ever-stronger after that, you wrote that it's going to get even crazier from act 3 forward, but I also already enjoyed the jump from act 1, which, while sad, was relatively normal-esque to act 2, where things got more weird and curious. Like dang, when that king of hatred card got introduced with just the right foreshadowing making you go "... Wait, 'Arthur'?", that was so great, how he was introduced in the story after that. Love it. Looking forward to act 3 and what you'll have in there next demo.
Art-wise, it all looks very stylish. I think the character sprites for the family work well, like you immediately get a good read on their base personalities, while they retain their family features (eyes and eyebrows predominantly) that show they're related. The effects, color distortion, VCR effects, those all look amazing. A huge fan of the cutscenes too, I loved how the ones up until Act 2 came back in the cave below the lake. The monster designs are another strong point, between the more ethereal monsters that attack the psyche and the more, well, literal meat-grindy monsters that get more physical, I am a huge fan of their design. Boss monsters were sick (the good sick), like damn, they also had that emotional impact aside from their stellar art, they were both as story beats, and gameplay the climax points. I think there was also a good flow in the demo, only time I got somewhat seriously stuck was with the Sarah Rebellion fight, which I THINK had something going on that she only attacks you with the multi-shot when you strike her? She sometimes did it anyway, so I'm not 100% sure if that's really the case, but letting her burn herself with the sword of Damocles did it for me, so I will not question if my wishful thinking willed magic RNG into existence. Was a tense fight either way, again, also due to the emotional impact at the time.
Music was another high point, when I saw that "Music by horbror" at the end I thought, you're absolutely right to make that its dedicated extra credit, those are some of the catchiest tunes I've heard in any demo day game ever. That "Eat the flesh, drink the blood" verse from the fleshrites fight music has been living rent free in my mind for the past month (I've been playing Dreams of Joy Departed on and off over the past month, this is also why I'm still on the old version). All the vocal tracks are high points really, that thematic song that plays during the heart of ice scene, the smells like teen spirit remix that plays during the deer hunting teaching segment with teenage Sarah, those are burned into my brain, which really is a testament to how great and catchy they are. Cool of you to put them on Soundcloud too, thank you for that! Update after writing the rest: I've been listening to fleshrites on loop while writing this, it seems like the "eat the flesh, drink the blood" is not leaving my brain anytime soon. Again, just a great catchy tune.
I also want to point out just how funny your game is. It has some heavy themes, and I love how you offset them by adding some jokes in there, contrasting the heaviness, and I think also adding to the heavy themes through them, since you have that contrast. Like I think if you overdo it with them, you'd destroy the mood, but you manage to get it just right here, where it forms a contrast to the heavier stuff without making the whole thing absurd. Kudos for that. Most of the humour is of course through Billy's absolutely non-compromising specialness, but also Winter's deadpan attitude and just the descriptions of the world around. Like the America map was one of my favorites. The state "Jefferson", perfect. Only one better was of course the greatest himself, Joergen (hallowed like the mother be His name).
Final point I want to touch on is what I think this game does best, which is setting the mood, I touched on this before, but there is always an otherworldly feel to things, like things are similar to how they should be, but not quite right, which is great because it really keeps you on your toes when following the story. This is where story art and music come together to create something really unique and this is where the greatest strength of the game comes from, like you really feel that there is a vision to the game you're trying to make and you have the music, writing and art skills to make them a reality as a cohesive unit. Those are always the greatest games in my opinion.
Thank you for your very kind comment, this kind of stuff raises my motivation significantly! Good day of progress ahead. You are the first one to notice the "Jefferson" thing I think! Some other people have commented on Spirit of Rebellion, and yes, it is on purpose that she can pretty much destroy herself... spoiler ahead: the adult version of Sarah is one of the main characters in act3, the next part, and this is foreshadowing for how her set of moves are themed. You can speed up combat and damage output significantly by setting up some self-destruction. The burning state does not only damage everyone but also raises power, which can then be stacked with other boosts.
The first version of act3 is on track to be finished and a bit polished by the time the next jam comes around, since save-transfers do not work consistently I have added a cheating room which allows players to set up their choices quickly and jump ahead.
The soundcloud is pretty much full so I update the bandcamp instead, its still free and although I have not tried it I believe you can just download everything in bulk if you want to.
I finally finished the demo. The downside is that I played the first version so some of my bug reports are outdated and I was also going to suggest making the UI focus texture a little more noticeable, but I still encountered a couple of issues that haven't been mentioned yet.
However, I must first say that I think the game is quite enthralling as it is and I want to know what happens next in the story, and I guess before too because the passage of time is creative to say the least even if chapters are roughly linear. I think nonlinear narratives are difficult to pull off in video games, especially RPGs where constant progression tends to be a core mechanic so good job there.
I thought the story was going to be more schizo but it's not that hard to follow actually. The focus on hunting and butchering reminds me a little bit of Pathologic, especially because of the surgical tool lying around near the beginning. I bet there's going to be a level made completely out of flesh later.
Besides that the symbolism is done very well. After all that deer imagery and story moments involving deer you get the feeling that other recursive elements will have a similar degree of significance in the future. Perhaps the fish where a little explicit, I'm not sure.
The presentation in general is fantastic so far. The only issues I encountered were some instances of poor collisions and some RPG maker textures showing up such as a regular old fantasy treasure chest in one occasion. Also, I'm certain that a music track is just Nirvana, that was just a song from Nirvana, I mean come on. It broke my immersion a little bit to hear Nirvana out of nowhere, someone please hide grandma's shotgun just in case.
Finally I have a couple of bugs to report. The first one is that I could speak again with Sarah at the Hidden Pool after recruiting her. She shows up for a split second after re-entering the area and I could still interact with invisible Sarah. However, I could neither dismiss her nor get at extra Sarah this way.
Additionally, both Winter and Billy can wear little girl clothes apparently as I realized after acquiring the Farm Girl II. Actually not a bad armor before you get the funeral suit.
Furthermore, using teen Sarah's basic attack against the Warbear consistently crashed the game while other skills did not. I had the traitor card equipped which also seemed to have no effect.
Finally, the final boss of the demo got stuck using the bloodrite shield ability for most of its turns and I won easily by spamming crackerlacker and guarding with every other character in the party. I'm not sure if that's an issue or the AI simply works like that.
Anyways, great game. My prediction is that college will suck because college sucks.
Thanks for playing it all the way through! A lot of things will be switched up considerably in ACT3. I want the progression of the story to be an increasing amount of "oh fuck".
Thanks for the bugreports, some of it is on my list but some things were unknown to me. How teensarah interacts with most encounters is a bit poorly tested, since most people, me included, just use her at the end and dont go back to grind out some more. I will add the strange attack interaction to my list.
You probably got a bit lucky with the Jackalope, there is a lot of RNG to almost every enemy. This is something that needs to be tweaked over time. I dont want to remove the randomness, but it needs to be kept in check so that it does not become uninteresting.
The nirvana song is a complete cover, there is nothing sampled from the original. The singing is also, as with every other singing in the songs, done with programming. I get your point, but I still felt it was appropriate as a sort of mood introduction to Sarah's teenage years, and a bit of foreshadowing to what adult Sarah will initially be like if you are familiar with the original song. There are other references in the soundtrack to other songs but most of them are much more subtle.
UI-color was changed in the newer version and people seem to like it a lot more, I do too.
Concerning the schizo-nature of the narrative it is a bit of a deception. Everything actually fits together according to the in universe logic of the game world, and more details will come through as the game continues. Even something that might seem completely random such as "MR.TV", is a part of the bigger picture.
I love games like Yume Nikki but always wished they would actually make sense and you could figure out how everything works. Twin Peaks is a pretty good comparison, seems nonsensical but when you figure out what set of rules the world operates by you get it.
The collision is just pretty shit and will continue to be so for a long time. I am going to focus on finishing and polishing chapter 1 for now, actually doing something about the collision will mean changing how maps are handled entirely.
The clothes follow a style system which will be explained more thoroughly in chapter 2. Winter, Sarah and Billy share one of the styles, it works like armor type, this is why it becomes a bit funny. Dont know if I actually want to fix that or just keep it around for a laugh.
University will be awful, but it can be a lot better or worse depending on player choice.
Sorry I was not very clear lol. I make playtest videos and I couldn't get OBS to hook in to the game in order to record myself playing so I didn't play or make a video. What engine are you using?
Rpgmaker MZ. I use OBS to record gameplay all the time, I just use the screen as the source, expand the small window and then cut away the parts at the beginning and end of the recording where I fiddle around. Have to add a real full-screen option at some point...
NOTE: I recommend playing with tutorials on if it is your first time, the "GO HERE" messages are not done because its boring and I hate it. They will be done soon though.
Changed UI-choice color and transparency
Tweaked fog
Fixed some sprites
Added keyboard options, you can enable WASD.
Pressing space in combat speeds up the animations, you can turn this on/off in combat by pressing shift.
You can enable a “tutorial” before the game starts, this adds some explanations and additional content. Not enabling it makes some stuff happen too. It is presented in a truly schizophrenic fashion.
Hint given on how the hate/love values work, different runs, and hidden values.
Skellies that block the path to the house in ACT1 now “rise up” and move to indicate that a path has opened.
Infinite ladders are now a feature and not a bug.
Area of interaction raised for many things.
Butchering skill is explained further if tutorials are on.
Dead party members now receive XP.
Using an item now takes priority in combat.
Young Winter now sells Jack of Merchants card.
Pregame Velouria scene added.
Fixed Hunting Tower game breaking bug, it was a really stupid mistake on my part and easily fixed.
Known Bugs:
There is still a rare bug which sometimes breaks the game in combat, I have not spotted what triggers it.
Loading into a map after death sometimes creates a bug if you enter combat, it can be “fixed” by leaving and reentering the map before combat if this happens to you.
Love the atmosphere of the game, it's unique and trippy as hell. The game feels like a puzzle where you have figure out what to do next and requires exploring every nook and cranny. The soundtrack is great as well, I especially liked the song in the area with the fishes.
I just finished the Hallowed Mother fight. I beat that one by pure luck because if she spams her hook attack there doesn't seem to be much you can do about it as it can kill your party members in 2-3 hits. I was only able to beat it because she decided not to use it as often and used her status effect spells instead.
Balancing the combat system is one of my concerns, I will fiddle with her moveset a bit. Once you are done with that fight, you are done with the introduction of the game, all of the good shit is still to come. I will be putting up two updated versions today, one of them will start right after that fight. If you want to continue playing, I recommend waiting for it and playing the new ACT2 build. I have fixed some gamebreaking bugs and other things. If you do continue playing the current version, know that you can softlock the game at the computer in the Hunting Tower and save accordingly.
Done. There is an updated version coming later today if you want to wait, I just need to run through it once to see that I haven't broken anything. I have gone through most of other peoples requests and fixed a lot of shit. Optional tutorials, WASD controls, things like that.
It's not my sort of game, but I think the artstyle and theme of the game are pretty cool. You've done some pretty nifty stuff with the RPGMaker engine. Only real complaints I can give are around some sound effects being excessively loud and general polish around dialogue polish.
The top and bottom of the name input screen are cut off:
I like your writing style, poetic without being pretentious.
Starting out with "Chapter 1: Regret (Nothing)" is for me a little too similar to the Eva naming scheme.
I'd like it if I could walk diagonally.
The words with contractions are missing the quote (i.e. "dont" instead of "don't").
The little cutscenes when I meet someone or get the gun are very cool.
Not sure how I feel about the sfx when I click stuff in the menu, it's kinda annoying.
I had to get uncomfortably close to Billy to trigger the dialogue.
In the combat menu where I need SWAG to perform moves, the moves should be greyed out if I have insufficient SWAG.
Walk animation could use improvement.
It would be nice to know what stuff like Strength and Endurance do.
It's a little disconcerting to me that day and night look the same in the campsite.
I assume the dialogue memory scrolling out of the textbox is intended. Very cool surprise.
The moments of "mixed media" are cool.
Jack of Deceivers is spelled wrong.
Is this her arm hanging off the bed? It's hard for me to understand this picture.
Obviously this game is supposed to have multiple party members at some point. It feels like I have to go through too many fights with just Winters and there's not much strategy, just hope for luck. I'm stuck on Meatgrinder and I'm going to call it here. I guess I could grind by fighting the fishes but I don't want to grind and waiting for a roll of the dice in the Meatgrinder fight is frustrating.
Thank you for your feedback, many of the things you mentioned I am working on fixing right now since other people mentioned them too.
I intentionally disabled diagonal walking since I just dislike it, sorry. T
The menu sfx has had mixed but mostly positive feedback, but I am thinking that I could tinker with it. It would be cool if the selection "voice" followed a scale and made a melody.
Many of the visually disconcerting stuff is intentional, but might need to be tweaked, this will sound like bullshit but its actually a part of the narrative.
Where did you read strength? It should say power everywhere so that might be a mistake. Power = damage, Endurance = damage reduction. All the names are part of the narrative to, its the ability to "endure" things.
Her arm is hanging off the bed but its twisted and sickened and was previously injured, Billy mentions this when he talks about his wife by the fire.
I think all of my walk-animations are pretty awful, I would like to improve them a lot but my skills concerning animation are lacking. I will try to make them better as I am getting better.
There is early strategy, and things are pretty easy and can be quickly done if you know what to do. You can get to the other members in about 15 minutes if you do not read stuff. To be able to figure that out however is pretty damn hard it turns out, working on tutorialstuff at the moment. Tutorials will be optional though and introduced like this:
>Where did you read strength? It should say power everywhere so that might be a mistake.
Never mind, I probably made that up.
>It would be cool if the selection "voice" followed a scale and made a melody.
imo you'd be taking away from the strengths of the game by doing something distracting like that
>Her arm is hanging off the bed but its twisted and sickened and was previously injured, Billy mentions this when he talks about his wife by the fire.
I remembered being told she lost her hands so I was able to piece together that it was her arm but it seemed odd that her elbow made it all the way down to the floor.
Best of luck with the game, there's a lot of potential here and you seem to be well on the way to making the game more approachable with the tutorials.
Man this game is awesome. I was amazed to see like, a game that can be played on AGDG, I'm not used to that.
The music was great! sound design is pretty solid, and the mouth noises for UI sounds is fun. Keep adding more sounds, the more feedback you get the more immersive it is.
i would kind of prefer to have WSAD controls in addition to point and click, I feel kind of disengaged with the way the game controls as is.
the vibe is very strange and cool, though I'm not sure if I understand what is happening, but thats the kind of stuff I like.
also
gotta agree with her there hahaha
keep up the great work! I look forward to playing through the rest of this and seeing this game come together even more
Thank you, wasd is on my list, I have no idea if point and click is possible, the mouse controls are pretty fucked as it is. If you want the basics of the story, the description, even though it might not seem like it, sums it up pretty well. If you get to the end of the demo I think you will have a pretty good idea on how things work as well.
Should note that the demo consists of 2 acts out of 4 which will be chapter 1, out of 6. Winter will remain but each chapter comes with a new cast of people whose memories you will get to experience.
Haha, and that line is a dig at myself, quite a lot is if you read between them.
Hello, ever since you first posted this game I've been looking forward to getting to try it.
First thing I notice, scrollbar doesn't seem necessary on the title screen, you have plenty of room. Although I'm playing with a 1440p monitor so maybe it's just a scaling issue.
Also the screen to name my characters was cut off but luckily I could infer where the enter button is to proceed.
Also I know that arrow keys for movement is a bit of a standard RPGM thing but in my opinion having WASD as an option would be nice. I generally like the puzzle-ey approach to the enemy encounters. I found the "confused" mood to be quite overpowered personally but I could've just been getting lucky with it. Also I randomly encountered this while fighting a random enemy: which forced me to quit out unfortunately. But luckily wasn't a big deal because of autosave. I was able to walk straight onto this platform without the ladder which I assume is not intentional:
Also I went back to the spot where you pick up Sarah for the second time by the lake and I was able to interact with the spot she used to be standing and it activated the dialogue as if she was still standing there. There was a bug where I would get stuck on the computer screen. Luckily I was able to wander around the room blindly and interact with the coffee pot which returned normal visibility. Also the AI chat log entry didn't do anything when I tried it. Anyway, I played all the way through and had a lot of fun. I like the characters and the general style and the music is great, probably the best agdg music I've heard so far. Keep up the good work!
Oh also It would be nice If when I have multiple debuffs on an enemy it showed multiple at once instead of just flashing one at a time. I've played other rpgm games that do it so I know it's possible.
Thank you for playing it all the way to the end, and many valid points! I am compiling a list of all the things to fix and I should be able to fix most of it next week so I can get back to working on act3. You have been very thorough and for that I am thankful. Multiple buff shown sounds good, should be a plugin for WASD available too. I want to rework the naming section, the plugin I used to change it up does not do what I want. I have been asked to add a "are you sure?" verify after the naming too, which I do not believe can be done in a smooth way with the current setup. Recently nerfed the confusionmood and the confusion effect on Joergun to 20 and 25% successrate but I may have overlooked something.
Have to ask since I am starved for storyinput, what did you think about Billy after the ending sequence of the demo and do you have any opinions on how Arthur is implemented?
Spoilers:
Oh, and one more thing, the beginnings of a darker path is implemented but poorly tested, I do not think anyone did it in case you might be interested. What you do is rack up your hatescore by choosing dialogueoptions which seem meaner, notsavefish, pick up king of hatred, take Deerhunter X (which is available at the platform you managed to get up on without a ladder if you did not save the fish) and choose "he is a legend" or "he was a misunderstood man" when prompted to have an opinion about Arthur. If you do Sarah and Billy leaves you and Arthur joins you as a partymember. In act3 this path will really get going and make some things diverge. There are also some things that can be setup to turn the young version of Sarah into a broken version of her which in Act3 becomes another "dark path" partymember. Working on other ways to get through the story too, I want this shit to be replayable.
You specifically mean the gunshot when you get the rifle right? Yeah, I have been meaning to fix that. I will raise the "interaction area" for most things, many people have noted that just as you. Later characters work differently with the dialogue trees, initially I wanted the first one to be like that to teach the player to interact with characters several times, but it just doesn't work, so yeah.
Your feedback is very clear and precise, I appreciate it. If you play it further and get more, do tell me. I have compiled a list and posted it here among the comments, you can check if you see anything missing. I will do an experiment with the table, but I am afraid it might ruin the "sort of visual symmetry" of the map.
This is my postjam fixshitlist, if I have missed something, please add it as a reply.
Post jam fixshitlist:
Add choice to get more explanations on how various systems work. Present as “infoboy” in the same vein as MR.TV and DR.Radio to not break lore. DONE
Add text about “choices” and hint at how the hidden systems work. DONE
Fix ladder or change the mechanic entirely OR make it so you can do something cool with infinite ladders, if so Winter needs to mention it to make it clear it is now intentionally kept. DONE
Look over all map-transitions and make them a bit more sensible.
Change UI selection color and transparency. DONE
Lower transparency of white fog. Keep transparency of red fog? DONE
Check softlock on Billy before he rests. PROBABLY DONE NOT ENTIRELY SURE
Increase area of interaction on most things and transfer points, DONE
Fix typos
Fix young adult Sarah dashsprite pixelshit. DONE
Improving collision may not be possible, but look into it.
Tweak menu sfx.
Update bulletspray text. DONE
Improve game over sequence, perhaps with “dying sprite” animation.
“frozen” sprites in combat when a character dies.
Choice to increase combatspeed, preferably in menu. DONE, but is not a menu option, animations in combat can be sped up by pressing space. Disable/enable this by pressing shift.
Add “empty” textbox before choice to make sure you don't choose accidentally.
Explain butchering skill in game if player have chosen “infoboy”. DONE
Skulls blocking east will rise up and move around with new sprite to make it super obvious instead of just moving a little. DONE
Fix ugly “bloodAnatea” fullscreen image, just gonna make something entirely new, probably cutscene where she rises up out of a pool on the bed of blood and hair.
Do something to show that you are cursed on map and in menu, or make curse go away after combat. EXPLAINED, but still need more visual indications.
shorten partymember lifebars
give xp to dead partymembers DONE
alter buffs
Add a real fuckoff event in ACT1 to get the players attention. PARTLY DONE
Make new graph for hallowed mother fight.
Using items takes priority in combat. DONE
Finish Jack of merchants card so young winter can sell it. DONE
Fix gamebreaking computer in watchtower bug. DONE
Add Velouriascene before game starts. Perhaps something that changes slightly and plays every time you load, 3 seconds, whispering different things. DONE, NOT LOADING SCENE THOUGH, WAS JUST ANNOYING.
Make upwards path more visible. I PUT A LAMP THERE.
Lower gunshot sfx which is too loud.
Change the dialoguetree of young Sarah to work the same way as the one on teen Sarah. DONE
Add secret boss in ACT 2, will require a lot of ladders.
Really digging the art, music and overall vibe of this game. It reminds me slightly of an old game called Dare to Dream (by epic mega games), although your game is much higher quality. I haven't spent enough time in this game to give a proper review unfortunately - as I am trying to just sample all the demo day games and then get back to devving my project. But I can tell that a lot of love and creativity has gone into this and it really shows.
I have no idea where does the demo end, so I finished after not seeing a way to progress between playground and murky waters after impressing a local grandma.
It has a strong overall style and the transitions/introductions add soul. Can't call it atmospheric though because it breaks consistency constantly. Music is nice too. The main motif reminds me of "heart shaped box" because of a very similar melody and that's actually a good thing.
I like all the options for equipment since the very early game, especially since the bonuses they offer are far from minor. Combat is ok despite my disdain for turn based. Having a sprint button is a nice QOL.
Ladder in the house is bugged and I can take however many I want of those.
The UI selection color is barely visible. If I played it at a different time of the day I wouldn't be able to see what's selected at all.
It's hard to see anything while walking around because of the fog and low contrast. Collisions and warps are weird at times (pretty common for rpg maker?).
Is this an rpg maker game? It would be an absolute hit back in the day and even more so now seeing how well those are doing recently.
By the big tree there is an upwards path, if you are around level 4 or 5 you are strong enough to take that path. At the end of the path there is a rope which you can use to climb down the well. You haven't finished the tutorial yet.
I have been thinking about the UI-selection, I will most likely make it less transparent and change the color. The ladders are truly fucked, I will fix it but since it cant fuck up progress at the moment it will be later.
This is an rpgmaker game, will think about your other feedback!
If you cant be bothered to finish it, though I recommend it because the real good stuff comes later, you can watch it in its entirety here or skip forward a bit and see if it might be worth your time after all:
There is an "end" to the demo at a good point in the story. You could also use the video if you get stuck to see what to do. Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
Thanks, I found it. Now that it was darker it was visible, but back then I couldn't really see it and even tried walking there blindly without success.
I'm stopping at the 4th key (or at least I'm assuming that's it). It's stays good all the way through and the production value is high, which could be surprising when compared to the pixel art style and even if it doesn't suit my general tastes. And there's smells like teen spirit outright being used, so I did get the musical reference right.
Just when I was going to complain about the amount of combat getting in the way of the plot, you give stuff to compensate and appreciate it, on top of having kino boss fights. The amount of equipment is insane too.
Thank you, if you have the fourth key you only have the final demo boss left though. Go through the door, the boss is easy but the saddest stuff is kept right there.
Alright, I pulled through. Kind of worth it for m'boy Billy's more backstory. I'm glad he gets a fair treatment because many writers would just make him a villain.
It is wonderful that you got that because it was precisely my intention. You see what he puts Sarah through and then you understand why and he perhaps comes off as a lot more sympathetic. Arthur however...
One dude encountered a gamebreaking bug using the computer in the watchtower. This is a build beginning at act2 if you want to jump ahead or encounter the same bug.
Thank you, the hatred mechanics are still very rough but I think they are going to be pretty great in the future. If you dont save the fish, pick up the deerhunter X gun, king of hatred card and call Arthur "a legend" or a "very misunderstood man" in the scene with the Barley Butcherer newspaper young Sarah and Billy leaves you and Arthur joins you instead, setting up the "dark run" of the game for the future. Deerhunter X SUPPOSEDLY scales with your hatred value so when everything works as it should you will be able to use things like butchering and behaving like an asshole to max your hatestat and damage-output.
And yeah, adult Sarahs college experience will be wild, lets just say that she takes no shit from people.
That was a refreshing game experience! I enjoyed the demo so far. Before I realized it, I had spent more than an hour on this demo.
There's a few things that I'd point out as feedback:
I got soft locked while talking to the father in the screenshot below. I saved before doing the dialog where the Billy rests.
The movement feels good, but for some reason I have issues entering and exiting areas. This happened to me the most while on the Bone Field and moving towards the swirling tree. I will exit bone field, but any movement after leaving will make me return to the bone field. Sometimes it won't do it and I'll be able to continue.
It's sometimes hard to find the right square on the screen which will trigger an item pickup, so I'll find myself trying to click everywhere around the object which I think could be improved with a bigger square or some kind of highlight over objects through shaders? I'm unsure how it works behind scenes.
The player could use a better pathfinding algorithm. I often get stuck if I don't put the cursor right exactly where I want to go instead of the player finding out where it needs to go.
Difficulty was pretty good, not easy, not terribly hard.
There are small spelling errors, but this is a demo so I can understand it must go proof reading first
This game is really promising, keep up the good work and don't be afraid to experiment with the character art since it's still early in development. Cheers!
An impressively immersive thing, with a really coherent art style that locks me into it, probably because of how old I am. I have nothing to add in terms of critique, other than "I would probably buy this", presumably after hearing a bunch of people talking about how actually effective it is, actually.
I usually loathe combat systems like these but this game was captivating, I'm curious to see how you'll tie up Sarah's story with the MC's story.
I loved the style and the music is really good, but I gotta say the whole thing is a little undermined when you start farming meatmen and hanged deers for XPs.
This sprite at the end has some visible black pixels on its top edge, pic related.
Thank you for the input, I know how to fix those pixels, I have had this problem before with other sprites. Now concerning killing and farming, that is a part of the point, and you can play this game as a straight up monster and make some interesting choices a long the way if you want.
If you do, Arthur joins you as a companion at the end, setting up a lot of divergent future stuff. As i continue to build this there will be more "paths" to get through the game than the "somewhat good" path. One of the things I am currently working on, except for the dark path, is a "solorun" with exclusive stuff that happens if you never recruit anyone except for the one time you are forced too.
I could spoil how some of it fits together if you want me to, but perhaps that would not be fun, lets just say that the story revolving around Sarah and Billy is "chapter 1" while the story of Winter will continue on through about 5 more chapters after this one is finished.
A bunch of stuff is, but it is hidden at the moment, many of the flavourtext choices affect hidden personality variables too. I want this to affect more stuff in the future, but you know, lot of work to be done.
Comments
Just finished Act 2. I really loved everything about this.
First I wanted to start off with the bugs I have encountered, which was the bug at the name menu when not entering it with the keyboard (I used a controller) and the bug in the hunting tower, but as I can see now in the comments, I still had the older version that did not have the fixes for that. Also interesting that there's more info on hatred/love now, I was wondering about those values during my playthrough (but saving all the bunnies kept the love train going, I made it through lovingly). Also funnily enough I always assumed the infinite ladders were a feature not a bug.
The story is the biggest draw for me, it immediately hooks you with the mystery of the black-haired woman, and then seamlessly transitions into telling the story of the Sweich family drama. Beat-for-beat there's memorable scenes playing out, I think the first one that really made me go "whoa" was the border war scene, that was wild. And yeah, it kept moving forward ever-stronger after that, you wrote that it's going to get even crazier from act 3 forward, but I also already enjoyed the jump from act 1, which, while sad, was relatively normal-esque to act 2, where things got more weird and curious. Like dang, when that king of hatred card got introduced with just the right foreshadowing making you go "... Wait, 'Arthur'?", that was so great, how he was introduced in the story after that. Love it. Looking forward to act 3 and what you'll have in there next demo.
Art-wise, it all looks very stylish. I think the character sprites for the family work well, like you immediately get a good read on their base personalities, while they retain their family features (eyes and eyebrows predominantly) that show they're related. The effects, color distortion, VCR effects, those all look amazing. A huge fan of the cutscenes too, I loved how the ones up until Act 2 came back in the cave below the lake. The monster designs are another strong point, between the more ethereal monsters that attack the psyche and the more, well, literal meat-grindy monsters that get more physical, I am a huge fan of their design. Boss monsters were sick (the good sick), like damn, they also had that emotional impact aside from their stellar art, they were both as story beats, and gameplay the climax points. I think there was also a good flow in the demo, only time I got somewhat seriously stuck was with the Sarah Rebellion fight, which I THINK had something going on that she only attacks you with the multi-shot when you strike her? She sometimes did it anyway, so I'm not 100% sure if that's really the case, but letting her burn herself with the sword of Damocles did it for me, so I will not question if my wishful thinking willed magic RNG into existence. Was a tense fight either way, again, also due to the emotional impact at the time.
Music was another high point, when I saw that "Music by horbror" at the end I thought, you're absolutely right to make that its dedicated extra credit, those are some of the catchiest tunes I've heard in any demo day game ever. That "Eat the flesh, drink the blood" verse from the fleshrites fight music has been living rent free in my mind for the past month (I've been playing Dreams of Joy Departed on and off over the past month, this is also why I'm still on the old version). All the vocal tracks are high points really, that thematic song that plays during the heart of ice scene, the smells like teen spirit remix that plays during the deer hunting teaching segment with teenage Sarah, those are burned into my brain, which really is a testament to how great and catchy they are. Cool of you to put them on Soundcloud too, thank you for that! Update after writing the rest: I've been listening to fleshrites on loop while writing this, it seems like the "eat the flesh, drink the blood" is not leaving my brain anytime soon. Again, just a great catchy tune.
I also want to point out just how funny your game is. It has some heavy themes, and I love how you offset them by adding some jokes in there, contrasting the heaviness, and I think also adding to the heavy themes through them, since you have that contrast. Like I think if you overdo it with them, you'd destroy the mood, but you manage to get it just right here, where it forms a contrast to the heavier stuff without making the whole thing absurd. Kudos for that. Most of the humour is of course through Billy's absolutely non-compromising specialness, but also Winter's deadpan attitude and just the descriptions of the world around. Like the America map was one of my favorites. The state "Jefferson", perfect. Only one better was of course the greatest himself, Joergen (hallowed like the mother be His name).
Final point I want to touch on is what I think this game does best, which is setting the mood, I touched on this before, but there is always an otherworldly feel to things, like things are similar to how they should be, but not quite right, which is great because it really keeps you on your toes when following the story. This is where story art and music come together to create something really unique and this is where the greatest strength of the game comes from, like you really feel that there is a vision to the game you're trying to make and you have the music, writing and art skills to make them a reality as a cohesive unit. Those are always the greatest games in my opinion.
Thank you for your very kind comment, this kind of stuff raises my motivation significantly! Good day of progress ahead. You are the first one to notice the "Jefferson" thing I think! Some other people have commented on Spirit of Rebellion, and yes, it is on purpose that she can pretty much destroy herself... spoiler ahead: the adult version of Sarah is one of the main characters in act3, the next part, and this is foreshadowing for how her set of moves are themed. You can speed up combat and damage output significantly by setting up some self-destruction. The burning state does not only damage everyone but also raises power, which can then be stacked with other boosts.
The first version of act3 is on track to be finished and a bit polished by the time the next jam comes around, since save-transfers do not work consistently I have added a cheating room which allows players to set up their choices quickly and jump ahead.
If you are curious to see some of the work I am doing on the new stuff you can watch my youtube-channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHYrBlyrqIT01hkOhMy3wAQ
You can also find most of the music available for download at my bandcamp: https://horbror.bandcamp.com/album/dreams-of-joy-departed
The soundcloud is pretty much full so I update the bandcamp instead, its still free and although I have not tried it I believe you can just download everything in bulk if you want to.
I finally finished the demo. The downside is that I played the first version so some of my bug reports are outdated and I was also going to suggest making the UI focus texture a little more noticeable, but I still encountered a couple of issues that haven't been mentioned yet.
However, I must first say that I think the game is quite enthralling as it is and I want to know what happens next in the story, and I guess before too because the passage of time is creative to say the least even if chapters are roughly linear. I think nonlinear narratives are difficult to pull off in video games, especially RPGs where constant progression tends to be a core mechanic so good job there.
I thought the story was going to be more schizo but it's not that hard to follow actually. The focus on hunting and butchering reminds me a little bit of Pathologic, especially because of the surgical tool lying around near the beginning. I bet there's going to be a level made completely out of flesh later.
Besides that the symbolism is done very well. After all that deer imagery and story moments involving deer you get the feeling that other recursive elements will have a similar degree of significance in the future. Perhaps the fish where a little explicit, I'm not sure.
The presentation in general is fantastic so far. The only issues I encountered were some instances of poor collisions and some RPG maker textures showing up such as a regular old fantasy treasure chest in one occasion. Also, I'm certain that a music track is just Nirvana, that was just a song from Nirvana, I mean come on. It broke my immersion a little bit to hear Nirvana out of nowhere, someone please hide grandma's shotgun just in case.
Finally I have a couple of bugs to report. The first one is that I could speak again with Sarah at the Hidden Pool after recruiting her. She shows up for a split second after re-entering the area and I could still interact with invisible Sarah. However, I could neither dismiss her nor get at extra Sarah this way.
Additionally, both Winter and Billy can wear little girl clothes apparently as I realized after acquiring the Farm Girl II. Actually not a bad armor before you get the funeral suit.
Furthermore, using teen Sarah's basic attack against the Warbear consistently crashed the game while other skills did not. I had the traitor card equipped which also seemed to have no effect.
Finally, the final boss of the demo got stuck using the bloodrite shield ability for most of its turns and I won easily by spamming crackerlacker and guarding with every other character in the party. I'm not sure if that's an issue or the AI simply works like that.
Anyways, great game. My prediction is that college will suck because college sucks.
Thanks for playing it all the way through! A lot of things will be switched up considerably in ACT3. I want the progression of the story to be an increasing amount of "oh fuck".
Thanks for the bugreports, some of it is on my list but some things were unknown to me. How teensarah interacts with most encounters is a bit poorly tested, since most people, me included, just use her at the end and dont go back to grind out some more. I will add the strange attack interaction to my list.
You probably got a bit lucky with the Jackalope, there is a lot of RNG to almost every enemy. This is something that needs to be tweaked over time. I dont want to remove the randomness, but it needs to be kept in check so that it does not become uninteresting.
The nirvana song is a complete cover, there is nothing sampled from the original. The singing is also, as with every other singing in the songs, done with programming. I get your point, but I still felt it was appropriate as a sort of mood introduction to Sarah's teenage years, and a bit of foreshadowing to what adult Sarah will initially be like if you are familiar with the original song. There are other references in the soundtrack to other songs but most of them are much more subtle.
UI-color was changed in the newer version and people seem to like it a lot more, I do too.
Concerning the schizo-nature of the narrative it is a bit of a deception. Everything actually fits together according to the in universe logic of the game world, and more details will come through as the game continues. Even something that might seem completely random such as "MR.TV", is a part of the bigger picture.
I love games like Yume Nikki but always wished they would actually make sense and you could figure out how everything works. Twin Peaks is a pretty good comparison, seems nonsensical but when you figure out what set of rules the world operates by you get it.
The collision is just pretty shit and will continue to be so for a long time. I am going to focus on finishing and polishing chapter 1 for now, actually doing something about the collision will mean changing how maps are handled entirely.
The clothes follow a style system which will be explained more thoroughly in chapter 2. Winter, Sarah and Billy share one of the styles, it works like armor type, this is why it becomes a bit funny. Dont know if I actually want to fix that or just keep it around for a laugh.
University will be awful, but it can be a lot better or worse depending on player choice.
I couldn't get this to work with OBS, sorry.
Why would you need OBS to play a game? I am not sure I understand.
Sorry I was not very clear lol. I make playtest videos and I couldn't get OBS to hook in to the game in order to record myself playing so I didn't play or make a video. What engine are you using?
Rpgmaker MZ. I use OBS to record gameplay all the time, I just use the screen as the source, expand the small window and then cut away the parts at the beginning and end of the recording where I fiddle around. Have to add a real full-screen option at some point...
UPDATE CHANGELOG:
NOTE: I recommend playing with tutorials on if it is your first time, the "GO HERE" messages are not done because its boring and I hate it. They will be done soon though.
Known Bugs:
There is still a rare bug which sometimes breaks the game in combat, I have not spotted what triggers it.
Loading into a map after death sometimes creates a bug if you enter combat, it can be “fixed” by leaving and reentering the map before combat if this happens to you.
Love the atmosphere of the game, it's unique and trippy as hell. The game feels like a puzzle where you have figure out what to do next and requires exploring every nook and cranny. The soundtrack is great as well, I especially liked the song in the area with the fishes.
I just finished the Hallowed Mother fight. I beat that one by pure luck because if she spams her hook attack there doesn't seem to be much you can do about it as it can kill your party members in 2-3 hits. I was only able to beat it because she decided not to use it as often and used her status effect spells instead.
Balancing the combat system is one of my concerns, I will fiddle with her moveset a bit. Once you are done with that fight, you are done with the introduction of the game, all of the good shit is still to come. I will be putting up two updated versions today, one of them will start right after that fight. If you want to continue playing, I recommend waiting for it and playing the new ACT2 build. I have fixed some gamebreaking bugs and other things. If you do continue playing the current version, know that you can softlock the game at the computer in the Hunting Tower and save accordingly.
I wanna install this through the Itch launcher can you tick the windows icon next to your upload?
Done. There is an updated version coming later today if you want to wait, I just need to run through it once to see that I haven't broken anything. I have gone through most of other peoples requests and fixed a lot of shit. Optional tutorials, WASD controls, things like that.
It's not my sort of game, but I think the artstyle and theme of the game are pretty cool. You've done some pretty nifty stuff with the RPGMaker engine. Only real complaints I can give are around some sound effects being excessively loud and general polish around dialogue polish.
The top and bottom of the name input screen are cut off:
I like your writing style, poetic without being pretentious.
Starting out with "Chapter 1: Regret (Nothing)" is for me a little too similar to the Eva naming scheme.
I'd like it if I could walk diagonally.
The words with contractions are missing the quote (i.e. "dont" instead of "don't").
The little cutscenes when I meet someone or get the gun are very cool.
Not sure how I feel about the sfx when I click stuff in the menu, it's kinda annoying.
I had to get uncomfortably close to Billy to trigger the dialogue.
In the combat menu where I need SWAG to perform moves, the moves should be greyed out if I have insufficient SWAG.
Walk animation could use improvement.
It would be nice to know what stuff like Strength and Endurance do.
It's a little disconcerting to me that day and night look the same in the campsite.
I assume the dialogue memory scrolling out of the textbox is intended. Very cool surprise.
The moments of "mixed media" are cool.
Jack of Deceivers is spelled wrong.
Is this her arm hanging off the bed? It's hard for me to understand this picture.
Obviously this game is supposed to have multiple party members at some point. It feels like I have to go through too many fights with just Winters and there's not much strategy, just hope for luck. I'm stuck on Meatgrinder and I'm going to call it here. I guess I could grind by fighting the fishes but I don't want to grind and waiting for a roll of the dice in the Meatgrinder fight is frustrating.
This game is kino, great work.
Thank you for your feedback, many of the things you mentioned I am working on fixing right now since other people mentioned them too.
I intentionally disabled diagonal walking since I just dislike it, sorry. T
The menu sfx has had mixed but mostly positive feedback, but I am thinking that I could tinker with it. It would be cool if the selection "voice" followed a scale and made a melody.
Many of the visually disconcerting stuff is intentional, but might need to be tweaked, this will sound like bullshit but its actually a part of the narrative.
Where did you read strength? It should say power everywhere so that might be a mistake. Power = damage, Endurance = damage reduction. All the names are part of the narrative to, its the ability to "endure" things.
Her arm is hanging off the bed but its twisted and sickened and was previously injured, Billy mentions this when he talks about his wife by the fire.
I think all of my walk-animations are pretty awful, I would like to improve them a lot but my skills concerning animation are lacking. I will try to make them better as I am getting better.
There is early strategy, and things are pretty easy and can be quickly done if you know what to do. You can get to the other members in about 15 minutes if you do not read stuff. To be able to figure that out however is pretty damn hard it turns out, working on tutorialstuff at the moment. Tutorials will be optional though and introduced like this:
Just finished this ;)
>Where did you read strength? It should say power everywhere so that might be a mistake.
Never mind, I probably made that up.
>It would be cool if the selection "voice" followed a scale and made a melody.
imo you'd be taking away from the strengths of the game by doing something distracting like that
>Her arm is hanging off the bed but its twisted and sickened and was previously injured, Billy mentions this when he talks about his wife by the fire.
I remembered being told she lost her hands so I was able to piece together that it was her arm but it seemed odd that her elbow made it all the way down to the floor.
Best of luck with the game, there's a lot of potential here and you seem to be well on the way to making the game more approachable with the tutorials.
Thank you, good luck to you as well!
Man this game is awesome. I was amazed to see like, a game that can be played on AGDG, I'm not used to that. The music was great! sound design is pretty solid, and the mouth noises for UI sounds is fun. Keep adding more sounds, the more feedback you get the more immersive it is.
i would kind of prefer to have WSAD controls in addition to point and click, I feel kind of disengaged with the way the game controls as is.
the vibe is very strange and cool, though I'm not sure if I understand what is happening, but thats the kind of stuff I like.
also
gotta agree with her there hahaha keep up the great work! I look forward to playing through the rest of this and seeing this game come together even more
Thank you, wasd is on my list, I have no idea if point and click is possible, the mouse controls are pretty fucked as it is. If you want the basics of the story, the description, even though it might not seem like it, sums it up pretty well. If you get to the end of the demo I think you will have a pretty good idea on how things work as well.
Should note that the demo consists of 2 acts out of 4 which will be chapter 1, out of 6. Winter will remain but each chapter comes with a new cast of people whose memories you will get to experience.
Haha, and that line is a dig at myself, quite a lot is if you read between them.
Hello, ever since you first posted this game I've been looking forward to getting to try it.
First thing I notice, scrollbar doesn't seem necessary on the title screen, you have plenty of room. Although I'm playing with a 1440p monitor so maybe it's just a scaling issue.
Also the screen to name my characters was cut off but luckily I could infer where the enter button is to proceed.
Also I know that arrow keys for movement is a bit of a standard RPGM thing but in my opinion having WASD as an option would be nice.
I generally like the puzzle-ey approach to the enemy encounters.
I found the "confused" mood to be quite overpowered personally but I could've just been getting lucky with it.
Also I randomly encountered this while fighting a random enemy:
which forced me to quit out unfortunately. But luckily wasn't a big deal because of autosave.
I was able to walk straight onto this platform without the ladder which I assume is not intentional:
Also I went back to the spot where you pick up Sarah for the second time by the lake and I was able to interact with the spot she used to be standing and it activated the dialogue as if she was still standing there.
There was a bug where I would get stuck on the computer screen. Luckily I was able to wander around the room blindly and interact with the coffee pot which returned normal visibility. Also the AI chat log entry didn't do anything when I tried it.
Anyway, I played all the way through and had a lot of fun. I like the characters and the general style and the music is great, probably the best agdg music I've heard so far. Keep up the good work!
Oh also It would be nice If when I have multiple debuffs on an enemy it showed multiple at once instead of just flashing one at a time. I've played other rpgm games that do it so I know it's possible.
Thank you for playing it all the way to the end, and many valid points! I am compiling a list of all the things to fix and I should be able to fix most of it next week so I can get back to working on act3. You have been very thorough and for that I am thankful. Multiple buff shown sounds good, should be a plugin for WASD available too. I want to rework the naming section, the plugin I used to change it up does not do what I want. I have been asked to add a "are you sure?" verify after the naming too, which I do not believe can be done in a smooth way with the current setup. Recently nerfed the confusionmood and the confusion effect on Joergun to 20 and 25% successrate but I may have overlooked something.
Have to ask since I am starved for storyinput, what did you think about Billy after the ending sequence of the demo and do you have any opinions on how Arthur is implemented?
Spoilers:
Oh, and one more thing, the beginnings of a darker path is implemented but poorly tested, I do not think anyone did it in case you might be interested. What you do is rack up your hatescore by choosing dialogueoptions which seem meaner, notsavefish, pick up king of hatred, take Deerhunter X (which is available at the platform you managed to get up on without a ladder if you did not save the fish) and choose "he is a legend" or "he was a misunderstood man" when prompted to have an opinion about Arthur. If you do Sarah and Billy leaves you and Arthur joins you as a partymember. In act3 this path will really get going and make some things diverge. There are also some things that can be setup to turn the young version of Sarah into a broken version of her which in Act3 becomes another "dark path" partymember. Working on other ways to get through the story too, I want this shit to be replayable.
Neato. Reminds me of a bunch of horror RPG maker games I played years ago in a good way. Couple things:
You specifically mean the gunshot when you get the rifle right? Yeah, I have been meaning to fix that. I will raise the "interaction area" for most things, many people have noted that just as you. Later characters work differently with the dialogue trees, initially I wanted the first one to be like that to teach the player to interact with characters several times, but it just doesn't work, so yeah.
Your feedback is very clear and precise, I appreciate it. If you play it further and get more, do tell me. I have compiled a list and posted it here among the comments, you can check if you see anything missing. I will do an experiment with the table, but I am afraid it might ruin the "sort of visual symmetry" of the map.
This is my postjam fixshitlist, if I have missed something, please add it as a reply.
Post jam fixshitlist:
Really digging the art, music and overall vibe of this game. It reminds me slightly of an old game called Dare to Dream (by epic mega games), although your game is much higher quality. I haven't spent enough time in this game to give a proper review unfortunately - as I am trying to just sample all the demo day games and then get back to devving my project. But I can tell that a lot of love and creativity has gone into this and it really shows.
Thank you, if you ever do finish it, tell me what you think and all the fucked up mistakes that needs to be fixed!
I will definitely report back once I have more time to sink my teeth into it.
I have no idea where does the demo end, so I finished after not seeing a way to progress between playground and murky waters after impressing a local grandma.
It has a strong overall style and the transitions/introductions add soul. Can't call it atmospheric though because it breaks consistency constantly. Music is nice too. The main motif reminds me of "heart shaped box" because of a very similar melody and that's actually a good thing.
I like all the options for equipment since the very early game, especially since the bonuses they offer are far from minor. Combat is ok despite my disdain for turn based. Having a sprint button is a nice QOL.
Ladder in the house is bugged and I can take however many I want of those.
The UI selection color is barely visible. If I played it at a different time of the day I wouldn't be able to see what's selected at all.
It's hard to see anything while walking around because of the fog and low contrast. Collisions and warps are weird at times (pretty common for rpg maker?).
Is this an rpg maker game? It would be an absolute hit back in the day and even more so now seeing how well those are doing recently.
By the big tree there is an upwards path, if you are around level 4 or 5 you are strong enough to take that path. At the end of the path there is a rope which you can use to climb down the well. You haven't finished the tutorial yet.
I have been thinking about the UI-selection, I will most likely make it less transparent and change the color. The ladders are truly fucked, I will fix it but since it cant fuck up progress at the moment it will be later.
This is an rpgmaker game, will think about your other feedback!
If you cant be bothered to finish it, though I recommend it because the real good stuff comes later, you can watch it in its entirety here or skip forward a bit and see if it might be worth your time after all:
There is an "end" to the demo at a good point in the story. You could also use the video if you get stuck to see what to do. Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!
Thanks, I found it. Now that it was darker it was visible, but back then I couldn't really see it and even tried walking there blindly without success.
I'm stopping at the 4th key (or at least I'm assuming that's it). It's stays good all the way through and the production value is high, which could be surprising when compared to the pixel art style and even if it doesn't suit my general tastes. And there's smells like teen spirit outright being used, so I did get the musical reference right.
Just when I was going to complain about the amount of combat getting in the way of the plot, you give stuff to compensate and appreciate it, on top of having kino boss fights. The amount of equipment is insane too.
Good job on the game.
Thank you, if you have the fourth key you only have the final demo boss left though. Go through the door, the boss is easy but the saddest stuff is kept right there.
or you know, watch this, I put the right time in:
Alright, I pulled through. Kind of worth it for m'boy Billy's more backstory. I'm glad he gets a fair treatment because many writers would just make him a villain.
It is wonderful that you got that because it was precisely my intention. You see what he puts Sarah through and then you understand why and he perhaps comes off as a lot more sympathetic. Arthur however...
One dude encountered a gamebreaking bug using the computer in the watchtower. This is a build beginning at act2 if you want to jump ahead or encounter the same bug.
https://horbror.itch.io/enjoycheatbuild
dude he ate that cat
why does butchering the rabbits give me hatred, i was just a lil hungry
music is all 11/10
i think my only criticism is that this game forces me to endure turn based combat, but for turn based combat it's pretty good
game is epic, i hope sarah does good at college
Thank you, the hatred mechanics are still very rough but I think they are going to be pretty great in the future. If you dont save the fish, pick up the deerhunter X gun, king of hatred card and call Arthur "a legend" or a "very misunderstood man" in the scene with the Barley Butcherer newspaper young Sarah and Billy leaves you and Arthur joins you instead, setting up the "dark run" of the game for the future. Deerhunter X SUPPOSEDLY scales with your hatred value so when everything works as it should you will be able to use things like butchering and behaving like an asshole to max your hatestat and damage-output.
And yeah, adult Sarahs college experience will be wild, lets just say that she takes no shit from people.
That was a refreshing game experience! I enjoyed the demo so far. Before I realized it, I had spent more than an hour on this demo.
There's a few things that I'd point out as feedback:
This game is really promising, keep up the good work and don't be afraid to experiment with the character art since it's still early in development. Cheers!
Amazing game. 10/10 love the music and the spooky themes but JRPG style with guns and horror themes its all really well done.
Thank you, how far did you get?
An impressively immersive thing, with a really coherent art style that locks me into it, probably because of how old I am. I have nothing to add in terms of critique, other than "I would probably buy this", presumably after hearing a bunch of people talking about how actually effective it is, actually.
That sort-of Omori vibe, innit? In a good way.
Thank you, I never really got in to Omori, due to the characters being too teenage anime, but I loved its artstyle and the mixed-media feeling.
I usually loathe combat systems like these but this game was captivating, I'm curious to see how you'll tie up Sarah's story with the MC's story.
I loved the style and the music is really good, but I gotta say the whole thing is a little undermined when you start farming meatmen and hanged deers for XPs.
This sprite at the end has some visible black pixels on its top edge, pic related.
Thank you for the input, I know how to fix those pixels, I have had this problem before with other sprites. Now concerning killing and farming, that is a part of the point, and you can play this game as a straight up monster and make some interesting choices a long the way if you want.
If you do, Arthur joins you as a companion at the end, setting up a lot of divergent future stuff. As i continue to build this there will be more "paths" to get through the game than the "somewhat good" path. One of the things I am currently working on, except for the dark path, is a "solorun" with exclusive stuff that happens if you never recruit anyone except for the one time you are forced too.
I could spoil how some of it fits together if you want me to, but perhaps that would not be fun, lets just say that the story revolving around Sarah and Billy is "chapter 1" while the story of Winter will continue on through about 5 more chapters after this one is finished.
Got it, thanks.
tbh I'd have never guessed that farming the monsters was part of a morality system.
A bunch of stuff is, but it is hidden at the moment, many of the flavourtext choices affect hidden personality variables too. I want this to affect more stuff in the future, but you know, lot of work to be done.