Art and character design is great. The “pathways” in the perks menu are not obvious (they blend in with the background) which made it difficult to tell what was available – I ended up having to just click on them until one got accepted. I didn’t really want it and I couldn’t undo it. At first, it was difficult to tell what was happening in combat. It seemed as if enemies would just do attacks, they’d move on, and I didn’t really have time to tell what had happened. I didn’t learn until later that you could scroll through the characters’ status and last actions in the lower-left panel during combat. Also I was frustrated that I mistakenly pressed the “Continue” button while I was on a Hallowed Ground stage before I had selected my stat increases. It wasn’t clear to me what “Continue” meant; I guess I wish it had prompted me: “You have unallocated stats, are you sure you want to leave the Hallowed Ground?” or something like that.

And that really sums up what I have to say about this demo: Very cool art and setting, combat was pretty fun, but trying to figure out how to properly use certain menus and features is quite frustrating, especially since there’s no going back once you’ve made a whoopsie.

Love the battle system. Took me half a battle to understand the meaning of running across the screen but that's quite clever.

Navigating the ui is a bit confusing. It would be nice to have on-screen buttons that advance dialogue or go in and out of sections of the game. Right now every time I got to a new page I feel like I'm hunting for the right place to click. Sometimes "esc" leaves what I'm looking at, but sometimes not? And sometimes it's "space" to advance dialogue but sometimes it's clicking the talking person.

Art is beautiful, although sometimes low-res and sometimes hi-res?

Really nice piece. Aside from having all the basics down, having good UI, tooltips, an ABS combat system that tells you when it is your turn better than bars filling up, it also has an intriguing premise. Pretty damn good.

ahoy. 

i have beaten the demo all the way through and saw the cutscene. i like to be restating the same feedback as last demo, but i have to mention again that the setting, writing, atmosphere and direction is absolutely stellar. when people talk about soul, this is what they mean. this game is SOULFUL. if you make it available for purchase i'll be getting it day one. don't change a single thing about the story or how you're writing it.

so now that's out of the way, here's the current demo feedback

there's still a couple of UI shenanigans. the main thing i noticed is on the level up screen. if i mouse over a stat, the information pops up. if i mouse away, the info stays. small things like that tend to build up and become annoying. another example, you gain perks every 2 levels. it would be interesting to have a visual indication every level you have it available, instead of relying on the player being clever.

sometimes in combat, if the enemy (such as the formless wheel guy) have a complex attack, the bottom left descriptions will get cut off. I have no idea what some of the formless skills do since i couldn't read it all. there's also a blue line at the top of the screen that i don't remember before. i'm playing on a fullscreen resolution, and my normal resolution is 1920x1080. i did play it in windowed mode last time, though.

the puzzles were interesting. the first one (directions in the maze) was interesting. took me a bit, but I got it. Is  the result randomly generated? i'd hope so. 

the second puzzle (the pentagram) was a bit harder. i thought i visited every square, but i still failed and had the Bee UI. i'm glad i failed, that was a fun challenge. i'd also turn the skill names into Bee-speak, since at this point players will know by heart what 'box' does what.

the difficulty was perhaps a bit too low. i think the hardest part of the demo was playing as the other team, dealing with the multiple waves. otherwise, everything felt too easy. i think this was a case of the player being too strong instead of the enemies being too weak, if that makes sense. i usually pump all points into either a main stat, or speed. Dino boy usually acts twice as much as everyone else and puts the team on his back. perhaps the enemies require a buff? some enemies felt threatening (the taurus archer was really tough), but many others were just pushovers. it also sometimes depends on the enemy intentions. it reminds me of how last DD it felt difficult since the enemies would sometimes focusfire a character down in 1-2 turns. this never happened here, and it felt like the damage was always evenly spread, which is what makes it easier. never had to use the protection skill, if that tells you anything.

these are i think only minor issues. the game really is stellar and is by far my favorite DD entry. all the new content was interesting and high quality. it's surprising how fast you're able to make it. keep up the good work and i hope to see you in DD50

also, if you have a high-quality/high-resolution image of your cover image, i'd love to save it