The art and the music are both lovely, the expressions are top notch, as are the cutscene sequences.
Nyehboy Lightmuffin is a cutie and will be protected from the horrors of the world.
The combat sprites are excellent too, as is the U.I design.
You a professional artist or something? This is extremely high quality.
Hobb/Nyeh pairing acquired.
Evil book acquired.
Church location is interesting, all of the characters are intriguing visually. Cutscene with the deerboss was very cool.
I will be honest and say the story is a bit too wordy for my taste, conversations drag on for way too long, but this is opinion and not fact. Unless you hear this from other people, do not mind it.
I really appreciate them especially coming from another fellow indie :D. I'm not really a professional artist, as in, I never went to an art school or anything similar. Rather what skill I have is a result of self-taugh lessons and a very-likely unhealthy amount of practice. Of course, I'm always trying to improve and it makes me happy when there's a comment like yours telling what the art made them feel.
Is true than the game is quite wordy xD, that's why I used the visual novel tag even if it's similar to a jRPG. Myself was surprised with the amount of dialogue every character ended up having at the end. You could say that was a result of obsession, since I had the feeling I didn't want to be left behind some of my own favourite games and works - the ones which inspired me to complete my game in the first place. There's also the fact that I believe characters should speak for themselves, reason why I don't like to restrict what they say. But now I'm heavily digressing ^^U. For my own sanity I'll probably tone it down in the next chapters and stories (though a wordy element will likely remain still).
All of this reminds me I have yet to report back of my playground of Dreams of Joy Departed. I promise I will do it; I just have to put my sleep schedule in control... somehow ^^. Cheers!
No rush, I will play your game more at some point, but there are a lot of games to follow, and a lot of things to do.
Don't get to hung up on the "wordy" comment, that is just a matter of taste, and not all necessarily a detriment for the players that will become your core audience. I was honestly not sure if I should have included it, but I figured if this was a recurring comment in the future, then some fiddling might be good.
I like the art style on this, and it easily carries the game all on its own. The maps could use more landmarks/less repetition, and I feel this sort of dudes-in-a-row RPG Maker structure demands additions like much faster run speed + diagonal movement as well as being able to animation-cancel text/turns to be fun. As-is, I lost all enthusiasm for playing in record time once I died and had to redo anything.
Thanks for the comment! Mmmmm, the game already features a button for speeding-up text and faster walk/running - though you may refer to a higher run speed or the option to directly skip dialogue scenes. Initially we thought about including such a feature, but taking into account the game needs some investigation to progress, skipping dialogue entirely could lead to players getting soft-locked or lost, in contrast with combat-oriented games where skipping dialogue wouldn't affect progress that much. As for repetition, you're very well right that some is due if the player doesn't save - which can happen because the game doesn't feature autosave, all saving must be done manually from the menu like old jRPGs. We may include a warning at the beginning to aware the players of that. Glad you liked the art. ^^
What I mean by animation-skipping is pressing a confirm button while animations like battle animations/text, overworld animations and screen transitions, etc. are playing to move forwards into the next queued action. And yeah, running being too slow, combined with the lack of diagonal movement in diagonally-oriented maps, makes getting around quite a chore, especially if you want us to backtrack to investigate. If you don't want to trivialize running away from enemies, having some diagonal movement that's deliberately slow would still help, as would a faster running speed when there's no enemies on the screen.
Yes, it's a very pretty game! I would like to return to it again.
Comments
The art and the music are both lovely, the expressions are top notch, as are the cutscene sequences.
Nyehboy Lightmuffin is a cutie and will be protected from the horrors of the world.
The combat sprites are excellent too, as is the U.I design.
You a professional artist or something? This is extremely high quality.
Hobb/Nyeh pairing acquired.
Evil book acquired.
Church location is interesting, all of the characters are intriguing visually. Cutscene with the deerboss was very cool.
I will be honest and say the story is a bit too wordy for my taste, conversations drag on for way too long, but this is opinion and not fact. Unless you hear this from other people, do not mind it.
This is how far I have gotten for now:
I had fun!
Thank you for the lovely words! ^^
I really appreciate them especially coming from another fellow indie :D. I'm not really a professional artist, as in, I never went to an art school or anything similar. Rather what skill I have is a result of self-taugh lessons and a very-likely unhealthy amount of practice. Of course, I'm always trying to improve and it makes me happy when there's a comment like yours telling what the art made them feel.
Is true than the game is quite wordy xD, that's why I used the visual novel tag even if it's similar to a jRPG. Myself was surprised with the amount of dialogue every character ended up having at the end. You could say that was a result of obsession, since I had the feeling I didn't want to be left behind some of my own favourite games and works - the ones which inspired me to complete my game in the first place. There's also the fact that I believe characters should speak for themselves, reason why I don't like to restrict what they say. But now I'm heavily digressing ^^U. For my own sanity I'll probably tone it down in the next chapters and stories (though a wordy element will likely remain still).
All of this reminds me I have yet to report back of my playground of Dreams of Joy Departed. I promise I will do it; I just have to put my sleep schedule in control... somehow ^^. Cheers!
No rush, I will play your game more at some point, but there are a lot of games to follow, and a lot of things to do.
Don't get to hung up on the "wordy" comment, that is just a matter of taste, and not all necessarily a detriment for the players that will become your core audience. I was honestly not sure if I should have included it, but I figured if this was a recurring comment in the future, then some fiddling might be good.
I like the art style on this, and it easily carries the game all on its own. The maps could use more landmarks/less repetition, and I feel this sort of dudes-in-a-row RPG Maker structure demands additions like much faster run speed + diagonal movement as well as being able to animation-cancel text/turns to be fun. As-is, I lost all enthusiasm for playing in record time once I died and had to redo anything.
Thanks for the comment!
Mmmmm, the game already features a button for speeding-up text and faster walk/running - though you may refer to a higher run speed or the option to directly skip dialogue scenes. Initially we thought about including such a feature, but taking into account the game needs some investigation to progress, skipping dialogue entirely could lead to players getting soft-locked or lost, in contrast with combat-oriented games where skipping dialogue wouldn't affect progress that much. As for repetition, you're very well right that some is due if the player doesn't save - which can happen because the game doesn't feature autosave, all saving must be done manually from the menu like old jRPGs. We may include a warning at the beginning to aware the players of that.
Glad you liked the art. ^^
What I mean by animation-skipping is pressing a confirm button while animations like battle animations/text, overworld animations and screen transitions, etc. are playing to move forwards into the next queued action. And yeah, running being too slow, combined with the lack of diagonal movement in diagonally-oriented maps, makes getting around quite a chore, especially if you want us to backtrack to investigate. If you don't want to trivialize running away from enemies, having some diagonal movement that's deliberately slow would still help, as would a faster running speed when there's no enemies on the screen.
Yes, it's a very pretty game! I would like to return to it again.