Play RPG
Sands Of Arcturus Beta's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall Fun | #27 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Art / Graphics | #27 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Sound/Music | #29 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Controls / UI | #40 | 2.333 | 2.333 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Genre
RPG
JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG
Genre #2
Sandbox
Open World
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Comments
I would love to play! But I've been unable to download the demo. I have tried over 5 times on different days and each download has failed.
Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 5! It's nice to meet you! My name's Hythrain. I'm part of the FQ team and a hobbystreamer. I'm writing this review live after having played your game.
So before I get into this, since I know you can see what I score you and "hear" my reasoning, I just need to explain that my ranks for specific scores could be related to me knowing nothing. I could be wrong in my assumptions regarding the graphics and the music. If I was if you watch my VOD, please let me know.
So when I jumped into this, I was honestly expecting some sort of deep story RPG, primarily because I didn't notice you called it open world/sandbox. Going into the prologue, I had no idea what anything was. I had expected more to happen in the prologue, but instead it was just several very long fights that, I assume, are intended to let the player play with the controls. However, in terms of story it provides nothing about who these characters are or why they're important. It doesn't even tell much at all. In short, it's just empty fluff you probably don't need. Unless you plan to add that in, in which case you need to do that now. Otherwise, it makes the prologue entirely pointless.
Now that said, that's also the first complaint of the gameplay I had: the prologue fights being so long and slow for no real reason. Tutorial fights don't need to take so long.
From there, there's a massive lack of direction of where to go. Like, from the moment I started controlling my character, I had no indication where to go. I was told there was a boat but no idea of direction to go, so I ended up going the scenic route by mistake. Then when I landed, I was just as confused for this huge place I was dropped in. Then I began exploring around and immediately found myself in the middle of chaos I was not ready for. This lack of direction and just... testing out things... led to me ending up stuck in the one dungeon, where I stopped playing for my sanity (because saves). What you need is a quest log that you can use to keep track of things. In addition, you should mark people who give quests so that the player can discern who actually matters to talk to.
Otherwise, it looks cool and I'd wanna see more.
-This one has the "MMO" tag, however it seems to be a purely single-player game, just saying.
-Loved the custom graphics assets (in particular the roaming chimera), great music too.
-Loved that there's a lot of worldbuilding, different nations and political interactions.
-Loved that NPCs had custom dialogue depending of your initial character's choices.
-Random encounters everywhere! I was attacked in the streets, I was attacked near merchant stalls, I was attacked by a large enemy group while inside a guild building.
-There seems to be no combat tutorial, but considering the combat seems fairly complex (like a dinossaur that kept mentioning about regaining balance), some mechanics explanation may help?
-Also considering how many abilities cost TP, shouldn't the battle UI show how much you have?
-All around hard game, couldn't even find anybody to recruit after the initial section and just kept getting killed by the random encounters. Still that's not necessarily a negative depending of your target audience, and your game page does point out "replayability, exploration and difficulty", so I fully agree you're achieving those objectives.
So definitely great job so far!
Thanks a bunch! Oops, totally didn't realize I could turn the mmo tag off, I'm kind of a noob when it comes to jams. Thanks for the suggestion on combat tutorial, I actually replaced TP w/ an AP momentum-ish system but yea, there is no UI for the bar and no explanation. I do intend on adding more guidance and making early game easier somehow, so I appreciate that feedback. There is an npc at your camp that guides you to each party member for the first few party members. The first one doesn't pop up until you fully explore the 'exterior' zone he's in/talk to crazy prophet in the temple in the first 'outskirts' zone closest to your camp, if you have the urge to continue playing and finding party members. :) The combat might definitely need some type of tutorial, I assumed it would be simple enough to jump into, the missing AP bar either needs to be fixed and/or explained in a tutorial though along with all the various state effects like you said, there's trips and bodyslams etc. that stun, and things that can give you states when walking around like animals, npc, plants, statues, buffs, debuffs etc., it wouldn't hurt telling the player about that stuff. Thanks for trying it out and your feedback! :D