While I love the attention to detail artistically and eventing wise, I had to give the gameplay 1 star, on account of my game softlocking on a white screen after saving the game. As nice as the intro cutscene was, I'm afraid that it's not something I would watch a second time.
Maybe im getting old, but the potty humour didn't get to me.
I was also not a fan of the inconsistent dialogue boxes. Some parts you can skip, other times it skips for you and I missed the dialogue a few times due to this.
Psychronic Gaming has always impressed me with their design and narrative, but unfortunately the characters and narrative was not well fleshed out enough in this instance for me to pay much attention.
My advice for next time; focus on making the premise of the story absolutely crystal clear in the first 5 minutes of the game, otherwise the player will lose interest or be left confused. Kiyasu, you did a great job otherwise :)
EDIT: I was playing on a previous submission, which I am told is the bugged version. Review subject to change soon. I basically stopped playing once the toilet humour reached a point of absurdity.
So, there's really no point in forcing players to sit there for a painfully long wait time for every single text box, and every single sentence within the text box. It's really exhausting.
But, it was a really neat atmosphere, and these cutscenes were so well done! It just shouldn't have taken 22 minutes to get through it.
Love the art and I like the music (when there is music), but the intro feels so slow, partly because the text speed is super slow and unskippable and partly because well I felt really lost with all the Trihan and the Sisko scenes.
Unfortunately crashed after being teleported to the ascent.
Overall: Love the cinematic vibes and the effort put into the graphics and sound, but unfortunately that's all it really was.
Gameplay: Not much to remark on since it's all text. As a demo for a bigger game it works for an intro, but in a jam the stretches of unskippable text with very long pauses in between definitely dragged the pace.
Music: Great music choices, although some sound effects were a tad bit grating.
Comedy: Pacing would have helped this a lot. A lot of jokes had potential but just kept getting dragged out IMO. Not helped by the long automatic text. Thankfully this gets bumped up thanks to the amazing cameo when Harold goes to Heaven.
Graphics: High point of the game IMO. So so sick, especially the nuclear explosion. Unfortunately it got laggy because haha RPG Maker MV.
Story: Good intro at least. Just not much happened after being teleported to the ascent.
Hey, DJ! Thanks for the feedback. Very interesting and also this is the first time I ever heard about lag for the nuclear explosion, so thanks for bringing this to my attention. As for the music, which of the sound effects did you find a bit grating? (Or could it be due to some lag or something?) And yeah, the crash is a part of a joke; it was supposed to crash right after the player sees "To be continued..." as a perfect ending to this unfinished jam version. :P
Concerning lag, I'm using an 11 year old Windows 7 computer which is known to lag pretty badly on more complex RM games. As far as SFX go, I wouldn't say grating as much as loud and I don't think this was as big of an issue as I'm making it out to be.
Beautiful art! The music also supports the cinematic feel this game is going for. There's definitely an "interactive movie" vibe about this game, and I'm excited to see how it works out.
There's way too much exposition. Like, I know you're setting up for a larger game, but even then there's so much describing of the history that I got lost and started tuning out around the time Sisko started his broadcast. I also didn't like how the text auto-advances, then abruptly shifts to waiting for the player to advance. It would be better to choose one approach and stick with it (I vote for waiting for player input since that will also solve the complaints about text speed).
It's too bad there wasn't enough time to add gameplay. I know Star Shift has some cool mechanics and it would have been neat to see what you had in mind.
I wish you the best of luck on the future of this project.
Gotta say, you got some great visual effects and scenes here. Even the exit game has the background fade to black before closing, which is a pretty cool detail. The music ain't bad, either.
Personally, I think the text speed feels a bit too slow, especially with all the pauses mid-dialogue, even with the text speed set to 10. Setting the text speed to instant, however, causes some text to be instantly skipped before I can read it.
Story-wise, it felt like there was a lot of exposition which didn't quite make any sense to me. Understandably it's due to time constraints, but I think perhaps some of the exposition could have been cut instead of the following scenes? As it is now, I don't really see the link between Harold at the ascent and the preceding events. The scenes with Harold at the toilet and in heaven were pretty funny, though.
Overall, I think this game has a lot of potential. Would definitely like to give it another try if you decide to keep working on it and finish it.
Not sure what I experienced here! This is a fever dream I'd expect to wake up from in the midst of a Harold Jam. The ambiance was really cool, and there were some impressive scenes put together, but I admit, I really have no idea what I experienced here.
The game crashed when I was teleported to an ascent and some weird creature descended.
I see it was kind of a cinematic game, but I found myself really impatient with the text movement. I prefer to speed through a bit faster. I also haven't played Star Shift so maybe I missed a lot of references. The Giga Buff Chad Harold insert was pretty funny though.
Congrats again Kiyasu for finishing this demo and entry! I really enjoyed the cutscenes and story, it was so cool seeing all the sci-fi stuff and the awesome graphics + maps! And the last part was funny when Harold was daydreaming xD Amazing job again Kiyasu! <3 Hope to see more soon! <3
Comments
Well clearly this is the greatest game of all time ever made. I'm not at all saying that just because I'm in it.
Also Kytt thought it was cool that she's in a game. :D
While I love the attention to detail artistically and eventing wise,
I had to give the gameplay 1 star, on account of my game softlocking on a white screen after saving the game.As nice as the intro cutscene was, I'm afraid that it's not something I would watch a second time.Maybe im getting old, but the potty humour didn't get to me.
I was also not a fan of the inconsistent dialogue boxes. Some parts you can skip, other times it skips for you and I missed the dialogue a few times due to this.
Psychronic Gaming has always impressed me with their design and narrative, but unfortunately the characters and narrative was not well fleshed out enough in this instance for me to pay much attention.
My advice for next time; focus on making the premise of the story absolutely crystal clear in the first 5 minutes of the game, otherwise the player will lose interest or be left confused.
Kiyasu, you did a great job otherwise :)
EDIT: I was playing on a previous submission, which I am told is the bugged version. Review subject to change soon.
I basically stopped playing once the toilet humour reached a point of absurdity.
So cool your game!
So, there's really no point in forcing players to sit there for a painfully long wait time for every single text box, and every single sentence within the text box. It's really exhausting.
But, it was a really neat atmosphere, and these cutscenes were so well done! It just shouldn't have taken 22 minutes to get through it.
Love the art and I like the music (when there is music), but the intro feels so slow, partly because the text speed is super slow and unskippable and partly because well I felt really lost with all the Trihan and the Sisko scenes.
Unfortunately crashed after being teleported to the ascent.
Overall: Love the cinematic vibes and the effort put into the graphics and sound, but unfortunately that's all it really was.
Gameplay: Not much to remark on since it's all text. As a demo for a bigger game it works for an intro, but in a jam the stretches of unskippable text with very long pauses in between definitely dragged the pace.
Music: Great music choices, although some sound effects were a tad bit grating.
Comedy: Pacing would have helped this a lot. A lot of jokes had potential but just kept getting dragged out IMO. Not helped by the long automatic text. Thankfully this gets bumped up thanks to the amazing cameo when Harold goes to Heaven.
Graphics: High point of the game IMO. So so sick, especially the nuclear explosion. Unfortunately it got laggy because haha RPG Maker MV.
Story: Good intro at least. Just not much happened after being teleported to the ascent.
Hey, DJ! Thanks for the feedback. Very interesting and also this is the first time I ever heard about lag for the nuclear explosion, so thanks for bringing this to my attention. As for the music, which of the sound effects did you find a bit grating? (Or could it be due to some lag or something?) And yeah, the crash is a part of a joke; it was supposed to crash right after the player sees "To be continued..." as a perfect ending to this unfinished jam version. :P
Concerning lag, I'm using an 11 year old Windows 7 computer which is known to lag pretty badly on more complex RM games. As far as SFX go, I wouldn't say grating as much as loud and I don't think this was as big of an issue as I'm making it out to be.
Beautiful art! The music also supports the cinematic feel this game is going for. There's definitely an "interactive movie" vibe about this game, and I'm excited to see how it works out.
There's way too much exposition. Like, I know you're setting up for a larger game, but even then there's so much describing of the history that I got lost and started tuning out around the time Sisko started his broadcast. I also didn't like how the text auto-advances, then abruptly shifts to waiting for the player to advance. It would be better to choose one approach and stick with it (I vote for waiting for player input since that will also solve the complaints about text speed).
It's too bad there wasn't enough time to add gameplay. I know Star Shift has some cool mechanics and it would have been neat to see what you had in mind.
I wish you the best of luck on the future of this project.
Great Game!!!
not a bad game!
That's an unexpected cameo rofl
Gotta say, you got some great visual effects and scenes here. Even the exit game has the background fade to black before closing, which is a pretty cool detail. The music ain't bad, either.
Personally, I think the text speed feels a bit too slow, especially with all the pauses mid-dialogue, even with the text speed set to 10. Setting the text speed to instant, however, causes some text to be instantly skipped before I can read it.
Story-wise, it felt like there was a lot of exposition which didn't quite make any sense to me. Understandably it's due to time constraints, but I think perhaps some of the exposition could have been cut instead of the following scenes? As it is now, I don't really see the link between Harold at the ascent and the preceding events. The scenes with Harold at the toilet and in heaven were pretty funny, though.
Overall, I think this game has a lot of potential. Would definitely like to give it another try if you decide to keep working on it and finish it.
Not sure what I experienced here! This is a fever dream I'd expect to wake up from in the midst of a Harold Jam. The ambiance was really cool, and there were some impressive scenes put together, but I admit, I really have no idea what I experienced here.
The game crashed when I was teleported to an ascent and some weird creature descended.
I see it was kind of a cinematic game, but I found myself really impatient with the text movement. I prefer to speed through a bit faster. I also haven't played Star Shift so maybe I missed a lot of references. The Giga Buff Chad Harold insert was pretty funny though.
Can only play browser games but just off the screenshots it looks super!
Downloaded! I'll play it when I have the chance!
THAT is a dramatic whiplash between dramatic and funny. I can and will definitely take lessons from the cinematics work on this entry
Congrats again Kiyasu for finishing this demo and entry! I really enjoyed the cutscenes and story, it was so cool seeing all the sci-fi stuff and the awesome graphics + maps! And the last part was funny when Harold was daydreaming xD Amazing job again Kiyasu! <3 Hope to see more soon! <3