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Lumen: Light in a Dark World(Demo)'s itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
PRESENTATION
Graphics are RTP. Mapping has some pretty standard problems that most new mappers have difficulties with - making large empty maps that are boring and bland, using some tiles wrong, cliff heights, etc.
The sound is pretty standard. Nothing really gives you much in the way of atmosphere, but it didn't jar at all so that's good too. The music is used well in the scenes they're used in but only a few stood out as good use. It all fit, but it wasn't exactly memorable.
Writing has spelling and grammar errors, as well as punctuation issues. The dialogue is stilted and the characterisation is pretty bland. Slow text is always a bad thing.
The story was basically non-existent. There was an intro that led to the main character growing up with hatred towards his uncle and some other guy but then suddenly he was in some guild or something and doing odd jobs. There really wasn't any explanation as to why he was with this group or what happened in the interim.
Some passability issues exist. There were some menu issues where you couldn't see information you needed to know in the item use scene - notably, who has what status effect and MP bars.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay consists of battles and puzzles and typical jRPG interactions.You can grab a bunch of different characters to join you but from what I saw, they all had the same skillset as the main character and while some of those skills were interesting ideas (the no-turn-use healing skills were great), it was always better to just spam attack instead of using any of the damage skills. The damage from attacking was miles better.
There's a day and night system. Not sure why. It didn't seem to have any affect on the gameplay.
Items gave percentage heals.
I got stuck on the puzzle, not only because there was no hints as to what to do, but also because a bat flew onto a switch as I pushed a boulder and it made it so that I couldn't push that boulder the right direction any more.
ENGAGEMENT
Percent heals are always bad when not supplemented with a hard amount, or at least 35% at the lowest amount. You have to use at least three items per person if you're injured below half health and that's not great.The game was going so well until I hit the dead wall that is the boulder switch puzzle as noted above. By that point I was at the hour mark and a lot of little annoyances made me stop playing - there was no real story being told that I could discern, I didn't like the character/s and fighting the same enemy over and over is beyond boring.
THEME
The theme is probably revenge. Pity the story and gameplay does nothing to support this up to the point I saw.26/80
Engine
RPG Maker MV
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Comments
You've certainly put a lot of work into this demo :) I liked the event indicators and the hint item, although it felt like a lot of clicks for what was basically a one line reminder of what's going on, so does maybe need to be streamlined a little.
Can't really comment on the battle system, it's not really my area. I got kind of fed up facing the same two bats over and over though, and ideally you'd still be able to escape from those in case you've accidentally touched one. They respawn which made backtracking maps annoying. EDIT: Forgot to mention that I found this passability error;
The titlescreen doesn't actually work with a gamepad which you might want to look into if you're promoting gamepad controls. There were a few typos around that could do with fixing (p.s. it's spelt "brooch" not "broach"). You also hit two of my pet peeves, first that text doesn't fit the width of the textbox correctly, (ideally fill out an entire line before starting a new one, unless it's stylistically between sentences), and also I felt that you'd overused pauses a little making the dialogue more tiring than it is.
Final thing I'd suggest fixing is the menu. Since you can't see the MP bars, it makes it hard when you're trying to use MP restore items from the menu. Sure, the player can check status but it's not user friendly.
So, I did end up getting stuck. Your puzzle hints at 17 boulders to open the door. I found 7 and turned all the switches on, but still wasn't able to get past. I did look around for an area that I missed but didn't see anything. This was around an hour in, so I probably would have stopped playing at this point. It's a good game, but a bit too battle heavy for me and not really my genre anyway. Good luck with this! <3
Yeah for sure that boulder hint seems to be too vague...17 is actually the sum of 1 + 4 + 5 + 7, so you have to move those boulders only, in order to make it work. How did you come across that pass through error? I'm having trouble re creating it.
Yeah, I would not have guessed that XD Maybe add an extra hint to the book?
It's the area with the dead tree 'maze' when you first leave. I think there's a crack on the wall, I could walk straight up those two tiles.