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Dream Devourer's itch.io pageResults
Ranked 53rd with 4 votes
| Criteria | Rank | Votes |
| People's Choice Vote | #53 | 4 |
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
Theme
You are a newly awakened Fae Dream Devourer and a mysterious doctor teaches you how nourish and strengthen yourself. It works.
Gameplay
Sort of an action game and your goal is to devour some pleasant and nightmare dreams to make yourself stronger and not die. You equip skills by going to the menu (would benefit a lot on hotkeys). Has a lot of puzzles and the action aspect of it works a lot. There’s also a time management aspect to this game which I'm a huge fan of.
Presentation
The mapping needs a lot of work. But the dreamscape is for the most part is passable.
Engagement
Has a lot of potential and I think with a lot more polish it can be a successful commercial game.
Total – 64/80
PRESENTATION
Graphics were RTP. Mapping was decent enough for what it was.
The sound was decent - there wasn't any atmospheric usage of it but what was used worked well enough and didn't stand out in a bad way.
Music was fitting and set a decent tone for the game, too. Nothing stood out as bad but nothing was really good either.
Writing was littered with spelling and punctuation errors, which is a pity as the story itself had an interesting premise and the characterisation was rather well done.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay consisted of walking around and action battle system dynamics.For the most part you walk around and talk or dodge projectiles whilst collecting items. You later unlock the ability to shoot your own projectiles but only get access to that just before the demo ends.
There was also an aspect of sim growth outside of dreams where you get to choose what to do with your days and some actions could enhance your in-dream skills, however we never got to see that bar once, and the pay off from it was hidden behind a demo wall.
There were some random points where the game would freeze for a while, especially between scenes in the garden.
ENGAGEMENT
The game was engaging towards the end of the demo when you finally felt like you were being let out of the tutorial... only to have the game end. This was rather frustrating as up to that point you'd not really been allowed to do much more than walk, talk, collect and shoot one thing. It really felt more like a tutorial than a game up to that point.THEME
The theme is understanding yourself and really, it was pretty much not really explored much in the game or presented much beyond a short cutscene. Perhaps it would have been touched on a bit more, perhaps not. At least the mechanics of the game fit the setting and story well, though.57/80
Team Members
RadiantCadenza
Engine
RPG Maker MV
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Comments
Wow... this game looks so good! I love the art, the main character looks so gorgeous! And I really like the story so far too. I'm very much suspicious of that guy.. helping our newly awaked fae too much.. hmm
I really loved the free time thing. Venturing outside to the friend's house or just hanging around at home. I didn't get to find out how to buy new movies.. T^T I wonder if I can buy new books too later on? Maybe music cds? haha I'm really curious about that. Oh and btw I love the mapping of the house a lot! It looks so comfy! I wish we could use the bathtub in our free time, maybe a bubble bath? XD
Now.. the battle system.. ahh.. I spent about 1 hour on the game and I really like what I've seen of the dream world system, but 'I died' a lot in there no matter what difficulty stage I was playing in. After a while that starts to get very frustrating. Tbh I kind of gave up on any but the first stage, the rest was too hard for me and I just got the option to go into that stage that continues to the second chapter.. but I couldn't get very far in it.. T^T
Overall: I really like the game, the art style is good, the game mechanics work really well together too, but I think the difficulty levels needs to be improved a bit. It's obvious I got a bit disappointed that I couldn't get very far in the story, right? >_< lol Sorry..
Anyway, good luck in the contest! :) I'll keep an eye out for any updates to this game!
Thanks for the feedback!
I will definitely be adding a lot more daytime events and free-time activities. I ran out of time on the contest before I got to implement more books/movies and the store to buy them from. Funny you mention a bubble bath since taking a soak in the tub was a potential one I was thinking of adding. Now that you mention it maybe I can allow the player to buy different bath products to enhance the effects.
I did intend for the game to be challenging, but the first level was overkill and a bad start. I did tone it down a little bit in the last patch by adding some rocks you can use as a shield and toss in the path of the bullets to make a safe route. I wanted to balance the difficulty in a way similar to the Mega Man series. Where your first attempt at a level will often be quite difficult, but gets better with practice and also become easier as you get new abilities. So if you find a mission that is too hard you can try out some of the other ones, and go back to it once you have more powers.
That said, I do need to fine tune the difficulty more and the player is a bit too weak from the start. I've found that the jump ability makes a world of difference, so in future builds once I add more content I'm providing that in the tutorial level as well instead of making players earn it later.
I didn't play the game much, but what I saw was very promising. Keep up the good work!
BUGFIX GAME UPDATE DOWNLOAD HERE(Now that the contest judging period is over, the orginal IGMC upload has been replaced with a patched version)
Unfortunately, a game crash occurs for many users upon entering certain maps. This is caused by computers failing to load files with Japanese characters in the filename. You can fix this error by having Japanese Unicode installed on your machine, or by using the above download which has renamed the files so that the game can run on all windows machines. Here is also a save at the start of the 2nd day which is just before the most common occurrence of this crash, allowing players affected by this bug to pick up where they left off.