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Beyond the Dungeon's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Theme | #164 | 2.041 | 2.500 |
Gameplay | #171 | 1.633 | 2.000 |
Overall | #177 | 1.735 | 2.125 |
Engagement | #179 | 1.633 | 2.000 |
Presentation | #193 | 1.633 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
The tutorial was a bit long-winded and I didn't really understand how I was supposed to grind when the enemies started of overpowered anyway? Still very interesting...
Halo, I made sure to add easy enemies at the start like the green goblin. If the enemies proved to be too strong (for example the rare goblin, crow, or mushroom mob) you can always escape
Rest assured that the mobs get piss easier once you got more gear and leveled up to 2
Your feedback regarding the tutorial is duly noted
Thanks for playing my game nonetheless!
Ah I must've missed them, thanks for that!
*tips hat* m'pleasure
Reposting from review.
It's a game about grinding, effectively. At least as far as I got. Interpreting 'beyond expectations' as requiring you to be a level above the signpost is a bit of a weird one. Such a game would require the grinding to be fun, but unfortunately it doesn't succeed at doing that.
It's a very slow game that tediously involves spamming the attack button for much of it, made even slower by the enemies taking 2-3 hits to kill on average since you're stuck with one party member. The enemies also generally don't give much experience so you will be doing this quite a bit. Gets easier when you get the AoE spell, but it's still slow and effectively involves fighting randoms over and over. I couldn't force myself to grind for the second boss and had to stop.
The dialogue is also odd. The NPCs are extremely chatty and go on long diatribes, sometimes going on for 10+ lines about stuff that is exceedingly generic 'well this IS a jrpg' stuff. Accidentally talking to one of these NPCs in town again is a bit torturous. The priestess is particularly guilty of this - I groaned when she went over the five pieces of information and then would keep extending the conversation even longer and then doesn't even join you even though there's no reason why she logically shouldn't. There's a reason why most standard jrpgs don't stick you alone for very long.
There's definitely some potential here. There seems to be some sort of greater mystery to the story and that might be compelling, but I just found it difficult to get invested in the world, and the combat being extremely boring in spite of the main conceit being grinding killed my interest.
Good luck with your future stuff.
Thank you for the thorough review! I agree with everything that you said about my game.
I see that you had qualms with the gameplay and mechanics, and I understand that it got repetitive. This is a fault on my part since I didnt have time to make more skills/other interesting stuff to make you distracted from the main routinary grind. As it stands, the strongest suit I believe I had going into this competition was my writing, so that's where I put 60% of my focus into.
Another focus I went into is the boss gimmicks, which I think isn't too groundbreaking from a player's standpoint, but groundbreaking for me because I got to dabble around "What boss do when all his side goons dead, health is half, or can transform?". Of course the first boss had no gimmicks whatsoever except the double attack, but they are more to make the player ease into the game.
The beyond mechanic is the best I can come up with based on my current set of skills sadly as of the duration of the jam. So I don't have anything on that lol.
Your feedback regarding the priestess and other NPC's at that having long ass dialogues is duly noted. I guess I just had way too much fun writing the dialogue for the priestess that it turned out to be an essay, more so bits and pieces to get the player engaged and immersed, as what I would have hoped it did.
Regardless, I won't cut the stories I want to tell short just to make dialogues less though. Maybe I'll implement an actual skip feature instead of the long press space bar to speed through the dialogue, so that accidentally interacting with a yapper NPC would get less annoying.
I'm glad I at least got a "Generic JRPG stuff" feel, because that's what I was gunning for. I didnt want to do anything out of the ordinary as I was already wrestling with learning how to use the default features of the engine as intended, except the story I tried to tell.
For other characters joining you, I was planning on making some characters join you. But alas, I was only able to add the protagonist since time constraints, and I just felt that it'd be better to have only him to venture on his lonesome until the game's completion, just like in battleheart legacy. But I do look forward to doing a party system similar to Inotia 4 in my future games when I have the time.
It's sad to hear that you got bored early game, but it makes sense because guilty as charged, I made the grind boring.
Nevertheless, thank you for taking the time to review my work and giving my game a chance :)
TL;DR -> Duly noted, I agree with what you said. I focused and had way too much fun in writing the story and dialogues than actual game devving that I didnt have time to add more to the other features of the game like making grinding more fun due to time constraints and current lack of my skills. But rest assured, I'll do better.
EDIT -> Spelling errors
Thank you for taking my review well! I'm glad you took something from it even though I feel it might have been a bit harsh and I didn't manage to complete a playthrough. I'm just some random guy playing your game so you don't need to take everything I said as gospel, but the ability to process reasonable criticism fairly is the first step to getting anywhere I feel, whether or not you agree with my opinions. I definitely respect you for that.
Good luck on your future endeavors!
Thanks, and no worries on me taking criticism. Rest assured I take them with a grain of salt. You raised valid points so no drama.
Though if there is someone who dishes out straight insults, or won't give substance, I'll simply ignore them for my own sanity haha.