I wouldn't know about having only one save place. After going into the forest west of the house, I completed the goblin battle, then encountered a random battle and realized that there was no healing after battles. The combination of random encounters and no healing after battle was the cut-off for me. If you get low during the goblin fight, you might be taken out by a wild cockatrice. And you couldn't even avoid fighting the cockatrice because the battle was randomly encountered. The Sorceress can heal, but she has limited MP and that doesn't come back either. As for being lost, I didn't find it too hard to follow the path. The inn was in the northeastern part of town and the farm was just outside the town. You leave the town on the southeastern path, just south of the inn.
My main issue wasn't the save points, but the fact that the battles are absolutely ruthless and random. On a semi-related note, it may be an opinion, but random encounters are the absolute worst kind of battle encounter, ever. Sure it may be more work to put in events that chase the player to encounter on touch, but it makes it so the player can choose to avoid these battles. The way to discourage people from avoiding all the fights is to make your bosses and required fights harder, so the player has to level up in order to be strong enough to defeat the required fight.
Overall, the developers seem professional, but inexperienced. I think as time goes on, they will improve. I was excited to see a game with some decent artwork , but the cutscene with Ann in the Inn made me shiver (I don't mean any offense by it. I looked around a saw a comment they made which hints at them also being inexperienced at artwork. Maybe they'll actually see this feedback and at least consider it.
Okay, out of curiosity I went and visited their website. The website has a different version of the game. An older one, I think. The website also contained Eraanthe's twitter and the most recent tweet was linking to this page. If you're reading this, Areving or Eraanthe, i'm sorry. I read my comments back and they came off as biased and a little bit harsh. I didn't know much about the developer or their experience with game design or artwork. I was taking the game at face value for what I thought of it. Let me go through my feedback once again, especially now that I have so much more knowledge about the game by seeing others' comments and feedback. Disclaimer: I, as of making this comment have not played past the second goblin fight. So keep that in mind while reading this. And also, a lot of this feedback is probably going to be repetitive to you, but it's because I genuinely think that it's important enough.
I love the presentation of the game, it looks clean sleek and overall really professional especially for an erotic indie game.
The game looks great on the outward presentation, but the inside is a little messy still. I understand that you're focusing on Act 1 of the game, but this prologue definitely need some fine tuning.
The cutscenes are plentiful, but long (In almost every single cutscene there is a drawn out pause while either Yoshiko thinks for a couple of seconds or someone leaves the scene. This most likely due to you using the "Wait for completion" on all of the Move Routes. That makes it so that the cutscene will not continue until the Move Route is done. Combine this with the slow movement speed of the characters in the majority of the scenes and it's a long wait. As for Yoshiko's thinking. I understand the need for a pause, but it happens very often. I love yoshiko's personality as a happy-go-lucky, air headed adventurer, but these scenes where she pauses to think for a couple of seconds are excessive. If you're using the "Wait..." command under the "timing" category then you need to decrease the amount of frames that it waits before continuing. Remember that the game runs (Or at least it's intended to) in 60 Frames Per Second. Every 60 frames waited is a second.
The artwork is another thing i'm going to bring up, but not go too far into because I know Eraanthe is the only artist on the team and it can be hard. Eraanthe, you've done a great job so far. the art on your twitter is amazing (Even though I don't share a lot of kinks that some of them have xD) I just hope that, maybe when the game is all completed up that you'll go back and redrawn some of the scenes in the prologue, because, i'm not gonna lie to you Chief, that penis in the scene with April makes me double over in pain. It looks like someone grabbed the skin before the tip and just crushed it with their bare hands like soda can, you know what I mean? Please don't be discouraged by that, it was mostly a joke. you're art has improved so much <3.
The battles at the start of the game, specifically the one in the blacksmith is unbalanced. Especially since new players will have no clue what to do at first. Even players with RPG Maker game experience will be a tad confused at the difficulty. Guarding in most other RPG Maker games doesn't restore HP or MP. It only usually increases the characters defense for that turn. This means that most experienced players don't used the skill and in turn will most likely lead to them being more confused than curious new players. That leads me into the next topic.
Now onto one of the most grievous offender and usually a rule of game design (My, personal 1# rule). Tutorials. You NEED to teach your player the mechanics, or at least give an option to see a tutorial/explanation. As I stated earlier, your players will wind up confused if you don't make things a little obvious, especially the players who've never played RPG Maker before and are trying it out for the first time with your game. Not telling the player to go East or West leaves it up to the player to decide which direction to go. This can sometimes make players lost and unsure of where to go. Be specific and detailed with your instructions, not so much that it slows down the pacing, but enough that new players will know where to go.
One final gripe I have with the game, and this isn't so much that it warrants a huge amount of attention, but always expect the unexpected. What I mean by this is that you need to take measures to make sure that players cannot leave the intended area you're supposed to be in/going to (Such as, the first you enter the village for the first time, you shouldn't be able to go back to the house or leave the village to the southeast until you've talked with the blacksmith). You can do this by utilizing multiple pages for each script and switches.
I'm sorry if I sounded like I was treating you two like you don't know how to do anything on the engine. You two probably know the engine better than I do, cause you've probably been working on it for a longer time, but I put in a few pointer just in case you weren't aware. Overall, now that I know the mechanics a little better, i'm very much willing to give the game more play time so that I can give you better and more feedback about it. God, this post is fucking massive, but it's still not longer than Yoshiko is! xD
Oh! Ty so much for the feedback, sorry I've been slaving away at comms and the game and hadn't gotten around to checking itch.io.
I'm certainly planning on going back and updating the april scene, it's the very first that was done afterall hehe.
As for the goblin tutorial- it's not supposed to be that difficult but after we updated the way levels work in the game, it toughened them up. Upon my playtesting I was able to take them out though without needing to heal- I'll need to give it another look though based on what you've told me (most the people testing atm are starting from the check point for more recent content so I appreciate your prologue feedback)
Implementing a soft tutorial during that fight sounds like a great idea too!
-Eraanthe
Random encounters are fine… in moderation.
They should only happen after a fixed battle has happened—specifically the battle that teaches you the games battle mechanics.
Additionally, most modern games with random encounters have some form of spell\equipment\item\option for encounter rate reduction\negation, and a handful have the same for increasing the encounter rate… no idea why.
But if you go to another town, and the only save spot is in your house, you could be in for a long walk, depending how big the playable area of the game world is. Having to travel far from your location to save, then go back to that place after saving can be a huge issue.
Apparently there are save crystals in the goblin dungeon as you enter or something like that. I haven't continued playing through the game so I wouldn't know, so keep your eyes peeled for other objects that might be able to save. Probably save crystals specifically? I'll let you know if i find out.
Edit: One's in the library, north of the reception.
My most recent patch introduces an item that eliminates the encounter rates (much like repel in pokemon, and other games) which you'll be able to purchase from general shops.
As far as save points go, I agree pacing is important- we've rebalanced the game in major ways recently and will be adjusting checkpoints where needed.
Thanks a ton for the feedback, it's greatly appreciated!
-Eraanthe
I can't wait to see what you have! Game development is hard work no matter what you do. Some people think it's easy, but those people have never worked a game engine in their life. Even AAA companies need months to make just half a game. Also remember that a lot of feedback could be bias. For example, I mentioned random encounters being a pain because I always want more continuous non-stop story. That's just my wants. lol. but I am glad to hear that you're listening to feedback continuing development of the game. I still feel like I should apologize because I didn't give the game much of a chance as I should have due to first impressions. The April scene and the first goblin fight left me near apathetic to continue, BUT I'm really glad I checked around your website and other medias. I learned so many things that made the fights easier. In fact, just simply learning that Guarding restores both HP and MP on top of reducing damage single handedly made the difference. I'm not sure how long ago you drew the April scene, Eraanthe, but it must have been a while because your art is very high quality from what i've seen recently. All of you on The Skyward Foundry Dev team are doing god's work out there. Keep it up.
T^T Thank you so much for the kind words. We're trying our best to make the game playable (and enjoyable) despite being so heavily a WIP and we certainly appreciate the patience and empathy! At the end of the day, hopefully you guys enjoy playing this Futa Quest as much as we enjoyed making it!
-Eraa