Share your impressions after interacting with the world of Nine Lives of Yoki! New feedback and suggestions for improving the game are always welcome ^^
Right now the game certainly looks better than it plays, stiff is one word I would use. The style and everything is there but the character movement feels very heavy, like Yoki is magnetically attached to the ground or chained to a weight at the leg. Detection for interaction, namely climbing ladders and wall sticks/jumps, also don't feel super fluid or simple. There's a sweet spot for the ladders and the jumps, and not in the "oh clearly I messed up here" way but in the "if you are one pixel off you will fail the entire wall climb/be incapable of interacting with the ladder" way. Similarly, animations right now are very slow and easily punished by enemies who can outrun the player and easily tear them apart which makes the slow/inaccurate detections that much more obvious. There is a LOT of potential and what's here is good, but a platformer like this doesn't do well to have almost souls-like weight and animation lengths when it wants you to do Metroid movement and wall mechanics. I'm excited to see what comes of the game, gonna keep an eye on it.
Yes, there is more graphics than gameplay in the game right now, as we are following the roadmap. Right now we are working on the level building logic and interface. Also, the first phase of development includes improvements to minor animations and combat - that's also very soon. After we finish doing the foundation of the game, we will start expanding the gameplay time, namely creating new levels.
Thanks for the feedback! We're trying to hurry up and add as many improvements as we can, but it still takes time to do it all.
Hello. I'll keep this brief, since my position comes from someone who isn't a patreon/boosty supporter, and is currently unaware of what state the game is on it's roadmap.
One thing I always dislike about Fem MC games like this is that scenes are completely tied to losing combat encounters, and I always hated that.
Two of my favourite H-games were Eroico and Wonderful Pink. The former an example of what I hate (despite absolutely loving the gameplay otherwise), and an example of my favorite implementation of Fem MC content.
In Wonderful Pink, most of the scenes were rather light-hearted capture and "interrogation" scenes by goons, but these encounters were still technically optional, and fit the Sentai/Magical girl genre the game was going for. The only sex scene occurs at the end of the game, with the player (or the closest approximation) sparing with Momoko, and eventually having sex.
Now, obviously a lot of people want to see the Fem MC getting fucked by monsters, it's the main audience for the genre, but I'll I'm asking is it would be nice if there were romantic scenes in the game with NPCs.
Now, here's a part where I'm probably gonna lose you/show my ignorance to the world this game takes place in, because I definitely would prefer at least one of these hypothetical "boyfriend" characters to be human. I assume this game takes place in some kind of spirit world, so perhaps it would have to be a human spirit guardian, or something, or maybe humans don't exist in this world? Again, I apologize for my ignorance, it's just kind of hard to find any information on this without reading the book, or so I think.
Thank you for you time, and good luck on your game!
Thank you for your wonderful feedback! Yes, we also don't want all h-scenes to be associated with player immobility, so in the future we plan to add the ability to make love at will with both hostile mobs and NPCs. There are people in this universe, and we may decide to add h-scenes with them in the future ^^
The DLsite code for Wonderful Pink (actual full English title is Hundred Furious Fist Momoko: Wonderful Pink 2) is RJ124558.
Eroico only has a Male MC. I was more using it for the "good gameplay, annoying loss mechanic to view scenes) example. However, Kurovadis is a game by the same dev that features a Fem MC.
I actually had a go ahead at playing the game!
Graphics:
Really amazing stuff! I have nothing to say but praise here. Yoki is a really cute character, and I think I'll go ahead and at least read the free portion of the book! My only tiny nitpick is that currently the transition between standing and crawling is a bit sudden, and the way she crawls made me think she was transforming into a feral fox, haha.
Sound: Apparently music was only recently added? It's quite a nice song. But the lack of sound effects is pretty noticeable. From what I read, you do plan on adding them, so that's good.
Gameplay:
First, a question: Are you thinking of this game having a "Metroidvania" style progression to it? As in, Yoki gaining upgrades and items that improve both her combat and movement options?
I echo some of the other feedback in that Yoki's movement is pretty stiff right now. Though it appears you are aware of this and are slowly solving the problem.
The range attack seems very underwhelming and underpowered with the limited amount of charges and no way to replenish them (as I'm aware.)
The melee attack is functional, but repetitive. A 3-hit string, with perhaps some kind of enemy pushback on the final hit, would go a long way in making it feel better.
The shield needs more feedback. Right now the only way you know it did anything is seeing the stamina icon show up. Being able to reflect projectiles, or maybe even some kind of parry system would be awesome.
Enemy wise, I definitely found the green slime to be the absolute worst enemy in the game to fight, because both the range and normal attack barely hit them. I think some kind of sliding attack would greatly help here.
Another suggestion I have is some kind of taunt function, which could be a risky option that aggros enemies into attacking/attempt to sexually subdue the player, which could be combined with a dodge/parry to quickly kill them. I assume this would be kinda sexual in nature, like skirt flashing, but I dunno how well that'd fit Yoki's personality yet, nor do I know whether taunting at ALL would fit it, lol.
Overall: A pretty great showing, though there's obviously still a lot of work to do!
Thank you again for your feedback :3
Graphics are one of the aspects of the game that we have almost finished working on! As for the music, the game currently has soundtracks and ambient sounds, but the rest of the sounds are still missing — we will be releasing a separate update for them. The combat system and physics also need improvement — we are aware of this and are already working on it. All that's left is to wait ^^
Really looking forward to features in the future like rebinding controls, the default are so awkward and up down not working on the d-pad forces you to use WASD and do this weird claw thing for the attacks. Jump being spacebar but also the mash out of grabs... I don't wanna mash my spacebar out of all the keys on my keyboard.
Can't wait for a zoom feature also and of course sounds too. Really needed another RoR style platformer with cute animations after Kinkaid went player initiated scenes.
Game still seems pretty bare bones for it to be version 0.7.9. Version 1.0.0 is usually what people think of as "playable and beatable" i.e. most of the core mechanics are in place and you can actually beat the game. So far enemies don't even make a sound and there is about 5 minutes of gameplay in level 1...
There is still a lot of material planned before version 1.0.0. We are following the roadmap, so we are currently focused on completing the development of the core mechanics, which will significantly speed up the game development process in the future. We have now completed 63% of phase 1. We would also like to clarify that the numbers in the update number are calculated as follows:
1 — phase (0 — first, 1 — second)
2 — update series
3 — series progress