Thank you so much!! Tonic (artist/writer) here, we really enjoyed your video. ☺️ And you are definitely the winner for best thumbnail, haha!
Thank you for all your kind comments!! I was especially happy to hear how quickly you felt "this is effective dialogue". From your comments, we also noted a few times where the gameplay elements could've been slightly clearer, so we'll clarify those in our next iteration.
About the length: Hilariously, the current demo features the most TRIMMED-DOWN version of the intro sequence yet... 😂 It has been a constant battle to shrink it down!! So, yes, I'm very much in agreement that making the opening exposition concise is essential, haha! I'm definitely not satisfied with it yet, but at this point, I'm taking a break to make sure I actually finish the writing for the rest of the game, lol. But certainly planning on going back into the intro and taking another crack at breaking it up.
On that note... Chapter 1 is the only time where there are so many scenes all at once;; The rest of the chapters are much more spread out! and more battle-oriented. So it's been a constant angst that the first section doesn't reflect the pace of the rest of the game... At the same time, plenty of RPG/JRPGs do that for their openings, so we've waffled on whether it needs such huge cuts 🤔
I'm just trying to avoid hand-waving too many things for the sake of pace, without also over-explaining magical systems etc, and also without sacrificing the fun of the character shenanigans. But at the end of the day... "game" gamers will not want to read things, and "story" gamers Will 😅 So it's tricky to figure out where to compromise and where not to.
Anyway, thank you again for playing! 💜 We really appreciate it.