itch.io

Hello! This is Ikiru from oldflowergames with some comments on your game. Overall this was a ton of fun, and I can't wait to see more!

• Really good job of establishing the setting quickly, with minimal exposition! The narrative and gameplay potential of the unexpectedly falling sky islands is huge.
• You have a great knack for fun, intermittent placement of destructible items. I do think it would be good to reduce the amount before the first battle, to increase the sense of urgency (“Town’s on fire? Ah well, there are shinies to collect!”). I also think it would be good to at least show the player something that they will get to spend it on earlier, even if it’s greyed out on the character screen.
• Love the decipher equipment system. That two-step unlock loop never gets old. I do think you should be allowed to decipher immediately from the pickup screen, though.
• The weapon system has a lot of potential! At first I thought the Javelin throw seemed a bit too strong, but when I realized that you actually throw the weapon it really clicked.
• In general, the timing reactions felt a bit too easy. Maybe this is something to tie into a difficulty setting, but I had to actively try to mess up the blocks.
• You did a great job of instantly establishing Mage’s personality. In general, the writing does a great job of settings things up quickly, at a level of depth that matches the aesthetic of the game.
• No fall damage yesssss, this makes vertical exploring way less tedious. Good call!
• I would’ve really liked to see a new enemy in the first battle with the Mage. The lack of enemy variety + the ease of the timing reactions put a damper on the momentum of the game, and minimized the impact of the game’s hooks. The amount of player choices are already great and satisfying, but I feel like we need to see more variety in what challenges we will be facing earlier on.
  • The ease and brevity of the early battles also never gave me an opportunity to see the “Showmanship” mechanics, and I only saw one of the Mage’s special attacks. I also never felt compelled to use any of the break attacks, because I simply didn’t need them (and refused to lose my precious flame axe).
• Bug: Mage got stuck in the minecart after the island fell to break the track. They did warp at the start of the next battle, but I was tempted to walk them all the way back up to make sure I wouldn’t start the battle at a disadvantage.
• The “Known Skills” system on the enemy tooltips is excellent, great balance of learning and clarity.
• Awesome integration in the first boss – the terrible boss jokes were a great setup for having him literally throw the weaker enemies at you.
• Balance-wise... Mage is insanely overpowered. I know this is a vertical slice for Maximum Fun but whew, that boss fight just melted.
• Small things:
  • The blue outline that passively shows your move range is a bit hard to see. Since the range is always 4 this isn’t a huge deal, but consider just making it slightly less transparent.
  • In combat, the timing of the axe swing animation feels a bit out of sync with the actual hit timing. This is most apparent during the slowdown when you defeat the last enemy in a battle.
  • The rising pitch when you gather the crystals is good, but I feel like it rises a bit too quickly, and as a result caps out too soon. It also felt like it took a bit too long to reset between pickups (most apparent on the last group of mine cart jumps).
  • As Pixel mentioned, I think keeping the reminder of “Hey, you still have moves left, are you sure you want to end your turn?” would be a good call.

Overall this is an awesome demo! All of the systems in place seem really fun and have a ton of potential for being fleshed out into a full fledged game. Everything feels satisfying, the tutorials and tooltips are brief but clear, and there’s already a lot of personality here. I think with a bit more enemy variety and some music this could be an 11/10 demo. Great work!

(Fun fact: The first game I ever designed was a tactical RPG with Paper Mario-style timing interactions. After a couple of years as a total amateur, I deemed it a bit too ambitious to be our first game... but it’s great to see others taking a stab at the concept. I’ve always dreamed of this gameplay combo, and can’t wait to play the full game!)