Wow, that’s a pure BAF entry! The introduction! The characters and their motivations! The legendary artefact and mysterious organisation!
Get ready for a very long comment… Well, I have to make up for the lack of comments, right? (I still can’t believe I’m the first to post here, also someone did on the main game page)
Your entry gave me hope that a sports story could make it into BAF, but mine was too realistic and I see how yours is at a different level… Yet, I would say that, at the core, the emotions and the passion are more important than the fantasy powers (like Eyeshield 21 where I’m unable to tell what can truly be done and what not, not knowing US football enough).
Some will say that it’s childish and unrealistic to give so much importance to a toy/game, but this is not so different from all sports and e-sports competitions. Well, for the mystical powers… I can’t comment.
I really liked all the subtle references in naming. It really looks like a work translated from Japanese, where the translator had troubles explaining some jokes and just left them uncommented:
- recurrent theme of rotation in the character names’ kanji, although they are never shown, but can be guessed
- well some of them have other references like the very obvious Unicorn L. Crawfish… Wait, maybe the L. is for “Loop the loop”?
- nobody says “bro-yo!” but I’d get how a translator would come to this…
- I had to search for what a shichirin is! (even more hidden as the English order “Rin Shichi” doesn’t make any sense)
(for having myself put many name puns in my last VN - which unfortunately didn’t qualify for BAF criteria - I understand how it can be frustrating to spend a lot of time of them for little gain, so I wanted to let you know that they didn’t go unnoticed)
Aha, I’m still playing 999 these days, the funyarinpa juice made me laugh. I wished Yoyo made a comment about how it tastes though, I’m still curious! I also want to try some sakotis. But not shirako… Who makes these juices anyway? A former sweet designer from Harry Potter’s Bertie Bott?
I really wish the gameplay was more elaborated, but I saw the troubles you got through in the devlog. Although you rejected QTE, I admit it was the first thing I imagined for a yoyo game. But when the “RPG” system was revealed, I was still excited about doing cool combinations, so I think that could work but you’d really have to give meaning to the sequence of actions and the modifiers they can give to the next action.
From my understand, this is a skill show like a dance battle though, there will still be the one limitation of the absence of direct conflict and thus no counter-play: each player just do what they think is an optimal sequence and therefore you’d do the same thing independently of your opponent.
BUT even non-violent battles may have interaction rules. For instance, in rap battle, your quip must make sense and answer your opponent’s previous sentence. In Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, the contests feature indirect confrontation based on the play order and impression made on the public and other pokemons.
For yo-yo, I imagine that your move could have qualities like elegance or fierceness (where character personality would come into play, Shion and Roman being better at elegant moves) - wait, that’s what you’re already doing now with Guts and Charisma, and those are affected by the player choices in the narrative parts, which I think is cool (classic but effective CRPG-style stats). Currently all moves use that bonus but with certain moves being buffed by just Guts or just Charisma, we’d see the difference better.
Then, there could be as novelty: doing a move too similar to your opponent’s previous move (or your own) would lose in originality. But for this to work you need to implement many more moves!
Finally, some moves may give bonuses to some others if they go next in line, related to how they chain well physically (but I don’t know enough yoyoing to say what they are exactly).
Anyway, the ending of Arc 1 was really cool and makes me want to see the other episodes! Uh, I mean, the rest of the game!
The BGMs also fit well and the main theme really standing out (pretty cool to keep the instrumental in the menu and the full song in the game for important events, as in some Sonic games). I thought “wait, they had budget for a Japanese song?! No, that’s stock BGM, right?” and yes I do see a few BGM providers including Maoudamashii in your credits (which I sometimes use too).
Clicking anywhere on screen spawns that rotating logo? I didn’t even know you could do that in Renpy!
Really, this reminded me of that Boss Rush Jam with theme “Rotation” where all the jammers (including us) tried to put crazy rotating elements everywhere in the game, and even in the UI.
Some issues I found:
- the main logo rotation (also continue button) causes jittering. This is something I noticed in several Renpy games using rotation (I think one had a snowflake rotation). For some reason the pivot is not perfectly centered? But I think Fatal Twelve had a clean gear rotation in its menu (we could check its code…).
- when the speaker name is too long, the “continue button” appears on top
- at some point, hovering a button turns it into a rotating logo and it moves interaction box and it’s hard to toggle off… can’t remember where it was, though
- “You’re foe’s weak, Hero’s Vow!” → is that a reference? It doesn’t sound like something that Yoyo would say? (I also totally forgot that his yoyo was named “Hero’s Vow”)
- I’m sure I saw a space before a closing double quote somewhere near the end, but for some reason my screenshot wasn’t taken
I’m regularly taking part in BAF, but I have troubles making very shonen-like works… When I started studying writing seriously, I had to unlearn all my high school habits of thoughtlessly placing tropes everywhere and think about a serious theme based on my personal life, which gave birth to more realistic, down-to-earth stories, and now I want to combine that with cool fantasy elements. So I’m learning a lot from other BAF games!
Finally, are you looking for extra programmers / game designers? I’d love to help you finish this game!