I went through it, released the guy at the end and nothing more happened, didn't find any further paths, and returned to the beach. However, I played it one more time now and went around the abandoned building a bit more after recruiting Boyle too. There's doors you go through without a path back, or going forward and backwards taking you to different rooms. I presume it's an intentional shifting dungeon kind of place? Since there's no reactions from characters or mysterious SFX when it happens, I honestly can't tell if something intentional or not happened. I also sent all my team to 1HP with the vending machine (I thought I was dealing it damage and thought I had to mash to destroy it. Again, no reaction from the character and the screen flashed blue, so it didn't respond like damage.)
My exploration was then cut short because trying to jump from the top support thing towards the top of the waterfall has Abe jump down towards the middle waterfall. The only direction I haven't gone to is over there, but I can't reach it. Also, there are two different padlock exits that lead to the same place. After exiting through the first one once, I expected the second one would lead to a different place...
Also, down here there are some many sentry camera enemy icons, but defeating one of them deletes them all. Bug or feature?
Feature. And yeah, it's a shifting dungeon. I'm considering expanding it a little for the Kickstarter demo and putting a party member inside to really sell the whole thing and what it all means.
I'll put making the vending machine damage more obvious on my list. I thought I fixed that already, but I guess I forgot to save the change.
Since the setting of the world isn't very clear at this point, it's hard to judge if a shifting dungeon was possible or not. The warnings were pretty normal too, nothing that hinted at the
It's tangential, but I remembered/thought up some things I want to ask mostly because I live off information:
1) Between the default enemy icon being a wolf, healing items being wolf meat/sandwich and the cure for lycantropy, I could get an image. Between the fish people, Mother Hydra and mentions of Dagon, I see Innsmouth, a quite different image. Papa Beer, druids, the ghost things are a third world. If we go back to Head Doctor, there's a fourth, and I'd classify Premature Burial under the same category as Papa Beer since it's a punny enemy, but the graffiti's probably a fifth. Did you create these in a flow state and didn't mind much how congruent they were, or there is a thread I can't see?
2) Are you going for Lovecraftian or just pop culture-ish things in the overall story/setting?
3) I liked the Moth Man encounter. Addressed, set up and paid off. A bit of a jumpscare, even, with it being out the window, and then on your face when you leave. Though it could use dropping a prophecy just to feel less like it's just using a popular name without the contents of its character.
4) I actually forgot to mention in the original post and now that I've bitched so much I feel the need to build goodwill, but I like your art. That first CG of Penn waking you up Komaeda-style was actually very cute. I don't know if you're cooking it up or didn't want to do it, but having your art for character portraits in the menu would be very appreciated (the sprites arent ugly, but your art is cuter).
5) What books do you like?
1. There's an ongoing theme. All the weird creatures are called "wolves" in-universe. Partially as a joke, but it gets paid off later. The party member Norman replaced for the alpha demo explicitly goes like "I hunt feral wolves. These Fish Men wolves are an invasive species." Which is actually good information, and it makes me sad I used Norman there instead bc of all that behind the scenes nonsense. They'll be included in the Kickstarter demo though.
2. Animal-inspired monsters, and theology-inspired monster hunters. Moth Man is a cryptid, Papa Beer is a pun, Fish Men are Lovecraft. But they're all animals. Head Doctor and Premature Burial are outliers, and were made before I had the idea down. In addition to the party member guy above, I might wanna replace Premature Burial with like, a zombie groundhog or something to codify the animal theme.
3. Moth Man has more to it and gets paid off later. Or not. It's sort of a "hidden quest" throughout Area 1 with various triggers. I might add 1-2 more triggers to make it all flow more nicely.
4. No need to apologize. The fact you took the time to play my game and critique it is a gesture I appreciate.
5. I don't really read all that often, but I recently finished Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. Very interesting autopsy on the 1960's. I like when art is a time capsule like that.
1) Oh, that's nice. Personally it's not that odd to me, since I'm used to "wolf" being used poetically to represent predators or aggressors. If it's there early, I'm sure people will just take it in as how this world works.
2) That makes sense, I understand now. For Head Doctor, it's embryo-like enough to be unclear if it's actually a human, so it isn't that much of an outlier. Maybe some edits to make it a bit more of an animal embryo and you can call it a day. Since it's the second enemy in the game, or possibly third if the player found Premature, it's probably better for all three to be in-theme to already transmit the idea of what you're fighting with in the game.
3) Recruitable Mothman real?
Also, thank you for your time
1. It's the whole predators/aggressors thing, yeah. Lot of overt metaphors regarding sheep, shepherds, the oxymoron of "lone wolf" because wolves are pack animals.
2. I didn't think of the animal embryo bit. That's actually genius. I'm gonna steal that idea.
3. Recruitable Mothman real, yeah. In playtesting, I only got 1/4 people to recruit him. Which I'd like to raise to at least "half the playerbase will find him."
Finished the demo
Couldn't solve the water treatment plant's puzzle, I have the impression you have to be gathering items to awaken some creature, and the only item I think was left was the one above the padlock door (between two doors) which I couldn't arrive at no matter what. That aside, the doppelganger encounter was a pretty clever, and I understood it betteron the secong time walking that corridor.
The Dagon battle was a bit good, but mostly I liked the Beak and Flounder interaction. That said, should a LV0 random fish also have 1000 HP?
Ninetails was more interesting for that one scene than Abe across the whole demo. When he accuses me of this and that, and says we are not the same, it's hard to think anything of it when I'm nobody. Four places with some 12 hours sounds pretty doable though. I also got curious about the cigarrettes and burning house you can find afterwards.
I must ask, however, aren't you a bit too enfatuated with status that apply freeze? One of my hydra fights ended instantly because the whole party got frozen in the AOE. The fish encounters underground were essentially letting myself die once to get full healed and actually have a chance at the battle. Had Amy not learned the one AOE attack, i'd have been pissed at the Dagon fight, probably. I absolutely think this game needs more AOE at most, more multi hit at least.
Since both Dagon and Hydra were necessary to end the demo, I have no idea what the three optional bosses are now. I also only found 5 (6 with the mothman I didn't recruit) of the 9 characters that were in it, and can't even guess what I didn't do right to not find them.
Loan Shark was the most interesting skill, Norman's line upon being devoured also rose my interest in him as a character.
I've said most of my pieces, and what I haven't said are things I don't think would be constructive, so if there's something you'd like to know/ask for your research on the gaming experience you've provided, it's the last thing I can do for you at this point.
- The treatment plant doesn't have a puzzle. It's just get in, get the key, get out. It'll probably make more sense when I replace the flounderer with the key with a party member recruit. Like "Oh. So this was the end of that."
- Flounderer is Level 0 cause it can't attack. Only alternative to my mind would be "Lv. ?"
- Yeah, Ninetails is definitely a character I wanted to get right. The burning stuff is his doing, effectively "If you weren't here, he would've resolved things. You're both wolves killing other wolves. Aside from your chosen LARP, you are functionally the same guy." It's something I try to lean into, and will do earlier with the afforementioned Norman-replacement recruit that goes "Hey isn't it weird that you kill wolves? Don't you see them differently as one of their kind?"
- I'll keep the AoE thing in mind. Moth Man is "the AoE guy," but one more wouldn't hurt. Also yeah, the Freeze obsession is a thing I've been fighting against. A problem of my own making, deciding the first area to be "the water area."
- Party members are Amy, Norman, Boyle (standard most people find), Laura (wolf, resident of the house that burnt down), Moth Man (wolf), Buddy Rabbit (another sewer encounter), and Herbert (the guy with the bike lock around his neck who you freed while he was brainwashed)
- I want to thank you a lot for taking the time out to do this. This isn't just me blowing smoke. The fact you really did care to be blunt with your criticisms is gonna do me infinitely better in the long-run than the people too afraid or uncaring to share their honest thoughts.
If I had to ask one thing: what was your experience with the Devour mechanic? It was meant to sorta be like "If you're struggling, here's your out."
-What a fool I've been too late for so long (I wont even say how long I spent going forwards and backwards to see different rooms and try to find the right sequence)
-The level displays really put the mind for a spin, endless tricks
-"The opposite of justice isn't evil, but a different justice," as they say. He kills wolves, he kills people, he believes he's more worth of the cure than you, as a foil he seems solid. We will be there for him no matter what.
-Since battles are meant to last a bit long in general, and bosses even longer, it could just be a two-stage ailment. Water first makes you cold, or wet, and cold/wet makes you more susceptible to freeze. If Hydra and Dagon can straight up freeze with some attacks, it shows their advanced powerlevel and is fine, but the average fishes could have this small nerf to their squad. (Considering the squad too, it could be that one part of it responsible for causing wet, and the other for causing frozen, iunno how you'd prefer to design this)
-The flow was just too good to walk back and check those places once the water level was down... Thoughthe bike guy I almost got right, but I thought itd be a boss battle and left for later. Once I couldn't progress on other places, I went back there to see the fight and instead he just left. (Maybe finding his corpse by the Hydra or before Dagon to transmit the mistake done there would help the player identify that plot was cut short due to the early release)
-After I finished it I devoured the whole team and seeing Abe transform gradually actually made the monkey brain activate. Probably worth playing over again just to see a full lupus playthrough. Being able to learn Shuffle from Amy actually made it seem extremely broken potentially. If it's not planned for the full game, what I think would be interesting would be getting a small memento, equip or key item, from people you eat, just to remind you of what youve done. And a derail about my design thoughts and philosophies: If there's a world where Full Devour route has the toughest encounters known to man and is the technical hard mode, I'd make it so after some numbers of devours, the skill evolves to give you more stats from the devoured, better versions of their skills or multiple of them, and you dont even get the mementos anymore, just a "regurgitated junk you ate on accident" to show how your humanity has decreased so much you can't even control your impulses properly when eating humans (maybe you can even eat wolves at this point?). It's fun, and many more fun things can be done on top of it.
