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(+2)

Hi there! I played your game beyond the first humans camp, but not quite till the end.

My general impression was a nice game experience. I like the idea of this fundamental misunderstanding between humans and the "monsters" :-) And also the mechanic of having items with certain props fitting the characters abilities has great potential.

My recommendation and wish would be to make the "item fitting" more smooth, effortless, easy going. At the moment after each battle I get stuck in a lot of looking, comparing, dragging etc. It feels rather distracting and halting than rewarding and exciting.

A radical solution could be to just do the fitting all automatically. You have this nice "collecting" animation, this could just be it -> each character draws the most ideal items into their bag, and on to the next battle. This would keep the pace and momentum and focus on the battles. And it would give you this one focus of making the battles more diverse and strategic.

Another option would be to make the fitting (who gets what) more exciting and fun. As for now my eyes constantly wander between the characters stats panel (bottom left) the party loot (top) and the members (bottom). It feels like one panel is too much (likely the bottom left). The tabs and character panel could show the bottom left information to keep things closer together. And a hint per item (who is the best candidate for it) would make things a little smoother. This could be as simple as a tab highlighting - so the experience of "you get this, and you get that" feels effortless and comes with a good feeling of "I am doing the right thing here, everyone gets what is best for them".

Not sure if this kind of "experience dump" is helpful for you. I have some smaller notes I want to share with you as well.

  • I like you full keyboard support! This is consequently done and just impressive. When using the right arrow to go through the inhabitants of the pub, though, the selectin moves in a zick-zack, I would expect it to go linear from left to right and then next line
  • The itch full screen button is barely visible, and I tried to use your in-game modal button for full screen (the one that looks almost the same)
  • The speed of the dialog text could be a little fatser (but maybe I am just a fast reader), I instantly used the "completion" space key every time
  • In the dialogs, it was hard for me to relate to one of the 4 slimes, they look too equal, I think. Maybe each party member could get one outstanding feature, fitting their nature (like the grey beart for the old dude)
  • The item transfer dialog could save some clicks (when right clicking an item with amount=1, it could be directly transfered, when choosing the transfer a mount "1/2 etc. this click could do the actual transfer without yet another click)

Hope this doesn't sound all too negative, I like your game overall. Just trying to give back here, as you helped me so much with improving my game.

(+1)

Thanks so much for continuing to play and leaving great feedback!

I responded to some of the Inventory UI stuff on Discord, but you have some additional points here, so I'll skim over the stuff already mentioned for others who read this, along with the new stuff.

The Inventory UI is about to get an overhaul. We've made a few quick changes to remove the old things that no longer apply, such as the belts, but we now have a lot more space to work with. Since the change to item stacks, the bags do not need as much space, which can give us even more. We want to redo all of it to better flow with the new combat system. The filtering is something we feel is important to a smooth experience, but the current implementation is clunky. Part of that comes from the 2 item types (consumables & equipment). Some filters only apply to one type, and choosing them will remove all of the other type. We tried to make this clear by having the type selection be a drop down that changed which options were showing, but it feels like it just hides the most useful filters. We plan to redo the UI to make the most useful filters more prominent, and clearer. We are also adding a filter for Affinity, as well as one for Offense/Healing. We also want to add plenty of options for quick sorting. We will be adding some UI highlighting for things like matched Affinities.

I'm torn on the auto-sorting. We want people to get to know the characters and learn what works well with each. There are also a number of ways to play and we don't want to push players into a certain way of playing. Even among our team there are different opinions on which Slime should get which items. Our kids have a very different play style than the adults, and even my partner and I do things a bit differently. We really like to allow for choice and strategy. I feel like if we add auto-sorting, it has to be something they player can control. I have some thoughts on how it could work, but it will take time to implement and add a good UI for. I'm very logical and detail oriented, so I can see this elaborate system with nested boolean rules... but that would not make a good UI for the average player. We will think on it and see if we can find a good system. It will probably be a bit, as we will want to finish the combat updates so the rules can best align with the most important parts of it. Affinities will be important, of course, but there will also be some other filters that matter. We plan for Tanko to get some abilities tied to using armor, so that will be an important option to include.

Along with redoing the Inventory UI, we are planning to make a combined UI for multiple screens. The Quest Log will be part of it, and we will add new screens to view the character stats and their abilities. We will still keep some character details on the Inventory screen, and expand it to better show what you need to assign their items, but some details will be moved to where they can be fleshed out more. Pretty much adding your classic RPG details. Eventually you will be able to use some abilities outside of combat as well, which will be from the new screens.


I agree with you on the zig-zag movement being odd. It is an oddity of the container we use to arrange things there with auto wrapping. I have an idea for how to force it to move the way we think it should go, and will eventually get that fixed.

There is not much we can do about the Itch fullscreen button. For the one in our game, are your talking about the one in the Town UI? That is meant to hide and show the Town UI itself so you can see the town. You can change the game to fullscreen from the Settings, or using a hotkey. combo By default it is Alt-Enter, which is the one I'm used to programs using, unless they simply go with "F".

We should add a setting for the dialog speed. For now we do have an option to simply display all the text immediately without the animated writing it out, but that should be a slider to give more choice.

Our art is currently being reworked. We want a lot more variety among all the Slimes, both to make your party stand out from non-party members, and to give them each more personality. The base for the new slime art is almost done. The humans still need some animations added, and then all the clothing and accessories. It is probably still going to be a few weeks for the big art update, but we may start to bring in bits as we go, even if there may be some contrast between old and new.

I like your suggestions on the Item Transfer. In case you did not see it, you can use modifier keys for quick transfers without the popup. Shift -right-click moves half a stack, while Ctrl-right-click moves 1/4. Currently alt moves the whole stack. We had planned to make that one split the stack into quarters and distribute it to each Slime, but with the belts going away we now have the middle-click open, so the middle-click will take on additional quick-transfer options. Still, if there is only 1 item, there is no longer a need for the popup. When we had the belts it was still needed for picking a destination, but now I feel like the it needs a review for optimizing in general.

We appreciate your feedback. Just like you, we have acknowledged that we are only looking from our viewpoint and need to get other views. These jams have been very useful in making our game better. We originally focused on the quick game, but but as the story grew, so many commented on it feeling RPG-like, and wanting more RPG features. That was what had us decide it was time to embrace what we really wanted to make anyway, even if we have to cut some corners to make the project in a reasonable time period.

(+2)

So you do game dev as a family project? This is so lovely! ❤️

(2 edits)

Yeah, we are a family studio. Our oldest really wanted to learn game dev several years ago. I've done it as a hobby since I was a teen, so looked at what was out there now and started teaching the whole family. My partner is the lead artist & storyteller, and I do lead programming, while the kids are learning all of it. Making a living doing game dev has always been a dream job for me, so when I lost my web dev day job last year, we switched to this full time. That is part of why we are trying to cut some corners to get the game complete and sellable sooner, rather than going full RPG.