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(+1)

It's tough to leave a comment with a game that is hard to like, but I also know that it's nice just to get any comment at all as feedback on something you put some work into, so I hope you can take this in the friendly constructive criticism spirit that it's intended.

I wanted to like this game but it turned out a little too crass and juvenile to be an enjoyable anti-hero/antagonist romp. I don't mind gross/weird ideas but I would prefer them to either be more clever or better motivated. I do think the puzzle type event in the second area is darkly clever but I don't think we needed the visuals in order to get the idea. I also like the "even demons think this guy is totally vile" bit.

I love the general idea of the story, which was what motivated me to play this. The idea of a gross anti-hero who slowly discovers that the local hero is actually a pretty horrible guy is a great idea. More fleshed out, you could have more of a setup like wandering around the tavern hearing people talk about how great he is, how he saved the village from something (which you later learn was a problem he caused), or later play with the idea of who would even believe this gross drunk about what he uncovered. But that's also just the realities of only 9 days of development time.

I like the artwork, and I like the lo-fi dungeon aesthetic with prerendered assets, it feels very much like a mid-90s game in that way. Same for the idea of colored keys and doors, a very old school dungeoning concept.

This is not a major criticism, but just something I always notice in first person RPGs, and wanted to note: it is good to give the player as much information as you can about where they're standing in the first person view. Meaning, if you can provide more info than "I'm facing a wall," like "I'm facing a wall and there's a corridor to my right and another wall to my left," that's usually preferable. The main way to do this is treat the view as if the character is standing at the back of their occupied tile rather than the center.

For combat: once you learn how to do it, it's way too easy, however for the type of game it is I did appreciate that it was able to be easily mastered to let the player reach the end without getting stuck. Too easy of a game is better than too hard! Also I never noticed the urine meter decreasing, which must've either been a not-fully-implemented mechanic or possibly broken in this build. If it was my game to design, I might do something like:

  • you can level up to increase max HP
  • even defending causes you to take minimal damage, so sometimes you might make the choice to power through and hope to kill before you take a lot of hits waiting for an opening
  • fountains recover HP but lower urine, so eventually you run out of healing
  • but you can find ancient dungeon booze to refill urine

But again, it's not my game, just something that I think would work with the existing design.

I thought it was a good length for the jam.

Oh, there was also an odd thing, when pressing escape it comes up with a menu referring to shooting and crouching and going into first person mode, must've been an engine remnant for another game or something.

I don't think it was terrible and it could totally be fleshed out into a more interesting and cohesive whole, with more time behind it!

"That does not mean it has to be mature".  I think this at the start summed up the game pretty well and is a good warning 🤣 And thank you for the nice warm up to start with but I went into this knowing this would be a vile divisive game! 😁 so you dont have to be so nice 😅 For my game jams I always try to do something different or experiment in a different area or to try and learn something. I also never have done a main character that was such a lowly piece of trash so I just really wanted to push that. But also its a bit of a juggling act with what the character does.. if there isnt a juvenile side to it then it can get a little too serious or potentially close to home for some. So keeping it dumb was the plan! 

So basically I have a two week newborn and my partner was in the hospital for seizures and coma for a week. That deffinately cut into my jam time but okay so a few points 🤣 (shes out now and recovering thankfully 😊) 

  • The menu (i forgot thank you) is a generic one I have. I use Unreal 4 and have a generic build I made for jams that has a few quality of life stuff that I dont want to have to re do every jam (menus, music player, cutscene player etc)
  • Your suggestion for the pee meter is exactly what was planned but.. time
  • I actually was going to move the camera back to behind like you recommended but I didn't have enough time to tweak the graphics filters and such so left it as is! 
  • I did actually want a exp system and more stats based combat! I've never done it before though and time (the typical culprit). The RND would of taken me too log and ... not too great with math 😅
  • I wanted to have portraits and scrolls of lore dump around the place to teach more about Ich'ael but.. you can guess what I will say...  But Darius Vol is a friend's character in our DND (yes hes juat as messed up in the dnd campaign)  so he already have his whole background to work with. 

Anyway thanks for the big response even though you did not like the game. I really appreciate the feed back and I'll implement some of your suggestions for a post jam uodate 😊 ... the story is staying crass and juvenile though sorry 🤣

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Totally understandable. Good to hear that they're recovering!

I should've guessed the main guy was someone's RPG character, that's exactly the kind of shenanigans people get up to at the tabletop.