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Story-wise, having the game be from the perspective of slimes, a common enemy type, is an interesting premise. Having them be otherwise friendly but misunderstood by humans has potential to be a compelling story of prejudice and empathy. It makes me wonder if there is a deeper lore reason for humans to mistrust the slimes.

Despite the good premise, I don't think the characterization and dialogue takes good advantage of this. Most characters feel interchangeable from one another because of their shared friendly tone to their banter. I noticed in your devlog that you want to later add accessories to make the slime characters more distinct. I think that's a good way to differentiate them design wise, but I would encourage figuring out what their unique personality traits are and have the dialogue reflect that. Their accessories could also reflect those personalities as well. Also, having NPCs with unique personalities would encourage me to want to interact with them and would further develop your world.

More of an idea than a critique but with if you made each party member different common enemy types? Instead of four slimes, you could, for example, have a party of a slime, a skeleton, a bat, and an orc. Something to think about and would easily make each party member stand out from each other. Just an idea to consider.

Having tutorials is good, but I feel the game tries to explain too much at once. It tries to cram too much information to the player and I find that I retained very little of it. I think it'd be better to introduce one or two mechanics at a time. I did gather that certain slimes have affinities, so certain items will work better being used by certain characters. It took me a few battles before I realized you had to drag and drop from the inventory to equip items. I think the tutorials probably mentioned it, but again, the information overload meant that got lost in the noise.

With that said, I will say that the UI during battle is very intuitive. I found that it didn't take me much effort to figure out how to use it. It was very second nature. Handling different menus and states can be complex but I didn't notice anything break during my playthrough and I managed to learn to navigate the battle system without much issue.

Is there a way to equip items to characters faster? Dragging and dropping items to each character one-by-one in between battles got tedious after a bit.

I think I did 8 or so battles before I lost interest. I never did reach a boss that another commenter mentioned. I eventually found the battles repetitive and the story hadn't progressed enough to keep me engaged.

Overall, I think your team has a solid story premise and a good grasp on designing a functional battle system. My suggestions would be on adjusting pacing, characters and dialogue, and rebalancing how tutorials are handled. 

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Thanks for playing and the feedback.

You start out in a Slime town, and the nearby one is also a Slime town, but as you continue you will reach towns with Slimes, Humans, and other races, with Slimes becoming less common the further you go. It is only a new group of Humans that has recently come to the region that are a problem. The final "boss fight" of the current version is in a town where Humans and "Monsters" live together.

Each of the party do have their own personality, and we are working on refining the story to show more of it. Some of that will come out as you progress further, but we clearly need to take another look at the intro sequence to show more of it, as you are not the only one to say that it is not coming through well.

While I like the idea of different races that are often considered "Monsters" being in the party, for our story it is your specific clan of Slimes that has the ability to consume items to gain power from them. Our combat system for the player is based around this concept. We would need to come up with a reason all these different races had that ability, or create additional combat mechanics and UI to allow for the different party members. That would be a lot of extra work, so wouldn't fit in our current game. You will see and interact with various other "monster" races as you travel. We are currently doing a lot of work on art. As we complete the art for them, you will be seeing additional races appear.

For the tutorial, are you referring to the Training Hall, and/or the popup tutorials when you first get to a new screen, such as the inventory? There is a lot to the game, and we previously did have a dedicated tutorial for combat that was interactive, but most players felt was overwhelming. We added the popup tutorials to show the basic UI elements and give a brief summary of what each is for, though they do need some reworking. As features have been added those have largely gotten only quick updates, instead of a full redo, and are currently a bit bloated.

The Training Hall was then added so that players can go at their own pace. You can read up on the topics that are of interest to you. We have Training Halls in every town, so that if you don't retain things and want to read more later, or reread something, you can do so whenever you are at a town. Storywise we were only going to put them in larger towns, but for gameplay they are at every town so far. We are also debating changing them from being tied to the towns, to something you can access while travelling as well. They are also the first place you get to interact with the various races, as they get added to the game.

The inventory system has several ways to move things around, partly to support a wide range of input methods. Part of the reason the inventory popup tutorial is so long is to accommodate explaining the many options. It seems that the quick transfer system is getting lost in there as most people seem to miss it. We will try to make it more prominent. Since you mention drag & drop, I'm assuming you are primarily using keyboard & mouse. For that input method, the fastest way to distribute loot is you use the right-click quick transfer, which is also what we primarily use. Just using right-click transfers the entire stack. You can also use modifier keys when right-clicking. Shift moves half the stack. Ctrl is a quarter. Alt evenly distributes the stack to each member of your party. We plan to add more options in the future. The next will be a bulk transfer that will move all visible items, and is meant to be used with the Filters.

The item distribution is meant to be part of the strategy layer of the game. It is meant for you to learn the strengths of each character and decide how best to spread out your loot to be prepared for combat. This will matter more in the future as more of the personalized abilities are implemented, but already you can influence the difficulty by how you distribute your items. We have had people say that they find distributing the loot repetitive or otherwise more annoying than fun, so the next release will include a setting that allows you to ignore it by giving the Slime abilities access to the Party Bag when choosing an item.

Glad to hear the combat UI is intuitive. Those systems were overhauled not too long ago, and there are a few more planned features yet to be included. There are also some options for speeding up combat using the modifier keys (Shift, Ctl, Alt) when initially clicking on the button for an ability that can allow you to skip steps by using defaults.

We have plans for some updates to the story already, but will take another look to try and make the earliest parts more engaging. The tutorials/Training Hall will be getting many updates in the future as we add more features with initial descriptions, and then go back over and refine that initial version.

Thanks again for the great feedback.

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I was referring to the tutorial popups in the inventory menu. Good to hear there is a way to transfer items faster. The training hall is also a good idea, though maybe there should be a way to access it even if not in town?

I would suggest tutorializing mechanics as they are relevant. For example, I didn't collect any key items during my playthrough, so you might include a tutorial for reaching that menu after the player has received their first key item, rather than at the very beginning. I think people also learn better by doing, so you might have the game explain what something does, and then having the player do it afterwards. That way they may retain the information better.

Good luck with your project.

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Thanks for clarifying. This is helpful.

I've gone over the Inventory tutorial and cleaned it up a bit for our next release. The main change was to put the info on moving items at the start, and adding some spacing, bold, and italics to help draw attention to some details. We plan to go over it again to see if we can trim it down, or break it up more. I also added back a button that allows you to restart that tutorial. The place it was got removed during a restructuring and adding it back seems to have been overlooked.

The tutorials are set to show as you reach the places they are relevant to. The Key Items don't currently have a tutorial of their own. If they did, it would start only when you open that tab. If you go to the Inventory before the Quest Log, then you are actually seeing 2 tutorials in a row. The first is short and just mentions the outer UI elements, mainly listing what each tab is and how to exit. If the Inventory is showing, then it rolls into the Inventory tutorial. The Quest Log doesn't have it's own tutorial, so going there first would get just the UI tutorial, and then when you switch to the Inventory you will get that one.

I'm thinking that adding a ToC may help, especially for going back through if you are looking for something specific. I'll have to see how well that will fit into the current system.

I agree that people learn best by doing. Our first tutorial was for combat, and it was interactive. It walked you through several turns of combat adding new buttons each turn and having you use them. Some people liked it, but most felt it was too long and overwhelming. The core system is still there, but the tutorial needs to be significantly updated for the recent combat overhaul. I'm also looking at trying to tie it into the Training Hall, so that you can start a mini combat from a specific topic, to try out just that piece. Unfortunately, that is not something that can be done easily with the current system. As we go forward I will be looking to see where I can add a bit more interactivity to the tutorials, preferably with an option for the player to decide if they want it.

Thanks.