itch.io

Thanks a lot from a long reply.

First, regarding the final cutscene. Run the game again, and Continue the game, and you will now see the cutscene.

I noticed just today myself that there is a bug there, that if after playing the game through, trying to continue journey (meaning, trying to check the final scene again), it will stay on black. I instantly realised where the problem is. I didnt reset my storycrawler after the final cutscene, and therefore, instead of continuing from the save point, it tries to continue after the cutscene, and as there is nothing more there, it just stays black, as it just look that there are no more lines to crawl through, and as nothing was initialized anywhere, it remains a black screen.

But, QUIT the game, and restart the program, and StoryCrawler is not initialized, and therefore correctly continues crawling from the savepoint.

This bug is problem only with the cutscene, elsewhere in the game this bug doesnt happen.

End Cutscene is roughly 4 minutes long. Although, roughly 3 minutes of it are credits, but those credits can be slightly interesting in sense that you get to see those places where you played in full color and full light now, figured that would be somewhat satisfying for the player to get to see the world the player restored.

And yes, regarding the defensive towers, there were two problems with them. First one was AI not doing what I told it to, which was that I told it to make similar looking gem places as that main building had, but even I tried to do it twice, it kept doing it the way it did, hence making it difficult for player to figure out that there are two different hotspots on those deefnsive pillars. That could have eventually been fixed, but as I was using free version of ChatGPT and Grok, I was limited in image generations I could do in a day, which prevented me from trying too much. However, when time extension came, I could have used Grok to fix that actually, but probably forgot about it, concentrating on more essential things, like making the game actually playable and completeable.

Second was that I intended to have some sort of indication about it, light one possibility I was thinking was that there could have been this blinking effect on those hotspots when you build them, this way highlighting that these spots have some meaning, but I didnt have time to implement it. Therefore those defensive towers remained hard to notice and figure out. Although, since this Jams rules told to include instructions for the game, I trusted it would be enough to mention about it on the page, but I guess many dont actually read those game pages before playing, or dont remember about it anymore after starting to play, since there is lot of stuff there anyway to read through, although I do have tried to highlight that defensive tower part in three different ways (in here as reply under the game page, which is alreadhy buried a bit. Then as a first thing in the main page. And finally, as a first thing in instructions part).

I unfortunately didnt really do any playtesting until the last two days, and I was actually wondering myself that the game might be completeable by just repairing the castle. I first wondered should I change it or not, but then I figured, that in case someone doesnt figure out the castles, maybe it is better to leave it as alternative way to complete the game.

I might make better version of this at later point, where I think the repair only becomes an option on second last level or something like that, since I think the first two enemy levels would be more fun if you cant repair the castle, and actually have to use those towers to defend, also forcing player to learn to use them. However, they need to be clearer first then.

Anyway, point was that you were supposed to keep using thsoe defensive towers, and it was all about balancing with them. Idea was that red tower would only hurt red enemies, green one green enemies, and blue one blue enemies. Therefore it was a matter of on which one do you put most power to, since you cant keep much power on all of them. For example, you can have only one of them at that max power of 10, since they decay so fast that you cant keep two of them at 10, it is just not doable, even if concentrating solely on those two, on top of that, you need to keep building the light tower at same time, so you cant realy concentrate all your power on just two defensive pillars either.

I am not sure how the shooting actually works, since there is a bug, and I am not sure what is causing it.

But originally idea was that if you have 1 power, it will hit 1 enemy with 1 damage. If you have 2 power, then it hits 2 enemies, with 2 damage each, 3 power, with 3 damage each, all the way to 10 power hits 10 closest enemies with 10 damage each.

However, enemies come from both sides, therefore there is the question of should you have some power on both sides, as towers also make passive damage once to each enemy as they pass them, or should you perhaps just concentrate on one side of screen, since by using that shooting power, you can damage enemies coming from the other side too, although, then also comes the question of which colored tower should you place closest to the building, since farther away from the center the tower is, harder it is to hit those enemies on other side by shooting, since tower is shooting closest enemies, and especialy if it is the edge most tower, it means that enemies on the same side are always closer than enemies on the other side, meaning you need to be able to shoot all the enemies from your side out, before it reaches to the other side.

So, by other words, you lost a lot of strategy, basically the whole main thing and fun of the game, by having missed the defensive towers, since the fun comes by balancing between defending by which towers, and building the actual light tower.

Anyway, thanks a lot from detailed feedback. And remember, you can now simply run the software again, and click continue journey, and will work.

However, if you accidentally click to end the final cutscene, then you need to once again QUIT the program, and start it again.