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Dragon's Isle Software13 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing and the feedback.

There are several options for dialog speed, including showing all the text immediately. We do not currently have anything for auto-advancing, though will think about it. The game is story rich, so we are working on trying to find the right way to present those story sequences. Part of the thoughts on going with a more standard JRPG style is to allow separating out the story a bit with more player control in between and player choice of who to talk to.

We are needing to do some rethinking on the inventory with the change to remove the inventory management on the default mode. Normally you would see the Bags for each Slime and be transferring items around in there. It also lets you see details, if you want. It does feel a bit excessive when the inventory management is off, but it seemed like the best way to do things for now until we really get a feel for what this change means and how to best update the UI for it.

We will look into the Filter UI to see about making them more clear.

The popups were longer, but then things changed so that you were getting a bunch at one time and they felt like they took too long to get through all of them. The main purpose of the popups is just to let the player know their is something new, and they can go into the Character Details to see more. We may need to rework it a bit more to find the right balance. We have already discussed adding a setting so players can adjust how longer the notifications remain, and possibly the size.

This demo was designed to give players a fast intro to the game, so it was accelerated from what the planned normal game would be. That Demo Dragon boost was especially meant to be a major jump so we could show off tougher fights and later abilities.

The main thing we are thinking about for changing to a JRPG would be the movement changing from an on rails side-scroller to the normal freedom of movement of a JRPG. This would impact not just moving around, but how the player explores, how they interact with NPCs, and how the story would unfold in scripted events.

We are looking at options for making leveling up feel better. Being able to distribute skill or stat pints are among the things being looked at.

We've had the suggestion of starting out with a single Slime and adding more over time before. The problem is that it does not fit into the story. That is one of the reasons we are looking at roguelike aspects. In that style of game with less focus on story we could have the player start with just one character and unlock more, and a larger party size, as they play.

Thanks again for the feedback!

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SOURSTONE SRL12 days ago(+2)

I am sure you already took into consideration many more options than I can even begin to think about.

"changing to a JRPG would be the movement changing from an on rails side-scroller to the normal freedom of movement of a JRPG"
I have trouble imagining how the game would feel in such a scenario.  I guess it would have at least two big problems one is the technical aspect, a lot of things will have to change to accommodate this new play style and the art aspect that will need to change as well. 

I think the art aspect can get more complex depending on how the final art vision for the game is. The side-scroller offers a bit of simplicity witch would allow for a more complex art style. 

I tilt towards keeping the side-scroll movement. I am a bit tired of the old JRPG movement style, the side-scroller offers a bit of a fresh take on it.

I guess one thing I do not know is if you have the story locked and now you are building the game upon the story, or building both at the same time and also if you only want to change the movement or to do a more massive change on how the game works? The "roguelike" mention makes me think that there is more taken into consideration than simply changing the movement.

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Dragon's Isle Software12 days ago(+1)

The core issue it money. We switched to full time game dev about a year ago, and this is our first real game that we need to release to try to sustain us as we continue. It has grown much bigger than intended, and as it is, it is not working. We are caught in between several areas and not good enough at promoting to draw enough interest in what may be too niche of a project.

Based on the feedback we have gotten, the story is too heavy and long for many who like the combat and want faster gameplay more fitting with the side-scroller style. Those who like the deep story and want to explore more of the world feel limited by the movement and ways to interact with the world and want to be more immersed in it . Switching to a full JRPG is a big undertaking, and would require a lot more time to do, but does feel like what we need to do to create the game we have in our minds with the full story. We don't have the time for that, so are looking at alternatives. Rather than picking one style, the reason for our questions is that we are thinking of forking the code and making 2 games in this world setting. We will take the side-scroller movement and combat and create an endless or roguelike. It will have much less story, but will be based somewhere in the same world, to allow some shared world building between the 2 games. This will allow us to reuse some of the art and character designs to help get both to completion without starting fresh on a new game. The main game will then advance more slowly as we build out new systems to make it feel bigger and allow more exploration and depth to the experience for the player. The current story would stay with that version. We do have a larger story planned, and that story is what drove the design to become more RPG-like and story heavy.

On the art, we are doing our own art for the game. The characters are already being designed for 4 directional movement, so it won't take much to finish them up for the free roam movement. We were already considering enabling it in the towns anyway. The big thing with art will be needing a lot more of it for the world. We will need interiors, which we don't currently have. The rest of the overworld art will need some work as well, but won't be too bad. We've done games with roaming around so have an idea of some of the issues we will need to deal with.

Thanks for taking the time to continue discussing this!

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SOURSTONE SRL11 days ago(+2)

I am in somewhat of a similar boat. I do not feel qualified to give advice. All I can do is give you my opinion and warn you that I have no successful games of my own =).

Usually games from this genre are focusing on the story and art style and less on combat (GameMaker type of games.)
Your game fighting style  and feel reminds me more of Pokemon. The twist being that instead of catching pokemons you get different weapons. Your niche may be here. Give weapons more focus and story and make them collectible, the compendium adds little value atm. Using it for weapons instead of enemies may be one way to go.

I tend to prefer action like games more than story focused games. I played a lot of games and very few got my interest in the story even some games that had a really good and polished story. My point is that these 2 categories are really hard to reconcile. 

Making the character free movement in cities feels right to me. 
It could allow you to add minigames in cities later on.  Similar to what a lot of GameMaker games have.
This may allow the story to be told at a slower pace as it would give the player something to do before hearing the rest of the story.

Finding your audience is a hard one... and I do not think there is easy solution for this.
My approach to this is to make games that I like to play, the audience being people "like" me. Is that a good approach? probably not...

If the project has grown much bigger than intended I would push trough to release it sooner than later.
Most of indie game dev quit after 1st game. I do not know what to do with this information. 
My interpretation of this is that I need to push trough and launch more than 1 game =).
Witch is what I am trying to hint at here.

You project has a lot of features already, and if you can't figure out what niche is this for, you could try to find it by releasing it.
The alternative looks more like endless development...

I can not express enough that this is just an opinion from someone who has not  released any games. So please that that into account.

Thank you for taking the time to delve into these talks!
Wish you a successful game release with lots of buyers ;)

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Dragon's Isle Software11 days ago(+1)

Thanks. These are good points. We do try to  design games we enjoy, as it is easier to get a feel for if it is fun, and more enjoyable to test. Sometimes in jams we will explore new styles, but sticking with what you know helps. This started one way and grew in others, so we kind of got lost along the way. We will experiment this month with some of the changes we are thinking of and see what people think.

I know indie dev is hard, and most don't make it. We still have a bit of time left to try to make this work, so we are going to do what we can. And even if it needs to be cut back to nights and weekends, we do plan to keep working on trying to make it succeed.

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