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Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback!

We are also classic JRPG players who hoard items. It amused us that we decided to create a game centered on using consumable items, when we like to hoard normally. Yet we found that it ended up working decent;y, even if we do still like to hoard things that are limited quantity, and expect many players will do the same with things they don't know are rare. We are thinking about adding a rarity to the items for players like us, along with possibly a new Bag for storing items you want to keep and not accidentally use in combat or the Traders' Depot.

With the status effects being added we are hoping to give Tanko a bit more use as a support character, giving some stat buffs. We certainly need to do a bit more work on balancing items so that the higher level items do feel more useful, but also leaving lower lever ones as reasonable when you just need a lower power attack or heal.

We initially added the quest to feed your village to fit the story. Then it grew and we added the Arm the Resistance quest as a way to make it not feel too boring just dumping items back to the one town throughout the whole game. With the recent updates it will be much easier to implement then next part of this, where the amount you Arm them will have an impact on the rest of the game. We've debated adding shops, and even started adding money, but the Traders' Depot makes it feel like shops would not really benefit the game, especially once we add in the rewards from completing quests. We may still add money, as it would make more sense for inns to require payment, especially as you leave the forest, but we still need to work things out so it doesn't feel wrong collecting a ton of money only to use a small amount for inns. Shops would help, but we need to decide what to have in them. It could just be allowing you to buy regular items so you can stock up on the ones you like the most. Maybe allowing the player to send money back as part of the quests, so the towns can buy what they need. I think this last would not work as well without also including other uses of money, as it would feel like an extra step for something that could be automatic since you only need a small set amount of money for each inn otherwise.

Yeah, we did ramp up the difficulty on that last fight and give the powerful items for it to compensate, as normally by the time you got there you would have more items of the proper level from normal fights. Glad the healing worked well for you though.

That final fight does need a bit of reworking on the amount the enemies heal. We are planning to adjust how often they can use their healing abilities to make it not feel so long, at least for the demo.

Glad you like the difficulty progression. We will be reworking it a bit as the game grows. It feels like it may be a bit too fast for the longer game being planned. We currently aim at having around 15 towns, with some camps, and maybe dungeons, along the way. Ideally we plan to have some side quests that will open up additional paths you can take to other places that are not on the main path, though we will see how that works out. The goal is to have at least 10 hours of gameplay. We don't want the party to grow so fast that it feels like you are constantly growing out of things shortly after getting them.

Part of the long intro was from comments that we did not do enough character building to draw the player in. We plan to break the current intro up into a prologue before the main story, that is optional. It may also be used as a free promo to learn about the world. At that point it will likely grow, allowing you to interact with more of the town. We are even thinking about adding mini-games as part of the celebration, thinking about the opening to games like Chrono Trigger and Wild Arms (well, opening after you complete the 3 individual bits). The main game would then start after the inn, as you are getting ready to leave town, with the Leader Leo dialogue being shortened and moved there.

I'll take a look at Golden Sun. Several Dragon Quest games also have really long intros.

We plan to work on the UI for showing power of abilities soon. While we were working things out we didn't want to show in-progress info that was changing as we tried to decide how to do it. I think that our current system of using multipliers on the abilities is what we will stick with. It allows even they lower level ones to scale with the character and remain useful later on, even if they do less. They will also require less AP/lower level items to use. I think the AP based ones will remain relevant longer, while the non-AP ones may become obsolete, unless they have status effects or other secondary reasons for using. I am thinking about ways to allow the player to adjust the in-combat icons to allow us more space for adding more. Some may get grouped. We may add a way to scroll. We may also add an option to hide those you don't want showing in combat, or even rearrange them. That will likely be added later after we build out more of the game and start to run out of space, but we expect we will.

As we add more art we are updating the towns. We will take another look at them and see about adding a bit more distinction. As you leave the forest you will also be seeing more distinction as we plan for each area and groups to have their own styles. We only added the Slimes living underground fairly recently. Before that all the buildings were wooden looking. As we add art for the other races in our world, Wildemore will be getting some of them added in, representing its diverse population.

Weather is something we are thinking on. One of the kids started on a system for rain, and we also found a shader for it. We need to do a bit more review on how we want to implement it. We are debating if we will make it have an impact on gameplay. I suppose that using it for towns could be a good first use.

I'll take another look at the screenshots. I wanted to show off everything I could, but there are so many menu based elements that they do overwhelm. I added a screenshot of Slimerise. I took it before for something and really should have added it sooner. The screenshots do make the game look too menu heavy, when most action is the combat.

I'll take a look at the words per line. Currently, a lot of the design is centered around making everything fit, while still being readable. After we add all the features we will be taking another look and seeing how best to optimize the layout.

My partner loves world building. We have so much in mind for the world, and have been struggling to figure out how to best make it fit into the game in a way that makes things feel better and not forced or in the way. The Compendium was the best we came up with. Glad that the current systems are working well enough.

Good to hear you are not having any performance issues. This last set of updates changed a lot of code, and I took that opportunity to do some additional cleanup.

Thanks again for the great feedback! This gives us a lot to think on and will certainly help lead to a better game!