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Jintor2 years ago(+1)

There's a lot here and it's the sheer amount is impressive, but the pacing is atrocious. Not only is there a lot of cutscenes before you get player control (and that's even before you get a tutorial), but it's all... so very... slow and meandering, and there's like 3 starts (village, then the kingdom/rebels, then the magic show, then you play as Mikka for a while longer?). If I wasn't do the jam rating I would have exited out already really early on. It's more exciting to either throw people into the action right away to let them understand what kind of game they're in for, or give them an immediate hook. To then get a joke about having to wait a long-ass time for something to happen was like getting a slap in the face at that point. 

To be perfectly honest, going through all of that to get to the actual gameplay was... a disappointment. An action game being made in RPGMaker is very cool, but actually playing it was mostly an exercise in tedium. I got to the bit where you're being chased by zombie stone enemies that just keep getting up again and quit. I know I'm supposed to get the circle, and if you kill enough enemies paths will open up, but at this point why? I'm not having any fun, I've spent 20+ minutes on this already, what's even the point? 

I'm not saying I hated the game; if anything, I'm impressed by the amount of work put in. But I think it could have been put to better use if planned around what a first time player's impression would be. Everyone's project is their own special creation, but what is is that makes it enjoyable is something you have to actively show to other people, and this doesn't do that very well.

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Diamond2 years ago (2 edits)

The pacing is too slow and boring, and you have to wait too long to get into gameplay, got it. I think your comment about 'throwing people into the action right away' part is a bit subjective, but I do appreciate the feedback. It's really hard to balance the pacing so it doesn't fall in the extremes like 'too slow and boring' or 'too fast and confusing', though. (I think my game somehow fell into both of these categories, being too slow and confusing XD) Since this is my first time doing this, I'm still learning how to get it right. 

The gameplay was disappointing? How? Was it because the slow animation when you press aim? If that's the case, then it's already been fixed, but not released yet. In v.0.1.2 you will instantly go into aim mode without having to wait for the animation to play.

Or was it because the enemy keep getting up? Then I don't see what the problem is. It's literally just an enemy respawning system, but instead of making them disappear and reappear at the corner of the map, I made it this way to show that Mikka didn't actually kill any of them.

Or was it something else? I can't read minds, so I can't improve my game if you don't tell me what the problem is. If you don't want me to improve it, then why wrote that part of the comment in the first place?

I'll try to patch up the pacing and narrative problems in v.0.1.3 so it doesn't take 20+ minutes to get into the gameplay anymore. Would it be better if you can move around and talk to people to advance the story instead of using cutscenes?

Tbh I enjoyed the gameplay part so far in the playtesting process, but that's probably because I'm the creator. If even I can't have fun playing my own game than other people's not gonna have it. I hope the next version will be more fun overall, though, after the combat's been fixed.

Thanks for playing and commenting!

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Diamond2 years ago

Tbh I think this comment kinda ruined my day here. But thanks for giving me the first taste of harsh criticism since I'm sure I'm going to have to deal with it a lot in the future.

It won't stop me from doing what I want to do, though.

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Jintor2 years ago(+1)

That's good! I don't want to stop creators making stuff, I want to help them make it better. But if you want to get genuine feedback, there's no point me sugar-coating that I enjoyed it if I didn't. 

If you want specific criticism of the combat, aside from it taking far too long to get to, it'd be something like this: 

a) I didn't feel like I was being effective. The point of taking out enemies is to stop them from preventing you achieving a goal, right? If they just get back up again, I don't feel like I was really achieving anything in that regard. If the goal in that area was to kill a lot of enemies to unlock the next bit, then I don't feel that was very apparent; perhaps a kill counter or some kind of feedback that killing them is what you're meant to do. Instead what it felt like was that I was trying to get to a goal, and when I got to the end of the map and realised there was no path 'up' to the circle and got cornered by like a dozen zombie rocks, I just felt dispirited.

b) The combat itself is clunky to control. This is to some extent because it's been put into a engine that's not really built for it, and to be honest having the strafe option really made it work better than I would have thought, but it mostly meant that I was just kiting enemies into a straight line then backpeddling while firing. Over and over again. Again, if I only had to do that once or twice and then the next map opened up, that's more paletable, but I felt like I had been doing that for quite a while to no effect.

c) This is a more minor thing but I found the giant explosive FX that you got on a successful hit to be a mismatch for the apparently tiny amount of damage each shot actually did.

Returning to the story for a second, there's aspects I like. I thought Mikka as a literal cat turned human was cute, the weird magician dad was fun, the animation scripting for the cutscenes reminded me of old-school Harvest Moon cutscenes, it was all sort of cute. But again, the pacing was just extremely long. Even the intro cutscene with villagers, that cutscene alone, the exploration of peaceful life before the lightning strikes - I was already anxious to get going by that time the lightning hit. Especially in game jams, where the people playing are often looking at a whole bunch of games in a row, I think it's important to grab people's attention quickly and effectively.

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Diamond2 years ago (2 edits)

a) You have to defeat a specific number of enemies for the path to appear. Since it apparently wasn't obvious, I guess I'll add an 'objective' texts that will tell you what to do. (Along with number of enemy required to defeat in order to move forward)

b) This version I'm working on should fix the clunky combat to some extent. Also, after I read your comment I also went to find a way to make combat faster, and the result was.....spectacular. Once I upload it I bet no one will complain about this issue ever again.

c) Each shot actually deals 200 damage. Since the stone enemies have 500 HP, you'll be able to defeat them in 4 hits (1 extra hit because of my shoddy programming XD) So I don't really understand where this problem is coming from, and you're also not the first to report it. I think it's more because the combat was so slow that the enemies seemed tougher than they actually were. Again, the next version will fix this problem.

I'm glad there's some aspect of the story that you liked. Apparently, even the initial 4-minute cutscene was still too long? Hmm...I think I know how to fix this. How about you immediately get right into the action after that cutscene? That'll fix the slow pacing, right? I need to modify the story a bit this way, though. Actually, this seems like a pretty good idea, I'll do this in v.0.1.3.

Not to say that v.0.1.2 will be a trivial update, though. Rather, it will be something that'll certainly fix up the slow pacing and combat issues quite a LOT....though not in a very conventional way.

Tbh I had a pretty negative view of you before, but now I've got a lot of ideas on how to improve my game thanks to you. So, thank you for taking the time to review!

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