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Juice Galaxy (formerly Juice World)

Floppy ragdoll rpg sandbox with physics-based combat · By fishlicka

My thoughts on 0.1.17's new features (spoilers)

A topic by Ryarod created Oct 28, 2021 Views: 344 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 2
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A couple points I can rattle off about how I've experienced Juice Galaxy so far in 0.1.17:

For the new features I've seen so far:

+ I like the quest system. It is surprisingly unintrusive - most of all because it offers the option of disbanding a given 'quest' at any time. Please keep this feature.

+Mr. Fox actually serving a purpose now is making me change my mind about him. He used to be one of my least favorite characters in the game; now he's likable. His going to the cabin actually adds a sense of liveliness to the world outside of combat - an eager addition - and the fact he waits until we've defeated Mrs. Slitherss to do this breeds a sense of progression in the game world.

+Finding Mr. Fox doing something other than standing around, and that something he's doing actually tying into what we can do for him, likewise makes the world seem a touch alive. Your chosen sound effects definitely help.

-/=The way we enter Mr. Fox's dream took some getting used to. I don't know if I'm outright used to it now. It definitely helps to understand it's just bunking in the same room, and it's darkly humorous to acknowledge that rather than lying down next to him we outright push him off (what is now) his own bed to get some shut-eye.

+I like the insight we get into Mr. Fox's mind, via meeting his younger self. Oddly enough this is part of why I think he's likable now. The way he is written for interacting with us gives a little anchor for the dream world, which is actually a good thing since it helps keep in sight some perspective... what comes next.

+The pages themselves are interesting. I like that you actually wrote up a misspelled letter and hid the pieces in legible form. Attempting to read them while they're still about and figure out which ones are which is a bonus challenge in and of itself.

+The new guy is impressive. Holy cow. The music onset, the sky change, and the camera being forced all help to give this very simply-designed character a very distinctive entrance. After I turned on the audio- I had it on mute when I first started- I began to hear the things the Dream Eater says. I know that they're fairly generic supernatural bad-guy lines, but the delivery, the voice mixing, and the (very welcome) contrast to the otherwise tongue-in-cheek nature of the game all make him quite intimidating and, within the Juice Galaxy experience at least, distinctive.

In what few movies I've watched and games I've played with a creature introduced this way, the terror begins and ends with the entrance; the creature itself being anticlimactic.

Not this time.

+The Dream Eater's fight is honestly difficult in a dread-inducing way. You've successfully made an AI that works to keep me on my toes. Those extra-long limbs you've given him- and significantly long fingers- are well-suited to the style you've chosen; his aggression and his use of his limbs to pursue us even after we've stepped out of the way, combined with his high damage rat, are just two of several of his behaviors that make him feel like an actual monster out to get us.

Still, like many monsters, he has a potent weakness.

-This may or may not be intentional: It is possible to hook the Dream Eater on one of the pipes sprouting from around Mr. Fox's Dream's cabin. He gets stuck here trying to pursue us, and I for one was able to take a breath, relax, and use Tiny Sun until he was fried.

If this was intentional, I give you credit. If not, though, it reminds me of Mrs. Slitherss; well-designed, but with a flaw and vulnerability that can go beyond mere rewarding of skill and strategy and into letting the challenge take a long rest.

-Mr. Fox's younger self's reaction to receiving all the pages is underwhelming in my opinion, given what we had to go through for him, and how scared he was in the first place. That goes too for talking to him again after his initial response.

+That Mr. Fox accounts for having moved into the cabin when you talk to him about it after the ordeal is a welcome detail.

--

This is definitely a world-building addition, and I give you credit on it.

+I especially like that we get/have to do a little exploring to find those pages, albeit among identical pipes.

+The prospect that at least one character from the Juice Galaxy universe can dream is lore-rewriting, potentially. The game's seemed like itself a fever dream up to this point; having a character have dreams of his own now offers a reason to consider Juice Galaxy's world to diagetically be a self-existent, alien world built on fever dream logic, rather than merely a dream itself. However, of course, it's still odd enough to leave open for consideration the prospect that it is in fact a dream itself- but even then, it is a dream that can itself dream.

-/=I wish that Mr. Fox's dream had more structures, hidden nooks and crannies, and things to find. I understand that may not have necessarily been the intended purpose of the dream world; it still seems like an opportunity untapped for a pocket dimension.

Deleted post

If it's an accident, it's a useful one. It makes him actually formidable, and gives a very strong reason for even a levelled-up character to avoid getting touched in the first place.