Very cool experimental RPG!! I've been on the lookout for a while for RPG "reading material" that cuts out level progression and this provided some very interesting food for thought. I particularly appreciated the consistency in results for allowing me to strategize more precisely (e.g. I knew an attack from Zaar would always one-shot a Skoul, but Bade and Warji would need to each deal one hit), and also how it made the permanent buff/ability items I found into a serious *decision*. The Fray feels like a particularly unique take on frontline/backline battle mechanics and I like the way it encourages you to consider risks, especially to the Supplicant. The time mechanic added a neat element of pressure to the proceedings, while the game was still brief enough that I was comfortable starting over to go for a smoother run-through when I got to the final area the first time and had less than an hour remaining.
From a designer perspective, I *do* kinda feel like there could have been some extra clarity for how to locate and plan for running into encounters, and some more options might have been nice besides, since encounters are generally Just a Punishment. That said, while encounters cost you time and health without any sort of return, the time pressure would prevent a player from excessively grinding anything useful off the enemy encounters, anyway, so like... maybe some little reward would be nice?? But again, I liked the lack of levels, I'm just stuck on this for some reason. That said, I do like that bit of depth in learning how you can avoid encounters and how awareness of the space factors into preparing ahead for an encounter that you can't avoid.
I otherwise think the random chance in enemy behaviors can, rarely, make things a bit of a wash when it comes to planning - excepting possibly Concourse(?) it didn't really feel like keeping characters in the fray impacted enemy behavior - it seemed to be generally just a Bad Thing to be in the fray, with the only reason *not* to pull out being turn economy. I generally didn't mind this at all, but there were a rare few times where Guruntum would just get *instantly* pulled into the fray and killed and I didn't really have any way to prevent it - even when I randomly chose to defend one of those times, she still got killed from max health because of how high the damage to her was. A bit of that randomness provides texture, of course, and frequent saves combined with short game make it not too big of a deal, but it still feels a bit odd for a game which is so tightly designed in other ways.
Anyway!! I don't want to come off overly critical because overall I think this is a *really* neat mini-RPG and I'm glad I played it. Other things I like include the way the time mechanic is woven into the final monologue and final battle, the way the characters move around the field and each have a little bit of their role and personality infused into each of the scenes, and the really tight pacing. Excellent work, I look forward to seeing more and will definitely share this one with some RPG-head friends of mine.
hey, thanks for playing and especially for leaving such a thoughtful comment! it makes me feel really spoiled, of course i loved thinking about this stuff and trying to put it all into the game, so having so many of my specific choices acknowledged feels really validating (especially the fray stuff, which felt the most self-indulgent at the time), very pleased to hear so many things made enough of an impression to prompt comment from you
your thought about encounter rewards was really interesting, i hadn't thought about it but there's definitely room for it. i didn't omit them for fear of players grinding or amassing power, it was just my belief at the time that the point of battle was the threat of death (imminent or by attrition), that the motivation for fighting is the possibility of it being the safest way past an obstacle, and that survival itself is the reward.. having material rewards for combat seemed to create conflicting incentives and undermine the message that violence isn't a game to win but a problem to solve. of course, weighing conflicting incentives makes for interesting decision-making - but by default i think most players' expectations in an rpg are that you're supposed to fight every battle, rather than pick your fights, so my hope was that by denying any material gain, i make it a little easier for folks to stop ask and ask "is this worth it? can i avoid this somehow?" guruntum's fragility fits into that picture, too. on top of everything else, i find people whose job it is to do violence with swords interesting, and i think part of that job is accepting the possibility that you can do everything right and still fail, or die.. the nature of battle is that it's sort of brutal and unrewarding, but the business of navigating it is a whole language with lots of interesting layers and expressive potential, and these two facts have to coexist with each other somehow
all that said, i still would've liked players to feel a little more empowered to avoid combat when they did decide it wasn't worth it. i'd love to explore a richer vocabulary for fleeing battle.. and there's one other feature i wanted to add: if you enter a room on the same turn that an enemy squad was set to leave it, if you could see them walking out at the same time as you walk in, so you know which way they're headed, and you can follow them around to see where they go. by the time i thought of that, though, it was too late to add such a complicated feature. maybe in a future game... by the way, were you able to make much use of death sensitivity? there are a couple tools for anticipating and avoiding battles as it is, but i wanted to leave them a little obscure. my hope was that the game's difficulty would make people feel like they were missing something and pay a little more attention, prod at the mechanics a bit more and surprise themselves with the discovery. but i think they went mostly undetected. that's just fine, you can beat the game just fine without them, anyway. but the lack of a clearer pathway to discovery still stands out as something i'd like to be different
anyway, that's how it all looks to me now, three months out from release. thanks for bringing up those points of critique, they're important ones to consider, and fun to chew on - like i said, i love getting to engage deeply with this stuff, so i hope you don't mind my seizing on an opportunity to think through some of this stuff out loud. thanks again for your comment, i look forward to sharing more with you in the future >:3
I'm glad to share my thoughts!! Especially since I've been doing a lot of research towards eventually making my own RPG which eschews standard progression, it's very interesting for me to see what a game can do thematically with the idea and the new challenges it presents. But, also, I love hearing other developers' thoughts on their games, you just can't get that kind of perspective anywhere else.
I *did* figure out how Death Sensitivity worked! It took me until pretty late through my second attempt, but I did get it. I think it could *maybe* be a bit clearer but I enjoy the way that it, like many other details about each character, is stowed amongst the menus in such a way that it incites curiosity. I agree the pathway for discovery could be clearer, but that's really tricky to nail.
I do also feel your point about the thematic texture of battle not having any reward other than survival - I think it's a good idea, I think encouraging avoidance of fights makes sense and suits the game's tone. My thoughts regarding it more center around, "I would either like avoiding combat to feel a bit more purposeful, or combat itself to feel more meaningful from a metagame perspective," and, yeah, I think that the former feels like a better fit overall? Being able to see enemies who just left the screen would definitely have been neat in that way, I think - although, maybe environmental details, footprints and the like, could have also been a nice way to signal enemy pathways to unfamiliar players, too? Since skulls on the ground also serve a similar purpose, in a different context.
I think "you can do everything right and still lose" is definitely an interesting conceit to explore, especially in a medium very focused on control, but one of the tricky parts about it is that it can potentially lead to players playing in overly defensive and ultimately less enjoyable ways out of attempting to prevent those sorts of cases The *other* tricky part is that, even in games with procedurally generated content, failure *basically* always takes the form of redoing content in some form, so it can feel like one's time is being robbed due to no fault of their own (again, borders non-issue for Cataphract due to *very* short length between saves, but does kind of feel like a strange hiccup to me?). I feel like procedural story generators (a la Dwarf Fortress) are *probably* the most likely to surmount this issue because randomly-generated disaster ends up still being interesting anyway, but I imagine there must be other examples too. I think your thought on exploring combat as both a tactically engaging but harsh and extrinsically unrewarding experience is interesting. I almost wonder if permanent negative impacts from combat could in some ways help to sell this - but then players would probably try to avoid those consequences by metagaming like frequent save/loading even more...