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A jam submission

[Full Jam Game] Harold MVView game page

HaroldJam22, MiniEpic
Submitted by noonestudiosbn (@dennis_jar) — 5 days, 3 hours before the deadline
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[Full Jam Game] Harold MV's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Therese Award for Strength: Combat#142.8203.059
Hrld Award for Graphics: Visuals#183.0373.294
Oldhar Award for Literature: Story#202.7663.000
Marsha Award for Music: Sound#202.8743.118
Lucius Award for Laughs: Comedy#202.4952.706
Harold Award for Excellence#222.8203.059

Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

HostSubmitted(+1)

This played like someone's first RM game that they used to experiment with the engine, but then ended up spending 4 years developing. And I mean that in a good way! There are so many hilarious art chimeras, ridiculous dialog moments, over the top mini-games and visuals. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and yet it looks like you packed an insane amount of effort into this.

Probably the weakest point here was the combat, which felt about repetitive despite the innovative mechanics. Bosses felt like a bit of bad luck could totally wipe your party. Even if grinding wasn't necessary, it felt important to avoid what felt like cheap boss moves. 

Thanks for such a frantic and varied game!

Developer

Many thanks for playing my entry and for the feedback! Much appreciated =) I have taken notes and will do my best to learn from this experience.

Submitted(+1)

The custom assets (battlers, chapter splash screens etc.), and general presentation are quite good. The writing is pretty good overall, though I think there's not a lot of tonal consistency or coherence - and if that's by design, it's probably more jarring than intended.

I know it's not a "serious" game given the whole anime intro song and whatnot but at the same time there's some deep / introspective dialog which would probably land better if the game had a more cohesive voice.

Gameplay-wise, there were a ton of features that I almost liked but almost every aspect of the combat in particular felt like an opportunity to do better.

The UI of the combo system took a while to get used to. I wish the Help box would just display whichever combo effect you were going to get (if any) as it was just information overload seeing all of the descriptions for the abilities themselves, plus having to wait for the combo state icons to flash back so you could remember which letter you'd already inflicted. I am aware part of the battle system is dealing with "tank" enemies, but at the same time that's super annoying because when you go to set up a combo on a solo target only to have 3 tanks drop out and disrupt your plan it's a big feel-bad. I think if you were to refine this combo system further, I'd consider making the A/B/C thing a global effect not a target-specific state, so at least you can't get randomly screwed by tank adds.

I'm unsure if Seal doesn't work properly, or if part of the intended design was to not lock out all AoEs but rather just specific ones. Either way, I found myself under-using Seal because I could never say for certain if it was working.

Enemies feel like bags of HP. Most fights drag on after a particular phase is "solved", but because there's no way to determine how many phases an enemy has you can't determine whether you need to conserve resources or not. I found myself getting frustrated very early not by the difficulty itself, but by how much of the difficulty is just due to the fact that the character abilities and interactions demand planning while the boss design precludes planning.

If you get the boss' HP bar down to 33% at the wrong time (low on resources) you're hosed. Whereas knowing that it's a 33% tipping point you could sandbag a bit and regain MP/Focus.

I think non-boss fights being skippable is somewhat at odds with the fact that grinding is encouraged and possibly even baked into the intended difficulty curve.

There are a ton of mechanics, and some of them are absolutely neat individually, but they don't all play nice together. Ultimately it felt like a choice between farming to power through, or bashing my head against every boss fight, and either of those was too much of a slog to commit to.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for taking the time to play my  entry, and for the detailed feedback! I appreciate it. I have taken notes on these points and will do my best to improve on these issues =)

Submitted(+1)

Thanks den for sitting through that wall of text I wrote haha. I could tell you put a lot of effort into this project, and many of the things I didn't care for needed tuning / rebalancing rather than a complete overhaul, so I think you're on the right track conceptually.

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

I had fun with this one and its obnoxiously-persistent robot antagonist that just refused to die. Only real criticisms I have are these:

  • Not a huge fan of enigma-boxed games since they’re slower to boot up. Enigma really isn’t any better than the default RM encryption in terms of asset protection either.
  • That title screen NEEDS a way to skip past the fade-in.
  • The last battle was a DPT race that, at my current level, felt absolutely impossible. Every other fight up to this point was great, but damage race fights are seldom fun, and this one just kept putting out deadly distraction adds, at least two of which had to be killed because one had auto-taunt and the other healed for an unrecoverable amount. Even while playing as optimally as possible, I could only get the boss’s hp down to 1/3 or so by the time he hit 0 and nuked everything.
  • Adding to the aggravation of the final boss was the incredibly long, unskippable cutscene you had to sit through every time you went to fight him. I think the scene was over 2 minutes long. D:

Other than the presumably-unbeatable final boss (I had to cheat-beat him in the end) I really enjoyed this one and felt the fights brought just the right amount of challenge. Very solid overall.

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much for your feedback! I have taken notes and will see to it that I learn properly from them! I am also super grateful that you took the time to see my entry through to the end, despite its balance problems. I appreciate it greatly! =)

Submitted(+1)

I didn't finish this game as I found the battles too hard. I played up until the battle with robot in chapter 2.

Very unique battle system and the anime energy is on point. The custom battlers are a fun touch as well. I liked where the story was going, so sad I can't play any further.

Developer

Thanks so much for the kind feedback! It's unfortunate that the difficult battles has gated you from seeing the story through to the end (coincidentally also the part which I've invested the most love XD). I have taken this feedback to heart, and will definitely learn from my blunder and try to improve!

Submitted(+1)

Die monster, you don't belong in this world!

From the get go this game uses some fun pacing techniques with the 'chapter' intros and text.

I really appreciated that and the accompanying sfx.

Music was very appropriate and  a breath of fresh air hearing non rtp music and sfx.

Loved the unique battle system along with the custom animations and effects.

I can tell a bunch of effort went into this and it was enjoyable to play.

ANIME ENERGY i was not expecting but felt it overstayed its welcome with that sequence being a bit long for a gag.

Overall solid entry but could have done with some more time in the oven to balance better.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks Charlottezxz! I am glad that something I made was able to be enjoyable! Words cannot express my gratitude for your kind feedback XD I have taken notes on the battle balancing and the gimmick time allocations, and will do my best to learn from these!

Submitted(+1)

Unfortunately haven't beaten this one yet because I keep getting a "Header is wrong" error during the robot fight; therefore I can't rate this one. However, I am a big fan of the battle system and I liked the concept of Marcie being the excitable little sister character who sees life as one big game. Battles lasted way too long though.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for taking the time to play my entry! I appreciate it =) I've taken notes about the battle balancing, and will try to improve as I go along.

The "header" error I suspect is likely due to the encryption tool I'm using. I'm currently learning about compressing files manually into a single exe without the use of external tools, that way errors like these won't show up in future projects. I apologize for any frustrations caused.

Submitted(+1)

Love the anime intro and the epic music in those cutscenes! I like the battle system of combining certain abilities to gain bonus effects. 

I got stuck at the falling dragon boss and can't kill it in time while also dealing with the tank and healing batteries. I think it would be nice QoL to have a quick-retry option so players won't have to rewatch the cutscene again everytime to retry the boss.

Developer

Thanks Nowis-337. I appreciate the kind words, and feedback. Difficulty balance and QoL are definitely something I will spend more time working on. My bad on those boss designs, I was experimenting with difficulty and mechanics and I think the general consensus is that it's way too punishing -_-' XD

Submitted(+1)

It was a game. I played it. Thus it had game play.

On first pass the combat was confusing, over complicated and unresponsive. If this was meant for a controller I don't have one. If this was to let you press a bunch of keyboard keys on battle it never let me do that. If these combos were supposed to be selected from the menu there was no clear indication of what was supposed to represent what.
And then I was dead. 

There wasn't enough story build up to make me want to look up or figure out how to use the complicated, fussy combat system.

Nothing funny.

Sound was OK. 

The game looked very good when I was in combat, I'll give it that. The visuals were stunning. For that alone I MIGHT come back to try and figure out what all the combos were supposed to be and how they work. 

Not much of a story that I could see.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for taking the time to play my game, and for the feedback. I am sorry you did not get much fun out of it. You have given me much to think about. I will take these feedback to heart and try to improve =)

(+1)

Of the three jam games I was assigned, this one was my favorite. Here is a video of me playing:

Developer

Thank you so much for your kind words, and for streaming my game! You have given me much to work with and to learn from, and for that I am truly grateful =)

Submitted

If I have time before the jam ends I'll try to watch this to figure out what the combat system was supposed to be, and replay the game.

Submitted(+1)

using the focus ability was fun and the custom art was a nice touch.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing my game =)