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Greetings to the Warden of Terra!

I enjoyed this game very much, it reminds me of sid meier's pirates, mount & blade warband, and the STALKER series.

I spent 15 hours in the first year completing most of the content, then I spent another 10 finishing absolutely everything I could find within the demo, except getting past age 13, I did not want to sit there constantly resting until I reached age 18. Anyways I'm going to copy and paste everything from my notepad that I typed out while playing the game, just organised it a little bit. I'm very excited for the full release!

Suggestions:

Combat -

Stances/Formations

For example:

  1. Normal stance: no advantages or disadvantages. 
  2. Defending stance: less damage taken, less damage dealt, more likely to be attacked. 
  3. Rage stance: more damage taken; more damage dealt. 
  4. Patient stance: slower turn speed, more accurate attacks

Fallout-style limb system: 4 body parts, head, chest, arms, legs. You can target a specific limb which costs accuracy but can deal debuffs or more damage to the enemy.

Skills tied to a weapon class: Perhaps when you reach 100 in weapon proficiency you can unlock a skill after finding a teacher for the weapon.

More stats listed about a weapon type or explanation for it, do swords and axes have a difference? I know axes deal the most damage, but are they slower? Is there a reason to use a sword rather than an axe?

Custom Ammo: Poison and fire arrows/bullets, changed mid-battle through battle inventory.

Information screens: How much health the enemy has left? How much critical% do i have? How much hit chance do i have against this enemy? How much estimated damage would i deal against this enemy? I think these abilities should be taught to you by someone or perhaps gained by becoming a cyborg, for example an analysing cyborg eye. Or a face accessory like the 'Scouter' from 'Dragon Ball Z'.

Personally, I like the combat the way it is, it just needs access to a few abilities and more battle inventory items. At least until later in the game, strong people like a custodian should make use of numerous abilities, and they should be countered by smart use of abilities rather than attack + high stats.

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Items -

Colour customisation for clothes, or just multiple items e.g., Black town dress, green town dress 

Helmets! You can still keep the face visible by making full-faced helmets slightly transparent or keep the visor open

Repeating crossbow

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Quality of Life -

Speed up button: Usually holding CTRL will speed up battle speed, or maybe pressing + and - on the keyboard will change ingame speed from 2x, 3x.

Radio: Ability to switch through the music while playing through the day

Relationship hints: I would like an addition of a hint/location of NPC events, for example whenever an event is available, a golden ! mark is beside them on the status screen.

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Other things -

Add a way for people to donate to you, e.g. paypal, uhh adding the game to steam and having a supporters DLC or something. Although I ended up looking through your wordpress page and read that you didn't want to do that, I can respect that.

Add a way to craft basic weapon parts, (there might already be, I just haven't found it if so.)

Ability to spare enemies? Not sure if a pacifist route would be something you'd like to implement, but it might be interesting.

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Complaints:

Mutated syringes sell for 50k silver to Mr White, it feels too high of a price as you can easily buy the best items in the demo from him in about 1-4 ingame weeks. I don't know if you plan to make alot more expensive items in the full game, but it just seems too much money for so little effort since you can just run and escape any encounters through the soviet bunker dungeon.

Beans are too rare; I think I bought it from somewhere once and never found it again. Even the innkeeper stopped selling baked beans and meat pies.

Kill reputation: I killed a bunch of chickens at the start of the game, and then the npcs were like "the sight of blood is exciting isn't it?" and "people are calling you the butcher of sinathir!" Later in the game I killed kobolds until I no longer loss mood from it, and nobody said anything. I love the reaction to ingame actions, but it's a bit funny to be called the butcher of sinathir for killing the same 4 chickens over and over for the course of many weeks.

Extra hints: I built an animal barn, but I don't know how to capture animals and put them in there, I think there should be a hint that appears when you place down new buildings/crafting stations on how to use them.

Wellness gains: really hard to get to higher wellness levels past level 6, and I don't think it is all that worth it, because it just seems to increase weekly stat gains at the end of the week, but these small gains are overshadowed by the gains you get from training with Mr White.

Dynamite combat sound: No kaboom sound effect :(

I fought Mr White 20 times, hoping that he would eventually give me the reward I so desired, but eventually I stopped fighting, and ended the game through the russian general, that is when I found out I unlocked lightbringer for defeating him 10 times, I think Mr White should have a different dialogue on the 10th time you beat him to let the player know they actually unlocked something.

Strong enemies combat: All they do is attack, need to make the boss fights more interesting. e.g. Mr White, the bridge dragon. As of now the combat is just endurance battles, bash each other until one of the fighters fall.

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Random stuff:

Stat Cap: I hope that you can go like JRPG style with stats and just raise them to 9999 or even 99999!!, because I'm on 1000 and only fighting a fraction of Mr White's power, how do you even fight in a great war with laser rifles, burrowing mechanical centipede things, high-tech futuristic stuff? Did he fight like he does now? Knight armour and sword and shield? I can't wait to see how powerful our enemies can be and how powerful our character can grow. I tried the anti-tank rifle with 0 skill against Mr White on my 11th fight with him, and I dealt 1 whole damage!!!!! Who is this guy?!?!

Mr White Learning: I trained like 50 times with him, got him as a friend, finally unlocked the learning tab from Mr White... and behold!! 'Basics of Farming'!!!!! Thanks Mr White. I wonder what he would teach you in the future versions.

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Conclusion:

Sorry for text dump haha.

(1 edit)

Thanks for writing down all of this. I actualy enjoy reading through long posts so I don't mind them at all.

except getting past age 13, I did not want to sit there constantly resting until I reached age 18

That's fine. There are not enough things to do right now to justify waiting for so long. For now, it is just something for people who really want to see everything. Reaching age 18 will be much more enjoyable one I add more stuff in.

Stances/Formations

This actualy was in the game in the past, but I removed it because the were not that useful with the curent system. Enemies attack random targets and there is no taunt move, so setting people into different stances didn't really work. However, I will be redoing / improving the combat system in the future. I wrote more about that some posts above:

Combat will definitely be changed in some way. I might decide to implement the grid battle system and do something about the speed. If I decide to keep the curent system in, then I will definitely spice it up somehow. I improve it graphicaly by adding backgrounds and animations and I will improve it mechanicaly by adding more active skills and passive skills  like if enemy misses you, you instantly attack back. Stuff like that.
Fallout-style limb system

This might work, but I will have to do some adjustments to this system. I remember playing the first fallout game and I started using targeting only near the end game and I aimed pretty much only for the head / eyes, because it is pretty much always better to kill something faster, than make it weaker and making the fight take longer.

Skills tied to a weapon class

That's my current plan for making combat more interesting. Just like you can learn new trade skills if your stat is high enough, you will learn new combat skills if your weapon stat is high enough.

More stats listed about a weapon type or explanation for it

This is something I plan to do for all items. The small top bar is not enough to show all the information I want to, so I will be fixing this.

As for the weapon differences, there will be more to them as I expand the combat system. Right now, they are pretty much divided into melee and ranged. Some enemies have minor resistances to certain weapon types (White is pretty much immune to ranged weapon damage), but that's pretty much it.

Custom Ammo

I was thinking about this some time ago. It is on my list of things to do once I start improving the combat. 

Information screens

I also have this on my to-do list. I want player to earn this first so pretty much everything you suggested will be in the game at some point. I want to add a bestiary in the future that will get expanded by you killing more of the same enemies, reading books or hearing the information from some NPC. Future cyber implants will also help with that. This will make stats like HP, ATK and so on visible in the combat screen.

Combat needs a lot of work. I will most likely get to improving it this year. Want to make fighting stronger enemies more interesting and combat items more useful.

Colour customisation for clothes

I played around with this some years ago. I have pretty much two options. Engine can control hue of images, or I can simply make separate sprites for different colors (Just like hair dyes work). This is something I will deffinitely add into the game. Same goes for more hairstyles, make-up, jewelry and other cosmetic items. Definitely on my to-do list.

Helmets

This was actualy in the game like five years ago. 


It wasn't hard to do, I just couldn't decide on the proper way to do it. Helmets make sence when you are fighting, but you can't see your character sprite in the battle. Wearing a helmet outside of battle is really uncomfortable, especialy the heavy medieval ones. Some people will want to see the helmet, but some want to see their haircut and hair color. I didn't scrap the concept completely. I'm still thinking about adding it back in some way. One solution I had in mind was to make helmets visible / invisible depending on your location. You will have your helmet off while in town or low danger locations and you will put it on in dungeons or other dangerous locations. Still have to think about that.

Repeating crossbow

I a list containing a lot of weapons I want to add at some point. Going from things like flails or morningstars through modern assault rifles up to futuristic laser and plasma guns. I will be adding these from time to time to Mr. Whites inventory. They will get their proper place once the game expands more.

Speed up button

This is something I don't really want to do. I'd rather make the game faster in a "believeable" way, like the speed potions already in the game, or by making the combat play faster if you AGI is high to show how faster you are than your enemies. Combat speed is something I will be adjusting for sure and I will be adding more vehicles and types of speed potions, but dedicated speed up button is something I will most likely not be adding.

Radio

Another thing I will be adding. My plan is to add a cassete player you can get. Then I will spread music tapes around the world you can collect / buy and play. First I will have to get some original music though. Don't want to plaster the royalty free audio I'm using right now all over the game. I will be replacing the current music with original tracks at some point.

Relationship hints:

I will have to think about this, because I want players to stumble upon those things naturaly. Stardew valley I think does the exact same thing, but Sinathir will have more events than SV. Telling players that some events are happening might be necesary.

Add a way for people to donate to you

I'm making this game as a hobby. Money would just complicate things. Best way to support me is to play the game and report bugs, suggest new ideas or just show the game to other people that might be interested in it.

Add a way to craft basic weapon parts,

You should be able to make these by learning the basics of smithing from Valdemar. You can make them at the anvil in his house. Unless I broke something in previous updates.

Ability to spare enemies?

This is something I will deffinitely add. You can play as a pacifist right now, but once you get attacked, enemies will fight untill they die. I will adress this at some point in the future.

Mutated syringes sell for 50k silver

Prices of most items will have to be adjusted. I kept the price of certain items high on purpose(for now) because once you get them, you are pretty much at the end of the game anyway. You can sell them and buy all the expensive stuff to play around with. This will be changed in the future ofcourse.

Beans are too rare

Another thing that will need adjusting, but you should be able to get raw beans from the small garden next to Billy's house once you finish his potato quest.  Recipe for seeds should be in the game also.

Kill reputation:

Those dialogues are really old. I will be removing them and replacing them with cutscenes that will show the first time you kill certain enemy type. You will will also get new cutscenes once you kill certain amount of different enemies.

Extra hints:

I'm still working on that. There are plenty of things that are not explayined properly or at all. I will be adding hint icons that show up if you have the hint mode set to ON, but this will be a temporary solution. 

Once you build a barn, Billy will start selling animals. All you have to do is to have them in your inventory. You can sell them or butcher them and you can feed them and get eggs / milk.

Wellness gains:

You can increase maximum wellness level by giving Ichor containers to Mr. White, or by joining the church faction. Wellness is not suposed to give you huge buffs instantly, but to make you stronger over time. Clearing the dungeon and training with Mr. White is better, but that is a temporary feature that will get removed / moved to different place as the game expands. Maximum wellness level you can get is 20. At that point, you will be getting something like 10HP/SP and +5 in physical stats per week. A nice bonus that even non-combat focused characters can get.

Dynamite combat sound:

Will fix this.

Strong enemies combat:

Like I said above. Combat will get improved and this means enemies will get more interesting abilities

Random stuff:

I'm not entirely sure right now, but your physical stats can get to something like 9999 and your HP can go to 999.999 if I'm not mistaken.

Mr. White fight is not canon. It is there to give you something to do with all those weapons and stats you have. He should be getting slightly stronger every time you fight him. But he is still going easy on the player.

He is using one of the premade RMXP sprites, but in that fight, he is suposed to be using ordinary sword only. I might make another temporary boss fight with him where he uses the lightbringer. 

Also, he is pretty much immune to ranged weapons.

Learning the basics of farming from him is pretty much a joke right now. He will be teaching you advanced combat skills, but these are not in the game yet.

Again, thanks for writing all of that. It's always good to see someone care enough to spend all that time playing the game and then writing about it.  If you have any more ideas, don't be afraid to write again.

Thanks for the insight into your game.

I'll definitely revisit this game as time passes on! Around every couple of months, or whenever I see you've implemented a major patch. I'll be writing suggestions again and looking out for bugs when that time comes.

I have to admit it's pretty inspiring to see a solo game developer make a pretty ambitious game, I'm glad to see you work fast and seem to be quite passionate and consistent. I completely understand that you don't want to monetize, because then you have to start making the game based on your consumers preferences and not your own. 

Speed up button: I like the idea of combat being sped up when your agility is higher, I think this is the best option for making sure the player won't be spending too much time fighting weaker opponents.

Weapon parts crafting: I had a look at the anvil in the Riverstone Smith, and there is the ability to craft weapon parts, I missed that.

Helmets: I'm not entirely sure what the best option is either, perhaps the option you mentioned, or give the player the ability to toggle the helmet on/off whenever they want? I don't know if that is possible with just a button press in RPGMaker.

Fallout style limb system: If you were to add something like this, you could definitely make some 'gimmick' enemies that have high resistance to damage or has access to a powerful ability until you deplete the limbs health. For example: fighting a cyborg that has an inbuilt cannon inside their arm, they would deal tons of AOE damage until the cyborg's arm reaches 0 health.

I also want to mention Suong is the best character followed by Billy, then Helena. Helena's fire spell is super powerful with the [in flames] damage over time effect.

Thanks. I'm glad you like the game. I don't plan on quiting any time soon so you can look forward to more updates coming.

I can make helmets visible / invisible when the player presses the button. I might do that as a last resort, because I like playing around with small details like this to make them in some way different from other games.

For example, if you get hurt enough, your character will have visible wounds. If you get hurt often enough, these wounds will turn into scars once you heal. It doesn't really affect the game in any way but it is a nice detail that most other games don't have. Most games have the "toggle helmet" option, but I feel like there is a better way to do it. I will have to think about that.

I was actualy trying to make one boss enemy consisting of multiple parts in the past and it wasn't bad. Doing this for bosses and other very strong enemies is something I will most likely do, but I don't think it will be useful or interesting when fighting againts weaker enemies.

Suong is the strongest companion once you "upgrade" her. Zacharias is right after her. Valdemar, Olaf and Roman are also quite strong. 

Helena and george are the only companions in the game right now that "level up" with you and get stronger with time.