Context: I have played Moku before some months ago, and almost completed it. I am playing on a Linux system, using 'wine', a Windows emulator. And some sandboxing.
I like the introduction cinematic.
I decided to play through the tutorial again, just for fun.
Like before, the tutorial is good.
I played a tiny bit around in the settings, and changed the magic points to purple and the player color to green, just for fun. It is rather flexible and nice.
I think completing the tutorial is giving me XP points.
I think I got this error when a poison shooter died from poison that it or another poison shooter shot:
The game does not seem to save in the tutorial. Or, are you supposed to save manually? (I later found out that I misread, and that saving is on the "todo" list).
In the pause menu, the button "Quit" quits to desktop. Might it make sense to give some way to quit to the menu instead of the desktop? And name them "quit to main menu" and "quit to desktop"?
I am going to try to play through the tutorial again, this time not sticking around for the poison enemies, since the tutorial does not seem to save (which I do not think is a major issue, but might be nice).
It is nice that you can skip the introduction cinematic with Esc.
I love the music.
I find it a bit annoying that you have to manually reload your crossbow by first selecting the bolt from the item consumable UI and then press 'Q'. It makes the section where you have to fight 4 poison shooters at distance much harder, since you might have to juggle both reloading your crossbow, selecting the poison-curing item, and selecting the health-restoring item. Could it make sense to let the crossbow be reloaded automatically whenever it is empty? Or, if the crossbow is empty and you try to shoot? As long as there are bolts in the inventory? Or, a hotkey like 'R'? It might just be me, but it feels bad when the main source of challenge comes from juggling item handling. It feels like a regression from the previous version - I like that you have to carry bolts with you, but I dislike having to manually reload the crossbow by selecting the arrows first.
Nitpick: I encountered a deadlock for two enemies. I do not think it is important or easy to fix this, so you can ignore it if you want. Itch.io does not accept videos in the webm format, so I tried to convert to mp4 format. But itch did not recognize the mp4 file as a valid file for inclusion in this post, even though it lists mp4 as a valid format. So I uploaded it here: https://streamable.com/j8ovba
Is it possible to maximize the number of carried bolts by restocking all your bolts, then reloading your crossbow, and restock again? The answer seems yes, you just have to go from for instance 9 to 5 bolts, and then from 5 to 10 bolts.
The tutorial feels much harder, given that you cannot just spam the crossbow all the time. In part since the combination of claw enemy and grabber enemy makes the shield much less useful - if you block with the shield, and get grabbed, you might just end up dying in one go. It also feels like enemies see you from much further away, though I might be mistaken on that.
Nitpick: Enemies getting stuck on each other again.
My items are not always restocked when reaching a camp. When it shows "Restocked", it works correctly, but "Restocked" is not always shown, and when it is not, my items are not restocked, I believe. Is it when you first visit a new camp? But, I tried to go out and into the camp again, and then it showed "Restocked", but my items were not restocked.
Nitpick: In the level up screen: "Effect" is a noun", "affect" is a verb. They cover the same meaning, but 'e' should be used when it is a noun, and 'a' when it is a verb. Like, "The 'wet' effect can affect your resistance to fire positive and your resistance to shock and cold negatively".
I have decided not to use the level and experience system, since I think I can beat the game without it, and I dislike the concept of experience systems in games a bit.
Wait, the game notes said that a difficulty system has been added, but where do I select? I do not remember selecting it when starting the tutorial or after the end of the tutorial.
Does the game auto-save? I do not see it saving, and I am a bit afraid of going out and into the game again. Oh, a save system is still on the "todo" list. I misread.
I am still trying to find and collect as many armor pieces as I can.
I found the MP3 player, but I tried to equip it while I had a full inventory, and I got this error:
I do not know whether I should stop here or not. Are these errors due to me running the game on Linux? Or are they genuine bugs? The first bug is bad, while the second bug is a bit weird and a bit the player making a silly mistake.
From what I remember of GML back in the day, there is no static typing in GML. And that does not make it easier to program in GML in regards to avoiding bugs. And GML is also a bit primitive and limited from what I remember. Have YoyoGames considered looking into adding support for another language than GML? Or, adding optional typing for at least a bit of static typing for GML? Or is that beyond YoyoGames' budget or specializations? Do you know if any other language than GML can be used? GML is one of the main weaknesses of GameMaker from what I hear from people, and while I liked it many years ago in some ways, GML was still primitive and not easy to use for the purpose of developing larger and more complex games. And your game seem rather complex and nice. Do you know if GMS2's development is in stand-by mode or active and going strong? Or if YoyoGames has a good and stable revenue income or not? (You may want to NOT answer these two last questions here, but do it elsewhere anonymously (agdg), since these questions might be a bit sensitive).
I do not feel like I gave you a full and good review, even though I spent a fair bit of time on this. Once you have added loading and saving to the game, I would very much like to complete it and give a full review. There are a lot about your game that I really like, and I enjoy playing it.