itch.io

Hi! 

Oops, I still have set the game too easy for you to be able to finish it in the tutorial campaign day ^.^

I'll reduce the Logistics Rating text so that it will not get clipped.

Thanks for mentioning the residence demand popup. It's not fully fleshed out yet. It is supposed to be saying either high or low residence demand. So even if it's on the positive, if the bar is short, the demand is low. Only when it's past a certain length it will say high demand. I don't this to be very complex though (keeping it simple, similar to the RCI bar in SimCity), so there will be no changes to this for a while.

Thank you for playing the game!

Hi.
Thank you so much for playing the game and giving such a nice feedback! I appreciate that you post how you think about playing the game.

The average traffic for community is still an abstract number at this point. I haven't fully fleshed out what it will be yet, so it will swing wildly according to what of time it is. Thanks for mentioning it though, it's been neglected since I wasn't working on the upgrade mechanic for a while. But I will think about it.

Demolishing building will definitely be a available in the future, currently it is only available for me for debug purpose :D

I thought about adding road and utility post, but stopped because otherwise the game will be a full-blown city-builder, which is not the game I originally envisioned. And I wouldn't want to make a city-builder at this point, not with my current skills and limited time. Just not to get your hope up... this project will only be a small-to-medium size neighborhood for the player to build. I do want to include several levels (like a campaign mode) in the future for players to try out different strategies. The two roads will be a way to go to next level once BigRealty has been pushed out, but it will be at least a couple of months until they are implemented.

I am glad you enjoyed the game and thanks again for your time

Thank you for reporting the bug on repeat playthrough tutorial. It's a part that I totally missed in my testing and will fix in the next build.

Ratings system has been a very abstract at this point because I thought players wouldn't bother with the details and just build stuff players like. But since you mention it, perhaps it would be better if the ratings system is a little bit more transparent. I will see what I can do for it.

The color of the tokens doesn't have any gameplay value for this build. I was planning to put a bonus system such as getting more fame/money if the player can collect all six colors, or token of the same color are picked consecutively. It's still a work-in-progress, and will be ready to be experimented in near future builds.

Thanks for the suggestion for the random events. Those are the features that I was excited to put in at the beginning of this year, that's why there is the random robber and police car patrolling around. But I didn't get to expand on those since I thought the main gameplay loop was still weak (which I hope has been getting better by now by implementing campaign day and encouragement on movement...). I really appreciate that you mentioning the random events,  as these are the things that I initially envisioned when first developing the game!

Again, thank you for your detailed constructive feedback!

Thank you for detailing out your play strategy this time! Winning on the 3rd Campaign Day feels right for the current build. For one round of a game, I am aiming for the player to be able to win between 3 to 5 Campaign Days. 

Yeah... I do agree that the game still hasn't feel alive yet, making it so is a huge to-do for this project. I'm still procrastinating on it as it's such a daunting task, LoL. But reading your feedback really give me a push to tackle it. 

I appreciate you mentioning your approach games as pieces of puzzles to solve too. I hope the game scratch off that itch a little bit, as I am planning to make the game into an intertwining between small puzzles and a tiny sense of community building.

As always, thank you for taking your time to play and write an awesome feedback!

Just updated the parent comment with added feedback on styles

This is a fresh update.

This time, I got stuck at the second battle at last city (Wildemore?). I used all the best items I have and still the damage is not enough to finish the enemies. Every time I get their health low, they always heal up to full. I thought, aren't enemies in RPG suppose to have limits on healing items?. Since they always heal, eventually I used up my higher leveled items and left with weaker ones. I was stuck in a losing battle of attrition for 30 minutes and called it quit after. I played the game in total of 1h15min.

I like that the skill selection now filters out the relevant items to choose from. I see there's also a sort of a cooldown system to prevent players using more powerful abilities with AP requirements. This playtest, my strategy would be to select skills/items to build up necessary elemental AP when there are only few enemies left; then use excess AP on stronger enemies. I think it would be good to show the current AP somewhere in the same screen. Right now, I have to open my party member's status page to view the AP. 

The sheer amounts of options to choose for using skills is still too much for me. The filtering of category/elements did help in alleviating this, but I think there are too much options being presented at a time. When the enemies are low, I find myself always choosing the basic spit attack without using items to preserve them. 

I still have something to say regarding the other questions and will edit this comment later.

=======================================

(Addition)

If you were to ask me which I prefer between JRPG or roguelike game, I would choose to "play" JRPG regardless of the game. But that's just my preference of play. From what I can see, I think the game can still go either ways; But I do think Hungry For Loot is leaning towards wanting to become a rogue-like though. Since a lot of the updates are setting up the game to be a rogue-like. I still think it's worth experimenting both ways and decide which one you would prefer developing after having worked both.

Some pointers on bringing JRPG elements (game can still be rogue-like)

I feel there is a slight audio and event mismatch in the cut-scene where you fight enemies in their camp in-between Dandelionrow and the 3rd town (Dawnwood?).  So when the cut-scene starts, the music immediately starts with ominous feeling, even though the party members are still questioning whether the humans are hostile or not. With this me as the player will always immediately assume that it will be a battle. However, I think it's worth trying out music with less ominous feeling in it. Playing instead a little whimsical/mysterious music will probably induce a sense of mystery to the player as to whether the humans are friends or foes. Not to mention that it also matches the POV of the party members at the time.

The most intriguing town for me so far is Sunview.  Someone mentions this place is a place where sun don't set, even at night. Now, normally in a JRPG, you would then be shown with how the night will really look like when you rest at the inn. But since all the towns are still placeholder, I just felt disappointed we don't get to see how Sunview would look like. At the start of the game it is mentioned that most of the things is in placeholder, but the game is already in Steam Next Fest. Aren't Next Fest games usually near finish where most arts and gameplay are finalized? If everything is still place-holder, I don't think it qualifies to be in Next Fest as it doesn't showcase the final quality of what the game is (sorry for the rambling)

Then there is also Dandelionrow where they are proud of serving foods from dandelions. Please show us how the foods and drinks looks like; make us salivate for them. Or make us disgusted by them. Anything that elicit emotional reaction will be good from a story-telling perspective.

Enough talking about towns for now and let's go back to the combat...

I see all the characters (players and enemies) have strengths and weaknesses, and you can deal slightly higher damage when hitting their weaknesses. I think it would make the combat feel more alive if there are different visual and sound effect for hitting enemies' weaknesses (like the "It is super effective!" in Pokemon games).

But I think I said enough for now, Sorry for rambling bit in-between. But this is a very good update compared to last month! After several months, I'm still intrigued on what the game would be, I so hope you will keep working on it and create a unique experience of playing as slimes.

Cheers! (raising up a glass of Dandelion Wine)

Since I am running on a linux machine, I am using Wine to load the program.

But I was greeted with the following message screen and cannot proceed any further:
ROOM -1 WAS SEALED FOREVER

Looking at your screenshot, this isn't supposed to be the game, right? Or Is the puzzle already starting?

This is quite a fun game once I grasped the control. It is quite satisfying to be able to grab onto a rock and proceed smoothly. The fonts and sound effects also match the nature of the game. This game can work with cartoon/wacky style, so I think it's worth leaning into it for now and see how other players think. I also like that you have the hard-breathing sound when the stamina is less than half. It really adds urgency/pressure to hang on for your life feeling. 

The biggest issue for the current build is the on-boarding. The difficulty from level 1 to level 2 is just too much. I think it is because the gap in level 2 that you can fall over and have to restart the level every time. In the end, I didn't get to finish level 2 and quit after trying for about 40 minutes. I think having an intermediate level between the current level 1 and 2 to solidify players' understanding of the control will be very helpful.

Also, I totally didn't get the purpose of the rope, nor is there any explanation on how to use it. I suspect it is needed to clear level 2 as designed but I think it need to be communicated better.

The quotes from famous people brought me some smiles on every retry, very nice touch!

Overall, although the current game has some issues with on-boarding, it definitely has the potential to be a very fun game.

Yes, finding the right balance between gameplay and story is very hard. But one thing for sure, at the current state the story is very much under-worked compared to the gameplay. And regarding The Compendium, I think you have priorities backwards. Players will look at the Compendium (or any reading materials) only after the fact we're interested in the story first. The Compendium is a nice to have, but it doesn't push the game forward. The story and lore should be fleshed out more first. Since you mentioned Helen being innocent and will experience shock, it is a plot-point that can be implemented in the game. 

If you really want to make Hungry for Loot commercial,  to be blunt... the game still need years of work, not months (maybe you could pull it off in months if you are doing this full-time with an experienced team). So, it may be wise if you have other smaller-scoped project going on that can be viably commercial. But well... this is more like a business/management problem that only you can decide. Me and other devs have no say in this.

I will certainly check the next update by the beginning of next month and give some feedback on the update!

Hi! 

You did an admirable job of preparing a project for Steam Next Fest. It took courage to execute and I'm glad that you learnt a lot of stuff from it.

Reading this post, I think you're still missing a critical learning point though. I have been participating in your monthly game jam for several months and been playing Hungry For Loot. Over time, I saw the game has always been progressing toward a good game. However, the one thing that the game lack is the "appeal" factor. It is fine if the project is still under gameplay development. I was under the impression that you will some time in the future implement the appeal factors that make people want to play an RPG in the first place. These include theme, story, presentation, and music.

In the current state, Hungry for Loot suffers from a mismatch between theme, gameplay and presentation. Playing as slimes in a slime-world invaded by humans is quite a unique theme to be explored. However, all the gameplay and presentation still point toward playing as generic human characters. Flipping around the players and enemy characters would solve the mismatch, but the game will be another generic RPG that is already flooding the video game market. 

Hungry for Loot with its current theme has potential, but it is still very premature. I honestly think it is not ready for market yet if that's what you're targeting. The thematic/gameplay/presentation mismatch is the biggest issue to be tackled first.

I hope I didn't sound too harsh in my opinions, I am quite interested in finding out what kind of unique game experience that will come out by playing as slimes. That's why I was interested in following the project in the first place.

I hope that you came out from this Next Fest experience as an overall better game developer. Let's both make better games! Cheers!

Hi! Thank you for playing the game and for the comments. 

I will try to fix the technical bugs that you have kindly reported.

Also, I highly appreciate you taking the time to play and comment despite this not being your type of game. I am fully aware that the game really visually resemble a city-builder even though I am not aiming for it. So.. sorry for not living up to the visual promise. It has always been in the back of my mind on how to visually separate the game from a city-builder. But I will tackle this a little bit later after the gameplay loop is solid.

All the best for your Next Fest!

Thank you for your thoughtful post!

I appreciate you mentioned some of the technical bugs. There are several others commenting on the broken upgrade mechanics, I'm already fixing it on my side and will be ready by next build. Will look into the goal system not registering stuff next.

Glad you liked the game even in its early state!
All the best for your Next Fest!

1 week voting period is a reasonable middle-ground I don't think it need any change.

An idea I would like to propose is to add more categories to the current rating, such as "game-feel/juice", "understandability", or "design intent".
I would use the following definitions:
Game-feel/juice
Does the game provide tactile feedback as you interact with the game world? (having both visual and audio feedback for interactions will be better)
Understandability
Does the game communicate its gameplay rules in an understandable manner? (the simpler and easier it is to understand, the better)
Design Intent
This one is a bit tricky, since the developers will need to specify the intent of the game they're making. It can be..  does the gameplay match with the theme the game is trying to be?  Or, does the game elicit the supposed feeling? Or even, does the game fit well within the genre it is trying to become? 

I am proposing this so that it would encourage all of us to be better game designers. Hey, this game jam is supposed to help everyone make better games, right? 
Submissions that are still in very early stage will clearly have low ratings with the above definitions, but it should not matter as long as we strive to become better designers.

This is just my idea, please take it with a grain of salt.

Thank you for playing and giving a very detailed feedback!

I really like that you shared some of your thoughts during gameplay, such as being more creative on how you want the neighborhood to look like, and also thinking about routes to take. It really reassured me that the updates are working! And thank you for powering through the game even with weird bugs/unclear points as you have pointed out. I will definitely take notes of these and fix them until the next update.

I am planning to have levels/scenarios of neighborhood. The current build only has placeholder neighborhood and meant to be a first level (more like a testing ground, really), so the game will still be easy for several builds down the development. But I will adjust the difficulty balance as project goes along.

Looking forward to your continued support!

Thank you for playing and the detailed feedback!

I am surprised that there is a feedback regarding upgrade this time. It has been a neglected feature and on the verge of being abandoned as I haven't really used it that much too. But I will keep it for a while.
The distance units is still a placeholder for the distance traveled down the road. If I get the chance to flesh out the upgrade mechanic, I will make the distance units more understandable.

It has not been fleshed out yet, but there is a simple defense number for the BigRealtyHQ. As more buildings are built, the HQ will have higher defense, making it harder to win if you go directly to the HQ unless there is a huge number of crowd with high offense. And respectively, as you reclaim the buildings, the defense for the HQ will be lowered and thus easier to win the game. But the balance is still out-of-place and it's so easy to win the game even with 4+ buildings standing. I will communicate this more in the game next time.

I am glad that you point out the soft-lock when crossing 20:00 during tutorial. It was supposed to prevent another soft-lock but surprise surprise, another soft-lock :D 

Again, thank you for the awesome feedback. I will be busy with your comment for at least a week or two. Please consider it as a compliment to your feedback-giving skills.

Hi again,

This time, I started the game with the option using party bag on. It eliminates the need for inventory management, so after battle I just need to worry about healing damaged party members. This is my preferred way to play RPGs because I play for the story first.  It really make the game very easy, as long as I don't conserve the high-leveled items in fights. Previously when I try to conserve my items, the game was way harder. I figured out the enemies drop so many loots that it is just better to keep using them. I guess this goes well with the title of the game, haha!

Although the addition of musics make the game feel alive, I feel some part are still off. One that stood out to me is after the boss fight in Wildemore. The tone is serious and exciting during the fight, but it abruptly transitions to cheerful when you finish the fight. So I just find it too jarring. But I am aware since the game is still in development, I just want to point out that some parts of the game need a little smoother transition as you shift emotional tones.

I managed to get to beat the game without using any debug mode! Here is the screenshot of it:

Good luck at the Steam Next Fest!
I won't be playing it this time. But I would suggest you include some polish on the attacks if time allows, since players will spend the most time in battles.

The addition of BGM really makes the game feel more alive! Having separate BGM between normal battle and boss battle really differentiate the stakes of the battle.  I like that switching between inventory screen and town screen.  I think there are some time when switching from inventory screen to the town screen, when the town screen music play, the inventory music doesn't fade away. So there are at times 2 BGM playing at the same time. But it fades away after you leave the town.

I saw that apart from the wooden houses, there are mounds (that look like a hobbit's house) around town feel more organic, it suits more to the slime theme. 

For the inventory management, I found myself using the "ability split" most of the time because it just feels more natural to assign items to characters that have affinities to use it.

After the 2nd town, the amount of items to use when choosing an ability/spit can be a lot. So my strategy is usually using the strongest (the highest level) item on enemies with full health. And when their health go low, I tend to use the lower-level items. Since we can check the item's description when hovering it, it is not a big problem. Perhaps a small suggestion here is to sort items based on levels? Or having some background/border texture that denotes the item's level.

I just reached Hazelgate and want to call it in for the night. I will be continuing tomorrow and post some follow-up comments. So far, this has been such a refreshing update! Not only the inventory management is more streamlined, but also the visuals/audio varieties are improved. Tomorrow, I will try to play up till the end of the available game.

You did a great job with the visuals and audio; they are simple and pretty clean. Everything is supportive to the gameplay, especially visual readability, which is on-point. 

I personally think level is too long and there's no checkpoint in between. I find it quite frustrating knowing my ball bounces off the wrong edge and fall-over especially near the finish line. Fortunately, the simple sound effects and overall sound design is pretty relaxing. The slowly moving abstract background also induces a feeling of relaxation. 
When I play the game, I get an overall mixed feeling of cozy/relaxed and frustration at the same time. It is very fun to roll the ball fast in a straight line without falling though.

I played for 25 minutes before calling it quit at level 3 as I somehow just fall over and over near the end. Most of the gameplay time is spent having to start over from the beginning of the level on each fall.

Some small suggestions I would add is to insert some checkpoints, and add a small section on every level where it is safe to roll very fast. I skimmed over your devlog and you mentioned that the game is designed to be speed-ran. Currently, I personally find it very hard to roll fast and have to stop/brake all the time.

With some better level designs, I think the game has the potential to be fun.
I hope you keep on iterating between playtest and development!

I was double-clicking on "ToonRoll2.x86_64" and nothing happened.
But as you said, when I run the program through terminal, the game loads as expected.
I will play the game and give the feedback on the main comment thread.

Willing to play and give feedback for everyone who played mine: Project Rally.

I will be out of town and be back by the start of June, so I will only start playing and giving feedback after that.
Feedback will be adjusted according to feedback received and your specific request.

Hi, this is a cool little sandbox engine stuff. It feels satisfying for me to watch stuff falling down, especially the sand. Probably out of all the materials the sand has the best visual texture.

The game probably took between 1 and 2 minutes for my first load. The percentage finished at around 18%. On the second load and afterwards, the simulator loads instantly at 1%.
I didn't encounter any bugs or crashes. But I was only running the application for around 5 minutes playing around with it. 

Just a little bit regarding the visual... The "tar/pitch" material has a very dark color that seem to blend with the background so it's very hard to see. Perhaps tweaking the visual contrast a bit will make it more readable.

I can't run both linux and windows version of the game.
Does anybody encounter the same problem? Or is it just me?

Hi!

Thank you for your wonderful feedback and also the bugs that you reported, I will be sure to fix them in the next build.
You're correct that you can only rally residentials when at least a family has moved in. I will make it more obvious next time.

The reclaiming building mechanic wasn't communicated enough this time around and need to be updated. I apologize that the "ratings and points" system is also creating confusion, as I am still figuring how to implement a proper progression to the buildings. You're correct that the idea is to build some buildings to increase some points so that you can build other buildings. In this build, I intended it as a way of progression, but it was not a good solution. I will play around these for a while, and right now I am leaning toward discarding the rating point system altogether and only use the rating system to unlocking crowd commands. For progression, I will only make building available as you build the preliminary buildings. Will see how things play out.

It was a rare thing that I see a full map with all buildings established even when I play it myself, so it makes me so happy seeing your screenshot! :D

I am glad you found the game fun to play even in this buggy state, and I truly appreciate the time you put into playing it and writing these encouraging words.

Thank you! 

Thank you for taking your time to play the game!

At this stage, I'm still exploring/refining the core gameplay and expanding buildings to have more varieties. 
I will try to implement somepolish here and there as time go on.

I am using linux OS and tried to run your game with Wine, but somehow it just couldn't load. Since I saw a post that you are working on a linux build. Please let me know when you have the linux build ready and I will do a proper playtest and give you feedback. For now, I will share my thoughts on the Alpha trailer on your YouTube page.

Judging from the trailer, you have a good 2D pixel-art action roguelike. UI is clean and gameplay is understandable.

For my personal taste, there is a jarring disconnect between character and the settings (equipment, skills and enemies). The character being a chicken with what seems to be humanoid equipment, items and skills don't go well together. My suggestion is to go full-on with the chicken theme. To give out some several examples, instead of using bow and arrow to shoot, how about reframing it as chicken flapping its wings to shoot out feathers. And same with the equipment... I saw there are "mask",  "amulet", "glove", "ring", etc. The mask and amulet fit well with the chicken theming. However, the "glove" or "ring" doesn't make sense. On the enemies, you could play around with having enemies that are natural predators to chickens such as foxes, snakes, or eagles, instead of blocky zombies which are more generic.

That's what my overall impression on the trailer. 

All being said, you did a great job with making a polished gameplay.
I will look forward on playing the linux build when it's ready preferably on the same feedback jam by the end of May.

Shooting and destroying asteroid feel very good and polished, you did a good job here.

However, movement still doesn't play well (very slippery like some feedback you already received). After a few minutes, I found out that it's best to stay near the middle of the screen and just try to shoot asteroids that come your way. It's just that when I want to get a power-up or avoid unwanted item that I do move the spaceship. And because of that, I always slammed into the asteroid and died. 

It would be clearer if you show a simple pop-up text when you get the power-up to clarify on what that gives you. The 3-bullet is very clear so it doesn't need mentioning. However, I find the extra-speed power-up is very annoying because just a simple nudge cause you to crash into an asteroid. I imagine showing a simple pop-up text is very quick to implement so this would be my small suggestion.

Also, regarding the spaceship scrolling to the other side of the screen when you reach one end is OK. The problem is that the asteroid seems to spawn around that area. For me, when the movement get out of hand, it's mostly a matter of seconds until random asteroid spawn and I ran into it.

I played for while and can only get the score up to around 5000-7000 before crashing into any asteroid. I personally think the game need more varieties to justify higher score requirement to get to the next phases. I think adding more power-ups with different shooting patterns may make the game more engaging.

Having the options to auto-distribute, and several difficulty options will certainly improve the game albeit much more work on your side.It is good to experiment with it for now and see which one feel great to play with. 

Just being curious... have you played Final Fantasy 8 before? Are you familiar with the junction system? The discourse around inventory management in Hungry For Loot seem to have similar characteristics with the junction system in FF8. For new players, it is a very clunky system to work with. But once you get the hang of it, it is very enjoyable since it offer high customizability and the ability to be overpowered at the start of the game if you know what you're doing. I feel like it may be the case with the inventory management in Hungry For Loot.

I will stress-test around the reclaiming lot and establishing on it; to see if I can reproduce the "null" bug you mentioned. Yes, the reclaimed lots can be built on for free. I was aiming for the gameplay loop to be around reclaiming lots and building structures on them. But hearing from you, this gameplay loop is still unclear yet and need to be communicated more.

Hmmm at this point, I am leaning toward discarding the point entirely. Making the label "Ratings & Points" seem to introduce more unseen problem. But I'll play around it first this time. Thank you for your suggestion.

When I first play a game, I tend to skip the tutorial so for a while I didn't know to press "Enter/Return" to start the fight. It would be good if you just show a simple text instruction there.

The control is very wonky even if you are purposefully making it a rage game. At the current state, every battle is very random for me. It feels like I'm waiting to be lucky when the enemy happens to come closer as I swing around my weapon. I think there are still lots of room for improvement regarding character control. I can't give any suggestion on it since I don't know the direction you're taking with the game. But I would at least try to make the character movement easier, that would be a huge improvement. Currently, it's just impossible to tell my character on where to move (bordering annoying).

Also.. due to the control, I mostly lose every battle, so I didn't get any chance to acquire any money to buy different weapon/armor. 

On the positive side...

I like that you have a good amount of variety to make every battle different, good job!
Every ability the enemy executed also has good sound and visual effect and make the game feel alive.

Personally, I can see the game being very fun after the control issue is fixed. There is some potential here and I hope you keep on working on it!

Hi Dragon's Isle Software!

I will take into consideration your advise on the tutorial. Currently it's only there to tell the player to how to play. I will look investigate the corner cases so that there will be no soft-lock in future plays.

Could you tell me around when do you encounter the "null" text in the pop-up?
Is it after multiple plays, or just simply when a few days has passed?

Regarding your comments on the rating numbers and its text label, I suspected that there will be confusion with it. There are "number/currency" which is used to purchase buildings; and "text-label" which tells how the neighborhood status is and grant crowd-command after reaching certain ratings. These are not supposed to be tightly related, so as you mentioned, it is weird having poor ratings number of 88, 132, and 521. Having them next to each other does make them seem tightly related, thus the confusion. At first, the "number/currency" was implemented as a mean to direct player's progression (limit the building options and only open them slowly). But this seem to create more confusion than the problem it solves. Thank you for your feedback on this, I need to work out a different solution.

Again, thank you so much for the time you have put to play the game and thorough feedback.

Looking forward to the next play/feedback session!

Thank you for your nice comments!

Although the game is still in very crude shape, I appreciate the time you put in to play it.

Thank you for your reply, I just got back from a short vacation and saw this.

I see.. so the inventory system is to promote strategic decision for players.
Yeah, auto-distribution system is not the correct solution for this, but an "easy" mode so that each member has access to all items in the bag may be a "nice-to-have" feature further down the development. But since you want to promote strategic decision, of course you can also omit this *easy* mode suggestion entirely. 

On the other hand. to make players care more into learning each party member's strengths, I would probably suggest making the party members much more distinct from each other (visually, in sprite shape and animation). I suppose this is already an item in your to-do-list, just haven't gotten into it yet. But I believe nailing this early would be critical for the game. Please think of this just as a friendly reminder.

Cheers! Looking forward on the next update.

I skipped every tutorial since it is quite long; and didn't bother with using keyboard to play the game, so I missed that you can use the hotkeys. I forgot to try out the right-click though, will keep that in mind next time. Yeah, don't spend too much time on mobile playability, let's focus on desktop first.

I think I have mentioned this once before regarding the inventory management. Since you want it to be as quick and possible also, instead of manually assigning the obtained loot to individual party members, why not just get rid of it? Having all party members the access to the common inventory seem to be more intuitive. Is there some kind of design decision for having manual assignment to each party member's inventory? Since inventory management happens after every battle, and there are tons of battles between towns, at the moment it feel more tedious than satisfactory to do so. 

Sorry if I seem so blunt with my words. Since I am still learning about game design, I just want to know what kind of design decision went into making the game.

Hmm.. I gave a good 20-30 min for the game. There was no apparent bugs as far when I was playing. If there was any error per se, it's just spelling mistake here and there. 

For the gameplay, there was almost no direction on where to go or what to look for. So it's just walking randomly from one room to another until cut-scene happens. I would suggest making the dialog introduce the world and point players to the right direction slowly.

Hello!

Thank you so much for implementing the debug mode, I wanted to see how the game finishes once you get to Wildemore so I got there immediately ;p Anyway... this time I played the game in random bursts jumping here and there using the debug mode.

The usage of ability/items in battle now feel better and organized. Although it takes a bit more click to execute an action, it definitely feels more intuitive which button is for attacking, defending, skills, or healing.I see now the attacker members have skill to target single or multiple enemies. Most of the time, targeting multiple enemies seem like a no-brainer. I think it would be beneficial to have significant damage difference between these two options.

I like the newly updated inventory UI. The highlight of each slime's affinity when you select an item is immensely helpful. Thanks to this, I was not overwhelmed this time in the item selection screen. I think you have addressed the huge pain point in managing inventory with this highlight. Regarding clicking and dragging items to the selected member's inventory... I am just thinking out loud here...  I wonder if it will be better to just be able to double-click an item to transfer (I am wondering for this in my own game too where you can execute an item in a menu with double-click instead of moving the cursor across the screen).

Everything comes a bit more alive this time after you added more animations. Since the game revolves around battle, perhaps we can expect flashy attacking or skill animation next or in the future? I'd imagine this will be the main draw for the game.

Good work on the project! I felt a significant improvement in this update.

Hi!

Please do not blame yourself for me not designing things to be clear enough :D. You gave a very good point though, that the player should be able to interact with the moving agent thing and be able to stop it.

I haven't fully fleshed out the ratings system yet so it does not really have any big gameplay effect. But for now, the ratings is only a metric on how good the neighborhood has become. The plan is making them affect the crowd mechanics. Such as, high education will give bonus for protesting offense, high safety will give bonus toward barricade defense, and high health will give higher stamina. It would be a while to see the ratings have any significant gameplay effect though.

Hmm... perhaps I should make the game last a bit longer for next month's game build.

Thank you for your heartfelt comment and feedback!
I truly appreciate the time you took to play the game and giving comments.
Also looking forward to what updates you've been cooking on "Hungry For Loot" by the end of the month!

Thank you for trying out the crowd mechanic and the feedback! 
I am glad that we're aligned that the crowd mechanic give the player more control towards game victory.

What you said are on-point. As a start, I would rather err on the game being too easy than difficult. (I don't like game-balancing in gamedev LoL).  I guess it kinda backfired because you were planning to do other things but won abruptly instead. I am implementing on having the option for the player to join the crowd protest.

Yes, for this month I only managed to make the enemy take one-way static path. (TwT). Will definitely implement different paths and also different spawn-points, so as to make the barricade usage less predictable. The plan is to design for high-risk/high-reward type of play for barricade. I am also taking notes on your suggestion regarding the corps calling out security during protest.

Thanks for reporting the bug on text staying red also, will fix it ASAP.

Great to hear back from you!

It seems your team is heading in the right direction with making the combat and item management easier to manage. Choosing which ability to use and only being able to choose the items to enhance the ability will definitely make the choices less paralyzing. I will be looking forward to the next update.

Yeah, I understand that there are just soo many things to be done with so little time. With RPG type of game, even if we do not have a save/load system, is it possible for your team to provide a cheat-code to skip to certain event/location? That will be super helpful for playtesters to just focus on the things under test. just my two cents!

Cheers!