itch.io

Thank you for playing! I'm glad the battle system eventually worked out for you, although I'd love to make it easier to learn before that first boss. If you have any suggestions for improving the tutorials, I would love to hear it!

(Side note, attacking a guarding enemy on purpose is very clever, I've never thought of that!)

I'm glad you enjoyed the story, especially since it isn't in your native language. That definitely gives me the confidence to move forward with that side of the project. 

This is helpful feedback. Thanks again for playing!

Heya, this is useful feedback, thank you!

In terms of the story, what would you like to see for it to be more interesting and fresh?

In regards to the music, this was all composed for the game with the intent of having a similar musical style. Does the rest of the music feel equally out of place, or is it only those two tracks you mentioned? 

As for your thoughts about combat and UI, here are thorough explanations of each of those elements.

Speed/Wait are percentages of the gauge. If the skill Speed is 50, then after using the skill your action gauge automatically fills up 50%. If the Wait is 50, then after selecting the skill the character will wait an additional 50% of their gauge before the skill executes.

You are correct about skills that cost Infinity TP; they always have the same power and cost your entire gauge, so ideally you want to use them when your TP is as low as possible.

Infinity Beat means that this skill has no Finisher and (in theory) builds up Beat infinitely. Of course, since the only skills with that feature in this build are non-damaging, they don't build Beat at all. In contrast, a skill with 0 Beat always meets the criteria for its Finisher, which means that the skill is effectively always a Finisher no matter how much Beat you have.

The darker, faded portion of an enemy HP bar is displaying how much HP they had before the most recent attack used against them (in other words, illustrating the relative amount of damage that attack dealt).

These aspects aren't all explained right away, in part because we trust the player to pay attention and make educated guesses about certain mechanics (you were pretty spot on with your inferences!) but also because many of these mechanics will be explained more thoroughly when the time comes. Most of Matsumoto's abilities are intended as a sort of "preview" of what's to come, as the game slowly introduces these abilities to the other party members in a slow and natural manner.

With that said, it's not at all the intent to confuse players, so this feedback leaves a difficult balance for tutorialization between overloading the player with too much information, and not providing crucial info they'll need to enjoy the game. I'll have another look at these elements and consider if there are other ways to hint at the mechanics during this prologue section.

Thanks a lot for playing, this was very useful data!

OHHH you're right, that didn't even occur to me but yeah that's totally disrespectful hahaha.

I don't know if I'm gonna make a whole new sprite for that but I suppose it's a solid worldbuilding opportunity. Thanks again!

Heya, thank you for playing! I'm glad you liked it!

You're like the fifth person to comment on that grass sound, so I'll definitely look into it and give that another pass. The capsule art was also just a quick placeholder I made for the jam; right now this game is unannounced, so I haven't gotten far into preparing promotional material yet. Since I posted this on an anonymous account made for the jam, it might not be fully up to date when the game is publicly announced, so keep an eye out for an announcement in case you miss it from my main account!

This is helpful feedback, I appreciate it. Thank you for playing!

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it!

The musical style choice is definitely a bit experimental. I selected it partially because I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and try producing a new musical style, but there is also indeed a heavy Nujabes influence there in general (the Samurai Champloo comparisons are hard to ignore!) There isn't any one particular character who serves that "defiant" role, but the narrative as a whole follows a theme of rebellion and deconstructing social norms that does slowly build through the events of the plot (with the ending of this prologue serving as a kind of catalyst for that). 

There are a few roaming enemies that were designed to be intentionally unavoidable, mainly the ones related to tutorials, as well as a few others that ensure the player collects all the DNA Samples here, since you won't be able to return to this area in the final game. The other enemies typically have a random movement pattern which means they can usually be avoided, but since they are randomized I can imagine there are many situations where it isn't actually possible to maneuver around them. I could investigate a more consistent movement pattern for these enemies if you feel that would improve the game. As for human enemies dropping DNA, I guess that's just some of the weird "don't question it" type of RPG tropes.

When it comes to Beat, those go up every time you use a non-finisher skill, and they are spent altogether when you use a finisher. You also lose one Beat when you're hit by an enemy, incentivizing skillful deflection and Aggro. It doesn't sound like the game was too hard for you with this in mind, but I actually wonder if I may need to make the game a bit more difficult in order to ensure the player gets the hang of the Beat mechanic.

Regarding Kiro's design, could you elaborate on what feels disrespectful? I'm always open to making changes to the game if there is any perceived offense.

Right now, this game is unannounced, so I haven't actually put a ton of thought into how I want to go about making a demo for it. These characters in the prologue aren't the primary protagonists, so if I do make a demo I might opt for something further into the game that better represents the progression system and characters. I'll put some thought into that for sure.

Thank you for playing!

Very fun! Great vibes too!

I think the Weak Counter is much stronger than the Strong Counter. The timing is a lot easier (I usually get a Perfect with the Weak Counter, but only Good with the Strong Counter) and it seems to do much more damage if you get a Perfect. 

Occasionally the timing would desync for one or two attacks, but it caught back up to itself after that.

Of course, I would like if the game was a bit longer, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a prototype for something bigger.

Fun stuff! 

Hm, this title wasn't quite for me, but it's certainly well made and polished. The artwork is fantastic, although quite simple, and the atmosphere works for the most part.

 The gameplay itself struggled a lot to get my attention. This title actually reminds me a great deal of Super Pitfall for the NES, which isn't strictly a compliment, but fortunately this game is substantially more competent and stable than that one. I found combat to be a bit flavourless, nothing about it was especially bad but the basic jumping around and smacking enemies with axes and swords just feels very played. This definitely seems to be trying to evoke the classic NES era not just visually but with its gameplay, but the awkward randomly generated platforming and milquetoast weapon and enemy design causes it to have more in common with many of the forgotten C listers of that era than their contemporaries that pushed game design forward and are remembered so fondly today.

There is some contemporary flare in the NPCs, who have some quirky one liners and goofy personalities (as well as a few serious folk who spout strange cryptic stuff), but while that does lend to making the game feel more modern, it almost clashes with the rest of the design choices by reminding me that we've had 50 years with the medium to innovate past running around in generic procgen caves swinging swords at snakes and bats. I'm sure there is a lot of this that is simply a matter of taste and can be discarded, but I'm left wondering why I would want to play this game over others.

I did have one decently long run, I made it to around floor 5 or 6, but unfortunately going through one of the doors seemed to have spawned me out of bounds (or perhaps the camera didn't follow me). After about thirty seconds of scrambling to figure out where I am, I quit the game there.

I definitely didn't hate this by any stretch, and on a binary of "good" and "bad" I think it's good! However, it just feels lacking in its own personality, I'd love if it had at least one thing that I could point at and say "You can't get this anywhere else!"

The monitor I was playing on has a resolution of 3240 x 2160 (3:2, bit strange tbh) which would explain the cutoff. I suppose it's the opposite problem to ultra wide screen where my screen simply wasn't wide enough.

In my case, I wouldn't mind letterboxing or something if that's the only way to display it on my resolution, but I imagine there are also other scaling modes and such that could make the game work at an unusual resolution like this one. Thanks for your response!

This title immediately caught my attention with its art style. I was scrolling past and saw that giant low poly worm and went "woah hang on" and scrolled back up. Visually, this game is extremely cool, I am a sucker for low resolution 3D, there's something about seeing the squares desperate to morph into something resembling a three dimensional object that tickles me.

It took me a few minutes to feel out what the game was, exactly. Right away I noticed crystals that needed to be collected, so I grabbed those, and clicking gave me what appeared to be a completely useless grappling hook. It took me a decent bit before discovering that the hook was to be used on the ground, but this didn't seem to speed me up or change my movement at all, until I finally hooked onto that rocky ground and it all clicked into place. Movement with the grappling hook is really fun, I wish the game had a greater concentration of rocky terrain to play with it, although this would obviously affect game balance.

After that, inside of my little egg rocket ship, I saw that you could spend money on various things, including "board" which I at first assumed meant "boarding the ship" in some way, until I right clicked and uncovered the hoverboard. It was already fun slingshotting myself around the map, but the hoverboard to slide down sand and stone made things even more enjoyable.

It took me a few more minutes to discover that the double jump was a jetpack, and that this was the best way to traverse vertical sand, since the hookshot can't interact with sand. These three are really great movement options, they all have their purpose but they don't step on each other's toes and they all feel useful at pretty much all times.

Honestly, in spite of appearances, I would go so far as to say this borders on a horror game. The movement, while fun, definitely leaves me feeling helpless to the giant worms, and the majority of the game revolves around evading these creatures that will kill you the instant they make contact. The primary emotion I felt the entire time was "tense". When I know where the worm is, it's way too close for comfort. When I don't know where the worm is, it's even more uncomfortable. Finding out there is a second worm was gleefully unpleasant.

With that said, actually dealing with the worms is difficult. It felt impossible at first to evade them, it seems that they do have a sense of awareness of the player and follow you once they notice you, and at that point for a good while it didn't seem like there was any way to shake them. I did find the jetpack allowed me to jump over them, after which point if you can quickly return to the egg you're usually safe, but there were frequent occasions where the jetpack wouldn't cut it, I was surrounded by sand, and left completely helpless. Some of the strategy of the game surely revolves around avoiding this position in the first place, but because I don't know where the worms are, this isn't always possible.

I would appreciate some better queues about the worm's position. There's a sound that gets loud when they're close, but other than that I can never tell when a worm is on my tail, and since you typically move in the direction of the mouse, it's really hard to look behind my shoulder to make sure there isn't a worm, or to see how far away it is. Perhaps an indicator could appear when the worm is especially close, or when it notices me, would help a lot to accurately gauge the danger I'm in.

Most crucially, I have no idea what the mission actually is. The game displays a counter with the egg ship and the number 4, but I don't have a clue what this means. At first I thought there were four ships I needed to locate, but I only ever found one in my playthrough. The "Launch" button on the ship doesn't do anything, and I assume this must be the win condition, but I don't have a clue how to fulfill it. Some direction in that department is essential.

All in all, very cool game with a very cool style. It's simple and fun, perhaps a bit difficult to expand, but there's room for polish and quality of life. I can imagine a game like this being popular among streamers.

I really like this title conceptually! A sim game where you use collective action to drive away crappy corporations ruining the neighborhood is so up my alley!

It is a bit difficult to play though, which is understandable for such an experimental project. In the UI department, there are a few small nitpicks that I think could easily improve the game. When you double click an object such as a building or trash, you walk all the way over to it, and then have to wait until you're done walking before clicking it once more and then interacting with it. I think it would reduce friction a lot if that double click immediately opened the context menu once you reach your destination.

In terms of onboarding, I wasn't actually sure what type of game this was going into it, so it didn't become immediately clear to me what my goal was until I got to the second town. Once I finished the tutorial, I felt a little bit roadblocked as well. My protests weren't effective, and I couldn't figure out how to efficiently rally people before I ran out of energy. Running around picking up trash felt a bit sisyphean in the way I was doing a boring, degrading task in order to gain favour with the public, only to fail to meet the threshold for a protest and have them all turn on me when the sun goes down, only to start from square one again the next day. In a way, that is a bit of a realistic depiction of how these things can go, but as a sim game it's not exactly a pleasant experience, and for the brief time I played it I definitely didn't feel like I had the power to rally the people and make a change for the better in the community, which I assume is kinda the point of this title.

After three or four days of picking up trash and rallying citizens, I finally decided to give it a rest. Perhaps I am the problem, not dedicated enough to my community to keep on fighting even after these corporations stomped me down!

In terms of graphics, the map graphics all look very good, I like the use of a universal purple colour to denote buildings controlled by the corporations. I did find the coffee shop a bit of a pain to use, needing to click on this tiny little coffee mug that blends in with the rest of the artwork is definitely a strange choice. I also find the portrait faces to be a bit strange looking, they have a lot of smooth shading which lends a kind of uncanny feel. I almost want to say these faces would actually look really good in a jazzy impressionist kind of painting, but when they're juxtaposed with the sanitized and clean graphics everywhere else in the game, they look a lot less professional.

I like the music and sound design, it's all very chill as any game like this should be. Pretty much no notes in that department, good work!

This is a strong idea, and exactly the type of game that should be submitted to Feedback Quest. A lot of titles in this jam are a bit *too* polished to the level where it doesn't feel like they're really getting the most out of a playtest, but something experimental and a little jank like this is what I like to see, it really feels like you have a fresh new idea that can be moved in a good direction. I'm not the target demographic for this type of game (although I find it conceptually very appealing), so I don't know what it would take for something like this to catch my attention "in the wild", but I think some small design changes and maybe a little more direction for the player would improve this game tremendously. This is a very neat idea!

This was very enjoyable! I wasn't able to record my live notes since the game is full screen without any window settings, so I'll just leave my overall thoughts instead.
This has been an enjoyable little roguelike. It's definitely taking notes from Inscryption, but I like Inscryption so I like this too. The aesthetic, while tonally similar, is definitely doing its own thing with the sort of stitchcraft look, and I appreciate how everything looks and sounds. It's very well put together, although this level of polish makes things like the UI text look a little out of place. The Game Over screen feels especially lacking in personality, but other UI elements as well just feel like they have a poor font choice that makes them look like placeholders.

Speaking of placeholders, there are a few assets that appear to be photographs of hand-drawn pencil sketches, which I assume are placeholders that will be fleshed out with more polished artwork later. These sketches are nice, and hopefully they'll be used as reference material if they are replaced, but as they stand now they definitely look like unfinished assets, so that's worth pointing out.

The sound design is on point and the music is fine as well. The presentation overall is really nice.

The gameplay is a little tricky, I don't play that many roguelikes but I very recently played a title in a game jam with a very similar Armor/Attack system, so I assume this is a relatively common convention. It certainly made it difficult but engaging to try to get through a fight unscathed, and the various attack addons you gain over time made the combat get increasingly deeper the further you go.

Unfortunately, I was eventually roadblocked presumably due to some kind of resolution issue. I did notice the skill beads on the left side were cut off a bit (there are three beads but only two visible on my screen), but this became an actual problem when I progressed to the furthest visible edge of the map and found I couldn't click on the next node to proceed as it'd been cut off by the screen. Unfortunately, that's when I had to call it quits. I'm not usually the type to harp on about resolution settings, but it may be essential for a title like this, since there's no windowed mode for me to stretch the picture to fit my screen.

Aside from that one issue though, you've got a very strong game here, and I liked it a lot!

I recorded my thoughts live while I played in the doc below!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N7IG5SYva47dfAYrnpIh4LQVRpL7AHcIgEFe7LrDjvA/...

This is definitely my kinda game. The art style is completely my vibe, it’s got that punky vibe that’s almost a cross between TWEWY and Scott Pilgrim, which now that I say that out loud definitely explains why the aesthetic appealed to me so much. It’s definitely a short title and there is SOME depth, but the way Rock Paper and Scissors overpower each other (in a way that is appropriate for the theme) definitely makes some encounters feel entirely matchup dependent. The real strategy shines in the last couple fights, where I had to really pull all the stops and strategize heavily in order to overcome the odds. I do think the humour is a little… more miss than hit, it’s mostly meme humour, and while the Charlie stuff will probably be appreciated for as long as that guy is around, Scissors O’Toole is gonna be stale in, like, three days at this point. Nevertheless, aside from Scissors O’Toole which got a thorough eyeroll from me, none of the humour annoyed me or anything like that, so it’s all acceptable. It would have been nice to get a little more customization out of the system, obviously there’s a good deal of building involved with your two party members and which skill the protagonist has, but I feel like this system has a lot of potential for customization that isn’t fully explored by the limitations of the gameplay as it is right now. In any case, this was definitely one of my favourite entries in this round of Feedback Quest. I don’t have many big nitpicks, this is basically just a fully fleshed out title, but I could see it being a backdoor prototype for a bigger project in which case I think it mostly works, but the combat is gonna need a little more meat on it for a game lasting more than a couple hours. In terms of the story, there isn’t much going on there, but that’s acceptable for something of this size. It can be difficult to write a compelling story, so something ridiculous like “a child runs society via Rock Paper Scissors” is fine enough for what it is. In any case, very fun title, I’m glad I played it!

I recorded my thoughts in real time as I played, and went into detail on which upgrades I opted for, in the doc below! 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10-cDx0HDTeCNMoAE0FWYtGEkL4St1EAkKPWYaf0e7Y8/...

This is a fun game! It really isn’t breaking any new ground. This is probably the third or fourth game inspired by Vampire Survivors that I’ve played in this round of Feedback Quest alone. It’s also a game where you are a space ship and you shoot stuff in space, which is a concept that has existed since the dawn of the medium. With that said, in terms of execution, this is the most fun I’ve had with one of these Survivors-likes. I think the different starting classes add a lot of depth to the game as well as a good deal of skill expression (I really liked starting with Cerulean and I felt really skillful pulling off my shots), and at first I felt the weapon choices were really shallow, but with the different modifiers on each upgrade round I soon found a lot of depth in how I choose to build my character. It would be nice if there were maybe some other types of modifiers beyond just new guns, but for a shmup like this I can live with being given a horrifying arsenal of blasts in all directions. In terms of balance, it’s easy to make a build that feels overpowered but I think that’s okay, it’s sort of in the spirit and appeal of a game like this. I do feel that the permanent power ups are hit or miss though. Regen feels completely broken, I got two of those and it felt like I could top myself off from a hit after only a few seconds. Feedback could use some work too, I think the screen shakes a little when you take damage but I think a unique sound effect is basically essential. Beyond that, this game is pretty fun, and once I sat down to play it I had a great time and was dying to play more, but I do fear it could struggle to stand out in the crowd. If you can get past that though, it’s a very good time.

Yo! I recorded my thoughts while I played in this Google Doc, although my notes were much lighter than usual with the nature of this game.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pMU7vJjTjWff9LFUe-eztMDkbxM0qpi9GTnJlnlGqpU/...

This is really fun! It’s obviously missing a lot of meat but the foundation is really strong. The combat is quite snappy, and while the mechanics seem complicated they’re very fast to grasp. One small criticism I have is the seemingly random nature of the skills you draw from your deck makes fights feel rather RNG dependent; it’s possible that there is no RNG in which case I don’t know what the determining factor is for new skills, but from my perspective playing it blind they feel arbitrary. If there is some sort of deckbuilding mechanic that could be pretty fun and cool, but otherwise I honestly would prefer if you had access to all your skills at once, even if that means reducing the total number of skills per character. I like the resource mechanic a lot, and while the animations are a bit stiff, they’re a lot better than I would expect for a game like this. There wasn’t a ton of music but I recognized some of the Touhou remixes and appreciated them. I do think the opening logo bits kinda sets off a bad first impression with how meme-y they are (and a potential legal issue too with the use of barely disguised trademarks, although this game is already in an iffy position legally), but I suppose that first impression at least lets people relax and not expect too much. I’d love to see how this game feels when it’s got more characters and content to go off of, but it’s a really strong foundation!

I'm back now that the jam has started and I gave it a proper shot!

So, I think the rendering fix worked, but my computer ended up freezing while I was trying to open the config menu to edit my graphics settings and at that point I gave up playing it on my laptop.

From here on, my notes are gonna be in the context of playing it on a higher-end gaming PC (I don't know the exact specs right now, but it's comparable to a PS5 so it's very high end). On this device, obviously I had zero performance issues and the graphics look fine. At the very least you can rest assured the game works on higher end computers, but I don't have anything in between my cheap laptop and my gaming PC so I don't actually know where the line is before the game stops working correctly.

Now, graphically, the game looks very good for its budget, but it's obviously pretty rough around the edges. The shading looks a bit smudgy and the models are a little low-poly but that's totally acceptable for a game of this scope. I do however have a greater critique when it comes to the characters themselves. 

The character creation options were super robust, there was so much to mess around with, especially with the hair styles, which is appreciated. That said, it's a bit weird having what is effectively only one single body type used across every character in the game (even something as simple as a height slider would have been appropriate, but if you wanted to go above and beyond, other sliders to affect things like wideness could help a lot. Considering the game is a little bit on the ecchi side, even some bust or butt sliders could be appropriate). While I don't necessarily think the lack of customization in body type is a big problem for the player, I do feel it is a bigger problem for the other NPCs because they're all randomly generated off this same character creator. Every character looks uncannily similar especially during combat when it's too zoomed out to appreciate the facial differences.

What I find stranger than the lack of body customization however is the lack of clothes, like, anywhere. I can understand spawning the player in with the half-naked underwear that she starts off in, but none of the NPCs wear any clothes and there's seemingly no way to acquire clothes of your own either. If this has to be the case, I think I would much rather the player wear something a little more interesting and maybe a bit less uncomfortable to look at, maybe even just a skin-tight body suit. As it is right now, it feels really weird playing the game where all interactions occur exclusively between two women wearing the exact same strips of fabric to cover their bits, and I was frequently worried my roommate would come in at any given time and see me playing a game that looks like this. I do understand that this is a scope matter, and honestly I assume this is probably a placeholder that will get filled out as time goes on, but I figured it would be important to emphasize that this is definitely a weird look.

Now, the gameplay is where I was really interested, and it did not disappoint! The combat is really fun, it's got a lot of room for strategy. The resource mechanic works pretty well and the blocking and dodging feel very fair to use. I played for about an hour and never found any new cards to place in my deck so I didn't get to mess with the deckbuilding mechanics much which was disappointing, but I really enjoyed fighting enemies. My only complaint, and it's a very small nitpick, is that interacting with cards requires dragging the cards around for seemingly no reason. It would be really nice if I could play this game using a keyboard or controller as well as with my mouse. That said, playing with the mouse feels fine and it was fun to explore around and collect treasure.

Overall, I really enjoyed this! It's obviously a work in progress and as you develop it more I think it'll become much more polished, but I think the core mechanics work really well.

Heyo! This game certainly seems like it'll be fun, but I wasn't able to get it running properly on my computer. The character select screen was where I first encountered issues (although there was a sizable loading screen before that point too), and it simply wouldn't display the character model at all. After that point, it seems all the 2D graphics simply stamp onto the screen and I actually didn't realize that I was supposed to be looking at something at this point until the first fight ended and I realized I was probably actually supposed to be seeing these actions in progress. Below is a somewhat extreme example of how this looks on my computer.

I'm not sure if this is a matter of PC specs or something else, I played on medium-low settings. My PC is a Surface Book 3 running Windows 11, it's got 16gb of RAM and the graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. I did use my Windows settings to manually enable this graphics card as well, but that didn't resolve the problem.

Aside from that, I wasn't sure how to quit the game aside from forced methods such as Alt +F4. I expected the ESC key may do something along those lines, opening some sort of menu for config and game quit, but that wasn't available. It's possible it's present in the Options button you can click on during some points of gameplay though.

In terms of actual game design, while I obviously didn't get to play much of this, I enjoyed what I saw! I think the concept of a card battler with this "timeline" mechanic allowing you to deflect and interrupt attacks is very very neat. I can't speak on balance or depth since I didn't get very far, but I am compelled by the few mechanics that were presented to me. Character customization is always welcome as well, and I'm at least curious where the few snippets of story were headed, although that alone wasn't quite enough to string me along for the whole experience.

If time allows, I might try this again on a more powerful device. I do most of my playtesting on this Surface as I feel that a powerful gaming PC won't always provide the most useful feedback about performance, and given this game's very broad and generous graphical settings, I assume it isn't intended to be played exclusively on a powerful device either. I don't know what caused this particular rendering issue, but hopefully there's some sort of fix! 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xk13MBq9PjfYjq2Z6mGYmA860nGNDorpbQF7kuYR9Hk/...

I'm jumping the gun a little and testing some of the early entries! The link above is a Google Doc with my real-time thoughts.

So, I have a lot of experience in the genre. I’ve played all kinds of RPGs from the NES all the way to the modern era with recent releases, I’ve played dozens and dozens of different RPGs made with huge budgets, as well as tiny projects made by only one person on an engine like RPG Maker, and I even spent three years in charge of a community dedicated to playtesting RPGs like this one. The reason I bring this up is to make it clear that I am not a “hater” who doesn’t enjoy random encounters or turn based combat.

With that said, this title is very rough. The characters lack personality, the plot moves very slowly and consisted largely of fetchquests by volume, the combat lacks depth and is incredibly unbalanced (Sky Ninja is so substantially stronger than Xania in every way that it began to feel like the latter was most useful as a meat shield), and the world design is poorly planned and occasionally feels arbitrary. While I can see some of the inspirations of this game, it feels like lessons weren’t taken from the great RPGs of the SNES era, neither from their strengths nor expanding upon their weaknesses. The title feels surface level as an RPG, the sort of thing that someone with a very rudimentary understanding of the genre might make in an attempt at illustrating its perceived shortcomings. I did see that the game page lists this as a parody of RPGs, citing a variety of different inspirations, but that inspiration isn’t really shining through here. Even the parody angle, with the Spaceballs influence, doesn’t really seem to show through in this game for me. There were a couple of jokes here and there, unfortunately none of which were especially to my taste, but it never really had the sort of biting wit and satire that you would expect of a self-aware parody. The concept of “Spaceballs for RPGs” isn’t exactly unheard of, there has been a lot of energy on the internet directed towards pointing out the funny inconsistencies and quirks of the genre, but I saw very little of that here. Instead, it was mostly just chasing NPCs as they ran around town in random directions, waiting until I found the right one to progress the story, after which point the narrative about traitors would proceed for a couple sentences while taking itself dead serious, and then it’s back to looking around for the right NPC to talk to. It is possible that much of the humour lies in the other NPCs, but I talked to a good few of them out of necessity in order to find the one I’m supposed to talk to, and rarely found any humour in it, nor any insight about the characters or plot beyond basic lip service to the conflict at hand. The game does not have to be funny, of course, but if it’s meant to be a parody then a steady flow of humour is generally expected.

 If humour isn’t the goal, I’m not sure what is. It does not feel like your passions and efforts went into dungeon design, combat encounters, or even the art. Perhaps there is a deep character driven narrative hiding in all of this instead, in which case it’d be ideal if that was given some more focus. As the game is right now, however, it’s hard to see what its goals are, but a decent rule of thumb would be that if it’s in the game right now, it could probably use a second pass. I know this is very harsh, which is unfortunate as I was very excited to play one of the few JRPGs submitted so far, but it is out of a desire to see titles like this reach their potential. I trust that you really do want to create this self-aware love letter to SNES RPGs, but right now that desire isn’t reaching the page.

Totally understandable! The stark black and white aesthetic is pretty notable so I also think it'd be a shame to incorporate more colours. That said, I'm sure you can think of other ways that can improve the play experience, especially once more testers roll in.

Yo! You are correct that I didn't really read any of the notes. I think I clicked the first New York one and found it a little wordy and decided I only wanted to click additional notes if it was for a concept I needed more context for. Often the notes were highlighted for subjects I already felt familiar with, so I was like "I know what that is" and didn't read them.

I was playing on Browser when I had that issue with the galaxy shader. Just to be thorough, I booted up the game just now on the downloadable Windows version, and didn't have any problem with it at all. (The animation would freeze briefly in between text boxes, but I don't think that was a performance issue). I don't know RenPy well enough to understand its limitations, but it could be worth looking into a way to check if the player is on browser, and reducing the animation accordingly. I would recommend waiting and seeing if other players report issues on browser as well before doing anything too drastic, but obviously having it completely freeze my computer is pretty major!

The text size problem was also simply because I was playing on browser, where the window is very small when I'm not full screened (and the only reason I wasn't full screened was to ensure I could access my control panel in the event of another freeze). When I played it briefly on the Windows version, the text size felt comfortable to me, but I didn't play enough to have a strong opinion on that front. If nobody else complained about it, then it's probably fine! Maybe a larger window on the Browser build would be appropriate though, if you're able to reasonably control that.

I really respect your philosophy on making this for yourself, and I am totally in that same boat with my own projects. Regardless, this is a very well made game and I hope it reaches its audience! I know I enjoyed it, at least!

No, this is a private beta test. You're free to try it if you'd like, but this build is for testing purposes.

I'm jumping the gun a little and testing some of the early entries! The link below is a Google Doc with my real-time thoughts.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NDU8JJY1KrnpsZTCBq5aNNp6VWDX4_nUzcL6D6eTECY/...

So, I didn’t play a ton of this, so I can only judge some of the early puzzles, but it is difficult to evaluate and give a ton of strong feedback to a title at this stage in development where it’s so unpolished.

I think the aesthetic of the game is really visually interesting, it’s quite minimalist and pops out with the high contrast sheer black and white. This same aesthetic on the other hand actively harms the game in a lot of ways. Everything from walls to boxes to floors to doors are a big white void, and so it’s frequently difficult to tell what I’m even looking at while I try to solve puzzles. What looks like a part of a wall can actually be a platform that moves up and down when you press buttons, what appears to be a line delineating the horizon of the floor ends up being one of the black lines used to show what buttons activate what. I want to say “add more colours” to things like the activation lines, but that conflicts with the aesthetic. It is possible more textures would help, because 1-bit games that only use stark blacks and whites have been made before and work to convey their environments, although I’ve never seen a Portal-style puzzle platformer like this attempt that, meaning it’s possible the aesthetic simply isn’t reasonable for this type of game.

The lack of sounds obviously harms game feel and feedback, and the general physics of the game are uncomfortable and strange, but these aspects are clearly intended to be improved upon as development proceeds so I can’t put too much emphasis on that. I had a look at the previous Stixcape game for reference and it appears that game had the same aesthetic choices, although I only saw one comment and one review, so the actual reception of the title is harder to gauge and I’m not sure if this art style worked for your other players. In any case, the aesthetic and physics made it a really difficult experience for me, in spite of the clever concepts with the boxes and switches.

I'm jumping the gun a little and testing some of the early entries! The link below is a Google Doc with my real-time thoughts.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/186dos60SCV9rsTroyD4QBZ9OTChG6d2akrjuTiEm5_k/...

So, coming off this as someone who doesn’t really engage in the otome genre does put me in an interesting but difficult position. On one hand, since this isn’t my type of game, my enjoyment of it should be a shining praise. On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of reference to compare it to, and that makes it difficult to measure how well it weighs up against other entries in the genre. At risk of sounding a little tactless, there’s a chance that I actually like otome games and just didn’t realize it, and this being one of the first ones I’ve played appeals to me not because it’s exceptional in its class but simply because I don’t know any better. There is also the other side of the equation, that perhaps this appeals to me because I’m not an Otome fan, in which case that may mean that it could be unappealing to your target audience that is actually interested in the genre. I don’t really think either is the case, but it’s food for thought with the position I’m in.

Now, the art is obviously great. It’s basically professional quality, and it really stands out especially in a 100% human made game. It’s easy to see a game like this and silently wonder if the developer was using generative AI to pump it out faster, but there’s a clear sense of love and passion that went into this that has me inclined to trust you. The art is really good!

The story compelled me a good deal as well! I chuckled and scoffed a little at first with the army of pretty boys all flaunting their gimmicks to me as the protagonist started to get a feel for her situation, but as things got moving I was really invested in this isekai protagonist’s superpower not being something dumb like having modern technology or an expertise in video games, but her genuine and honest intelligence on historical subjects, which I found made her really compelling. At the beginning she seems a bit meek and passive, which is a reasonable and human reaction to her situation, but once she figures out how she can leverage her skills, the change in confidence is natural and exciting, almost empowering. I’m like, heck yeah girl, you know way more than any of these pretty boys, show them just how useful you are! I’m really rooting for her, and by the end when the demo concluded I let out an audible “awwww” because I really did want to see more, which is honestly something I wasn’t expecting going in.

The audio is all serviceable, nothing stuck out to me as especially bad (although the opening musical number made me wince a little bit, that is once again a matter of personal preference rather than quality) and some of the music choices were really good. I especially liked the green fella’s theme (I’ve forgotten his name, my apologies) and the way it incorporated Chinese instrumentals on top of the otherwise Western guitar heavy sound. It’s good stuff!

The characters are, for the most part, relatively surface level and tropey in the short time I spent with them, but that’s understandable given this is a smaller chunk of the story. We have our bad boy, the smart one, the heart of gold, the happy one, and the quiet stoic one. I didn’t get enough time with greenie to figure out what his schtick is, but needless to say these are archetypes we have seen before. Regardless, it ain’t broke, and I think the characters were enjoyable for what they are. I am a little inclined to move towards the Will route just because I have a penchant for intelligent characters, but I was compelled by Dan’s attitude and  hope that even if I take the Will route romantically, that won’t prevent Dan from being friendly and honourable. It’s especially good for a game like this to have some tension between routes, to make the decision of who to court more meaningful.

Overall, while it isn’t my type of game, I had a lot of fun with this anyway! I think my feedback will be less helpful than feedback from someone more experienced in the genre, and in hopes of helping that out I’ve recommended the game to a few friends who I know enjoy this type of thing a bit more than I do. Nonetheless, I had a good time and even left wishing it would go on a little longer, which is about as good as you can get from a playtest! Great work, I’ll leave a proper score when the rating period begins!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wddLUatdB0l9dx7NLlUNwAVNEXrUnv7i6e8sbNYL7Yc/...

I'm jumping the gun a little and testing some of the early entries! The link above is a Google Doc with my real-time thoughts.

This was a lot of fun! I was pretty compelled to keep playing after I died. While it doesn’t do anything crazy groundbreaking, the different choices are compelling and there’s a decent bit of weighing options.

In terms of assets, it’s all passable. The pixel art is a little scrappy bit in a charming way that feels at home in something casual like this. As the veggies get stronger their art becomes less appealing as the sprites get bigger and have more empty space on them, but the art style gives the vibe of a game that doesn’t need to be taken seriously and for that I can’t complain much.

Musically, it’s forgettable but serviceable, nothing in here stuck out as egregiously bad but a custom soundtrack that loops properly would be preferred. If it were left as is I don’t think anyone would complain, but it would be great if there were some more tailor made tracks.

In terms of balance, I feel like the Chef Hat might be a bit too strong. While choosing any one weapon upgrade does seem to power up that weapon alongside the additional shots, the Hat multiplying all of your shots at once almost always feels like it outweighs that. By the time I had around six knives floating around me, I turned into an untouchable killing machine that basically just got to sit there and wait for the enemies to kill themselves. Knives were especially strong too, but basically useless on the final boss except for grinding for HP.

The movement speed was annoying but I understand its value now, especially since it gives the running shoes a lot of use. If you moved at a comfortable pace from the start, the shoes wouldn’t be useful.

The boss is great, its design is very goofy in a way I adore, and it has a variety of attacks that keeps the fight really fresh (pun intended). My one complaint is that the attack where it shoots a vine and drags you into its mouth seems hard to react to, and once I get sucked in I have no idea how to escape. It basically feels like an instant death sentence, which is almost welcome since the game otherwise feels a little too easy, but a single attack’s ability to kill me in effectively one hit does feel frustrating. If there is a way to escape, I’d love some more information on how to do that.

In terms of UI and controls, it’s all functional but there were a couple points of irritation. It’s weird the game has any interaction with the mouse at all since core gameplay only uses the arrow keys or touch screen, although there isn’t much reason to disable that. On PC, my only real problem was the pause screen, it would be nice to unpause with E. Mobile had a couple more issues I went into greater detail with the touch controls. It also confused me a bit that the dedicated pause button pauses the game, is still visible while the game is paused, but doesn’t work when you press it while paused to unpause the game. I’d make that disappear or just work as an unpause button.

I’m also unsure about the pot at the bottom right of the screen. Veggies appear to enter the  pot, and its placement below the D pad conveys that it’s important in some way, but if it is conveying information I have no idea what, as it doesn’t appear to be a progress bar for soup at a glance. If it is, I would make that more readable.

Anyway, this was a fun little game! It’s not breaking any new boundaries but that’s okay, it’s a casual and addictive roguelike shooter and I think it plays that role very well.

Once ratings open, I'll return to give this a proper score!