itch.io

What I liked:

• Tutorial is unobtrusive and explains things well, but still lets me feel like I'm figuring things out
• Art and SFX are fantastic
• Atmosphere is great, very unsettling in a good way
• Randomly generated loot is cool, seems like I find something new every time I open a container

Suggestions:

• When you're taking items from a container there needs to be a "Take All" button so I don't have to spam click "Take" for a stack of items or for all the items in the container
• There should be some money or something more useful than clothes I already have in the containers, I'm a weirdo who feels compelled to check all of them and I want to be rewarded for it
• Combat feels a little slow, speeding up the animations just a hair would be cool
• A way to lock onto enemies like in Zelda or Elden Ring would be nice
• When I died I couldn't figure out how to respawn or even pause/turn off the game. I had to open the task manager. That might be on me though maybe you said what to do and I missed it.

Overall you have the makings of a great game on your hands, excited to see what comes next for this!

Thanks a ton for the detailed feedback, this is super helpful.

The shop softlocks and save issues are definitely bugs and I’m tracking those down now. The draw pile duplication is already solved I just haven't uploaded the newest build yet.

You’re not the first person to mention Buzzwords needing clearer communication, so tooltips are coming soon. Same for keyword highlighting, probably not before the demo, but I agree it’d help readability a lot.

Really glad the core gameplay is landing and that the game over sequence stood out. Appreciate you taking the time to write all this up!

Some thoughts:

• Music and sound effects are impeccable, the atmosphere was great while playing, very zen. Reminds me a little of Minecraft or BoTW the way the music drifts in and out (that's a compliment I love those games)
• I like the little colonists' messages to each other and thoughts. I think you could take this further with little dev effort. Have a bunch more random messages that can pop up depending on mood/stress level. Like instead of saying "Bob is stressed out" you could have Bob say "I miss my mommy" or something
• Not sure what the "point" is really beyond just building stuff. I think you could take the Minecraft approach to a "story" where like the Ender Dragon there is an overall goal but it's completely optional. That way players have a goal they can go after if they want, but they can also just build cool shit and vibe in your world
• It's a little jarring how the camera snaps to 8 preset angles. Might be better if the camera was freer but I don't know how difficult that would be to implement.
• Art is very charming, I love the way the colonists look and I like that some of them are animals, that's especially cute.
• Main menu music is a banger

Overall you have a great game in the works, can't wait to see where you take this.

Okay, pressed Z to get through the main menu, so here is some real feedback

What I liked:

• Art is great
• Talking cat is based
• I love when you can take specific actions during turns in JRPGs, like the guard switching

Suggestions:

• Add actions during the player's attacks! A 3 piece punch combo is practically begging for timing your inputs for the punches a la Mario and Luigi RPGs
• Some sound effects seem pretty loud relative to the rest of the audio, specifically the gunshot noise when you select something on a menu, and the noises when someone or something gets hit
• Make the controls more obvious, especially in the main menu. It says "Press Any Button" and most of the keys on my keyboard do nothing lol

You have the makings of a great JRPG on your hands, keep up the good work!

Ummm ackshually it's a death OCTAGON

What I liked:

• "Health" system is very clever, I've never seen anything like it before
• The sound effect when firing is really satisfying, I like it a lot it reminds me of Space Invaders
• Presentation is great, art is fantastic and the gameplay is engaging. This is one of those arcade games like Tetris where you enter a flow state. I could see myself playing this for hours, especially if it were a mobile game.

Suggestions:

• Music is a little bare bones, could be more interesting
• Maybe having a small description (or even just icons) for the alternate weapons would be helpful
• I didn't notice the controls on screen for a few minutes, maybe make it more obvious

Hey I don't know if it's a bug or I'm just stupid but I couldn't get past the main menu. Intro cutscene was nice though, the moment where her eyes turned red was kino

What I liked:

• Music, art, and presentation are impeccable

Suggestions:

• Not sure if it's just my computer but the character seems to move way too slow. I got filtered by the second jump
• The pause menu opens kinda slowly, to the point that I noticed it was taking longer than I thought it should. Again, this could just be my computer being shitty

What I liked:

• Good variety of items (are there actually millions???)
• Game makes sense intuitively, I had a "higher or lower" build and was kinda playing ride the bus, which was fun
• Art and music are good

Suggestions:

• The tutorial is too much. I didn't read most of it and was able to understand how to play. You could probably cut a lot of it out. I had the same problem with my game, you'd be surprised what players can pick up from tooltips and context
• You seem to borrow a lot from Balatro visually, like the loading screen using a random card, and the UI colors and such. Not necessarily a bad thing, it works well, just be wary of people dismissing this game as a clone at first glance. The gameplay and actual feel of the game are pretty distinct though.
• Having some kind of icons or artwork for the items would go a long way. Also making them a specific objects, like Balatro's Jokers, or my game's books does a lot for thematic cohesion.

Overall good game, I played for about 20 min and I had a lot of fun!

What I liked:

• Pixel art is fantastic
• You nailed the retro feel without it feeling cheesy
• Music is good

Suggestions/Bugs:

• Stat select screen doesn't have the right aspect ratio, there's a black bar on the bottom of the screen. I tried to take a screenshot but it didn't work which leads me to my next point
• I was unable to take a screenshot while running the game
• You need sound effects, which I'm sure you're planning on adding. The game feels so flat without them.

What I liked:

• Music is great
• Controls are responsive and movement is fluid
• The pace at which you introduce new mechanics is perfect

Suggestions:

• Maybe you already do this, but it would be nice to see the time to beat at the start of the level
• One small bug, the taskbar has the wrong name for the game if I right click on the game's icon. See screenshot:

What I liked:

• Art is cute
• Controls make sense
• Platforming gameplay is good

Suggestions:

• Echoing that other comment, either make this a blatant porn game or take out all the futa shit. It's offputting to me but the people who like it will love it if you lean into it.
• The music is a little grating, I think it's the instruments you used
• I had to go into the controls menu to figure out mouse/keyboard controls, those should be made apparent rather than just assuming I'm using a controller

Bug:

• The ladder in the beginning of the first level is bugged, you can't move, attack, or dash after climbing down. You're stuck in the idle animation until you jump

Testing on Mac, played for about 15 min

What I liked:

• Tactical gameplay is fun
• Graphics and artstyle look great
• Tutorial was clear and informative

Suggestions:

• Making me wait like 5 seconds for each dialogue to play is excruciatingly slow, but I don't want to skip them or spam the enter key, that's annoying too. Maybe make the dialogue boxes auto play and not block user inputs?
• Music definitely sets the right atmosphere, but one note droning does get a little grating after a while
• There's a little too much exposition in the beginning IMO, and it's just military lingo and callouts, not really advancing the story at all so I wasn't invested in what they were saying and just wanted to play the game

Probably just Steam, Itch doesn't do much for visibility of your game. Steam doesn't do THAT much either but it's a little better.

Played the first level. This was like an acid trip and I loved it. Everything felt like a surprise, nothing made the noise I thought it would or looked the way I thought it would, and that was cool. I also like that the difficulty doesn't hold back. Maybe I'm just ass at the game but the first arena fight with the watermelons and flowers gave me some trouble. Only problem I found is that the tutorial assumes you're playing on controller, I had to figure out how to play via trial and error on mouse and keyboard.

I played through the first level, spent about 10 minutes playing.

What I liked:

• Cute art style
• Intuitive controls
• Catchy music
• The tutorial explained things well without being too much text in my face

Suggestions for improvement:

• Maybe allow some kind of lateral movement with jumping, I almost got filtered by the moving platforms in the first level
• Maybe add a toggle like in Yoshi's Island with throwing eggs, where you can toggle the dash to be holding down shift and releasing vs pressing it again. If you don't know what I mean look up the throwing eggs controls in the original Yoshi's Island

Good game! I like it and think it will do well.

Hugboxing:

• Music is comfy and good, I like how it gets more stressful when you fight the boss
• Graphics are charming and cute
• Gameplay is genuinely fun, from a fellow "take a board/card game and make it roguelike" dev, you executed this really well

Crabbing:

• I wish there were a way to lock one individual item in the shop and not the whole thing, but I understand the design rationale to make it the way you did, there is added risk to locking
• I think the game is a little too easy, but maybe that's just because it's the demo

Overall great game, looks just about ready for release, good luck with everything!