itch.io

Hi. I just recently bought the game (kind of late to the party) and I thought I would share some feedback and I hope this is good place for that.

Graphics are brilliant

I find that graphics wise the game is pretty good; the ponies are well designed and animated. Not really a My Little Pony fan but rather a Pokemon fan, but still found some favorites from your game (Poni-Bot and Primcess). Overworld, although I find the "Arrival Story" overworld kind of small, is very is also very pleasant and pretty - I think you nailed a good retroish style that is good without being an exact copy of something else (like Pokemon).

Battle system is engaging - familiar but not samey

Battle system is also working really well; kind of similar to Pokemon, but I still kind of need to be on my toes and make some guess work to succeed. Double typed attacks are nice but I find it hard sometimes to figure out how effective double type attacks are against certain double type ponies as there are so many simultaneous type match ups. Also I have to say that concepts behind some of the attacks are pleasantly innovative (like the "Wire Whip"). I kind of wish there was at least a local PvP (online PvP on the other hand is understandably very difficult to do so no sweat if do not have it).

Audio is... mixed

There are couple good tracks in the game and SFX is fine, and it is not like other music tracks are bad, but I feel that the music as of style and instrumentation is very inconsistent. I mean, some are these chiptune tracks, but some are these orchestral things and the rest in a strange in between. Also the volume levels also feel like they jump around a lot. I hate to say it so but it feels kind of hodge-podge musically. Maybe the game would benefit if the tracks would be remixed/arranged with consistent sounds and/or virtual instruments and the volume levels adjusted - not that they would need to change a lot compositionally, right now they just sound like they come from different places.

But as I said there few very good tracks. I have heard the regular pony tamer battle theme years ago and it still works. But what really got me was the Crystal Stable theme. I mean to redo what is basically a version of a Pokemon Center which has so iconic theme and nail it with completely original music that is both brilliant and fits perfectly to the scene... I think that is the musical a high point for the game. Definitely my favorite track in the game.

By the way, sorry for all the Pokemon comparisons ^^;

Menus are not the most intuitive

They are not like terrible but they are kind of clunky and should be thought out more. On a similar note - and I have seen this also with other small Unity games - is that you kind have to constantly move between using the keyboard and mouse; for overworld the keyboard only is best, while for the pause menu and battles only mouse seems to work well. Talking of course from PC point of view but I think that committing more to a single control scheme would make the experience much more fluid.

All in all... keep up the good work

It is kind of hard to give exact score, partly because the game without the DLCs seem kind of small and incomplete. But with more development I can totally see that this will turn out to be a good game. Waiting to see the new developments and DLCs in the future.

(Sorry for a long post)

It's nice little game. Maybe it could have been more challenging?

No I meant controls in general. Thanks for your earlier reply; I was able to beat the game thanks to that.

Played it already couple of times before the rating period. Really nice game to play. What I paid attention on my last play was the music; despite the nature of the music, it does never got annoying or repetitive - which I could normally expect from this kind of "cute" music. So yeah, the most cutest and addictive game yet in the jam.

Aside from the control issues others have mentioned, I want to say that the audio and visuals fit quite well together - those are definitely the strongest point of the game. Although I feel that the game does not capitalize well on the topic; yes you can fall down but you are supposed to climb anyway so there is not any extra risk taking included with that than that of a average game. Ok game, that looks and sounds good.

Hey, here is one more : Duskwood DigestNot sure if I have time to rate your game any time soon; I have a list of few other games I would like to try and towards the end of the jam I also contracted a flu so I am pretty tired. (But there is still two weeks time so probably later)

I used Pygame - if you can call it "engine"; it is more just of a programming framework. Glad you liked the game.

I like how this game is challenging but not in an annoying way. It just takes some getting used to and getting better. I did not finish the game (yet) but I like that you also keep things varied enough to be interesting - at least that is what I felt during the 10-12 levels I  managed to clear.

You definitely improved the game last time I played it. And although the gameplay is not anything ground breaking it is very relaxing and calming to play which is nice; I think your choices for the audio also help with that a lot. Cozy game for sure.

Lot better. But I just noticed that I if go to fullscreen mode the text moves out of the overlayed area; but fullscreen fixes the other problem I mentioned about the text going out of screen...

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I wondered if people would prefer a timer - I have to see if I have time to add one.

I had one of the guests use the scientific names for the plants you collect - plan was to give them some personality that way. But yea, on the hind sight I also thought the scoring system might not be not so clear because of the different names and descriptions used.

You could try using an overlay (although I am not sure it is called like that...). That means you draw a filled rectangle etc. on top of the background image with some transparency and put the text on top of that. This helps the text to stand out. See an example:

May not be the best example but I hope it gets the idea across...

I tested the game and while the normal game play works, the shop screen has text that goes outside the screen; like this:

Also text  over that blue thing is very hard to read. But otherwise the game seems to work - controls are good and responsive, etc.

Although the procedural generation could perhaps be more balanced. By that I mean if you could reduce the luck factor like the cookie placement and how easy they are to get. Because now there is no cost at restarting and you could just as well restart over and over again until the cookie jars appear next to you. Just a thought...

(p.s As a side note, I also made a procedurally generated game and it's also my first game jam and published game. Nice to see I am not the only one and how people do procedural generation differently.)

I can see it; here is a screenshot. So no worries.

I tried the game but I found using shift to run problematic in a browser; holding shift and right clicking simultaneously triggers the context menu. Maybe you could change it so that right clicking walks while left clicking runs thus no need to press shift?

On my third try I got 110 or so biscuits; the controls feel bit tricky because there is so much inertia - but I guess one gets used to that on repeated play troughs. I recalled the skydiving in Pilotwings 64 (old Nintendo 64 game) because that one had pretty good skydiving controls, but I don't know if you know the game.

You should mention on the game page that the mouse controls the camera - I think I did not realize that until second play trough. Controlling the camera with mouse and movement and speed with keyboard is kind of an hassle - maybe you could find better solution to that?

Very nice game; especially the controls are very well done. I wonder how many levels there are?

I understand that arrows and "wasd" keys move, but are there any other controls I should be aware of?

https://eml-games.itch.io/duskwood-digest

The game is made in Pygame and packaged with Pygbag. You can play it on the browser (desktop browser only, no mobile browser). If you have time please play it and give feedback if you have any. Trying to make some improvements and provide Windows, Linux and source code downloads later.

Known problem is the audio lag which is very noticeable in sound effects. It is really annoying; is this normal in browser games? Although this problem is present only in the web version - when I play it on my desktop there is no such a problem. If any one has solution or suggestion to the problem it would be very much appreciated.

(Also I did not have time (yet?) to balance the score system. Text readability might be a problem too, the game is very low res.)

Hey, I downloaded your .rar file and tried to unpack it to play the game, but I was unable to unpack the .rar file - I wonder if the file is faulty? One thing I can say though is that you could try to make your download smaller...

I cannot completely figure out how the mechanics are supposed to work in this game - it seems bit random what ingredients work for the biscuit at any time. But I played it twice, first my points went to minus hard, but I figured out that if I test each ingredient couple times in row and check which one effects positively, I can then just spam that one ingredient to get the "taste" to 10, 20 and even beyond. That strategy worked fairly often and on my second play I got 54 points; proof:

So yeah if the mechanics would be more clear it would be nice - you could write it in more detail in the game page. (I do not know if you meant it to be random or luck based, but I feel that mechanics with logical and fair outcomes are better than luck based but that is just my preference).

I am actually making a game where the player gathers food ingredients and my plan was, if time allows, to have different characters prefer different ingredients the player gathers and give a score accordingly. You could implement similar system perhaps; now you only have that one yellow haired guy but you could have different guys and gals with various hair and clothe colors and have them judge biscuits each differently, but consistently as per character. Just an idea...

On the artistic side. Graphics are not the most high quality but they work well from the game play perspective. One thing I would add is music, yes I think it would make it much more enjoyable. You could also have the character say different orders and replies instead of just "I want biscuit", "That was good.", etc. maybe by choosing saying from a list of sayings.

But all in all it is an ok game and you have still time to make it better.

I make my music with LMMS a free cross-platform desktop app (link). If you do not have some sample libraries (tool to make music in music apps) I would recommend Fluid_R3 soundfont (.sf2 file); it is decent, free, so-called general midi soundfont; you can find it in many places over internet it (here for example). You can use soundfonts like that in LMMS using it's soundfont player - I think it is most fast and easy to use instrument if you are new.

But really you will be hard pressed if you are new to music making and want to take this route of music making for this jam. I use this software but I have been making music on computer for like 10 years and used more complicated software such as FL Studio (commercial app) in past too. Also figuring out how to make music that loops seamlessly in your game can also be difficult if you are new to music production.

I'm new here but to me it seems that playing on the web is preferred. Although downloads can be used too - at least that is what I plan to use as I do not know how to make web builds with pygame...

Someone on another topic here when answering about the use of Godot said: "Usually, yes, but for a gamejam you should use Compatibility mode so you can export a web build. Web builds are what get your game played a lot more, faster, and easier to access! Also, keep in mind you can't use C# for web builds, only GDScript, which should be fine for a gamejam. But ultimately, you can use anything you want 💪, it's your game, remember to have fun with it!"

I think the "biscuit" part can be any reward, etc. (At least that is the impression I get when I google "risk it for the biscuit meaning".)

I also liked the "Uncharted territory"; I feel it gives most ideas. But I also liked "Risk it for the biscuit", because it sounded kind of fun and quirky, and now that I think of it sounds kind of poetic - but I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Also liked "Weird instruments" and "A special backpack".

Good luck. I am first timer too, never made a single proper game except some tech demo/experiment kind of things...