Thanks for the feedback! It took some time to digest everything. This post may have more words than the entire game itself, but i will try to respond in the most detailed way i can.
(There's no quote system on itch.io apparently, so i will try to improvise something.)
"I beat the game yesterday and was hoping the comment section would be open here to talk about it, but I guess I'll post here instead (if you'd rather not have this type of discussion on your game page feel free to delete it)."
For some reason, i couldn't have both a forum and a comment section, so i decided for a forum without thinking too hard about it lol But feel free to comment anything here.
"As a first RPGM game, this is good, it's always fun seeing people customizing enough of the game to make it look original, and the art here really is fun. The worst thing I can think of, considering this is a first attempt, is certainly the guide book item in the inventory. It's quite confusing, and should honestly just have been a bit better explained, I forgot what every status ailment was in the exact moment I closed that window =P."
At first, the idea was to just make every element about the game hidden, from the ailments to the damage calculation. The guide book was more of an info dump about some terms, it's not meant to be memorized or anything. Most of the terms there are obvious but i needed to do something for the people wondering what the hell is "Jelly" supposed to do. I could have made something clean, with 5 to 6 pages, but i honestly don't think this is a problem, exactly. It's not something i would change in an update.
"But the ideas are there and the drive to make something original as well, you clearly thought about the battle system, and how to make it distinctive, and all the form stuff is fun too (that changing animation is way too long though, lol)."
Oh yeah, while i don't care about the guide book, the form change animation is the first thing i would change in some future update. I was pretty annoyed with that when testing it.
But why i didn't change it then before releasing? As someone that would make a RPG in my spare time as long as 3 months, I've planned to make every aspect of the game in a well defined span of time. Like, the visual identity, enemy design, and stuff like that would be made in the first 15/20 days, then some 10 days to design the maps etc. Which means, i was well aware with most elements in the game that could end up being problematic, but i just needed to carry on.
"The general narrative has a real "first RPGM game" vibe to it lol. It's hard to describe, but things like the first scene being a pretty shallow philosophical moment, one of the first NPCs breaking the forth wall by recognising the dialogue box, the odd dry humor, collecting the four two elemental crystals, etc. That might come off as a bit mean, but take it almost as a rite of passage, we've all been there. Also, being inspired by the first Dragon Quest, this feels almost intentional, like the quintessencial RPGM narrative told in its simplest forms. I would also disagree with your assessment of DQI not being super influential, and that DQII is the one that really inspired people, but I digress, let's go back to your game."
It wasn't exactly intentional, but i can see why this happens lol
First RPG maker projects are rushed by nature, not very well thought out, and also not very polished.
Liquid Sugar is 100% these 3 things. Don't feel bad for pointing that out.
Think of it as a project that i thought about far more before actually starting it. No way it would be made like this otherwise.
"A couple of tips is that the sense of pacing in cutscenes is a bit off, and you close the dialogue box to wait for a few seconds before showing the next dialogue, which always makes it uncomfortable because I kept thinking it was over, only to have my character still stuck in place. There's a command you can type in the dialogue box to have it hang there for a couple of seconds without closing it, and that helps inform the player the cutscene is not over yet. But I really enjoy how you never have a text dump in the game, like every dialogue was thought out, and edited to be shorter, and it works really well. I don't think I was ever at a loss with the narrative either."
Yeah, the waiting times in cutscenes are weird and can be annoying. Another result of not testing it a lot and something i was thinking about for the eventual update.
"Battle animations look like you had fun making them (A+ on that healing animation), but some of them go on for too long (the "thousand little punches" or however it was called was pain everytime an enemy used it)."
Same as above, you are 100% right about a lot of animations being needlesly long and this is something i would want to fix
"The graphics are not very legible, not only from the sprite work (collage work? idk what you'd call this technique) but from contrast as well. An NPC told me about a robot at the abandoned factory, and I crossed that entire place twice, and never saw something that looked like a robot there. If there wasn't a dialogue prompt telling me the little icon on the left of the first island was a crossbow, I would have never found it, etc etc. The world map is also really boring, its literally a bunch of rectangles connected by some lines."
So, graphic assets related stuff was the first thing i made for the game, and after doing everything, and testing it, the first thing i could notice is how 48x48 sprites simply doesn't work well in any style that's not super deformed lol Along with the custom resolution, it was kind of messy, yeah.
Honestly, it's not something i would change at this point, unless people really had problem progressing through the game. The messy aesthetics blends well with the vibes, if anything.
But i feel you about the crossbow. Could have made it 96x96 with an opposite color, but i'm okay with the text describing it. Same with the Spyglass.
Surprised with the Robot, though. I should have made the dialogue box something like "the dude in the abandoned laboratory" instead of robot. Since there's just one npc in the place anyway.
The world is meant to be artificial, like literally some rectangle towers as big as a aircraft carrier, put together. Didn't want something as vast as a Dragon Quest exactly to make traversal between places faster and as bloatless as possible. I personally like how tight and narrow it ended up being.
"The game is about 3 hours long and it still had me grinding, which is never fun. First NPC I talk to? Grind 3 hard to drop items from a common enemy or 3 common drop items from a rare enemy... Awesome. I think I was level 12 by the time I left the first island, just trying to grind out the 3 carrots. Second town, same thing, after all that grind I barely had enough money for the two cheapest items there."
Maybe my mistake was putting the npc alone as the first thing you encounter after the first save, as i never intended it to be seen like a mandatory quest. Your reward is just a mini lore dump, after all.
That said, yeah, the experience curve is by far the biggest problem in this game. My main idea of average level for the first boss was like 4/5, and then 8/12 for the second one, either the missile rider underground or Mr Green. It's a game that will be just too easy with any kind of grind.
So yeah, i was not just clueless about how to tackle the experience curve and money, but also testing it alone, and in the last week of making the game. Kind of expected this happening lol
But in hindsight, no matter how many time i had, this kind of balancing feels impossible to do alone. It was actually interesting to see that you really took your time to get the 3 items before doing anything else. It's something that me as a player would never do, and i'm likely to be in the minority.
The same applies to the purchasing habits in RPGs. In the third town there's some items that are really expensive, not meant to be purchased before atleast going through the key cards bridge, but i got some feedback about how they actually grind there to get everything, which also made the game too easy.
"Halfway through the game I bought the berserker item and the muscle ring, I equipped them on the strongman form and for the rest of the game the battles became just literally holding down the enter key, I couldn't even be creative if I wanted, since the berserker item locks my skills, it's like the game gave me an overpowered build at the expense of fun. No enemy could deal with this either. You clearly thought about the skills and equipment in the game, but then put an item that just undermines it all, it feels a little weird. Maybe if items played a bigger role in combat, the berseker would make more sense? idk."
You know, this would never happen in a commercial video game, because there would be a lot of QA to make sure overpowered items like this are heavily nerfed.
This is something i could solve balancing more the stats, and then testing it again and again, and that takes time.
About that, i feel like i shouldn't have made 12 different playstyles as the forms, if balancing them would be too time consuming.
"The towns are really basic, with pretty much nothing interesting going on, and the level design on the towns and oveworld is really uninteresting. And still, they are a step above the dungeons, which are all completely flat, and are clearly just a few halways connecting rooms that will, sometimes, try something different, but never something interesting. It feels like you have in your mind a couple of things you think a dungeon shouldn't do (don't be a corridor, don't make every enemy walk the same, don't limit the dungeon to just fighting and opening chests, etc), but it never feels like you have a grasp on what a dungeon SHOULD do. You never "cooked" anything here, you just avoided the pitfalls. You should have spent more time designing things, questioning why something is the way it is... Hell, maybe you can find an idea to make a hallway dungeon be interesting, who knows? That would probably end up with you getting a game with memorable dungeons (even if they turn out bad) instead of the unremarkable ones you have here."
I'm happy with the towns being basic in design. They mostly exists to have people talking about the world, to put the player in the setting. There's nothing else they should do imo.
For the dungeons, i just wanted something that strongly resembles DQ1 and other 8 bit RPGs. If anything, the first thing i would change about them if i made the game again, would be removing the gimmicks lol You know, the pac man like setpiece in the Licorice Tower of the Radar thing in the Anise Temple.
Something i overall disliked when testing the game was how the enemies were placed. All the enemies walking in big rooms can be easily avoided, and sometimes there was the same kind of enemy too near each other. That's something i want to change as well in a future update.
I understand your idea of making dungeons more remarkable but this is definitely not the game i would think of this kind of ambition, Think that you would have probably enjoyed the dungeons a lot more if they were challenging, and the balancing wasn't so fucked up.
"My last (and maybe harsher) comment is that it looked like you spent most of that 3 months making the game not look like standard RPGM project, instead of being a fun, well paced adventure, with fun level design and fun combat. IMO, that's fine, but I'd prefer a game that looks like standard RPGM and focuses on design over presentation."
It's hard to reply that part without looking super defensive haha But i feel like your experience was soured mostly by balancing problems. If i removed the npc in the lab, and the expensive items, maybe your experience with the grind would be completely different?
I say this because i played dozens of jrpgs that i really disliked because they were either too grindy , or just trivial for a reason or another, that could end so much better with some tune up in the numbers. Also, several Jrpgs that i love, but just because i ignored most of their sidequests...
"Sorry for the heel turn and subsequent downer comments. If you take anything from them is that you have an ocean of possibility in front of you, and whatever comes next can be so much more inspired and creative. And hey, if you had fun making this, and would like to make another one just like it, go for it! At the end of the day, I'm just a guy who stumbled here and decided to spend way too long writing out his personal opinions on your work. More than making an amazing game, you should have fun making your game. Everything else comes with time! Cheers"
Thanks for the time!
It was an interesting read. No matter what was my intention with the game, and what you got from it, it's great to have a different perspective on stuff.