itch.io

The atmosphere of this game is so interesting to me. I am not sure how to explain it but we have like a very grim and moody underground setting that also has a cozy vibe to it with all the cute furniture arrangement stuff. It's very cool.

Thank you so much for checking out the game! Watching this was quite helpful for me as I can get a live reaction of any bugs or pain points that I wasn't able to address during development. 

Just to clarify on some points of confusion, the quests aren't random unfortunately but I had initially planned for them to be random in a rogue like type of way, but due to the time limit of the jam I wasn't able to follow through with it. And I think because I planned the game around independent scenarios, my writing suffered quite a bit for it.  

The reason why the quests may be different for some players is that I have conditions based on classes for 1 quest (the thief quest). Essentially, you won't have that quest if you picked rogue as you are already the king with the kingdom's thieves working for you, but if you were a separate class you would have it and can recruit the thieves at the end. Basically, it would play out similar to like Live A Live's ninja chapter where if you kept your kill count low, you could recruit the thieves at the end of the mission and unlock lockpicking.

Another point is regarding how levelling and skills work in the game. I don't have traditional levelling in the game, and my characters develop based on the actions they perform similar to FF2. So if you do physical attacks more your Attack attribute increase and if you use magic spells your MP increase, etc. I also have a system where depending on the skill you use, you could potentially learn new skills. Such as if you used fire you have a chance of learning Fire 2. 

I think one of the reasons why the game was so easy was that I was unable to properly balance the way skills are obtained so you could beat the game more easily by getting strong skills early. But I think with properly balancing later I should be able to make the combat better later. However, I must confess that I was worried that, since this is a game jam, I would make it too hard for people to complete so that's partially why it was so easy.

With regards to the permadeath system, I have a limited amount of LP points for each character and every time a character would die they would lose 1 point. Once these points are all used up the character is permanently gone. In addition to this, enemies can attack knocked out characters in battle to decrease their LP points so it incentivises the player to revive their characters quickly. Watching the stream was quite helpful because it showed that I should balance the stun mechanics a bit better so that the player can revive more easily instead of being stun locked. Also your idea of making a character sacrifice at the Myconid quest is brilliant and I think I am planning on including it in the post jam version. I definitely had a plan to make a part where you are forced to sacrifice a character but didn't know where to put it, so this helps.

And thank you so much for showing the bug regarding the Myconid quest, what should have happened was that the fast travel point for the Myconid village would have been removed after the quest so you can't trigger it again but I think I didn't put the removal command before the transfer back to the palace so that's why it's still there. I will definitely fix this later.

All in all, thank you for playing it anyways. And sorry for not being able to balance the gameplay properly! I think I bit off on a bit more than I can chew regarding my ideas for the game jam so there were many things that I wanted to fine tune and include but couldn't.

I quite liked the horror tone the game was going for and how things got progressively darker as it became more dangerous to enter the mines. And the custom art used the game had a nice charm to it. The stealth mechanic was also quite interesting, but I would prefer it if there was a way to get enemy units to stop following me after a point. Because once I am spotted the enemies follow me indefinitely which is a bit rough since I instantly die if they run into me. But since they are relatively easy to avoid, it wasn't that big of an issue.

I think the writing is done quite well and the way it was paced made it interesting to read. I also think it helped the atmospheric setting that you were aiming for with your game. I did encounter a bug where I re-entered my house and the entire screen was black without a way for me to exit. 

The setting and gameplay are so cool. The concept of a rock, paper scissors death game is fun and unique. I haven't played a game made with MZ3D before, so seeing how it works was also quite interesting. 

This game is really good. There are so many things here that appeal to my tastes from the choice based CRPG character customisation in the beginning to the tilesets used (REFMAP is amazing).  Also the very simple but elegant window skin and the way map display names are shown are nice to look at, and I think it helps with the very moody setting of the game. The narration used throughout the game is also interesting.

For the priestess dying part it was because of the perma death mechanic of my game. Basically when you lose all your LP points on a character they are removed from your party and replaced with a reserve unit from your barracks until you no longer have any characters left. So that's why when the priestess died she was replaced with the soldier. 

Also thank you so much about pointing out the issue with the dialogue boxes, I think the reason for this is just bad UI practice when I was making my choices. I used a plugin to adjust the size and location of my choices, but since I wanted it to look like a message box with choices, the plugin only allowed me to hard code the values instead of doing it through a script based off screen size. So while it may look right on my computer I think in some computer screens it will look off.

The Myconid village was intended for you to complete before leaving as you are trapped there by them.

I initially wanted it to have some roguelike elements with the ways quests are presented and each playthrough you will have a slightly different set of quests, but I couldn't implement it in time so that's why it ended up with the current fixed order.

Regardless, thank you for checking my game out. I would definitely keep these feedback in mind when working on similar projects later and when I try to fix the game a bit post-jam. And I am quite glad that you found the story and setting interesting, because I was worried that I couldn’t put as much effort into it as I normally would. 

I quite like the sound effects you used for the game especially for the dialogue and footstep sounds. Also it's great to see another game that also uses CTB and pop up dialog windows. The taller rtp character assets that you used are very cute as well.  

However, when it comes to the UI of the battle window, I wish that when you open the skill window, the actor names window is also hidden. Because now the skill names sometimes overlap with names of the player characters and that is a bit hard to look at. Also whenever I died, I had to watch the opening cutscene again instead of being able to immediately load a save which I would prefer.

Overall, I think the setting is quite interesting and is very cool that I get to play as a skeleton character.

The music in the title screen is so good. It almost reminds me of like a Tim Follin song. I also liked how the combat is quite hard, so that I am more considerate about my actions for every encounter.  Shield bash also feels quite fun to use.

I really liked the way the intro was set up with the camera work. The character customisation is quite interesting as well and helped compliment the crafting system.

I love the humour in this game. 

The voice acting for the narration was well done and I liked how the events were set up in the game. I also found it interesting how it was kind of like a visual novel with how the narrative/descriptive sections were included in the game. The use of lighting also helped with setting the mood for the game with the music. The story was also decent and I like how it worked with the gameplay to make things get progressively harder.

I really like the intro section of the game with the CGs and the atmosphere was well done.  The doctor kind of caught me off guard and I wish there was a way for me to save my progress before I died, since I had to do everything over after that.

I love the art style of the game, and I thought the fact that it was a side scroller was quite interesting. I do wish that the directions were a bit clearer as I was lost and didn't know how to continue.

I had to use a lot of jp plugins for it. The main ones are the Formation System plugin, this one for Glimmers and this one for Attribute Growths.

Ohh yeah I agree about the issue with the Myconids. I thought that since I allow the player to use 5 party members, enemy counts should be slightly higher but I think this balancing gets impacted with the Myconid part since they like to spam status effects  and you have to fight all of them so it will end up being a bit tedious. 

However, a part of me did want to make it somewhat long since you are essentially wiping out their entire tribe and to make the sacrificial decision feel easy to do but with implied consequences.  But yes that's definitely a part that needs better balancing.

But thank you regardless for checking out my game. It's very interesting to hear other people’s thoughts on it.

Note. There's a small UI bug regarding the functionality of my FixedLeader plugin. You can replace it with the fixed version below or remove the portion of the code regarding  the fixed menu display order.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YZJa7Jn3U4V9nBD2q4uWnjyeRjWj0g3W/view?usp=drive... 

Thank you! Because of the time limit of the game jam I had to make a bit of a sacrifice when it comes to the writing and decision making. But ideally, it would have been almost like a CRPG in terms of choice and consequence. If I ever expand on the game or do a similar idea for a future project, I will definitely make visible consequences for those choices.

That's fair. The rtp facesets are a bit lacking when it comes to animals. I think Kasumi is probably my favourite out of the characters. I found her to be quite funny during my playthrough. 

Ohh, what I meant by the shops, were the shops in the village rather than the overworld. Like you would get money from the enemies  during your escape and use it at the village. BUT there was supposed to be another town at the port. I didn't consider the idea of going back to the village once you start your journey but yeah that is something I should have included.

And thank you so much for liking the way it was set up. I wanted to play with gameplay and storytelling a bit in the beginning, where initially things are quite difficult and you would die quickly if you aren't careful, but things would end up getting slightly easier once you get Kasey to help relieve the tension a bit.  The encounter is actually like an optional super boss that you can beat if you plan carefully with Kasey but it is intentionally set to be hard to accomplish. 

I definitely wouldn't have been able to make the visuals as interesting if it wasn't for the fantastic rtp modifications and assets by the community. Which is a bit sad considering the closure of the forums. 

Hey, thank you for checking it out and yeah there was a quite a few points where it was a bit rushed. I had initially planned for like a steal skill to get gold from enemies and to have a plugin to adjust the escape rates for the enemies but I just ended up using RPG Maker's default one instead. Ideally, with the gold obtained from fighting the enemies, you could have enough to buy from the shops.

Also yeah the Kasey ending should not have occurred prematurely. I actually had like half the game left after you entered the house lol,  but I had to cut it out because of time. But I am glad that the auto save feature came in handy. 

And thank you for mentioning the issue about not knowing how to progress in the overworld. I thought having the event triggers at the entrance of the castle would have been clear, but I should have expanded the detection area to perhaps the entire castle so that the player can more easily reach the target.

I played the game and thought the idea of having 5 party members at once was quite interesting. And the overall moody tone of the game was done well with the music choices. However, an issue I noticed is that there are some moments when the gauges exit the UI. And I think it would be better if there was a face graphic for Noah. 

I am not familiar with the set up for your project, but maybe you can try this plugin: NUUN_BattleGaugeWidthFix.js. It might fix the out of frame gauges bug when you have more than 4 party members. 

Another issue which may be a bug? is that when I am near the beach home, the "I can see it! The Beach home of my Best Friend!" conversation keeps repeating whenever I land on a particular tile. I think this is because the touch event that triggers the dialogue did not properly change it's self-switch to a page that doesn't cause the trigger after the first interaction.

Hey, I played your game recently and thought that it was very charming. I like how so many of the characters have an initial dialogue and another for when the player continues to speak with them. And I think you did a good job of balancing the lighthearted parts with the more serious theme focused moments. 

I'd love to see what you think of my game.

Have you tried downloading it through the itch app? I also ended up facing some problems when I downloaded it directly. 

I wasn't able to create a windows build on time as I was having some issues with packaging and only finished my mac build.

Hey, the idea for your game is great, and trying to get a new high score is very rewarding. Swapping the ability to attack really makes the game fun to go through. But I feel as though it was quite difficult to control the ship.

The music and the art style were great and the bunny is really cute. The reversed angry birds idea is great as well.

I wasn't sure where I was supposed to shoot but I liked the role reversal of you playing as the bullet instead.

Hey this is a really great idea and I really enjoyed how you implemented the idea of role reversals. I really liked the risk factor of the time delay for switching between the driver and the car as the obstacles are approaching fast and I think it helps you to be careful with your decision on when to switch.

I liked the simple pixel art style used for the game. I think it fits quite well especially with the music used. I am not quite sure what it was but there were some points where it felt like there was an invisible border and I couldn't jump through the area but aside from that I think its a great first game.

Hey, I just played your game and realised that we actually have pretty similar ideas of reversing a tower defence game. I think your units look quite good and I like the idea behind them. I think the main problem I have is that after a certain point in the map I am unable to place any units, however, there isn't really much of a visual indicator to let me know where the point is. 

I played the demo and thought that it was quite good. I am really interested in seeing how the story unfolds especially with the dynamic between the two sides. Good luck, and hopefully you will be able to successfully finish the episodes.

This was a really good game. I am really looking forward to seeing what you make later on. Good Job!