itch.io

Thank you for trying the game! Yes, that area of the game does lag for a lot of people: I will work on optimizing that part of the game better. That was one of the earlier bits of content I made, so the events I used to program it could be a lot cleaner. I appreciate the feedback and I hope you'll look out for new updates!

Thank you for the thoughtful post! 

• "Cycling through enemies to hit was very odd. There was a slime and a bat. While targeting the bat and pressing left to go to the slime, it went to Rose. Very disorienting."

Yes, this is a known issue. I'm working on fixing the targeting so that moving from left to right does not switch rows from the player's party to the enemies. It is one of my highest priorities to fix this. I'm very sorry about that.

• The enemies on the overworld move incredibly fast, and once I realized that they gave no exp, that made each battle pretty annoying

Yes, there is no level up system in the game for the player characters. Once you unlock necromancy, summons DO level up and gain xp from those encounters. They at least give crafting materials, but I can consider reducing the number of overworld enemies in the Phurston cave.

• The battle system as it stand right now is very slow. from clicking to attack and waiting for each thing to carry out took a little bit longer then what I would have wanted it to.

Understandable. I will look into ways to speed up the combat animations so it's less sluggish!

• The overworld map is filled with buildings, none of which we can enter, so its a little confusing as to what makes something enterable or not.

The only enterable buildings for the time being are the apartment building after you finish the tutorial questline, Phurston Barracks, the Abandoned Castle in East Phurston Outskirts, and the mansion in West Phurston Outskirts after starting A Peel For Help. The overworld buildings are more-so map pieces to make the world feel larger and more lived in: I apologize if that was confusing.

• I stopped playing once the screen stopped updating but I could hear the game was still processing my actions.
  • This happened during the big slime fight in the dungeon when trying to use the main characters buff spells. Not sure if that was the reason, or maybe cause I was going in and out of the window.

Yes, I have noticed this issue: that the game will sometimes freeze during combat. I will have to look into my plugins and see what the culprit might be. I have been aggressively adding plugins that give combat more depth and I suspect one of them is causing issues.

• "The fishing seemed weird just because the second you want a fish, you get a fish. The AFK fishing gets considerably less fish then if I was to just do it myself. Like I can either catch 60 fish, or 1 fish in a minute."

Yes, that is by design. That feature is so you can gather resources while you're at work, or sleeping, or playing another game. That why it's AFK! One of the design pillars of this game is to have both high-activity and low-activity gathering. High-activity gathering is, like you said, catching 60 fish in 1 minute or AoE grinding mobs with the Hunter's Map to gather crafting materials. Low-activity gathering is AFK fishing or scavenging with the Hunter's Map so you can make progress in the game when you otherwise wouldn't be able to. 

 - "I like that summons stick with the party and level-up."

Thank you. Summons leveling up and having their own unique roles in battle is one of the combat features I'm most excited about developing. I will be expanding on that greatly in the coming patches.

 - "There are a lot of items, and I do like that I can craft them in the field, but it's a little underwhelming when some of the items that I have access to (at least early on) basically all do the same thing - bat wings and rat meat have the same effect, and other items only offer tiny changes in outcome. I know the game is working with small numbers, but having options for +3 HP/MP vs +4 HP/MP vs +5 HP/MP feels like bloat, not opportunity. Most of the items so far also feel pretty standard; HP/MP regen, stat boosts."

Yes, the early items are very close in terms of the HP and MP that they're capable of healing. This is partly a function of the fact that the numbers are so small. In my experience, its not actually bloat. They are intended to have different niches: 3 HP/MP items are meant to be gathered more quickly and require less time navigating crafting scenes to make, as well as resources. They are meant to be the time-efficient item to use, with 4 HP items being medium time, and 5 HP items being the most expensive to gather and craft in terms of time and resources. This does end up being relevant as, at certain thresholds, being efficient means using the lower tier items, as higher-tier items will over-heal and thus wasting time and resources to craft. I will add more unique craft-able items over the course of the game. Also, 5 HP items are potions, which can only combine with foods when making soups to make high HP/MP healing foods, and food can only combine with potions to make middling HP/MP consumables that heal status conditions or give bonuses like barrier. It's part of what makes Life of the Party so versatile and tactical.

 - "Similarly, there's a decent spread of magic spells, but I'm entirely sure if there's any benefit yet to using one over another. Some enemies are maybe weaker to certain elements?"

There are elemental weaknesses: most of the enemies early game have an elemental weakness. A scan system is in development: I was actually playtesting it before I saw your posts. I can't guarantee an ETA on it, but it will show enemy stats, the attacks they can use and their effects, and the elements they are strong and weak against. A Scan system is one of my highest priorities.

 - "It would be nice to have a division in the inventory for ingredients, battle items, and misc items. That way I'm not scrolling through a whole list of fish and monster parts looking for spellbooks to use or what healing items I have left."

I was thinking that myself: I could probably implement that before the next patch.

 - "Does the agility stat have any effect at this point in the game? For all of my battles, my characters went first, and then the monsters."

Yes: while the alpha slime and alpha bat have 1 agility, most of the other alpha monsters in the game have more than 1 agility and will out-speed you if you only have 1. Luck has no effect in the game though, I have no intention of programming anything related to luck and removing it from all interfaces over tie.

 - "Where do I find more gold? I'd like to buy some new abilities, recipes, and supplies."

Gold can be acquired primarily through M.I.L.F. contracts, though you can also get some gold for completing A Peel For Help (250) and defeating Mimi's Dryad in the Abandoned Castle in East Phurston (1000): gold bonuses for learning summons and leveling up summons will be coming in the next patch. The ratio will be 15 gold for each HP of the summon learned and 25 gold for each level of the summon above level 1. As of now, the most efficient gold farming is M.I.L.F. contracts, though.

 - "Enemy scaling could use some work. Random encounters so easy as to be an annoyance, while bosses suddenly spike in HP and damage capabilities, requiring a dozen turns and multiple items. Something in-between would be nice, as a challenge and signpost of increasing difficulty."

This is partly by design. The intended gameplay loop is that basic enemies are meant to be AoE farmed with the Hunter's Map for crafting materials that are used to fight Alpha monsters to get gear upgrades. Also, using consumable items is the intended way to heal in combat: primarily through the use of Life of the Party to make consumable items apply to your whole party and not just the user. I can look into adding some more intermediate enemies, but the enemy scaling is by design: they both have different roles in the games combat system.

 - "Quests could also use some work. Right now most of them are plain and repetitive: running back and forth between two people, fighting the same basic monster half a dozen times, using the same spell over and over again in the same room."

This is also by design. Early quests are intended to be a hidden tutorial: just to introduce the player to the game's core mechanics: fishing, cooking, alchemy, M.I.L.F. contracts, using the Hunter's Map, dungeon crawling, etc. Quests outside of Phurston will be much more difficult with boss fights against Alpha monsters or monsters on par with Alpha monsters in terms of difficulty. 

 - "I think there's too much writing, in multiple senses. Since this is a visual game, you don't need to write any non-dialogue text, especially during conversations. Either convert it to dialogue, show it with the little speech bubbles, or cut it.  And to the extent that dialogue shows the personality of a person, I think you could cut a lot of that too and still get the vibes across. You establish the characters as certain tropes/archetypes early on, there's no need to overdo it. And honestly, since the MC is pretty basic self-insert, I think you'd be fine to make him essentially a silent protagonist. Less talking, quicker cutscenes, and the sooner the player can get to the crafting and battling." 

There is less dialogue going forward, it's mostly to establish the personalities, world build, mix in some humor, etc. I understand going from the end of Sorceress Cavern to the end of The Real Game Begins can drag on a bit, but the game becomes much more a war game with the core gameplay loop of gathering and crafting to fight Alpha monsters with afterwards. The player character is not meant to be a silent protagonist though: he will be updated with more fleshed-out with dialogue and a role in the story.

I hope that answers all your questions. If you have any more, let me know and I will get to them as soon as I can.

Thank you for the very in-depth posts, first of all.

 - "Collision issues/invisible walls in the first dungeon in the upper right area around the  Leather Gloves chest"

Thank you for bringing this to my attention: that dungeon was recently changed, and I must have forgotten to change the regions that restrict player access. I will address that immediately.

 - When learning new abilities at the barracks the text still refers to the players as "Harold"

- I saw that too, I will also fix that immediately.

 - "When on the crafting menu choosing between food, potions, etc.., the 'esc' key doesn't back out but instead acts like the 'enter' key"

I'm aware of this, it's the default keys of RPG Maker: it is annoying and I will look into changing it.

 - "Entering/Exiting areas is inconsistent. For instance. the main town I can enter and leave by just walking over the entrance/exit, but the barracks requires interacting (that is, hitting the interact button) with the door to both enter and exit, and the graveyard can be entered by walking over the tile, but can only be exited by interacting with the exit."

I am aware of this. I would like to make this more consistent in the future, but its not a high priority at the moment.

 - "When moving to different sections of the overworld, I often appear a few tiles into the next section rather than right at the edge. Also, there's a tile south of the barrack that will act like you're trying to leave the area when you're facing east or west rather than south."

 - I am aware of that, leaving the barracks placed the player one tile south of where I intended it to: I have fixed this and it will be applied in the new patch. Moving further into the map is intentional though: as its' currently programmed, transference between maps occurs when the player steps on a tile on the edge of the map, so if you were to transfer to another map and wanted to go back to the previous map you would have to move off the tile and then back on to the map. I understand it is a bit visually jarring, but (as far as I understand) it's the easiest way to program transferring maps and changing this is not a priority for me at the moment.

 -"Not sure if 'Optimize' equipment is working correctly; when I tried it, it gave my main character the staff instead of a sword, and simply didn't equip the leg-guards."

Optimize doesn't work correctly and is a feature I do not intend on keeping in the game: it is a holdover from a plugin pack I haven't removed yet because it's low priority (though will happen) it simply won't work properly in this game. Optimize works very well in games with vertical progression, as one piece of gear will be strictly better than another. As this game has a horizontal progression system that prioritizes situational gearsets, optimize will only work properly in situations where the player has no gear in the slots

- "I had some issues early on with ally-targeting abilities defaulting to targeting the enemy or not allowing me to target certain allies, but I got them work in later battles, so it's possible the issue was on my end."

Yes, I am aware of that and have fixed it: it will be live in the next patch. 

- "While moving from area to area within the tunnel, I was occasionally still getting messages about dropping off rocks/dirt even though I'd finished that part of the quest."

This I am not aware of and I will have to investigate further: thank you for bringing it to my attention.

 - "When you find the girls outside the bar, Rose is unresponsive?"

Yes, she currently has no dialogue. I can add some dialogue for her and a question mark above Emma to highlight you're meant to talk to her and not Rose.

- "While fishing, it doesn't seem like I can interrupt the AFK prematurely?"

You can interrupt the AFK at any point. You have to hold the OK button for a second: this is mentioned in the text box preceding AFK fishing.

Thank you very much for the highly-detailed feedback! If you'd like to join the Discord, I have a link here. https://discord.gg/EGhyBmfF