itch.io

Visually one of the best agdg demos I've played, gameplay felt pretty smooth as well. I think the player character looks really good, I love the attention to detail where he'll point his gun towards the camera when the cursor is over his body.  I also loved how the enemies burst into giblets. The only concern is that it might be a little too similar to Metroid given that even the enemy and UI designs are pretty close matches to their metroid counterparts. It could detract from the feeling of exploring this alien world because of how familiar things look & feel right off the bat, but that might just be a nitpick.

Either way great demo! I look forward to seeing more from this game.

Plays and looks great, the fast movement feels really nice and smooth. If you haven't tested the game with ultrawide monitors I can confirm it seems to work perfectly with one. Nothing really to complain about that others haven't already brought up. Well done!

Hello, I was really excited to give this game a try since I'm also a FE cloner, a few comments:

• When I hit "load game" without any saves the game just froze up on me
• How come when I'm viewing the preview before entering combat, sometimes my unit is on the left and the enemy is on the right but sometimes it's the other way around?
• Not sure if this is a pathfinding bug or just unintuitive but I noticed this:

this enemy is supposed to have 5 movement so I'm not sure why he can't move 1 further down path the 4, do bridges cost 2 move? if so that seems an odd choice to me.

• I had a bug where an enemy moved to a tile where another enemy is already standing. Luckily it didn't seem to mess anything up since the other unit moved off the tile afterwards with no issue.
• Game crashed after selecting my reward for level 4 unfortunately

Overall, besides a few bugs it seems like you've  built a good foundation with the base SRPG mechanics, I'm looking forward to seeing how you flesh out the rougelike elements going forward, since I've seen a lot of discussion on whether rouge-like FE could work.

Oh also It would be nice If when I have multiple debuffs on an enemy it showed multiple at once instead of just flashing one at a time. I've played other rpgm games that do it so I know it's possible.

Hello, ever since you first posted this game I've been looking forward to getting to try it.

First thing I notice, scrollbar doesn't seem necessary on the title screen, you have plenty of room. Although I'm playing with a 1440p monitor so maybe it's just a scaling issue.

Also the screen to name my characters was cut off but luckily I could infer where the enter button is to proceed.

Also I know that arrow keys for movement is a bit of a standard RPGM thing but in my opinion having WASD as an option would be nice.
I generally like the puzzle-ey approach to the enemy encounters.
I found the "confused" mood to be quite overpowered personally but I could've just been getting lucky with it.
Also I randomly encountered this while fighting a random enemy:

which forced me to quit out unfortunately. But luckily wasn't a big deal because of autosave.
I was able to walk straight onto this platform without the ladder which I assume is not intentional:


Also I went back to the spot where you pick up Sarah for the second time by the lake and I was able to interact with the spot she used to be standing and it activated the dialogue as if she was still standing there.
There was a bug where I would get stuck on the computer screen. Luckily I was able to wander around the room blindly and interact with the coffee pot which returned normal visibility. Also the AI chat log entry didn't do anything when I tried it.
Anyway, I played all the way through and had a lot of fun. I like the characters and the general style and the music is great, probably the best agdg music I've heard so far. Keep up the good work!

Hello,

I experienced a few crashes. Not sure what exactly caused them I was just walking or fighting and suddenly the window closes. My character also get stuck on enemies/terrain quite often.

Also I'm assuming they're just placeholders but the dad being palette swapped Vigarde is very strange, same with the rest of the recolored/asset bashed FE sprites but that one just stood out the most.

I don't really feel like I got a good feel for how the game actually plays at all from the first mission since you just have one guy, but I'm assuming that's the end of the demo since it quits out when you return to the boat.

I really like the art style and the world building seems interesting.

The game is unfortunately full of typos, grammar mistakes, strange wording, and awkward conversation flow. I'm assuming english is not your first language, but generally I think this game could've been more enjoyable with a couple more passes of proofreading.

At first when I got to Marche it seemed there was no way forward. I tried replaying and picked some different dialogue which seemed to unlock another combat mission that wasn't available before. Unfortunately this new mission locked up on me, I think I selected to move into a section of the map at the same time enemies moved there which caused it to lock up? though I'm not entirely sure.

Generally, I think this game has some cool potential so keep at it.

Looks pretty polished, here are a few comments:

• I also tried using controller (Dualsense) since the tutorial gave controller inputs as well but it wasn't working for me.
• Fullscreen didn't work. I would go into fullscreen in the settings but then when I back out of the menu it would revert back to windowed.
• Character feels a bit fast which makes them a bit unwieldy to control, especially when jumping.
• This game throws quite a lot of enemies at you, maybe it's just what you're going for but it felt a little over-the-top to me, especially in just the first level.
• It seems like there's no input delay on the pogo bounce attack so you can mash really fast and  and do the attack like a bunch of times in a second. I have no clue if this even does enough damage for it to matter balance-wise but thought it was worth mentioning.

I played this a while back and the game feels a lot smoother and more fun than it did months ago. Some comments:

• Maybe it's just because of how I play but boss balancing seemed a bit inconsistent, my first try I got to the first boss room and got oneshot by the mancubus guy with a rocket launcher. I got the same guy my next run through and was able to just barely scrape by with 3 health. Next run I got some wierd lava man with claw hands that jumped around and was completely non threatening. I also got the spider guy that jumps around at the end of the second cathedral who was similarly easy. Not sure if the mancubus guy is supposed to be harder than the others or if I'm dumb and missing something with that guy.
• being able to kill enemies before they spawn feels cheap
• I remember complaining about the dash last time I played but it seems alright now
• The sword felt a bit OP because I could just swing into a big clump of enemies and get a bunch of health and armor, but I was only playing on normal mode so maybe it's fine as is
• When the Cacodemon looking guys and the metal spider guys use the attack that splashes a bunch of projectiles around them all the projectiles making an impact sound at once is very loud
• Random upgrade system is good, but I'm not sure what some of the upgrades do. For example I assume that luck has to do with item drops and maybe crit rates? but I'm not sure if it affects anything else.

Had a lot of fun, just a few comments.

• This could just be me being dumb, but it wasn't clear to me that cards that do effect damage can target players. This led me to not those cards when my opponent had no monsters on the field because I assumed I would be forced to target one of my own monsters if summoned since my opponent would have no valid targets.
• There is some jank with the "boss" stages. It seems they get to go first, since it says enemy turn, but then they don't do anything, but I'm able to play cards. Then once I play a card they do their turn like normal and then it goes to my turn normally. This happened every time for me so I'm not sure what the steps are to reproduce the issue.
• I feel like there should be some more visual distinction between the spell and monster cards besides just the border. I think it would help if the spell card art wasn't just characters standing around like the monster art. Not sure about other card games but in yugioh a lot of the spell/traps focus more on inanimate objects, characters doing specific actions, or action scenes (though there are many exceptions) which I think could help set them apart from the sea of AI generated fantasy character portraits.
• UIs are very nice and seem quite polished

Overall, keep up the good work!

Interesting game, I had fun. Here are my comments:

• lava being an insta-kill feels a bit cheap with the character being as fast as he is
• I think I got the items figured out. Sword, Heart and shield are obvious but it seems hourglass is move speed and gun(?) is fire rate? It was a bit hard to tell the difference before and after so I wasn't quite sure. Also if the gun is actually a gun it's kinda hard to tell.
• Is there any compelling reason to pick one room over the other? the rooms all seem to be randomly generated on entry so it's not like I can create a mental map of the are in my head.

Thanks for playing again! I was hoping I'd get at least one or two returning players.

I've gotten a few comments about adding esc as an alternative to the back button so I'll probably add that for next time. Same with click for advance dialogue. I remember getting that last time as well but I guess I had forgotten about that by the time I was done with the rest of the control changes.

I agree that the actions in dialogue feel unnatural how they are now. A few VNs I like do it but I think the reason those feel natural but mine doesn't is because mine is randomly switching to a 3rd person omniscient narrator whereas most VNs that do the same thing are strictly first person with first person narration. I think it's unfortunately necessary for now unless I want to draw/3d animate everything that happens between chapters that isn't standing around and talking and changing scenes, but I can play around to find out how to make it less akward.

Aeaea is an island from greek mythology it's pronounced aye-ee-ah. I know that there's a weird mix of greco-roman and germanic-y names but I generally try stay either within those two groups or things that are at least somewhat related.

>Why do I have 2 Leannes and 2 Leonards to fight with in the Unit Screen?

sounds like a bug. I can look into it.

>Cassius starts his first Mission as a Knight without a Weapon? Seriously?

Based on later comment you must've accidentally a stored it without realizing.

>Using Healing Potion didn't work, unless I did it wrong. There seemed to be something off with the Inventory. Anyhow, Party died, due to no Weapon on one Member and failed healing Potion. 

>Enemies were also able to just move on the Tile of my Healer after I used the Potion.

Sounds like the same inventory bug that others ran into. Sorry about that, I think have it fixed locally but never hotpatched because I want to do more testing first.

>Theres no Way to restart a Battle, you'll have to sit it through once a Person dies/you reached a loosing State, and have to wait until everyones dead.

nope sorry. I'll probably add a "retry" button to the same menu with the end turn button.

>No new Missions?

Unfortunately, I had planned to add at least 2 more but I didn't end up having time for this DD.

Thanks for playing! Sorry that the UIs where messed up on Linux, I'll maybe try out a proper Linux build next time.

It looks like you also encountered the same inventory menu bug that other's had trouble with, so sorry about that one as well.

Otherwise thanks for the feedback, it seems a lot of my systems are still unclear so I'll so what I can do to make the onboarding experience a bit easier.

I'll also see what I can do about the general story pacing, it's just a bit hard syncing it up with the gameplay pacing. I feel like I need to introduce a bunch of characters to get deploy count higher, because the game is more fun when you have a bigger army, and maps are harder to design when the player has less units because the they will have way less room for mistakes (it'd probably help if I didn't split the party so early).

As far as a figure I think that would be neat if you wouldn't mind. Generally for stuff like this the character I prefer is Simone because I like to see her as the "mascot" character for my game, but if you do decide to do a figurine you can use whoever you want.

Thanks for deciding to give the game a second try. Sorry for the issues the first time.

Perspective on character art in general is kinda fucked on the art. Every time I make a new one I try have a bunch of the other portraits pulled up in the same file next to it so I can look at them side by side and make sure everything lines up but it always ends up somewhat messed up. Something I have to work on I guess. I think Duke Circe and Estelle are the worst in terms of looking out of place.

You actually can see Lucerne's buff on her stat page but I get that it may not be that intuitive, you have to hover over the skill icon which should show a popup (though there is an issue where it will go off the side on 4k monitors if that's what you're using). I'll try to make skills more obvious next time.

Sorry about the heal staff bug. Another anon found it the other day and I wasn't able to figure out how it worked until earlier today. I've already fixed it on my end but I wasn't going to release a hotpatch because I want to do some more extensive testing to make sure the fix didn't introduce a new bug.

You should've been able to use the potion, the keyboard controls for the inventory menu where a little janked in the build, sorry about that. As with above I think I've got that fixed but I'm still testing.

For the last mission I agree that the story-gameplay synergy could be a little better.  Maybe I can have it so Euphemia is physically blocking off the exit... I'll have to play around with it.

Thanks for the story praise, it's honestly the last thing I was expecting this DD. And spicing up the combat is going to be my next big goal because I feel it is a little plain at the moment.

Right click is back and wasd is move, not arrow keys.

What resolution are you playing on? I've done absolutely 0 testing with non-16:9 monitors so that may be the problem.

I played through level 11. Pretty cool but nothing too challenging yet.

In the level that introduces the  the green paths you can make one of them only created paths for "intended" angles to shoot from and when you did it wrong it would just do nothing. I found this pretty unintuitive because earlier in the level I could do the path wrong but it would still appear, so I thought it was a bug at first.

Also you can glitch into it if you shoot it then stand on the spot where it was then reload. It didn't really let me cheese the level or anything but since you normally can't walk through them I assume it's not supposed to work like that.

Also do some rooms have multiple intended solutions? Because in the last room of level 11 there was a little hole in the wall by the one way door that I assumed was for shooting the golden eye because it was lined up perfectly but then it never ended up needing to use it for anything so I wasn't really sure why that is there for. If it's a "secret exit" that unlocks extra levels or something like that then I think it would be better if stuff like that is very clearly not a part of the main puzzle.

Yep, I just checked in the editor and she's somehow missing the invisible skill that's supposed to give her 999 bonus avoid in combat, thanks.

Thanks for playing!

Did you actually game over from that, or did you just see it in the "conditions"? I ask because it's supposed to be rigged to be impossible (so the player has a sense of urgency even though there's no actual danger) so if the villager was able to die for you that's a bug and I can look into it.

Permadeath is supposed to be a thing in this game but there's no way to stop people from alt+f4ing whenever a character dies so I could add a "quit to menu" or "restart chapter" to at least move the process along a little quicker.

Checking attack ranges is a bit obtuse right now. You can see the range of the currently equipped weapon by "inspecting" on it in any of the menus that show the inventory, along with other stats, like might (damage) and weight.

>8/10, would commit warcrimes with Lucerne

Oh boy, you'll like what happens in the next chapter then ;)

No reason to apologize, bug hunting is half the fun of DD!

Yeah sure, I'm playing on windows and I went to buy an attack speed upgrade. I already had a few stacks of the attack speed upgrade from leveling up so maybe that has something to do with it.

Also I gave the game another try, I got up to the boss but he disappeared with a sliver of health so I couldn't get into the next room.

Pretty fun game! I had fun experimenting with all the different shooting modes. I think it would be nice if I could swap between them with the scroll wheel instead of having to use the num keys.

It's also a bit hard to stop to pick up enemy drops. I see that handling is a stat so maybe that's by design but it's just a little annoying at the moment. I also felt like the sniper was way more powerful than everything else.

Also I have no idea what any of the stats do.

I don't know what your plans are for this game but this seems like it'd be a lot of fun once the multiplayer is in and I can swim around and fight other players .

Cute little game, here are some of the issues I encountered:

• Arrow keys for menu traversal makes no sense, let me use wasd and also just let me click with the mouse in the options menu like you can in the main menu. It's also weird how in the main menu you can hover over something but the option that was in the selected state from the arrow keys stays selected.
• There is a lot of very strange wording in this game. I'm assuming english isn't your first language.
• If a room starts out with a narrow hallway early on and one of the purple guys spawns you're basically screwed
• Groups of enemies aren't really any more threatening than a single enemy, you just heard them together and shoot at them backwards as you move then do an extra at the end to collect all the souls.
• Slimes just sit there and do there own thing so hunting them all down to unlock the door after I've already defeated all the real enemies just feels like a chore.
• Buying upgrades in the hub crashes the game for me.

I didn't expect much because of the meme-theming and souls parody aspect but I thought it was quite enjoyable. I've never played VS or any of it's clones, so I'm not sure what's unique to this game and what's a genre staple.

I like the rat wall as a way to check player progression early. Once I knew it was coming, it made deciding early upgrades more interesting, since I have to at least get some offensive moves if I want to be able to get past it, but I also want to stock up on movement and defensive upgrades while enemies are still sparse.

You could make the XP progression a little more obvious. Based on what enemies drop them I assume that the progression goes light blue -> dark blue -> green, but some visual differentiation besides color could help make it obvious that it's more valuable when you see it the first time.

I also felt like the XP progression ground to a halt after the crossbow guys show up, but that could just be because I'm bad.

The magic circle having infinite range seems a little not right, it feels a bit cheesy to beat up the archers from the other side of the map while also whittling down the herd of rats, mushrooms, and soldiers I've accumulated.

All in all, pretty solid. I hope that one day I can be forgiven.

Thanks for playing!

I've been getting a lot of camera comments (both here and in the threads) so I think experimenting with it will be a big priority going forward.

In terms of attacking, I think the source of your confusion is that a diagonal counts as 2 spaces. So units with 2 or 1-2 range weapons (bows or tomes) can only attack at the diagonals that share a corner with the tile the enemy is on. When you're in the screen where you select an attack target there should be an outline showing the unit's attack radius.

Counterattacks occur if the defending unit can attack at the range your attacking from, so if you attack a bow from 2 range with a tome they can counter but if you attack them at 1 range they can't.

Follow up attacks, occur when you're attack speed is 5 or more higher than your opponent's. Attack speed is a combination of a unit's speed and encumbrance penalties incurred by using a weapon higher than the unit's constitution stat. This part would've been more obvious if you had a chance to look at the stat screen, but since you were playing on laptop you weren't able to do that.

These interactions are lifted 1:1 from Fire Emblem so I'm likely not going to change them drastically but I'll see what I can do to make it more obvious to players.

Thanks for playing!

I wasn't actually going for a flash game aesthetic, I was moreso trying to replicate the look of low-budget VNs like Higurashi, Umineko, and Tsukihime, but the fact that it currently gives off flash game vibes is good to note.

I'm still fiddling with the camera movement. I think for next time I want to experiment with free camera movement similar to FE3H.

Thanks for the feedback!

By teleport I mean that I go inside the building as if I had gone through the door normally.

Okay: real feedback now that can actually move:

This game is a bit tricky to play. I get what the game wants me to do (spam parry to gain speed and go drill mode) but I feel like the level is a bit chaotic for a first level where I'm supposed to be learning the mechanics (if it is even meant to be a first level and not just the level for demo purposes).

I'd also recommend changing the cursor to something that stands out a bit more because I would sometimes loose it's position in all the chaos onscreen.

Overall this seems like it could be interesting once it clicks, but getting to that point is a bit of a bumpy ride.

Nice Morrowind music and sound effects lol.

Generally I feel like the combat is very slow. I get you're going for a oldschool feel but it feels like I'm playing Morrowind on 0.5 playback speed. All of the animations are generally extremely lethargic and don't any weight to them.

I'm also not really a fan of being able to cancel out of charged attacks with the dodge, I feel like it ruins the inherent risk that would usually be associated with charging up an attack.

Also sometimes when I climbed on top of buildings I would teleport inside them (I figure that's a worldgen problem where the boundary for the door isn't being placed right instead of a bug with the climbing itself).

I never played your last game so I don't really have a reference for what's different besides the billboard enemies getting swapped out for full 3d, but I think this is a pretty good start for your new project.

Ahhh, I do have a Bluetooth Controller connected. Thanks, I'll disconnect it and take another stab at it.

Somehow, it seems like the the movement is completely broken for me. I'm not sure how that could be the cause since others seem to be running the game fine but basically when  I hold the A or D key all the character does is a microscopic nudge in the direction.

I thought this game was very solid so I don't have much to say.

I went straight into it without reading the page and had no idea that there was a dash button for the first couple runs, and it isn't obvious what all the icons mean when selecting the next stage.

This game is very addicting though, it reminds me of Noita.

Fun little game. Probably one of the best looking agdg games I've seen in terms of just visuals. Here are some of the issues I noticed:

• The crossbow guys are kinda annoying to hit as they run away
• Character switching on the main menu isn't working for me
• Enemies are very easy to stunlock
• Enemies are generally very slow and non-threatening
• Player also feels pretty slow for this type of game
• the mid-air downward slam move can cause enemies to get stuck in the floor.
• Got to a dead end with one of the big guys and figured the demo was over. Only came back because I saw other comments talking about a boss.
• The shotgun is extremely overpowered, I felt the best way to deal with every encounter was just kill all the crossbow guys first and then stand in place and wait for the rest of the enemies to attack so I could riposte them, some of the other moves where cool like the upward kick thing but the game didn't really to experiment with the moveset.
• Sometimes the character just randomly changes direction when I shotgun or use the sword. It looks like you have a feature that automatically turns the character away if you attack facing the wall so I'm assuming that's the culprit for this issue.
• The doors are super fucked, sometimes they took a very long time to open, sometimes I see them close then immediately open again. The crossbow guys sometimes phased right through them and I had to bait them back out so I could hit them.
• Terrain is easy to get caught on
• I don't get the point of having empty hallways between encounters
• some of the vfx caused my game to lag (especially the riposte effects) and I have a pretty powerful computer
• In the boss fight I can't tell which vfx are just there to look cool and what's an attack, since it all has the same transparent reddish pink look.
• You can very easily just mash left-click on the boss and you'll kill her before she kills you (or at least I tried it and it worked first try).
• The most important issue: boob mode should not be an option it should just be how the game is

I hope this doesn't come off as too negative, the game looks like a very promising start and the character models are very nice.

Thanks for playing!

Currently there is no map dialogue with the villager (there was on my last demo but I've refactored how dialogue works since then and didn't get time to update talk targets on the map to work with the new changes). Also they're not supposed to target her. In my last demo they did and I felt like it was too much for the first real map (especially because a lot of the people playing weren't already familiar with this type of game), so I kept her in as fake anti-turtling incentive (so players may try to play fast because they think they need to save her, despite her not actually being in any danger) for now.

I'm not planning on porting over mechanics like pair-up/rescue from FE but I do have some similar mechanics planned, they just fell out of scope for this demo.

Different expressions are also planned for future demos I just didn't do it this time because art is the bane of my existence.

>I guess there's no way to save Simone

You're welcome to try ;)

I can't believe we're referencing fucking yaoi paddles in the year of our lord 2023

It was a bit annoying to track down the last few fujos in the main area and I found that I could shoot during level transitions but besides that pretty solid game.

The game looks very polished but I'm experiencing some jankiness from the UI. I went into the settings but when I hit the escape button the settings stayed up on screen but the game unpaused and I could move around again. Also the tutorial skulls show the default text before filling in with the proper tutorial text after about a second when I played.

Additionally the default controls of QER for the 3 abilities seems a little awkward, I didn't see an option for key rebinding but I feel like it would be a great addition if it's not already in and I just missed it.

Also I really liked the music.

There's not much to do quite yet, but the controls are quite responsive and fun to experiment with. Jumping while going up slopes felt not quite right, and I ran into a bug where after drowning I would drown a second time on the respawn spot, but otherwise I thought the game was quite cute and look forward to giving it another try when there's a bit more stuff to do in it.

Game was a bit short so not much to say

• UI was very functional though a bit plain
• Combat was very barebones, though I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a large focus of the game or a means to an end to facilitate the fantasy world
• Kept accidentally pressing dialogue options when just trying to advance text

First and foremost, the character sprites are very small, I feel like they can be blown up way more, even if it means parts of their legs and feet get cut off by the bottom of the screen. Adjusting the size of the text box could help with this since there is a lot of padding, especially on the right side, which is a waste of screen space.

Additionally a log feature would be very much appreciated because I like to go back and reread things, though I have never worked with renpy myself so I don't know if that's a feature it comes with out of the box or not.

I'm sure you've just not gotten to this yet, but sound effects and other effects could really bring this game to life, some impact sounds and screenshake when Wren hits Gabriel when they first meet for example.

The found myself really interested in the beginning when you're first setting up the world and characters, and then the story falls into a bit of a lull towards the end of day two, where I'm not learning that much new about each characters, but some of my favorite VNs are like that so I think it's somewhat of a necessary evil for fostering familiarity with the characters.

This may be personal preference but I also think the amount of screen time each girl gets is a bit lopsided. Outside of sections where I got to chose which character I wanted to spend time with, it seemed like Sera and Aria had more interaction with Gabriel, whereas I don't think I really interacted with Clover much at all. Obviously, I could've selected her dialogue options but I feel like there should be more of a "hook" for each girl along the main path so I'm interested enough to check out their scenes.

I also noticed a small typo here where Sera is talking about Eva but Eva is listed as the speaker:

and one last criticism: the preferences on the main menu are white on white which makes it unreasonably difficulty to read:

Despite these criticisms, I think you have a nice unique VN with a lot of potential here. I wouldn't have spent the time to write all those if I didn't also really like it. The character designs are great and I think the school uniform is very stylish. If all of the finalized sprites are expressive as Tahlia's sprite was, this game is going to have a lot of charm and character. I really dig the atmosphere in this game, it's very cozy, especially in the very beginning. Based on the setup you've provided there are lots of interesting directions this VN could take, so I'll definitely be keeping an eye on any future progress.