There is just no comment from Drifty, and I couldn't find the game on the streams (given that there were several streams, maybe I just didn't find it).
"The game kind of just ends on a weird note. I was expecting a fight or something, but it just ended there. Definitely felt like there could have been a "To be continued..." or "What do you image her fate to be?" sort of line at least."
In fact, in the Russian version, after the screen is darkened, the credits should was began, but for some reason in the English version, it immediately throws it into the main menu. But yes, this is the end of the game. The fact is that the Forged Page is the background of Eltira. Eltira will appear in my main game as a minor character, which is under development.
Initially, I planned to make the battle closer to the end (partly for this reason, the Eltira's archery skill was mentioned). But I had to abandon this idea because of lack of time.
And it's a bad idea to include only one battle in an one hour-long game. I believe that there should be at least 3 battles. A preparatory easy battle, an average one for "mastering the gameplay", and the final one. And if I immediately throw a difficult, final battle at the player , it will confuse the player, in my opinion.
But one way or another, I consider the story finished, especially if we perceive this game as the speech of Eltira's story for the mysterious interlocutor in the tavern.
About a bump: Yes, initially I just didn't pay attention to it. I decided not to bother with this moment and just assumed that Eltira was walking with her eyes closed for a while :)
As for the mother... Well, I deliberately made her such a character. Even considering the fact that someone drove her crazy, this does not justify her. In my opinion.
Thank you so much for your first impressions! Indeed, there is not much direct gameplay in my game, so I deleted my post, considering that it would be quite boring for such a video format :) The reason is that I wanted to show the story in the first place. Initially, I was going to add more gameplay, but there is a 1-hour limit to the GameJam. Therefore, the plot remained a priority for me. But if suddenly later there is a desire to finish playing not on the record, then just about 20 minutes after the start of the game, a more intense plot begins :)
P.S. And yes, about the slow movements of the characters in some moments - it seemed to me that this was the optimal speed of a simple step movement. Especially during cutscenes. If everyone moved like a Flash, it would go against the overall dynamics of the game.
I really liked the visual part of the game and the atmosphere. You did your best. Perhaps you should have made the game a little lighter, and it would have been absolutely wonderful. But this is a matter of taste:)
The disadvantages include the high difficult of the battles, which, unfortunately, also forced me to interrupt the game. Perhaps, if I have the mood, I will try to complete it :)
And also, I think that all the replicas should have been made from the bottom or from the top of the screen. But not at the same time from above and below. It's hard to switch attention, at least for me. Perhaps this does not cause any inconvenience to someone.
In any case, I see that you have put a lot of effort into your game, and in general I have pleasant impressions about it!
Well, I played your game and in general, I have quite pleasant impressions.
But first about the disadvantages:)
- An unnecessarily detailed control tutorial at the very beginning of the game, given that at the moment the mechanics of the game are extremely simple, and also, the gameplay itself begins only after about 6 minutes of the game.
- Inability to control the mouse. Yes, in some games it is really acceptable to disable mouse control since certain game mechanics will work correctly only with the keyboard/gamepad. But in this case, I don't see a good reason to deprive the player of mouse control (even during dialogues).
- The same applies to saves. In my opinion, there is no reason in the current demo for the inability to save at the player's request.
- Probably, this is not exactly a disadvantage, but I was somewhat confused by the emphasis on toilets in this game: D
Otherwise, the game is quite good, and I think both the graphics and everything. the rest will be improved if the game continues to be developed.
I really appreciated the fact that you paid a lot of attention to the variety of character sprite animations. Head turns, sv_battlers, and even reflection in the mirror (which doesn't work so well in my game).
I think I should take an example from you in this regard. I really liked it!
The plot is not the most unique, but if you try, you can come up with something really interesting. Moreover, this is only a demo.
The locations themselves are made at a fairly normal level, and I would advise you to try to improve them, for example, using parallax mapping. But as I noticed, you didn't use plugins in your game. So, if you want to create your own game without using plugins, then you will probably try to get the most out of the RMMZ engine! :)
All the positive and negative aspects of the game have already been described in detail before me, so I will only say from myself that I really liked your game. Very sincere, light (in terms of perception, atmosphere), and beautiful.
I would also like to note that I liked your characters created in the generator. As far as I have noticed, not everyone manages to create beautiful, organic characters, but you have more than succeeded!
Thank you for a great game, it will be one of the examples of what I (and other developers) need to strive for in terms of quality :)
Personally, it was not a big problem for me that the fights go on for a long time.
The first fight may feel too long, but in such cases, the presence of dialogues in the battle helps well. But at some point I realized that the goal of this fight is not so much to win, but to stay alive. And this is quite an interesting move, although perhaps not everyone will like it. Perhaps you should have added some simple battle before the battle with the Serpent, so as not to immediately frighten the players with such a powerful battle, and let them first get acquainted with the abilities of the characters.
But in fact, this is a matter of perception of each person individually:)
I understood your opinion about the main character and the characters. And I agree that a loving mother would not become such a person, as you said, because of simple facts. But according to my idea, this should be a kind of drama. In addition, she did not become like this overnight, she was fueled by paranoia, lies and many other negative emotions over the years. Well, there were a lot of fools among kings and queens in real history: (
About Russian - actually, that's why there is an English version :) I apologize only for the fact that the translation was not as high-quality as it could have been. I had to translate literally on the last night before the deadline...: ( I have already found some translation errors, but I hope that they did not spoil your opinion about the game too much.
And to be honest, I'm scared that you passed the game for almost 2 hours, I hope the judges will pass it faster :D When I checked the duration of the final version of the game, it took me about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Obviously, everyone goes through the game at their own pace.
I see that you also have a game, I will play it when I have time!
I was checking Credits now and found out that I forgot to specify one of the authors of graphic assets in the final version. Can I additionally specify a list of credits in the description of the game page? Or upload the corrected list as a separate text file. It will be sad if I am disqualified because I missed something in a hurry...
Well, I finally found the time to play the games of other participants! I really liked the lightness of this story. A small, pleasant adventure.
As for the characters, I appreciated Maja, as I have a love for female characters of the tsundere type :)
I feel that special attention was paid to the battles. They are quite complex, but at the same time a balance is maintained.
The musical accompaniment also had to be in the spirit, as well as the art of the characters.
The only thing I missed was the visual display of characters on the map, instead of abstract icons. But this is not such a significant disadvantage, and someone may even like it :)
Yes, I really tried to create an atmosphere and paid special attention to the visual part (given my little experience and generally problems with imagination regarding level design). But here's a game of hide and seek... This seems to be the weakest point of my game :D
In fact, the main reason why I came up with these "hide-and-seek" at all is the desire to somehow let the players play themself. Because in my game there are a lot of cutscenes and dialogues when the player can't do anything. But since this is primarily a game, there should also be some kind of gameplay.
Initially, I had the idea of making a snowball game, but it would be more difficult to implement, and the development time is obviously limited.
Maybe someday, after the GameJam, I will redo this moment :) Especially if I continue to receive negative reviews about this moment of the game...)
In any case, I'm glad that you like the game as a whole so far! I hope the rest of the game will not disappoint you.
I'm sorry that I didn't manage to involve you in the atmosphere of the game.
I will answer about several points:
About the local currency. I just made it clear whether 100 Tes is a lot or a little according to the speech of a merchant who calls prices for a number of goods. I can't say that I carried out complex calculations, but still during development I thought about this aspect, and it is expressed in:
1. Examples of prices from the words of a merchant.
2. Rimas's words about how much they manage to earn in a week.
Given the fact that they are children, and how hard it would be for everyone.
I didn't think that someone would pay attention to this aspect in a negative way, but since this question has been raised, I tried to give an answer to it :)
"Then I play hide and seek with 2 people I dont know. There is no reason to care. Why do we even play this hide and seek?"
From the point of view of what is happening in history, this moment is also explained. If you consider this point from the point of view of logic, they say "Why do strangers play hide-and-seek with each other", then in my opinion the answer is simple. These are children, not adults. I'm afraid I didn't quite understand the negative point here.
If you mean the very fact that gameplay is a boring moment, then here I can only parry by the fact that the hide-and-seek themselves last no more than 1-2 minutes, given that fact it's easier to find twins. Everything that happens after winning the game is an approach to one of the key events of the plot.
Talking to a woman is probably not the best solution objectively, but I tried to give the player a sense that the residents of the city are not just extras of NPCs, but people with their own characters and history. Although I can understand that not everyone is interested in the "inner world" of an statists.
"Some spelling errors like Quee instead of queen. "
Yes, this is my mistake. I was translating the game into English the night before the deadline, so I didn't have time to carefully check the translation.
"Found an alley, leads to nothing. Why include this?"
What allye, at what stage of the game? There is one small dead end in the western part of the city, before the timeskip, if we are talking about it. I did not put much meaning into its existence, except that there are also many places in reality that do not interest us in the context of the situation. That is, why can't such an alley exist?
From the point of view of the structure of the city, I also do not see any special problems with it. And as you can see, the city does not end in the western part of the map, so it is assumed that there are other streets and buildings behind it. If I made the city too small, surrounded by walls and fences, it wouldn't benefit the sense of the scale of the city
"Why do the guards yell at me?"
I'm afraid there is even more misunderstood question here... What moment are you talking about? The moment before the timeskip? If so, there are two reasons:
1. It was discovered that the heroine had left for the castle, and her search began.
2. The death of the king further increases the need to return Elthira to the castle.
"This is nothing about roleplaying."
Well, I don't position my game as a full-fledged RPG :)
The heroine has a completely prescribed character, and in those cases when some choice of actions is given, it is included in the framework of the character of the heroine.
In any case, thank you for trying to play my game, I made some conclusions from what you said for myself.
I especially want to note the moment with small details. For example, I was busy with such small details in GIMP, even to the point that I rearrange books on the shelves in ready-made assets of some bookcases. Although I could have spent this time on something more substantial.
Yes, I also have a couple of small problems that I didn't have time to fix in a hurry. But not critical.
Oh, and I remembered one more mega-complicated thing... This is to come up with a name for the game! I was close to the fact that the word "star" also got into the name of my game, like half of all participants :)
Yes, I agree. I have characters in the center of attention, but I also tried to reveal the local setting as much as possible. These are quite interrelated things.
This is my first completed game in 3.5 months of experience in Rpg Maker. Therefore, along the way, I also have to learn a lot of things. Including parallax mapping, which I used to try to avoid. But now I realized that the technical framework of the editor is too constraining for me :)
I hope you will like my game, at least in terms of the atmosphere, which I put the greatest emphasis on. An opinion about the game, even negative with arguments, is welcome :)
I will also try to play your game and the games of other participants in my free time. Time to apply my meager knowledge of English :D
The most difficult thing is not to stretch the game for more than an hour. But it seems that I have gone a little beyond one hour. If, of course, you read all the dialogues and interact with the environment. It is difficult to make the game short when the game is very full of plot.
Tonight I translated the game using the utility (to english).
I completed 90% of the translation at night, and I was going to finish it in the morning. I was so scared when the utility returned an error when exporting the translation 2 hours before the deadline :D
The reason was in the version of RMMZ 1.3.2, and my not updated utility could only work with earlier versions. It's good that I managed to do it in the end.
Just in case, here is a screenshot. As I understand it, my local time is displayed at the bottom, and the time in the Pacific Time Zone is displayed in the pop-up frame.
But this is slightly at odds with the time indicated at the top :)
I have a question on a similar topic, about the game length.
For example, there are literally 5-7 minutes left before the end of the game. But the timer of the judge shows 1 hour already, although the general course of the plot shows that the end of the game is very soon.
In this case, the judge immediately interrupts the game and moves on to the next one, or is there still a very small time limit allow?
After all, everyone passes the game at their own pace, and it would be a shame if the judge doesn't have time to finish the game because of his/her pace of playing :)
