Glad you enjoyed the game! If I could add weight gain, I would, but it would take an insane amount of time to add all the sprite variants to make it work, unfortunately.
When I had the portable zip available, the itch launcher was causing save issues when people downloaded that version. I got enough comments and low ratings for the itch launcher issue (which was not on my end) that I simply took that option away.
I can maybe try to add a toggle for some of that stuff down the line. I do need to work on adding more preds and levels first because I spent a long time working on accessibility/preference toggles for a couple months and honestly need a break from that, haha.
The customized game option lets you start as a pred character. Pred mechanics will also be expanded on in the future. This will include being able to grab enemies and swallow them before defeating them, and of course being able to eat regular enemies. The implementation of predding in the demo is more of a teaser of what's to come in the future than anything. Keep in mind, the demo is just that; An early preview of what to expect in the full game.
Did you save the game at all? This doesn't appear to be the case when testing.
Also, "true perma" only works with preds that can do permavore, like the budgies and the boss characters. Slimes/the mimic still have their normal behavior.
Everything playable now is indicative of early game difficulty more than anything. As I start to work on the next couple of areas, fights are gonna start to get more complicated and more challenging. I'll also introduce more customizable difficulty options later on down the line.
As far as magic, I'm hoping that once bosses start to have more attacks of their own, things will naturally balance out a bit. One thing I have planned as a potential adjustment for spells, though, is making them require stamina so they'd be a bit harder to spam. Thank you for the feedback!
I've been putting a lot of work into this game for over a year, and when it's done, I do intend to charge a modest price for the full game (no more than $20, probably less.)
Yeahhh... Haven't been kicked off the platform yet, hopefully it stays that way. There's still hope that with enough pushback, maybe they'll change course. Still, looking into alternative options just in case.
I would love to if I could, but it would add an insane amount of extra spritework. Each character has dozens of sprites and animations, and I'd basically have to do entirely new ones for every character and every future character. It's unfortunately not realistic for a sprite-based game with as wide of a scope as this.
Yeah I was definitely considering adding more save slots. The nature of the game as it is almost necessitates it, really. Thank you for the feedback!
I'm really glad the general ideas behind the game worked so well for you, I put a lot of thought into how I could make the vore suit the gameplay better than in a lot of games, so it means a lot to hear that!
Glad you enjoyed the game, stay tuned, I have a lot more planned <3
The other two are the slime and the mimic. There should be slimes dotted throughout the first area, and the mimic is in one of the treasure rooms in the topmost "treasure vault" area of the cavern.
The codex is grayed out because it hasn't been implemented yet, sorry! Same deal with "customized" games, it's a feature I was working on but wasn't able to make available at this time.
Not sure what could be going wrong with the inventory, though. You're accessing the pause menu and tabbing to the character menu, right? When you scroll down to the spell inventory, you can go into it. You can change the second and third spells in the menu, but the first one is your "character" spell-- It's tied to the character you're playing, so it's the only slot that cannot be changed.
A lot of good feedback here, thank you!! I was hesitant to add more actions out of the glide at first, but after testing attacks out of glide, I chose to add that as a new feature. I do think you have a good point of letting you jump out of glides, so I'll see about adding that as well. Double jumping currently requires you to be falling to activate, but I've gotten a lot of feedback that folks don't like this, so I'll adjust it so that you can initiate a midair jump before the peak of the last one.
I'll also try to telegraph enemy grabs a little better, that makes sense. I know what frames of animation to look for to tell that's what their doing, but making it clearer is always a good thing since not everyone is going to immediately know what a new character's grab sprite is.
I was considering making the first Budgie fight a bit more scripted to better teach you how struggling works. Based on the feedback I'm getting, I'm definitely leaning towards doing that.
I do have plans for the 4 following areas to be not only much longer, but have a lot more exploration and enemy variety. Thank you so much for playing and I hope you're looking forward to the future updates!
Skylar's a freak who is meant to be a bit slippery to control hahaha! Glad you liked the movement otherwise though!
There will definitely be a lot more enemies of both variety here. I have considered having them interact with each other, but it's not a super high priority at the moment.
Will be fixing the mimic bug in the first update! And re-bindable controls will hopefully be a thing later on down the line. Currently, you can just toggle between fullscreen and windowed modes, but I'll take a look at what else I can add.
I made it so that you need to have started falling for the double jump to register. I've preferred it when games do it that way, but enough folks have mentioned finding it frustrating, so I'll go ahead and change it to allow you to start your second jump before the peak of the first. I'll also see what I can do about making the divekick have a bit more control, that's definitely a fair point, especially given how narrow the hitboxes on some of the enemies can be.
The dash is mostly useful for evasion and quickly moving through rooms, so I might re-contextualize the tutorial for it to be more evasion-focused? I really haven't heard anyone else say they dislike it so far though. It's not going to be removed because I and other folks consider it to be a fun aspect of the game's movement, but I will see if there's anything I can do to improve how it feels. I can definitely make some level design tweaks to mitigate that frustration, at least.
Magic also has a lot of utility, I feel. If you time it right, you can do a lot of damage rather quickly. I actually had to nerf the triple-spark spell multiple times because of how easy it was to stunlock bosses with it. I'll look at the casting times, and I'm probably going to give the bosses more startup frames on their grabs to make it easier to counter them. I'll also make boss grabs cover a bit less distance, some characters like Vesper being able to rocket across an entire room probably isn't very fun.
Also, taunting is basically an easter egg to let you get eaten immediately by a pred. I don't intend for it to have any practical utility. I'd rather remove it from the controls list entirely and just let folks discover it as a goofy surprise. I could give it an innocuous buff like restoring some MP or something, but it's just not what I intended the feature for.
I will make adjustments to knockback angles and i-frames to prevent stunlocking whenever I find a situation that can cause it, but there are a lot of situations where the dodge or glide-kick can actually get you out of it that you may not realize immediately. I'll also likely increase ending lag on enemy attacks even further to help mitigate the issue.
I will consider giving a range buff to the weapons when players are using them, particularly the dagger.
Yeah, the re-grab scaling on boss vore attacks is too high. Some characters are meant to be better at escaping than others, but it's clear the balancing needs work.
Currently, the buffs you get from eating foes are limited to extra HP, SP, and MP. It might not be a bad idea for it to also add to your other stats, but I don't want to give attack damage buffs out too easily. I don't want the damage numbers getting into the hundreds by endgame. I will definitely look into this though.
As far as the characters, Tanza and Skylar are definitely not meant to be nice. If they're not your cup of tea, that's fine. I always considered Vesper to be more teasy than anything, but she also doesn't let anyone talk shit to her, so she definitely slings back at Tanza and Skylar when she encounters them. I certainly didn't think I wrote her to come off like a jerk when she fights Luna, and there's also the fact that the dragons are literally inflicted with a frenzy spell when you fight them-- Though the dialogue that implies that was cut from the demo, I believe. In the final game, you'll have the option to spare them and let them return to the central hub room in the palace. They'll all be quite a lot more chilled out then. Except Skylar, she's just like that.
Will try to tutorialize the inventory/menu systems and the pred mechanics a little better, don't want folks missing that vital information! Glad you found those things though.
The thing that might make it unclear that health upgrades are persistent is the fact that each character has separate scaling for them, which is fun for balance, but I might need to do a better job clarifying this. Maybe I'll change the post-perma dialogue for the first time it happens to tell you to go look at the menus, and also explain some of those things.
I do like that idea of commentary from Luna or other digested prey! I'm gonna look into how I can implement that. Will also work on fixing those bugs you found as soon as I can. Thank you so much for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed your time with my demo! <3
I've heard several people say they'd like to be able to move with the analog stick instead, so I'll definitely be looking into adding that functionality, hopefully soon. I would also like to add a more complete remapping system in the future, but that's gonna be a little ways off.
AV isn't currently in the plans, but as far as the latter, I do intend on making a toggle for more explicit versions of the portraits that will have things like that.
When you pause (start/enter) and tab over to the left-most menu (L/A on keyboard), you can then press ESC and scroll down to the option that takes you back to the main menu.
Will take a look at the vine knockback issue, I think I missed a bit of code in the hitstun state relating to the slopes.
Yeah the difficulty actually used to be much higher, but in early pre-release playtesting, I had to tone it down quite a lot. I definitely plan on upping the difficulty as you get further in the game, and later on, I'd like to implement a "customized game" feature that will let you adjust difficulty more directly.
Thank you so much for your support and feedback, it means a lot!!
The player will be able to eat regular enemies later on down the line. Predding almost didn't make it into the demo, but I really wanted to include at least a small taste of that feature so that people knew I was planning on delivering more of that in the future. But yeah, the stats were indeed the main concern right now, so I haven't figured out what to do with that yet. Being able to "grind" on basic enemies to inflate your stats seemed like it could cause potential balance issues to me, but I also want to make sure you get SOME kind of reward for eating them.
The Tidal Wave spell is supposed to repeat the sound while it's out on screen. It is then supposed to stop playing the sound when it goes away. Was that working correctly? I could also make it not loop the sound if it seems excessive.
Yeah, I need to do a better job of tutorializing the actions you can take while caught or eaten. At the very least, I plan on including button prompts during the vore sequences in the future. I have also considered turning the encounter with the first Budgie girl into a more on-rails tutorial for it.
I will also try to improve the surrender mechanics, or at least explain them better. You have to hold the button down for it, but it doesn't kick in right away; It takes about a second for it to start speeding up. I also might change the buttons up a little, since you hold the "interact" button to speed up taking damage when swallowed, yet you hold the "jump" button to speed up the animation for getting digested. Not sure what I was thinking there, lol.
Glad to hear you enjoyed! Stay tuned, I've got a lot more planned in the future, like more areas, vore types, expanded predding mechanics, and, of course, several new preds/playable characters. I also want to do a few bigger boss fights!
Oh interesting! I didn't even know itch had a launcher if I'm being honest, hah. Will look more into it and see if I can fix the problem in the next build. Thank you for finding that! Hope you enjoy the game!
Hmm... How long does it freeze for? Does it outright crash? And is the game running off an SSD? I wouldn't think that would be an issue, but I haven't exactly tested it running on an old-school hard drive, so I dunno...
