itch.io

I have a potentially dumb idea that I'll toss out there anyway, because it would partially address my biggest criticism and completely address one of my other complaints: perhaps you can ask the player to select some kind of background/profession in a sort of "character generation" menu, prior to being whisked away from their old life.

This would grant them an ability matching that background, which they could immediately use in the tutorial battle. Since they are some kind of chosen one anyways, it wouldn't create any sort of narrative dissonance in my opinion. They're just... a natural leader.

I don't know if this suits other story elements that are already in place, so feel free to discard this if it doesn't.

Thanks again and good luck with your project! I plan to check back in with it once things are a bit less busy on my end.

I'm not sold on the narrative choice to make the protagonist's past life uninteresting. Between that and the abruptness of being pulled away it feels kind of rushed versus the rest of the intro.

I wish the "enter name" boxes would have more obvious prompts than just the input cursor, and not allow the player to accidentally skip them. I don't know if the engine supports checking for an empty text string before progressing to the next event, or perhaps just a confirmation prompt of the entered name would work. I decided to roll with the main character being a nameless entity from another realm or something, but if I feel like most players would just restart the game at that point (hence, it's an unnecessary point of friction).

First battle, I got down to 1 HP after selecting an Air Knight, a Fire Rogue, and the Water Mage. I was decently sure my party comp should have been favorable against the enemy group, but the intro text only provides a very vague idea as to what beats what, rather than specifics. So maybe my comp was bad - or maybe it was good, and my RNG was unfavorable - I honestly have no clue. And that's a pretty big problem. The first fight was, other than making some profoundly uninformed decisions, completely non-interactive. I felt like I should have lost but barely pulled out a victory due to a lucky roll about 14 skirmishes in. But more importantly I felt like the victory, as well as the defeat which probably should have taken place instead, were entirely un-earned.

Despite the lack of mechanical satisfaction, there was some tension and excitement and the battle music did its job. I'm just already pretty skeptical of the core mechanics, or at least how the player is onboarded to them.

I'm digging the exploration system so far.

I tried reading the Basics and Tactics pages for info I missed, and honestly it's overwhelming. I feel like there's got to be a better way of guiding the player through this information.

Second random encounter, I completely murdered them. But my elemental bonus was a net negative per the info at the top of the combat screen! Hypothesis: the game system favors offense (larger dice over larger HP pools), making Knights bad. I will test this further as I go.

The self-deprecating nature of the companion(s) is kind of grating but I wonder if it's meant to be, as a way of highlighting the political / societal issues in play. I can see there's been a lot of effort that's gone into world building, although having that come in via a slow trickle of incidental dialog is interesting in contrast to just kind of being dumped into combat.

Battle 3, seemed very easy once again despite having a negative elemental modifier. I'm back to thinking it's more RNG than anything, with the Morale skill being basically essential to player survivability. That creates another issue, since there's no reason (yet) NOT to spam Morale every turn it's available. Battle 4 was the same findings.

I had a massive element and faction bonus going into the boss battle, and used Morale every turn. Seemed like the boss would spam its special at every opportunity as well, dealing 1/2 of the incoming damage back to my party. Which was nearly the only threat it posed, but that threat alone was enough to get me down to 1 HP at the end of the battle.

Got to the first major story milestone and am calling it good here.

Conclusion

The art is fantastic and the animations add a lot to a format I am usually skeptical towards (visual novels). Dialog is generally solid, and while there's more world building than storytelling so far, it's competently done, and I am admittedly quite early in so I assume it will get more engaging once we meet this important NPC they keep talking about. I am genuinely interested to see how the plot begins to unfold. The Renpy GUI is fine enough, but it sometimes feels janky where menus are concerned. Small voice over snippets don't do much for me, but the rest of the sound design is very solid.

Sadly, I don't see this maintaining my interest mechanically. It's just too random and at the same time too repetitive to hold up any longer than the five or six battles it took me to escape the newbie area. I feel like combat needs a complete re-work, but if that's infeasible at this stage I could see a larger early game skill variety (and in general, more actual gameplay E.G. interactivity) going a long ways as well.

I hope these notes are useful and wish you continued success on your project. My tastes aside, it's very well done!

Super fun playthrough, I appreciate it!

I like the ideas you had about changing up the music a bit more during cutscenes, and adding more background info about the kingdom during the prologue. Regarding the former, I'll need to source some additional tunes, but that's already something I'm working on for new content, so it shouldn't be too tricky; for the latter, I think just changing up the generic "you can't use this" flavor text should suffice - I don't want to give too much away after all, since later chapters do revisit the royals' history.

Hoping you're down to play Chapter 2 (and beyond) when they're ready!

Thanks for playing, Bakar! I appreciate you taking the time to check out my project.

I like that approach. Hopefully none of the effects are too complex (from what I've seen so far should be OK)

Thanks for playing ColoCoko! I appreciate your comments.

Hey Cootadude, thanks for the detailed reply.

Seems like we're mostly on the same wavelength as far as the approach needed to get the game in line with your vision. The good news is, you have sort of a design roadmap available based on what worked in this version and what didn't, should you choose to restart from scratch.

I think the RNG thing is just part of the genre but I'll certainly pop back in if I think of anything later on.

BTW did you decide on a title, from what I am seeing?

This game has improved massively since last time I played. Well done on all the new features and content as well as the QoL stuff I am seeing in this build.

It might be just a little bit addicting (I saw after playing for almost 2 hours and missing my bedtime).

I think it's still sometimes hard to tell what a skill will actually do, but that's a function of having so many effects and skills with proc chances and whatnot. I don't even know how to suggest improving that at this point.

Other than info overload and some occasionally unforgiving RNG, I didn't find any friction points that significantly reduced my enjoyment of the game.

Hi! My apologies in advance for the novel to follow. I wanted to provide as much detail as possible regarding my experience in the hopes of providing actionable feedback. I'm hoping it comes across as such, rather than an attempt to roast the game.

I'd like to see the intro display something other than a black screen with the dialog boxes. Seems like a lost opportunity.

Is there any way to convey the characters' classes/roles other than that kind of chunky tutorial text? Something that also demonstrates their personalities might be better. (EDIT: I don't have any sense of what makes these characters tick, even as far as the maze section)

"This should be easy". Enemy proceeds to deal 2/3 of Eliza's HP in damage in one turn. If the third attack had gone her direction I would have lost a character instantly, which seems weird for an opening battle. I didn't use Taunt because the characters said it would be easy, and the hint text said that skill was for harder battles, so it kind of felt like a gotcha to be honest.  Maybe you have something in place to where Eliza can't die in the fight and it's just cinematic, but it doesn't establish a great feel right off the bat.

The tutorial text assumes keyboard rather than controller. Would be an easy fix to just mention which buttons are mapped on your average X Box or generic gamepad. Though, I think it would be better still to use a key rebind plugin and direct the player there to configure their own control scheme.

The second wave of guards doesn't have that crazy triple attack skill, or maybe it was just bad RNG on the intro battle. I'd still suggest making the intro fight not have a chance to kill Eliza out of nowhere, if it doesn't already.

I don't like stuff with such a low % chance of working, but it's OK-ish for damage skills which just happen to have secondary effects. Cure, on the other hand, should never have a % chance to work. That feels extremely bad, and I would never waste 10 MP and potentially a turn on that. (EDIT: I never really found a need to remove States, which isn't a sign that they are well designed)

NOTE: can you put in the skill descriptions which ones are instant-cast? It feels like Heal and Taunt don't take an action, but I have no way to confirm that's actually how it works other than observation.

Curiosity: why does magic do fixed damage, but physical scales with ATK? Fire and Light are already super weak versus literally anything Ryoma can do, since he now has THREE skills which deal multiple hits, each of which deals in excess of 100 damage. BTW, he learned Dual Attack at level 4, but he already had the skill at level 1. Was he not supposed to have this starting off?

These battles pose literally no threat now since I level up every time and the DEF scaling seems to make enemy attacks do negligible damage.

Got Fire 2 already.  The % chance is high enough to maybe proc sometimes, great. Its damage is already lower than Ryoma's Dual Attack, though, and I just learned it. Plus Fire1 is completely useless, since I don't have to worry about MP conservation given how this leveling system works. Incidentally,  I don't level up every encounter now (which is good), but there isn't a sense of danger or attrition to any of the battles. I also get one or more potions from every fight.

Enemy detection is kind of wonky. Sometimes they make an alert emote but don't approach or speed up.

I found a Buckler, cool. Wait why does it REDUCE my Guard Effect from 100% to 5%?! I think it was supposed to increase it to 105%, perhaps? Well, Imma equip it anyways because the DEF bonus warrants it.

Please consider using a plugin that makes it so moving events stop moving when an event / dialog box is playing. I just got stopped by a random "I think this is where the secret passage is" text box, which felt weird because he just said he didn't know where the passage was 30 seconds ago, then 3 guards mobbed me. Very tedious, because at this point enemies are just bags of hit points and treasure.

The Eliza solo fight was the closest thing to a strategic battle I've had this far. Felt pretty good to exploit the slime's weakness right away, but the rest of the battle was sketchy because it felt like if both soldiers used their OP skills on the same turn I would just be dead. So, used Sweep to stun one guy, used Heal every turn to top off, and used Dual Attack to chop down the enemies. At this point it dawned on me that TP recovers so quickly from damage taken that I have practically unlimited. I'd strongly suggest reducing the TP gain rate.

Ran into the secret passage (the black screen eventing once again felt lazy tbh) and then wandered around the maze for a bit looking for levers. Nothing new or exciting at this point, and unfortunately I am not invested at all in the story because it's so generic and there are no character moments. Actually, at this point it's barely a story, it's a series of plot events. And the gameplay is not compelling either.

I don't want to harp on the mapping too much because it looks like a previous reviewer covered that, but I will concur that it needs a lot of work. Not just mapping however; the level design itself is subpar. I think you could do more interesting things with having to be stealthy and not just farm all the battles in these huge rooms, though that would require fixing whatever mechanism is driving the enemy alerts.

I know this is a big update to an existing game and it seems like a lot of effort has been spent in establishing scope and setting up later characters and story arcs, but with an introduction this clunky I feel like a lot of players will tap out before you get there. My advice would be to refocus that effort into quality rather than scale. If the game was polished I could somewhat forgive a lot of the less-than-original mechanics and tropes and the vanilla gameplay, but the combination of poor balancing, obvious database mistakes, and generally questionable systems design make it very tough to trudge through.

I hope this info is useful and that you find success in continuing to improve your project.

Hi DarkScream,

I received the same error reported by coffeedripstudios; there appears to be a file (windowskin) missing from this deployment.

Thanks so much for playing and your comments Hythrain!

And GL with the rest of FQ6 - there's some great looking games in this one (many of which I also plan to try).

Thank you for the LP!

I was able to watch most of the playthrough tonight and it was very enjoyable seeing how you interacted with various systems (great work on character readings, too). I'll finish the video tomorrow, hopefully.

Thanks again!

Thanks so much for playing and for your comments!

Love the creatures battler pack series and looking forward to more sets.

Question: would you consider releasing sets 2 through 4 in a style with outlines? Set 1 had that option but the later sets do not. I prefer the outlines, but consistency is more important so I'm using the basic style from set 1 for now.

Thanks!

Hey Kobato Games, I appreciate you giving this game a look! I've definitely made some notes on what folks liked from this battle system and hope to incorporate those elements in future projects.

Thanks for the report on that TypeError as well.

You're correct that it would've just gone back to the Title Screen, so it's not game breaking, but I still plan to fix that bug for a future patch, if I can.

The cursor file requires a plugin, as RPG Maker doesn't display menu or battle cursors by default. I'd recommend Yanfly's, though I believe a few authors have similar plugins:
http://www.yanfly.moe/wiki/Battle_Select_Cursor_(YEP)

Thanks a lot for featuring the game on stream along with the great commentary.
I'm glad all of the critiques are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, though I'll definitely have a look at those points for ways to improve them (got my eye on a camera plugin that should remedy that janky scrolling, for example!)

Appreciate the review!

Also, good luck with your game dev endeavors!!

Thank you so much for the stream!

Your feedback on the character creation process is much appreciated; agreed, would love to see more games with female protagonists or the option to select or customize based on the player's preference. (the skin tone option was also added with inclusivity in mind)

I also think having some kind of "quick start" option during character creation is a great suggestion and should be relatively easy to implement.

The multi-enemy fights can be tricky! Part of the fun (I hope) of the game is trying to optimize encounters with less than perfect information. I will mention, you can generally one-shot each of the Level 0 enemies with a Spell or Tech skill, or you can try to prioritize defense. But yes, in general, some fights require a "game plan" and even then not all of them are worth taking, depending on your loadout.

Thanks again for featuring my game and glad you had a fun experience!

There's a series of units with what I believe to be gun/blaster based attacks, with one underwhelming damage skill and one support skill I don't recall being particularly useful. Felt like they were under-statted overall, though having a CD-based damage skill with more oomph might also help.

But to your point the units with only 2 skills generally feel worse than the units with 3 or 4, at least this early in.

Starting a new thread for the .80 version.

Happy to report that all of the issues I had on last go-around are resolved.

I'm still not sure what caused the audio to fail before, but I'm glad it's working now because the music and sound design is exceptional. Some of the voices sound a bit strange with the various filters used, but it contributes to the "vibe" of the game (they're from other worlds, after all).

I got decently far this time and was able to see a ton of different area types, which seem to open up as you progress. Great variety with not every node being straight combat. The puzzles and encounters are very cool conceptually, and the reward system is interesting.

Once I got to Spells it also opened up a new layer of depth. There's a ton of stuff going on this this system for sure, and it is extremely addictive once you get into a groove. I had to pull myself away to hit some of the other jam games on my list but absolutely, 100% plan to return to this once there's no longer a time crunch.

I will say that it doesn't currently feel like all units are balanced, but I am also thinking that is intentional and meant to drive the player towards opening up more creation slots and such in order to customize their loadout. If so, then my only negative thought about that is you can sometimes roll a pretty bad party before you start unlocking upgrades. But, it's not like there's a big failure penalty, so it might be fine.

Overall, amazing work and very unique!

0.77, not on a VM or sandbox

Also: when I booted it up to check the version #, the audio worked!! Now I am extra confused! :D

Appreciate the quick reply! I realized halfway through typing up my thoughts that I wish I had taken screen shots or recorded a video in order to be able to provide some more/better details.

I'll try to elaborate and clarify on everything I can.

"This is the first time I've heard of this issue. Did you try modifying the audio settings at all?" Yes, I adjusted every volume slider, set my laptop at max volume, and checked to ensure Windows volume mixer didn't mysteriously mute the game client, as it sometimes does for reasons unknown. (this last step was made more difficult by the full-screen issue, which was honestly the main reason I noticed it)

"If you could provide a bit more detail for this one it'd be very helpful (details of the menu), for example: 
Was the tutorial about using an interface, or were you in the visible home area with no dim screen? 
Do you happen to recall what the dialogue was saying?" I don't recall which tutorial it was, but I am fairly sure it was either the first or second tutorial you can trigger upon landing in the main sanctuary area. Pretty sure it was a dimmed out screen.

"I ran into a problem with an Encounter in which the Bookshelf wouldn't seem to do anything regardless of which skill/outcome I selected. There was a Taunt prompt I believe, which flew by pretty quickly and didn't really help me get past it. I had to exit the area which ended that run, unfortunately." OK, I am 75% sure it was a red cursor and will be completely embarrassed if I mis-remembered. I did take into consideration the green/red cursor instructions from previous battles and thought it odd that the Encounter wanted me to target the bookshelf. The Skill tooltip said something about +1 / -1 CD for all skills so I may have thought it was a party wide effect.

"Each slot has a chance to summon a soul, the first 3 are guaranteed (it mentions this in the soul creator's upgrades)." Oh! I skimmed the upgrades menus, but didn't see this explanation. I wonder if there's any indication you could have on the recruit screen itself that the empty slot was due to random chance. All the other RNG stuff is pretty transparent in how it works, but just a thought.

"The first row is highlighted while all other rows are dimmed. If you hover over any option those that are interactable will brighten even further (this only happens with the first row)" Right, so for clarity I figured that my only choice was the highlighted row, but it wasn't clear if I was able to only select one level from that row or not. E.G. my intention was to "farm" the low level stuff if that makes sense. But I suspect the direction of the game is to continue progressing into harder areas, die, and respawn your party with whatever upgrades etc. you accrued, rather than any sort of grinding loop.

I am on Discord! mooglerampage#6446 (at least until the user name / handle changes reach me) or if it's easier to chat in the Feedback Quest server that works too.

A very interesting game! Unfortunately I encountered a lot of bugs that haven't been discussed in any of the previous comments and much of my play time was spent wrestling with those.

Is there a known issue where audio will refuse to play regardless of settings? I can't get any sound or music for some reason. I did see some kind of funky Avast prompt the first time it loaded (aside from the regular Windows Defender prompt which I am used to) and wasn't sure if that was related, but closing and re-launching didn't help.

On the topic of how the game launches, it was weird that it opened in full-screen initially but I couldn't see the mouse cursor anywhere on-screen, even though Windows had complete focus on the game client and wouldn't let me click into background processes. I suspect it could be a game engine limitation but I think it would be better to have a windowed mode option.

I ran into one issue where a tutorial dialog tried to run exactly when I clicked something in the home area, so I was stuck in a menu with no way to advance the dialog (left / right click did nothing). Eventually I hit Escape and it took me out of the menu, allowing the dialog to run.

I ran into a problem with an Encounter in which the Bookshelf wouldn't seem to do anything regardless of which skill/outcome I selected. There was a Taunt prompt I believe, which flew by pretty quickly and didn't really help me get past it. I had to exit the area which ended that run, unfortunately.

I'm not sure I like that when only one enemy remains, offensive skills are a single click with no need to use the cursor. I get that it's faster, but it's not consistent and takes some getting used to. it also doesn't mention this in the tutorial unless I missed something.

It seems like you can start with 3 party members, but some of the other creatures are actually unlockable if you go into one of the Upgrade menus, then upon returning to the hiring area you can recruit up to 4. This was super confusing and I don't know if this is how it was intended to work.

I loved the art style. Animations felt punchy even with no sound. Fantastic, amazing sprite work.

It seemed like enemies ramped up in power way faster than players. Are we supposed to clear all 3 areas in a horizontal row before moving to the next row? I think the world navigation could use a bit more explanation or visual cues to have at least some idea what we're doing.

The ideas behind the upgrades, skill customization, etc. all seem very cool but I didn't get far enough to experience much of it due to the various UI and technical issues. There's a ton of potential here and I do plan to retry in the future. I hope this feedback is helpful!

Cute visuals! Always love to see more retro RPGs and I think the art style for this is well done. Some of the map layouts and tile placements are a bit weird and there's an odd effect with the water that I don't think fits the aesthetic, but for the most part the graphics are solid. I do wish there were more animations in battles, as other than screen flashes for magic it's all (very fast) text.

Music was OK. I would advise caution using that DQ III overworld tune even for a demo, tbh. The tracks I couldn't identify from other games did vary in quality a bit, but were fine on average.

I think the stat curves are too steep for pretty much everything. It felt like I doubled in power every level (one shotting the intro area mobs at level 2) but going just a bit too far outside of the ideal encounter zone was rough and didn't yield enough xp to feel worth it. Which, when most of what you're doing is farming, doesn't make for a super fun experience. Granted, that focus on the grind is very on par for DQ I, but I don't know if that's one of the design elements from Dragon Quest that you really want to emulate (or if it is, there has to be another way to make it more engaging).

Default controls were a little funky but manageable. I wish you could equip stuff from the Equipment menu rather than just from the Items menu, but I eventually figured it out.

Overall, interested to see where this project goes!

Hi, thanks so much for streaming the game and for your great feedback. Glad you had fun with it, and I will definitely catch the VOD since I had to step away partway through the stream. The way you took extra time to really analyze the choices was awesome to watch!

So, uh... I guess I only have a single ring slot for game balance at this point. Like, there's a "feasible" lore explanation that magic rings have to be attuned to a person and only one can be attuned at a time, or something. (I think D&D does something similar?) To be honest, re-balancing everything around a second Ring slot would be a considerable undertaking which I'd need to really think about. But I can definitely see your point there!

I get what you mean about the Tech skills as well, though that one is a bit more nuanced. Some of the basic Techs granted by weapons are only slightly more powerful than a regular attack, but that's enough to (for example) drop a low level foe in a single shot. So they're more useful in some contexts than others. Whereas Tech skills attached to stronger weapons, or granted via scrolls, are a bit more impressive at least in terms of single-target damage. That all said, if it feels too weak, it's 100% worth it on my end to review the numbers one more time.

And YES, most importantly: the dog! Gosh I wish I had thought of this, haha... OK so while I can't promise making the "animal companion" suggestion into an actual feature quite this late into development, I can assure you that I am working on other projects where you can, indeed, pet the dog.

Thank you so much for the great stream, it was a ton of fun!

There are definitely some opportunities to streamline the initial choices and remove some of that overwhelming feeling from the early game. Along with fixing the display issues with treasure chests and bombable walls you had pointed out, it should help smooth out the player experience quite a bit.

Much appreciated!

Perfect, I felt it was in the spirit of the jam but wanted to be sure. Thanks!

Thanks so much for the feedback!

Removing some of the clunki-ness and poor UX of retro games while keeping the fun / nostalgic parts was a big goal with this project.

I'm also glad to hear that the rather steep challenge has been rewarding to solve. (I love those "YES" moments when you take out an over-leveled monster, too!)

I'd be interested to know if you think the choices are too much, or if once you get a feel for the game (and/or on subsequent playthroughs) it alleviates the stress a bit.

Thank you again for playing. Much appreciated!

Great jam, thanks for hosting!

I had a quick question: is it OK to release updates to a project mid-jam? (with some jams - usually when strict time limits are involved - uploads are disabled, but I don't believe that's the case here)

Much appreciated.

Great question KV.

I don't have a firm answer honestly. Perhaps holding off on features (upgrade system for example) would've made my use of time more efficient. Or I could've started on assets sooner albeit at some risk of not being able to use all of them.

Ultimately I think the combination of world hopping + unique actor mechanics was, as some folks stated, just too big for a jam game. So my "next time" challenge would be to find an equally compelling, but less ambitious, gimmick for the game.

Thanks, I am glad it all came together as well.

I did kind of compromise with Katina by making more skills multi-hit in the general flavor of Nova games (and giving more Break Shields also) but it wasn't my first choice. She does have one of the coolest Guard skills in the game IMO, however.

Thanks for taking the extra time to finish this installment DJ!

The sprites could take up a dev log of their own haha.
The "abridged" version is: Sawyer made Chip's battler graphic; townspeople and monsters' map sprites were 2k3 RTP (some with palette swaps from me); Sarah was from Tiny Tales (with another custom palette swap); and every other actor battler or actor map sprite not mentioned elsewhere was custom, using some combination of Tiny Tales and the 2k3 RTP as references. It definitely took longer to make those than any other element of the game, but it was freaking worth it IMO.

I know some of the soundtrack is a bit too on the nose (ruins battle theme!) but I think it helped the vibe more than being a detriment. Still, I'd want to go with bespoke music in a long-form project as I've used pretty much all the good 16-bit stuff I could find in one or more jams.

Was super fun being able to jam all of the guest characters into this one! (Chip seems to be a popular sidekick choice - I wonder why? :D)

Aw man, thanks KV!

I guess I am gravitating more towards that Pixel Remaster style as time goes on. It just feels like a natural aesthetic to me, so I am glad it's largely gone over well! :D

Yeah, totally agree on the face graphics. I was going to try 2x pixel scale instead of 3x but I already had about half the characters in the x3 scale already, and it would've been too time intensive to redo a bunch of them. (having inconsistent scales seemed worse than living with a bit of quality variation, at least at the time). I might try full HD faces in the future and see how it goes.

Therese is such a wordsmith! LOL
Honestly that gaffe with her recruitment dialog makes me cringe every time I see it. If I do a post-jam update, fixing that scene is gonna be top priority for sure.
Minus the placeholder snafu, constructing a satisfying narrative was basically my biggest "growth" effort for this jam, so I appreciate the feedback on the writing and characterization.

Thank you again for playing! It was a ton of fun (albeit stressful AF) to put together and reading all these comments has been great as well.

Thank you, CrocPirate!

2k / 2k3 definitely have my favorite RTP sets of any RM engine and it was a blast to adapt and expand on those sets for this project.

Thank you so much Lochraleon!

I think it may have been the first "forced" save point where you go to the safehouse of sorts.

If you haven't heard other reports along these lines, I wouldn't invest too much time investigating since this is RM after all and it could have been a fluke nw.js crash or whatever.

Not sure if this was a one-off, but during one of the cutscenes which prompted the Save window to come up, the screen stopped responding aftwerwards, though audio and controls seemed to keep going in the background.

Fortunately, F5 to restart the game client worked, and my save was intact.

Otherwise, very good experience overall. (saving full thoughts for after ratings period)

Thanks so much Human. You're absolutely right about some of those details that didn't get a full coat of paint, so to speak. Therese is a woman of few words, but "placeholder" is apparently one of them!

I am both ecstatic that the game was fun enough to play for two hours, and a bit miffed at myself for going so far over the playtime allotment (but more of the former if we're being honest). Still, there wasn't enough cushion left to trim anything unfortunately, so I will have to put that under the "lessons learned" column.

Balancing was... well let me leave that for a future dev log / itch.io post. I will say that most of the party members did intentionally skew towards the easy side, as I wanted folks to be able to complete the story should they decide to commit to the full 1-hr+ experience. Not sure if I'll make a post-jam update or not, but if I do, a "hard mode" and a super boss (regrettably cut for time) would both be on my radar.

It was a pleasure to participate in such a cool jam with lots of great games. Thank you for hosting it, as well as all the other cool stuff you've done for the community (too big of a list for this Comment section).

I didn't think of the Harvest Harold angle.

Missed opportunity, perhaps?