🎊 Giveaway Ended - Thank You for Participating! 🎊

Hi everyone,

I am thrilled to announce that the Tearful Heart Feedback Giveaway has now officially concluded! Our entry period ended on Tuesday, 12 December 2023, and I’m overwhelmed by the fantastic response and insightful feedback we received.

First and foremost, a massive thank you to each and every one of you who participated. Your engagement and enthusiasm have been nothing short of inspiring. It’s been a joy to see so many of you diving into Tearful Heart, sharing your thoughts, and helping shape the future of this project.

Winners Announcement Coming Soon!

We are currently in the process of reviewing all the feedback and selecting our winners for the Grand Prize, Excellent Insightful Feedback Awards, and Random Draw. I know you’re all eagerly waiting to find out who the lucky winners are. Please bear with us a little longer as we carefully consider each submission to ensure a fair selection.

Stay Tuned!

Winners will be contacted directly very soon. Keep an eye on your Steam notifications – you might just be one of the lucky ones to receive a Steam Digital Gift Card!

We understand the excitement and anticipation surrounding the announcement of the winners. Rest assured, we’re working hard to finalize the selection, and the winners will be notified promptly.

A Heartfelt Thanks

Once again, thank you for your participation and for making this giveaway a huge success. Your feedback is invaluable and plays a crucial role in the continuous improvement and success of Tearful Heart. We’re excited to build on your insights and bring even more exciting experiences in the future.

Wishing you all the best, and thank you for being an integral part of this journey!

Warm regards,

Alessandro

Hello everyone! I am excited to announce the release of my new game, Tearful Heart! After two years of dedicated work, the game is finally complete!

Tearful Heart is a turn-based RPG that weaves together the tears of a shattered world with the strength of heart, crafting an emotionally resonant story.

The game is free and now available for play (both web and Windows versions).

https://rex64.itch.io/tearful-heart

Additionally, to celebrate Tearful Heart’s launch, I am thrilled to present a Feedback Giveaway! Immerse yourself in the game, share your feedback, and get a chance to win Steam Digital Gift Cards!

Giveaway Rules & Regulations

I am eager to hear your thoughts on it!

🎉 Feedback & Win Giveaway! 🎉

–> ENTER THE GIVEAWAY HERE <–

Hi everyone!

To celebrate the launch of Tearful Heart, I’m thrilled to announce a Feedback Giveaway! Dive into the game, share your thoughts, and stand a chance to win Steam Digital Gift Cards!

Prizes Pool

1. Grand Prize for Most Insightful Feedback

• 🏆 One Grand Prize Winner: The participant with the single most insightful feedback will receive a ¥5000 Steam Digital Gift Card.

2. Excellent Insightful Feedback Awards

• 🌟 Four Winners: Out of all submissions, four will be chosen for their exceptionally insightful feedback. Each of these winners will receive a ¥2500 Steam Digital Gift Card.

3. Random Draw

• 🎲 Four Participants: Four winners will be chosen randomly, regardless of the feedback content. Each will receive a ¥1000 Steam Digital Gift Card.

I’ll be purchasing Japanese Yen Steam Digital Gift Cards, so the actual value you receive will automatically be converted into your currency according to Steam’s conversion rates.

Please note: You can only win 1 gift card. If you’ve already been selected for the ¥2500 card, you will be excluded from the random draw for the ¥1000 card.

Here’s How to Enter

1. 🎮 Play the game, available for free on Itch.io.
2. 📝 Access the feedback form via Google Forms. https://forms.gle/tjGSS6CJDXxmbSK38
3. 💬 Share your honest feedback. Don’t forget to enter a valid Steam Quick Invite link (winners will be gifted the Steam Digital Gift Card directly to their accounts).

Giveaway Rules & Regulations

1. 📋 Eligibility: Open to everyone who plays the game and completes the feedback form. You must have a valid Steam account to receive the prize.

2. ⏰ Entry Period: Begins on Tuesday, 28 November 2023, 00:00:00 UTC and ends on Tuesday, 12 December 2023, 00:00:00 UTC. Keep an eye on the time left with this countdown timer.

3. 🔍 Winner Selection: You can only win in one of the categories: Grand Prize for Most Insightful Feedback, Excellent Insightful Feedback Awards, or Random Draw.

4. 🎁 Prizes: Winners will receive a Steam Digital Gift Card of the value corresponding to their winning category.

5. 📣 Winner Notification: Winners will be added to my Steam friend list, and I will gift them the Steam Digital Gift Card after the giveaway ends. Note that due to Steam’s policies, there is a mandatory 3-day waiting period before I can send a Steam Digital Gift Card to a newly added friend. For more information, please refer to the Steam Digital Gift Card FAQs.

6. 🔒 Privacy and Use of Feedback: Participant privacy is important. Emails will be used solely for this giveaway. Additionally, I reserve the right to incorporate your feedback into an eventual postmortem blog post about the game.

7. 🚫 One Entry Per Person: Duplicate entries will be disqualified.

8. 📚 Adherence to Laws: This giveaway complies with applicable laws and regulations.

Regarding Your Steam Quick Invite Link

If you win, I will gift you a Steam Digital Gift Card. To do this, I need to add you to my friend list on Steam. Please provide your Steam account’s Quick Invite link, which you can find on your account’s friend management page.

Make sure the invite link is valid.

Please note the following:

• According to Steam’s guidelines, a 3-day waiting period is required from the time I add your account to my friend list before I can send a digital gift card to a new friend.
• I am purchasing digital gift cards in Japanese Yen, so the exact amount you receive will depend on Steam’s official exchange rate. This means the value of the gift card might vary when converted to your local currency.
• Some countries may be restricted from receiving digital gift cards due to regional purchase limitations. If I am unable to send a Digital Gift Card to you, I reserve the right to select another winner.

For more information regarding Steam Digital Gift Cards, please refer to the FAQs on this page: https://store.steampowered.com/digitalgiftcards/selectgiftcard

Your feedback on Tearful Heart is crucial for shaping the future of my ongoing efforts to enhance my game development skills. I’m super excited to see your thoughts!

If you have any questions about the game or the giveaway, feel free to leave a comment here or contact me at gamedev@alessandrocuzzocrea.com.

Good luck, and enjoy the game!

Thanks!!! This was supposed to be a 4-month learning project, so I don’t think I’ll be updating it anymore (unless I found some critical bugs or something). I’m already working on my next RPG Maker project so stay tuned!

First of all, thank you for playing my game and thank you for the feedback you left! I really appreciate it.

A few thoughts that came to mind while reading your comment:

Well, i can see what you were trying to do with this game but i don’t 100% like it, so i’ll start, the random encounters are annoying and there’s no way to adjust encounter rate,i know you are trying to emulate old rpgs but that doesn’t mean you have to follow the rules to the book,and with that comes grinding,i wouldn’t mind it as much if the forest dungeon enemy didn’t hit so hard..i even encountered a world map encounter with a lot of enemies so i didn’t even bother with that..

Both exp and stats growth are balanced in a way that requires you to have fought at least a certain number of encounters before the boss, so leaving it up to the player to alter the encounter rate could be detrimental. The game itself was designed to minimize unwanted encounters. For instance, you can Escape any battle (except boss encounters of course) with 100% success and once you completed a dungeon you can use the teleport to instantly move between entrances avoiding any further waste of time. But, yeah, I agree that an option to adjust the encounter rate would have been nice to have.
Regarding the overall game difficulty: there are 6 tiers of equipment, you start with Tier 1 which is the weakest, and going through the Forest Dungeon with only Tier 1 equip should be doable but really hard. You can get Tier 2 equip (which is a vast improvement over Tier 1) from enemies you encounter on the World Map (which are so weak that they go down with a hit or two). You don’t need a full set of Tier 2 gear to clear the Forest Dungeon but drops rates from encounters are pretty generous so it’s relatively quick and easy so it’s easy to collect all pieces. The problem is, there’s nothing to help the player understand this system. Maybe some more explanation (like a short text tutorial) would have helped.

The game is pretty basic in terms in combat, no fancy mechanics,basic skills..it makes the game a little generic since there have been many that have done the same but maybe others won’t mind.

I agree. This is the first I made a game almost from scratch using RPG Maker so it ended up kinda basic. For my next game, I’ll try to strike a balance between classic and experimental.

The Graphics are pretty nice althought not 100% perfect and there are some weird enemies…like rocks..ants and floating stones that hit hard..

Yes, some of the enemy designs are a little lazy, especially the ones at the beginning of the game.

There’s also the imbalance in some skills being weaker than the basic attack itself..what? you throw a rock and it does like 7 DMG, you hit with the bow you do like 80 DMG.

I feel like that’s caused by my design not being able to properly communicate my design to the player. If a special attack is weak then it’s meant to be used mainly for its side effects. For instance, the skill “Stone” has a 50% probability of confusing the target. The small amount of damage it causes is just for show.

It’s also weird that the healer can do quite a lot of DMG vs not so armored enemies, almost as much as the blonde character.

Each party member starts with similar stats and begins to specialize when they reach level 12-15. The blond character is supposed to have a tank role and so his stats and equips are more balanced towards defense and HP than attack.

Overall it’s not a terrible game but could use a little more polish in terms of combat,art maybe but it’s not mandatory. I would have liked to see something unique in terms of combat, like how Bravely Default has it’s Brave that gives you extra hits(just an example). That’s all i had to say, good luck with the game dev and have fun!

Thank you again for leaving me such a detailed feedback. I will be sure to keep it in mind when I’ll work on my next game!