itch.io

To clarify, by "one for the road," I don't mean I'm completely dipping out on the project! It's just that I'm going to get a lot less useful, since you're developing a different version of the game from the one I'm commenting on.  I feel like it's just courtesy to therefore zip my gob.

(I actually haven't stopped getting ideas and noticing things about Roguefort, though.  I'm planning to type up a proper list and upload it to the Discord as a PDF; that seems like a QoL upgrade for you, compared to a bajillion comments.)

In terms of credit and an NPC . . . wow, that's amazing.  I'm genuinely touched.

My instinct, if I'm potentially being credited for stuff online, is to ask for "Merlin Grace" as the name given.  I do have some misgivings about that, though, since Merlin Grace is sort of my "stage name" for various art projects, and I don't want to use you as free advertising.  I don't have any misgivings about saying that I want "my" NPC to be named Merlin, though, since my affineur is named Merlin too!

Y'know what, one more bug report for the road.

The dungeon minimap seems to pull from every dungeon level simultaneously.  It's decently useful on level 1, but as you discover areas on 2 and 3, they all display at once and it just turns into a uniform blue square.

Also, do all dungeons have bosses? I have not been able to independently confirm that all dungeons have bosses.

A couple minor things as well, because why not throw 'em in:

• the dialogue boxes for pets usually include, like, "/u2014" on either side of the species name.  Purely visual bug and not disruptive
• it would be really nice if you could switch items in the quick-consume slots by dragging and dropping (like how the rest of the inventory can be rearranged)
• this isn't even a bug or a QoL or anything, buuuuut: you mentioned improved graphics in the Steam version.  I think skin colour customization for the Affineur would be a valuable graphics upgrade, for players who want the character to resemble them a little more.  Just a suggestion

These things may not be disruptive enough to warrant tweaking the Itch version again, which is cool, but maybe they're applicable to the Steam version too.  I figured you'd want to know.

On one hand, awwww mannnn, but on the other, yeah that's more than fair.

It's been a blast, and I'm glad I could help out.  I look forward to seeing your progress updates, even if all I can say is "that sounds really cool" and not "here is a massive bug report about it" lmao

PSA: DO NOT TAKE QUESTS FROM THE GENERIC GUARDS.  The one who gave you the quest will probably not come back; that individual will be replaced by a steady supply of clones, each of whom will happily give you a new quest and then not come back either.

I knew I probably wasn't supposed to get quests from 'em, and I did it anyway.  The cost of hubris is a clogged quest log.  LEARN FROM MY DOWNFALL, MY FRIENDS.

Yo, am I supposed to be able to get a quest from each individual Fennmarche Guard(tm)? Building reputation in specific factions was already pretty quick to do, but this is a new level of speedrunning.

Speaking of faction reputation: when my reputation ticks over from "Neutral" to "Friendly," whichever territory-blob I'm in at the time still has a chance to become completely "explored" as per the World Map.  I think the game is confusing "places I've been" with "places where they like me" somehow.

And finally, would it be easier for you to keep track of if I did this on Discord instead?

Just a few things, here.

• Currently, when I "deliver" things for a fetch quest, they stay in my inventory.  I gave the same three deer hides to two different people, and still had the hides afterwards.  This is . . . odd.
• Is there a way of getting pets up to full HP again? I can revive them to half health, but I'm not seeing anything beyond that.  I recruited a healer but the healer ignores my pets.  
  • After finding out that they weren't going to heal my pets, I wished I could "stable" the healer lol -- but I recognize that that option might mess with the intended game balance too much, since it would get me out of having to defend my party members all the time.
• Filling a water pouch while standing next to a stove triggers the "refill-and-boil" action, but stoves do not give me the option of purifying water that's just in my inventory and not yet clean.
• I have once again acquired a different animal from the one I was taming.  A hawk became a storm falcon this time, which is related, so maybe it's intentional? Mentioning it in case it isn't.

And finally, thank you so much for the "highlight a faction's territory" option in the world map.  I know who is where now :D

FINALLY I HAVE INSTALLED 0.3.15

That was a stupidly laborious process BUT I think this confirms that I was having a computer / Internet problem instead of a problem that could be solved on Timmy's end.

IT HAS NOW WORKED.  I'm leaving the specifics below in case you still want them, but I got it to work eventually, so I'm like 90% sure the problem was on my end.

An error occurred during installation downloading: http2: server sent GOAWAY and closed the connection; LastStreamID=1, ErrCode=INTERNAL_ERROR, debug=""

Rarely, it's LastStreamID=3 instead of 1.  I haven't seen any other numbers.

When that happens, I can retry the download (though it ends the same way again).

More rarely, I'll get an error message containing the term "non-retriable," but I don't have that in front of me right now to copy out.

I got my "standard" error message when I was trying to download 0.3.9 as well, but that one worked on like the third or fourth try.  I'm well beyond third and fourth tries here lmao

Have other folks been able to install 0.3.11 up to 0.3.14 okay? Trying to figure out if this is just a "my computer" problem.

I just got a snow leopard by taming a frost elk (with the whistle).  The frost elk didn't turn INTO a snow leopard or anything; the frost elk is still wandering around wild.  My pet snow leopard was just created on the spot as soon as I "succeeded" in taming the elk.

This is a big one, so I've tried to break it up into topics.

1. World Map Stuff

• There's this . . . thing on my map.  It kinda looks like it might be a broken heart or possibly a pair of footprints.  I've tromped all over the whole area where it shows up, and found absolutely nothing, and I'm confused.  It might have mouse-over text or it might not, because:
• It's really hard to mouse over the little icons.  I've only managed to get the "Rumoured Settlement" mouse-over to pop up once, and I spent a few minutes trying in case it was a skill issue.
• It's also really hard to SEE the little icons.  They're very small and very faint.
• I've restarted my run a few times now, and one thing always happens with the map: the dark grey "unexplored" effect vanishes after a couple in-game days. Sometimes it only vanishes from the territory occupied by Grasse-Verdenne (which is where I always start because I am attached to Birchforge lol), even though I absolutely have not explored all of that land.
• I could be wrong about the territory limit, though, because it's quite difficult to "read" the faction mode.  I think it would be great if you could select (for example) Thymerock in the little faction list and get Thymerock territory highlighted until you deselected 'em again.  My extremely limited knowledge of coding tells me that this might be a bigger ask than it sounds like.

Water Stuff:

• Water enemies that spawn in the shallows will instantly disappear when they touch the deeper water lol
• I can stand up in river shallows, right? I've been wading in them the whole time.  But reaching them doesn't save me from drowning, even though I could presumably stand up.
• When I drown, the death pop-up says I died of thirst (when I'm resurrected, the event log says "drowned" instead)

NPC Stuff:

• It's kind of weird that I can get and/or redeem quests from NPCs while they're sleeping lol
• Are monsters supposed to attack my workers? They don't, which is nice of them, but are they SUPPOSED to? 

Miscellaneous:

• Again, multiple runs, and the other consistent UI goof is this: at some point, it becomes impossible to scroll far enough left that the "Structure" tab becomes visible again.  "Security" is the limit there, and structures are only accessible by pressing 1.  This is a very specific thing: I have no issues scrolling right in the building menu, and scrolling left works fine too until I hit the point between Structure and Security.  Then it stops.  Very odd.
• The game-created, default Home Campfire fully ceases to exist if I set another campfire as my "home."
• Some way of "batch-cooking" food would be really nice.  When I've got fifty raw meat in my inventory, clickclickclickclickclickclickclicking it all is a bit of a drag.
• Why is it that a workbench can be opened by bumping into it, but a forge requires a right-click?

Okay I think that's it.  I've spent some time without an Internet connection over the past few days, and am deeply obsessed with Roguefort, so I built up a bit of a collection there 😅

P.S.: It took me a bit to figure out why I was sometimes getting "you boil and refill your water pouch" instead of having to go boil it as a separate action, but once I figured it out: that's really cool, makes perfect sense, and is a nice little QoL perk.  Three cheers for boiling water automatically.  And the levelling/XP system is an unalloyed delight so far.  I get SO hyped every time I get to pick a guild thing.

So, first off, not keeping up with everything is ABSOLUTELY fair.  The speed and quality of your work on this project are practically superhuman.

Second, I wonder if user feedback could be streamlined in some way, to make it easier for you to find it all.  Maybe a Google form.  (Or a couple Google forms, if you wanted to separate bug reports from general suggestions.) The current liveliness of the comment section is great (it definitely adds to the sense of community), but preserving your time and energy should be a priority too!

That's great to hear! A suggestion for QoL with storage containers generally: it would be really great if you could see what was in them by inspecting them, imo

Okay, after making chests and not being able to open them for a while, I've learned the blueprint for a large chest.  Now, when I build large chests (which I could do before learning the blueprint), I can open and use them just fine lol

Ooh, you can do that??? I thought my Birchforge friends would be mad at me for declining quests.  Unironically this might make me start over just to have a quest log that's clean of that stuff (which I haven't actually DONE, it's just . . . sitting there)

Dungeon tiles are much better now and OH MY GOSH YOU FIXED AIMING! I didn't even think of this, but automatically exiting Aim Mode if there are no targets in range? HUGE IMPROVEMENT.  11/10 THANK YOU EXUBERANTLY

I get that with my legendary items too.  I got Angler's Companion (Oak_Rod) and a Ring of Power (Signet) lol

BIG bug: If, after filling a storage container, I accidentally click another item in my inventory (like, try to transfer that item into storage), the item is permanently destroyed.

Small bug: In the storage container "dialogue," it always lists the current number of items in my inventory as the maximum.  Like "Inventory: 3/3"

I'm having a blast though.  I've got tile floors and braziers.  I'm rich :D

Question: is there any way of replanting trees? I feel bad about not replanting the trees lmao

Yet more questions!

With the Windows download (installed through the Itch app, in case that's relevant) . . . is the setup wizard supposed to run every time I launch the game?

Whoa, thank YOU for taking the time to reply so thoroughly! And for making the game, which I am fully obsessed with.

Regarding recipe drops: my main reason for farming them so desperately was that I wanted to build some dang storage.  If there are more types of storage in the game now, the low drop rate should be less of an issue, I think.

Bad news: while the question marks have disappeared, the ghost items still take up space on the ground (I can't build on them, and they're labeled "Item" when I mouse over).  Also, while I can open shelves now, I cannot open chests XD

Yo, should I be able to put things on my shelves and weapon racks? I assumed that was what they were for, but all I can do is inspect them.

Miscellaneous bugs:

• items turned into pink question marks and became immortal (I can't pick them up to destroy them or anything)
• toads are all lowercase Ts (except the monster toads, sometimes)
• cooking two minnows and two other species of fish (one specimen each from the latter) gives me . . . four cooked minnows
• opposite problem: when I cook meat, it doesn't go into the existing stacks of the same type of meat in my inventory.  I have to drop it on the floor and pick it up to make it stack right.  Same thing happens when I make blossom curds.
• this isn't technically a bug, but I canNOT tell the difference between dungeon walls and dungeon floors.  They look almost identical.  It's very frustrating
• most nights, at least one enemy will freeze in place and let me kill it 50+ times.  I always spam-kill these because I need all the recipe-learning opportunities I can get.  Spam-killing three of these frozen targets in a row is sometimes not enough to get a single recipe; idk if I'm just spectacularly unlucky with that.
• the Lich King in Sunken Hollow kept SAYING he was summoning reinforcements, and he stayed completely alone (so I murdered him)
• sometimes I'll be shooting at a monster and it will SAY I hit (for however much damage), but the health bar will not go down.  When this happens, it seems to be impossible to MISS; the arrow always hits, always for the same amount of damage, but that damage never comes out of the monster's HP and the monster never moves

Oh wow, thank you!

Another question: how come bandits and Dominion soldiers keep getting into town when the town is surrounded by barricades and impassable water? Does the impassable water not register as a barrier? Do they actually just spawn right there instead of "coming from the north"? Thanks!

Am I missing something with the water barrels? I've placed them right next to my farm plots, filled them completely, and . . . nothing.  The plots stay dry.  

It looks really neat (which is why I've downloaded it now, hoping to play it) but it basically doesn't work in my browser (Firefox).  There's about a half a second of lag between input and response, which isn't the end of the world.  Animations play in stop motion, which is also not the end of the world but I don't think it's supposed to happen.  Two minutes into this experience, the entire browser crashes (this has happened twice now), which is . . . not ideal.

Tiny . . . bug? Do you call it a bug when it's out-of-sequence text? Anyway: if I remove the power coupler from the life support system before donning the emergency suit in Talos (this is quite early game, second or third loop), the message is "You remove the power coupler from the life support system, your suit quickly notifying you that the air was no longer being replenished by the facility." 

Hi, I'm just a tad bit confused, sorry.  Are you saying the full content of the game will come out on the free web version, eventually, just more slowly? Because you'd be an absolute angel for that.  It's totally fair if that isn't the approach you're taking, though, too -- I just want to know what I, presently saving all my dough, can expect lmao

This game is an absolute gem.  I'm so excited to play as much of it as I can.

Cannot for the life of me find the last cat lmao

Hi, sorry for the late reply; I didn't get a notification for some reason! I'm playing the web version in Firefox, on a Lenovo Thinkpad with 16 GB of RAM.  The lag isn't nearly bad enough to be game-breaking or even really annoying, just a little "woop, might not be able to run this forever / add too many bajillions of plants" flag, you know?

"No vomit noises" gang :D

That was fun :D it started to lag pretty quickly, though.  I'm not sure how much can be done about that, considering the sheer number of fruits . . . maybe a "no fruit animations" option, where your juice count goes up when you get within range of a fruit-bearing plant, but the game doesn't actually render a bajillion 3D objects? I don't know, I'm not a coder myself.  I'd just like to be able to play the full game without crashing my PC lmao

A "no vomit noises" option would also be nice.  I get the impression that grossness is part of the intended atmosphere, which is cool, but there's only so much vomit noise a person can take, y'know?

Fiiiine I guess I'll use Steam again XD

Genuinely the most captivating puzzle game I've found all year.  Instant favourite.  My dearest wish is for an endless mode.

Waaaait a sec.  Does quartz just not appear in the magma level? I thought it was rarer than diamond down there, but if I kept looking, it would be there eventually.  Like spinning the machine: a tiny chance that I'd just have to keep taking until turtles fell out.

It's a truly lovely game, but I don't think cows are spawning as fast as they're supposed to.  I get a new cow maybe 40% of the time, when I return to the surface, and I've run out of leather completely as a result.

I'm also getting a bit tired of combing the magma zone for quartz.  I think I'd find this "quest" a lot less annoying if there was some sort of cumulative bonus for the number of times you've reached water (maybe the number of times a specific turtle has sipped the water, like a level-up system; the bonus could even be different for each turtle) -- it wouldn't feel like I was doing EXACTLY the same thing, over and over, then.  I'd also have a reason to change my turtle loadout again -- now that I only have one goal when digging (find quartz in the magma zone), it doesn't make sense to mess around with turtles or artifacts anymore.

I was also hoping for the relics to . . . idk, do more? Unlock new recipes? Allow you to equip specific relics for themed effects? Allow you to build a museum that would then accumulate "donations" of quartz, with the quartz yield dropping A LOT when you took a relic out (to equip it), so you'd have to balance the usefulness of the effect with the slashed income?

Idk.  I'm not a game designer.  I just feel like I've run out of things to DO before finishing what I want to get DONE, if that makes sense.  And that's a shame, because I've had a lot of fun with this game so far.

TL;DR: discovering stuff and messing around is really fun, and I wish I could keep doing it while chasing the last two turtles.  I'm sure I'll keep enjoying the game in some capacity no matter what (it's charming and relaxing), but it could be even better, I think.

I'm working on Super Convergence now, and I have some more thoughts.

1. I love the text.  Unlocking the first star in the Azure River, I got "THE ANTI-CREATOR: we have confirmed the nature of the antagonist" and I was locked in.  That, combined with the slow fade and the cooling sun I'd already read about from the other two "first stars" . . . I mean.  There was no way I could leave without finding out what it was all about.  The data in the stars is all great, but that one moment was impeccable.

2. that said, the stars start to feel "cheap" pretty quickly.  Unlocking a whole constellation in one convergence takes a lot of the impact out of the story for me; I lost the experience of asking "what does this [DATA CORRUPTED] say? Between this phrase and the next?" -- I could just find out.  Immediately.

3. after devouring the whole story, I'm now left to babysit the engine for several days in order to get the Super Convergence.  There's nothing left to discover.  There are no more upgrades. The flashbang is used up.  I would've liked a slower burn.

4. I would've liked to make the text bigger and turn off the glow effect.  It was a bit hard to read as-is.  EDIT: wahoo! I discovered you can turn off the glow by turning visual effects to "low" :D

5. running this game makes my PC get extremely hot.  Like I said in my earlier comment, I don't know how much can be done to lighten that load -- but anything you can do, in that area, wouldn't go amiss.

6. more details about how each upgrade was affecting my production and consumption rates (and the amount of Light I'd get by converging) would've been hugely appreciated.  "Base rate, x2 from [upgrade], x1.5 from [other upgrade], total," sort of thing.

7. I very much wish the automatic pip allocation would take pips out of white when it was full.  Would stop using pips for any light that's both full and bereft of "downstream" nodes sucking stuff out of it.  That would make it a lot more efficient to get up to full Resonance points.

I've ended up being quite critical, I think.  I want to emphasize that I love every data entry.  My biggest wish is just that I could find more lore crumbs . . . like, the shattered remnants of a planet? I don't know.  I just want to read more.

Seconding the request for automation to stop "idling" the pips.

I'm hooked on the story, for sure.

I do wish it wasn't trying to melt my PC.  I don't know what kind of optimization is possible with the code, but if it could be made less demanding for weaker machines, I (and my weak machine) would appreciate that.

I'd appreciate more information about how the upgrades are working, too.  Total production for a node, and then on mouse-over (or something), a rundown of which upgrades are reducing the drain on it / boosting its production from base.  A similar breakdown for the amount of light I'm going to get from Convergence.

Ooh! I missed some updates, so now I get a lovely little present :D

Aw man, I was very excited to hear of the UI scale . . . but it turns out it was already set to maximum.  Thanks though!

I am utterly obsessed with this game! My only real complaint is that I find the text very difficult to read sometimes (especially the red text).  I'd really appreciate some UI customization: font size, font brightness in comparison to the background (maybe even the ability to tweak the background's saturation too), that sort of thing.

Apart from that, I think it would be nice if you could mouse over routes on the map to see how long they'd take.  And to have maps of the facilities themselves, because I get pretty confused trying to navigate Astrape XD

That was awesome -- I really wish it was a full game! I would love to play it longer, find new plants from "exploring the world" etc.  Maybe different regions would be friendly to different plants, and certain plants could be hardier than others -- so there would be more strategy in the crossbreeding, as you tried to get a profitable plant that also grew well in many garden plots.  

I agree with the suggestion that hovering over cards should show the plant's stats, and I found the card-merging a bit finicky at times: sometimes I merged cards by accident, other times I tried to merge cards and they missed each other.  Maybe that's just because I'm using a touchpad.

Another suggestion: our "research" panel could include a family tree of different crossbreeds.  I made my own in Paint.net, which was doable because there were only three parent species -- but it would get a bit overwhelming with more than that.  Also, I wished quite a few times that I could rearrange the cards in my hand (to sort them by type and level).

I'll definitely be playing again as-is, though; it was very relaxing.