itch.io

Because I don't wanna greet the robots that steal my words.

And thanks! <3

Wow, this is absolutely impressive. I'm usually not a fan of First-Person Shooters but the story just got me. The characters were sooo good, I wanted to protect them at all cost. I also like all the costumes, especially the frog ones. But it's crazy difficult! The second boss, especially... how are you supposed to dodge all these chainsaws while also posting the protein-chain for a life-saving vaccine on Facebook?! I'm stuck there but I will try again tonight.

Thanks for making this game! <3

Oh, btw... can you date Marah at all or...?

Thank you! <3

Thank you! <3

Thank you for the support and the kind words!! That really means a lot! I can upload a web version later that runs in the browser, that might work until we figure out why it's not launching.

The game uses NVDA when it's running and default to the OS speech synth if it doesn't. What GPU are you using? And maybe try running the game in Windows compatibility mode, like Windows 7 for example. Not sure, at this point I'm only guessing, unfortunately...

I'm still thinking about what could be the issue. Redsneasel mentioned a few comments above that it worked for friends on Windows 10 so it can't be the operating system. Older versions of Soulblaze were running on the same machine you're trying now?

Oh, dang! You're right, that needs to be updated... thanks for letting me know. It was free during the alpha development but it went into Early Access last week. There's currently a free demo on Steam but I'll upload it to Itch soon as well. Sorry for the confusion!

Absolutely, I'm not planning on stopping with accessibility now haha

Ah, bummer about Windows 7. It's hard to test the game on all the old systems but maybe I can figure something out. Glad to hear it worked for the others though and thanks for letting me know. Appreciate it! :)

That issue should have been fixed with the last update. If it's not too much trouble, could you test it with Window's narrator instead of NVDA? If that works that at least I know that it has something to do with it.

The dependend libraries should be included with the build. The weird thing is that the log is empty, it would probably include an error about that.

When I start the game for the first time, Windows defender warns about it and I have to tell it to launch it anyway. Did this maybe open silently?

I have now tested it on a Windows 10 virtual machine and it launches normally for me so I'm not sure what's causing the issue. Can you remove your save files from the app_userdata/Soulblaze folder: playerdata.tres, player_config.dat and if it exists, save.tres, (make a backup of these files before) and try again?

Oh, dang! Sorry about that. It launched fine on Win11. I'll see if I can reproduce it. Thanks for reporting!

Hey, Redsneasel! Yes, blind accessibility is still part of the game. Because of the big rework of some systems, there might be a part here and there that isn't reading anymore but I'm fixing that when those come up. I'll do a more thorough test later today!

Hope you get better soon and thanks for the support!

Thanks, Redsneasel! Glad to see you're back :)
Just as a heads-up, I haven't added any of the recent things I've been working on to the public build (only some bugfixes) because I'm doing a lot of reworks that break parts of the game. The bunch of new content will be updated with the EA release.

Aw, shucks, thank you! <3

Thank you! Glad you've been along for the ride for so long :)

Thank you! Yes, I'll try to keep going :)

I have a similar issue but with Butler. Trying to upload a build fails, and trying to login and log out also fails with "

authenticating: retrieving wharf status: Server error: HTTP 403 Forbidden for /wharf/status"

Hey there, superfreq! Thank you so much! I will do my best to finish Soulblaze and am always happy to hear when people are still interested in it. Am definitely still actively working on it and will write another devlog soon.

Glad you enjoy my alt texts haha. I hope I was consistent with adding them!

Thank you, Vincenzo :)

Also hoping for EUR currency default (using Payoneer)

Thank you! I'm looking forward to it releasing too :D

I seem to have fixed it by excluding an addon. The library seemed to have caused issues even though it throws no errors and is working as intended.

I have implemented a battle speed slider in the settings. It'll come with the next patch!

Ah, I see what you mean. I misunderstood.

For Steam, I had to offer either Steam input remapping via their API or make my own to get the controller support and Steam deck verified tag so I just opted to do it in-game.

Ah, gotcha! Sorry, I was so stuck on the word "moves" from Pokémon that I didn't compute haha. Thanks for making the images.

I could whip something up. Should be doable as I'm already reusing an object that takes care of button prompts. 

Regarding the keybinders, it's an important accessibility features for players with physical disabilities that rely using different controllers. Remapping inputs enables them to play the game. So I'd say every game needs it, actually :)

Hi! I've been uploading my game builds with Butler and while it used to fix permissions, it doesn't work anymore. I'm exporting an .app bundle via Godot standard export templates. I tried both .app and zipped. In both cases players get the error that the game is damaged and can be run. It works fine when running through the Itch app or when manually setting permission with -xattr

The mac build also launches when uploaded via SteamCMD.

According to the docs, Butler should take care of that. Any clue what I'm doing wrong? Is it maybe new libraries that I added?

Oh and until then you can increase the text speed or even disable the battle message box which sorta speeds up the battle as well, if you haven't tried that yet :)

Oh, that's cool! I didn't know it even works with those older controllers. Thanks for testing and letting me know :)

I'm still not sure I understand "names of moves instead of button images", sorry. I assume with "moves" you mean the tricks that Animons can perform during battle which don't show any gamepad icons (at least not intentional)?

Do you mean these or something else? Would you like an option to disable controller icons in the UI in general?

I can implement that! Would you prefer a general (battle) speed slider in the settings or like toggling a fast mode on and off during battle?

Hi there! Thanks for playing and your feedback.
The controller icons should swap on the fly depending on what input method you're using. When I test it, it changes betwee  keyboard, XBox gamepad, and PS4 controller for example. Is that not the case for you?

Also, I'm not sure I understand the rest of your comment. The name of the moves are displayed on screen, there shouldn't be any controller buttons. Could you share a screenshot so I could get a better understanding of what the issue is? Are you talking about the battle screen or the input remapping screen?

I shall burn it quite intensely, then! :D

Few things despair me more than the Itch.io text editor haha

And I know how annoying it can be when you get feedback that assumes a later stage in development so I hope I wasn't too bad :D

No need to apologize! You communicated that it was an early build so bugs are to be expected.

I'll definitely want to give it another shot and try more of the battles. On my first startup I alt+F4 out of the game because I was trying to get the controller sorted which led to a long freeze and the log saying it was unable to free an invalid ID. The log file is HUGE. 2.4GB D:

(I still have it if you want to see it)

When I started the game again, I was above the start point with some items spawned around me. Maybe that was the reason some of the things didn't trigger correctly?

Hey!

I enjoyed the game, the art style is cute, relaxing, and inviting. Monster taming and farming sim is also always a combination that hooks me :D
The combat is very interesting, I really like the potential of the risk-reward of drawing sharbles and am intrigued to see what other strategy / options I will have! My first strategy was to just pull as much as I could, getting closer to the limit but that always backfired. I won the first fight by basically overloading every turn haha.

It took me a while until I understood the UI for overload though. Initially, I thought the number was the indicator and that I wasn't supposed to go over 100. The diamonds are very small and the particles floating around have the same shape and color as the filled overload units so I didn't notice at first that something was changing. I got it eventually, but I would suggest making the bars, which seem to be integral to the combat system, standing out a bit more / easier to read.

Additionally, already having sharbles with different effects might be a bit much to learn at once, in my opinion. Figuring out how the drawing works, overload and damage, that there's a bar for each spryte, is already quite a bit to learn so I think just starting with a bag of basic identical sharbles could help avoid overwhelming new players? Then let the player add additional ones a bit later once they have figured out the basics. 

I'm not sure if I had broken the game somehow but I had a feeling that I did something wrong at some point. There were no other wild sprites or battles beyond the first one. The skull explained to me how the farm and tool works and then nothing else seemed to continue? I'm not sure if that was the end of the alpha already. Also, going back to the skull started the initial dialogue again and I got the skull in my inventory a second time :D

Generally, like the direction and am excited to try more!

Hi,

I've been exporting my game for macOS from Godot which used to work fine but now since I'm using the GodotSteam extension the build does not launch anymore without applying "xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine [application]"

I've been uploading via Butler and as far as I read it'll take care of executable permission and flags? I don't have an Apple Developer account yet so I cannot properly notarize the app so maybe that's the issue but I wanted to make sure I'm not exporting incorrectly on my end. I tried exporting as DMG, Zip, and app and they all throw the error "app is damaged, move to bin" but in launches fine once I remove the quarantine flag.

Thanks in advance

EDIT: I should add that the game starts fine when uploaded to Steam, even when build on a Windows.

Hi! Yeah, I realized the massive problems of DM'img someone after reviews right after posting it...

I will post a comment as you suggested but I think I'll also disable ratings for the demo and leave it just for the main game.

Hi,

my demo just got a 1-star review and the user writing that the menu buttons don't work for them. I tested all my input devices and they work on my end so I'd like to know what OS and input hardware they were using but I have no way to reply or message them so I'm stuck with this 1-star rating. I've seen a post saying replies were planned but that was 4 years ago. Any updates on that?

Thanks!

Hi! I'm Zein, a solo dev, working on Soulblaze. I just released a web-based demo for the game. The game is heavily inspired by Pokémon but tries to create a fresh spin on it with dice rolling (inspired by TTRPGs like Savage Worlds and Dungeon World) and roguelite elements. The goal is to catch and train animons to build a team, teach them techniques, and then beat the boss of the region to get to the next. The demo inludes the first region and boss but you can also play the current development build which has 3 regions (but is a little less polished right now)

Link to the game: https://swordandquill.itch.io/soulblaze

I plan to release in Early Access later this year (Q3)!

Thank you so much for playing and the feedback. That's a great suggestion for the map, I'll implement that. Will also help with touch controls on the Steam Deck :)

And I'll see what's going on with the pick button.

That's fair, you shouldn't have to expect elements to suddenly be horizontal when everything else is vertical. I have changed it now that everything is in a vertical line. It'll come with the next update. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Gotcha, thank you! Settings are saved when you hit the accept button, which you can find at the bottom of the settings, there's accept and cancel, they're horizontal.