itch.io

My thoughts after reading it, in no particular order:
- Setting seems fine, nothing jumps out at me as a "wow super cool i have to play this" that i sometimes feel after reading a rulebook, but there is nothing bad about it.
- Basic mechanics need another pass. I think i understood most of the things, but even after reading it thrice im not super sure about everything. Maybe some things need to be explained in different order, or maybe examples are needed. Things like AP costs, and attribute actions i think i got, but i have the nagging feeling that it could work completely differently than i understood it.
- Everything needs a bit of polish, some sentences run too long, some explanations gloss over stuff that seems very important. Needs to be proofread by someone with little to no experience with the genre to see what needs more explanation.
- I would need to read a play by play of an example turn or even an entire combat before i would feel qualified to run the quickstart adventure. Something very simple like the hero vs 2 random thugs in an alley, it should be enough that every mechanic could be used once before the fight is over.
- Heat sounds very cool, simple risk-reward systems are my jam, and degrees of success is something i always do in my games, no matter the system, so i like it's baked in. Reflex is iffy because it relies purely on luck, i just see my buddy making a reflex based ronin and just never rolling doubles and being stuck with basic attacks.
- As for the adventure, its fairly non-linear, and i can see the player doing some stuff that will leave them with no further clues or skip half the drama.
I do love non-linear stories, especially whodunnits with multiple plots at once, but it does feel like a bit much for a testrun adventure. If i had to juggle a new ruleset on top of the adventure, i would for sure mess it up. I do like the story and i wouldn't want to simplify it, but i feel like it needs a little rewording to make it flow more intuitively. Maybe the adventure could have some sort of a checklist, a glossary or even a flowchart. Or a cool map of all the areas and what happens in them?

Ill try to get a screen shot tomorrow if I remember. Turn white is close enough, brightness goes up very fast until there's only an orange smear from the wall and white everywhere else. Later I found it wasn't 100% consistent to reproduce but definitely was connected to throwing the staff at the orange walls. But yeah, the game feels super fun so far, especially the gun that lets you place grindrails, you could make an entire game based just on that.
Edit: and of course as some universal laws demands, i have been completely unable to reproduce the glitch today. Well. bummer.

Tested on linux via Lutris, works fine, frames chug a bit but im literally playing on a toaster. Throwing the staff on the walls you can run along sometimes completely borks the lighting for a few seconds. Overall movement is fun,
kicking and jugglling dudes in the air is VERY fun.

feels weird that attack is bound to F instead of left mouse, but i guess left mouse is for aiming the staff throws? Dunno it felt kinda off till i got used to it.

Great so far, very promising.

It was very cool. fuck the spooky face that follows just in the corner of your vision tho.

If it's shut down, maybe post a transcript of possible answers somewhere, so the content is not completely lost?

i didn't know you could screw up basic movement in unity but here we are. Shame, because the game looks absolutely gorgeous but with the strange, stuttery camera movement i don't see myself playing it to the end.

The fact that the rotation level softlock is still not fixed despite being reported multiple times is kinda outrageous tbh. I was going for a 100% but i don't think i care enough to start over

The fact i instantly remembered this after playing it like 10 years ago says something.