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Ero Witches

A Madoka Magica erotic fan parody HRPG · By madodev

Feedback

A topic by Endovior created Mar 10, 2023 Views: 819 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 5

Became aware of this from your post on 4chan looking for feedback. I just played through the first five dungeons (on 0.6), and wound up writing more than would fit there, so posting here instead.

Starting with mechanical notes...

I didn't figure out that healing items were reusable until the second dungeon; it would've saved me some time if that'd been made more clear. That said, especially in later dungeons, I often found myself wishing there was a revive item; sometimes enemies randomly focus down one of your characters quickly, and it's annoying having to reset despite having plenty of other healing items because there's no other way to get them back up.

Generally, it felt like there weren't enough healing items to casually clear floors, so it was always important to be strategic about which fights I took. At the same time, though, that lack of healing items inspired me to completionist exploration; I wanted to be very careful to check everywhere for chests to make sure that I wasn't missing any healing items. This was more irritating on the more confusing dungeons; worst offender was the mummification dungeon, whose 3D maze layout made it a lot harder to figure out where I'd finished checking and where I still needed to go.

Debuff effects often felt a lot stronger than buff effects. Mami's Ribbon Tie made such an amazing combination with Madoka's Lovely Barrage that I rearranged the party to put them in first and second, which remained a great opener against large enemy groups until the hardier enemies in the fifth dungeon became tough enough to ignore most of that damage. Similarly, in boss fights, it almost always seemed like the right call to debuff a boss instead of buffing one character, since the boss would be doing its thing every turn, and messing with its ability to do that was always fantastic. It helped that later debuffs often combined with attacks, so it didn't even feel like I was wasting a turn to put the debuff down. 

Unfortunately, many buffs often felt questionably-useful. I eventually found Parry Stance necessary in the fifth dungeon, to enable attack-focused characters with attack debuffs to contribute much at all, but it wasn't exciting; I'd hoped for counterattacks when I read the name, and was disappointed when that wasn't the case. Guardian Stance was a big enough swing that I did wind up using it often, especially since my Sayaka lagged far behind the party on offensive moves; the fact that it applied such a big buff to the target without stacking its debuff on Sayaka made it feel worth her time. The idea of Madoka's Glitterdust was neat, being a unique effect instead of another stat mod, but in practice it often felt like I'd rather do something else, and I eventually traded it out. I was quite happy with Kyouko's Spearchain in most circumstances, combining decent damage with a decent defensive buff always felt like a reasonable move. I would've liked to see more buff combos like that, or AoE buffs.

As a map explorer, I was generally disappointed by the lack of equipment, up until the Cursed Loot dungeon. Then I was disappointed again by the way you didn't get to take any of the good stuff with you afterwards.

Mechanics aside, talking about fetish content...

Enemy art was generally uninspiring. This is an HRPG, adding naughty enemy sprites would go a long way towards selling the mood.

The first dungeon was mostly kinda boring. The characters got stripped naked pretty quickly... and that was basically it, aside from the grovelling from the boss's attack. Unless something is going to take advantage of their nudity, being mostly naked is actually more interesting than being completely naked. Instead of the bulky and boring rags, I'd have liked to see an item that restored just their underwear, since seeing them desperately try to preserve the last shreds of their modesty would've been more interesting than them just being totally naked with no way to solve it.

The second dungeon was much better supported, with the many items in the first room to apply or remove the corsets and heels. Instead of just having them quickly forced into the highest heels and tightest corsets, I'd actively cut away any items that were too debilitating, and instead try to keep everyone wearing gear that they were just slightly uncomfortable with to maximize both training and combat power. It was a neat concept, and didn't wear out its welcome, since the enemies were effectively helpless against fully-trained characters.

As a cursed item enjoyer, the third dungeon was incredibly disappointing. There could've been a lot more done with the items in question (see literally any of /d/'s cursed item threads for ideas), and instead it was just minor stat debuffs. Combine this with not even being able to keep any of the actually-good equipment for later, and I wound up not enjoying this one as much as I thought I would. That said, I see you're already on this one and going in a petplay-focused direction; I look forward to seeing what comes of that.

The fourth dungeon was mostly just a long boring slog. Without any other interesting things happening to the characters when they're wrapped up, it was just... kinda silly? The bondage sarcophagus move used by the final boss was a little neat, but mostly this place involved wandering around a maze searching it for loot while heavily debuffed. The lack of interesting ways to respond to the progressing mummification other than collect the items that let you opt out of it, and general lack of things that exploit your bound state made this easily my least favorite dungeon.

The fifth dungeon had some neat concepts, but felt underdeveloped. Sure, I managed to find the stuff to shrink futa cocks and break out of chastity early on, but the debuffs didn't feel significant enough to force me to use it, and the training duration to get the titles was long enough that by the time I was ready to consider breaking out, I was basically just stalling before the boss fight. Worse consequences for being maximum horny and unable to masturbate while having the biggest dick crammed into the tiniest cage would've sold this harder. I also would've appreciated larger / growing plugs and an anal training progression instead of just waiting for a long time while plugged; 1000 steps was so much that I wound up walking back and forth in a long hallway for a while to get it done.

I didn't play the sixth dungeon, since it was the last dungeon when I played, and feeding and weight gain isn't my thing (even if the weight is only going to tits and ass).

Generally, I was a little disappointed at the lack of lasting fetish-related consequences to the dungeons besides the titles. For example, it'd be amazing if completing training in corsets and heels unlocked alternative outfits that, or if some piercings from the cursed dungeon could be worn afterwards (either case probably being sidegrades instead of upgrades, allowing more customization of the party). That said, I understand that there's only so much art you can make, and there are possible inclusions that'd make later expansions more complicated.

Developer

Thank you so much for the feedback! 

I can say that persistence between dungeon isn't going to happen, that's a can of worms I don't want to open. All other things though, I'll take into consideration. I especially want to add more content to dungeon 4 and 5, so I'll keep your feedback in the back of my head. I'll edit this post later to add what I kept from it.

You'll also be pleased to hear that I uploaded version 0.7 a couple minutes ago, so you can try out the new cursed equipment immediately. Let me know (here or on /d/) what you thought of it.

(1 edit)

While playing, I kept saves before entering each dungeon, so I was able to go back and try dungeon 3 with an appropriate save. The animal-themed moves are neat,  and definitely help flavour the playthough, while the other cursed items are now inconvenient enough to actually care about instead of completely ignorable. The stuns from the Choker seemed to proc more frequently than I'd have expected, and the Blinders were annoying enough to make it worth swapping up my team order to deal with the vision issue (this is a good thing, provided that everyone isn't blind).

Moved right on to dungeon 7 after that (with my latest save), skipping 6. It was... probably much too easy, actually? Everything here gives stat boosts instead of penalties, but instead of it being the case that you needed to get use the fetish mechanics and get mostly-trained to easily handle the boss, I explored around, opened a few boxes, found my way to the boss, and defeated them like two levels below cap, while most of my party was less than half-equipped with pony gear, despite a couple of hand-me-downs.

Moving on to maxing out the titles here was a real chore. I had to go considerably out of my way to get loaded up with pony gear (I basically loaded my group up with defense buffs and offense debuffs, applied them all, then sat around waiting to get kitted out), and getting to max grace actually required me to abuse oats and resets (after beating the map and getting fully kitted out with everyone, I had a combined total of 30 grace across the party). Then, actually getting the titles just required... lots and lots of walking. Which, okay, sure; thematic, but the implementation wasn't great. I think an infinitely-repeating area like in dungeon 3 would work well here; a pony training area with a nice long road whose end becomes its beginning (letting you walk in a straight line as long as you need to), and passive enemy groups off to the side, positioned so that they won't bother you if you're walking the line like a good pony, but you can fight them repeatedly for training and gear if you like. It might also help to have *some* pony gear just lying around in chests, to help get everyone fully equipped; there's a lot of items required across four characters, so every little bit helps.

Note that I didn't even run into the blinders/blindfold until I'd beaten the boss and sat down to grind out full pony gear, so I didn't get to experience the maze-like passages while impaired. Having missed that experience was probably for the best, I'd have found trying to explore while blindfolded rather annoying; it might be worthwhile to put in an item somewhere that removes eye-encumbering items from one person, in case anyone else is similarly bothered by the conflict between exploration and completionism.

I just tried out dungeon 7 and I am fully consent with Endovior's posting. I had the exact same experience. While I liked the idea and the art of the transformations, the mechanik is not optimalized. I takes waay too long and it doesn't feel balanced. I ran into he boss accidentally before the first wipe, and beat it with almost no transformation. After that I ran over an hour in circles to get the pony equipment and grace buffs. I feel this needs some adjustments.

Developer

As the dungeons go on, balancing becomes a lot more difficult. Level difference start mattering less and less, so the difference between the player at the start, and at the end of the combat are much lower. You should expect balancing issues to exist in new dungeons more often now. I still hope to one day add an actual hard mode where I don't have to care about handing out a casual experience. For this one though, I think I'll move the pony gear to give DEF upgrades and increase the attack of the enemies, that should work. I might get rid of the good horse / bad horse thing alltogether.

For dungeon 7, I like the idea of an infinitely repeating training area with some of the gear delivering enemies at the side. I'll also add a full loadout in a chest somewhere. I don't think the blinders are a problem though, since it requires your entire team to be equipped with blinders before you are completely vision locked - otherwise it's just a way to force you to change your first partymember - and as you mentioned, that is unlikely to happen unless you opt-in for it. Finally, I'll also make it so Grace accumulates just from walking around in ponygear, that should also make the boss more difficult.

From both your posts I've also made the plan to implement some changes to other dungeons. I'll be adding some shortcuts to 4 (make the metal bars open from one side), as well as an extra move for the enemies and players at high mummification. For dungeon 5, I plan some more flavor text and moves for penis envy, as well as harsher drawbacks for wearing a cramped chastity belt. I had a look, and unfortunately adding new dungeon specific stats breaks save compatibility, so I'll just opt for adding plugs with more diverse effects rather than an anal training stat.

As always, thanks for the feedback!

(2 edits)
Level difference start mattering less and less, so the difference between the player at the start, and at the end of the combat are much lower. You should expect balancing issues to exist in new dungeons more often now.

One way for balancing in later levels would be the use of the unique dungeons mechanics. E.g. you can only hurt the Boss or prevent some bad mechanic, if you reach a certain point of transformation, a specific status or got a high amount of a specific stat. Generally speaking some condition the player has to archieve in the dungeon to be able to beat the boss. Something similar you did before e.g. in dungeon 1 with the shaming / shamelessness mech or the corset/heel trainig in dungeon 2 . In the pony-dungeon at the moment you can enter the dungeon, run to the boss straight on, beat it and leave.

Another possibility for balancing I could imagine would be to use the fixed level-window per dungeon. E.g. in Dungeon 7 you are something between lvl 28 and lvl 30. You could add a special skill the girl (or just one) gets on lvl 30 you need to beat the endboss of that dungeon. This type of balancing should only be used selectively.

One other point: Is there a possibility to add more save slots? I used to keep a save game at the state before entering a new dungeon. And use 2-3 slots within the dungeon.

Developer

I'm going to try to not overthink this. I'll first see whether I can balance dungeon 7 just by making the enemies harder. There are already some shortcuts that only open when you are wearing enough horse equipment. So the dungeon gets easier as you get more equipped already. The main issue is that you can just run to the boss and beat her, making the enemies harder should remedy this.

Only if that doesn't work will I go for drastic measures.

One other point: Is there a possibility to add more save slots? I used to keep a save game at the state before entering a new dungeon. And use 2-3 slots within the dungeon.

Sure, I'll increase the amount of save slots to 20 in the next update.

My balancing ideas weren't meant specifically for lvl 7, but as a method to counter the problem with the less mattering level difference in higher dungeons. Maybe later in dungeon 10...or 12 :)