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Moonfell: the Tides of Aether's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Controls / UI | #45 | 3.615 | 4.667 |
| Sound/Music | #52 | 3.615 | 4.667 |
| Overall Fun | #62 | 3.615 | 4.667 |
| Art / Graphics | #89 | 3.357 | 4.333 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
New content, balance changes, various bug fixes, UI enhancements, some dialog overhauled
Genre
RPG
JRPG | CRPG | MMO| RPG
Rating
For 13+
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Comments
I wish I was able to play this game more, honestly! I only played the first 2hrs & felt it wasn't enough. So, apologies if I can't give too much critique. (If any!)
To start: Moonfell was so aesthetically pleasing from the get-go (not even the start of the game, but simply reading through the itch.io listing got me excited to play)! The game itself felt like such a love-letter to old school JRPGs. I adored the modern pixelization & rendering of sprites, the chiptune OST, and how well the game seemed to guide us around locations (and how they circled back). The tutorials were very straightforward & I actually appreciated that spamming the same attack may weaken its effect! The synergy mechanic was pretty fun to use & the HUGE damage inflicted was so satisfying to see!
I also very much adored all the characters we were able to encounter/play. None of them felt the same! Something I LOVED seeing make a comeback were the hidden items. I've been primed since young to spam the Confirm key along the walls. So, to see it in this game was so nostalgic!
I'm very curious to see if the multiple POVs will lend itself to puzzle mechanics. Something I enjoy with larger groups/split groups is having them trapped in a location, separated, & having the ability to switch between their POVs to help the entire group escape (like in Corpse Party, FF7R).
A few things I thought needed attention:
Overall, I had a ton of fun! The game hit so many nostalgic notes for me. I'm definitely excited to get back into it & play some more!
For my initial reaction to the game, you can find the VOD here. You'll have to forgive me, as I played the game during a 24hr Charity Stream. Timestamps are available, though:
Thanks a ton for the stream and the great feedback.
I could tell it was quite a marathon, but you seemed to pick up on all the concepts pretty quickly, and found a solid quantity of hidden items as well.
I'm also glad you were able to find a couple points to critique! I've added a note to my backlog to add a "remove" binding option.
As far as the MP and TP replenishment goes, I do delay that tutorial until the first 4-party-member dungeon which is shortly after your playthrough ended (sorry for spoilers!) It felt like adding that in any earlier was prone to causing info overload given the various other systems being introduced, and Spark's basic attack command is strong enough to clear most of the initial forest area. I know some players have figured it out organically, which is great, and as a backup I'm pretty generous with Tonic and healing points in the first dungeon. I'll definitely revisit if I get more feedback along these lines though.
There is absolutely more in store with the field skill system and puzzles as a whole. Without giving too much away, I can say that using a variety of skills to overcome a single puzzle will be part of the core gameplay later on.
Thanks again!
Hi, I filled out your feedback form, but will give some more general thoughts here. I completed the demo in about 4 hours.
Hi Midnight Spire Games,
Thank you for playing and not only completing the demo (in a fairly impressive time, I might add) but also filling out the feedback form. Super helpful data to have! And there are a lot of good observations as well as stuff I can do a better job at communicating.
I'll let you know once I've had a chance to check out Minerva Labyrinth.
Have you tried the Butler tool? I find it very helpful for dealing with uploads, and it also enables auto-patching for the client.
One thing that I would have liked in chapter 2 that would help here would be the option to continue playing each sub-chapter after defeating the boss. It could end after returning to rebel HQ, with an option after the boss to return there immediately or stay put. This would allow time to collect any remaining treasures or poke around the world map before moving on, if desired.
To me it feels like a bug, but that might just be me; in Unity or Godot, having no GUI element focused would just break the menu navigation, but I can see that that's not a problem in RPG Maker. What I typically do is just highlight the "cancel" option by default, though I have also seen games grey out the selections for a second or two when popping up a selection box (although, I think that's OK for warning/tutorial type boxes, but probably more annoying than helpful for gameplay selections).
Yeah - I would definitely expect them to be moving around, and I don't think that needs to be made explicit, but with how cautious Estelle has apparently been playing things, moving to the forest in the castle's back yard seems like a riskier move than she would want to make. It's not a big deal, really, it just stuck out to me a bit. In my head I just hand-waved it as RPG logic, and of course time and distance are kind of abstracted away on an RPG world map.
I don't recall if that was mentioned prior to that point or not, but it was definitely made clear that the invaders had a lot of intel that they shouldn't. This was implied at the end of chapter 2 to have come from Roderick, who I believe was the commander they were looking for during the prologue, and who had apparently been identified as the traitor at some point between then and now. So, if I understand correctly:
Do I have that right? If so, it's mainly the last two points that are glossed over. The impression that I got overall was that the Empire was already well-known to everyone except the player, but that the protagonists were surprised that the Empire had an army, which doesn't make sense. I don't think this necessarily needs more foreshadowing, but maybe a line or two after the harpy fight and/or when meeting Stefan would clarify where everyone stands.
This reminds me of one other thing, which is that I believe Darren reported that the Empire had already been to the ruins north of town before he got there. Was there a clue that I missed or am not remembering where he discovered that?
(Apologies if some of this really should have been obvious, there was just a fair bit to absorb and of course, I can't easily reread it to see if I overlooked things.)
Hmmm! I have never tried the Butler tool. While I mostly use itch.io for jams nowadays, it's always welcome to find new ways to streamline things.
I was on the fence about offering an option to stick around and explore after each split section, but I can see the appeal. Especially since a couple players have now beaten the boss before tackling that second book puzzle (one of them even re-loaded to finish exploring!)
I'm not super keen on selecting "cancel" as the default for the same reason I didn't want to default to the top item in the list; though that may be a case for discouraging players to mash through those choice windows to begin with.
True! Distance is relative in RPGs, and the scale of the world map can be deceptive. I'll still keep an eye out for similar feedback.
Your synopsis is spot-on! I think there are a few scenarios where the cast makes assumptions based off of limited info, and they are not always correct, which to me is part of the fun in figuring out the plot! (Not implying they're wrong in this case, for clarity). I can definitely improve how this is conveyed so it doesn't seem like an unintentional omission. Darren's assumptions about the Empire finding the cave first were based off of what Krell tells him, but they may or may not be similarly flawed.
No need at all for apologies, by the way! Your observations have been great, and I am not afraid to do some extra legwork to dig up additional details as needed. This has all been super helpful!
Thanks again!
I also beat Krell without finishing the book puzzle (I'm missing some of the books) and I don't think I found whatever the switch on the goddess statue opened, either, since I'm still missing a secret; if it was not the end of the demo anyway, I would probably have also reloaded the game to finish up there, unless chapter 3 let me return immediately. Since it tells you how many secrets are left when you find one, is there a way to check?
There's one more thing that I thought of that is bothering me, which is that if I'm not mistaken, the harpy said that they would capture "the blue-haired ones" (plural) alive and kill the others, but only Lunara has blue hair. Did it intend to capture Darren? Maybe it was actually singular and my brain just filled that in; in my brain, the harpy was talking about both of them, and I didn't think about his actual hair color until later. (I like the inverse color schemes for the two of them, by the way.)
At present there is not any way to check secret counts for a given area, though I have that planned as part of an "Atlas" (companion to the Bestiary) that will show a variety of map info, such as treasures, secrets, etc.
You're right about the Harpy's dialog! I'll probably change that line to "dark-haired" or something along those lines, since it doesn't quite make sense with the character's color schemes (I also like having the siblings' color schemes inverted, so that definitely won't change!)
I forgot to mention that when I launch the game, I get this error very briefly. It disappears immediately when the game finishes launching and doesn't seem to cause a problem, but I don't know what it means or if it's a problem on my end.
(EDIT: I've been told that this is just a thing that RPG Maker does.)
Ah yes that is a known RPG Maker thing. I am guessing one of the other RM games in the FQ8 lineup has a newer version of nw.js (to confirm, it doesn't have any negative side effects, just the annoying message). I recall there being a workaround and will look into it further for the next build. Thanks!