I finished the demo, it has potential, fighting system is pretty fun, parrying window is a little short, but other than that selecting different areas of attack and timing when you should attack or switching your characters for extending your combo is pretty fun. I imagine it can be pretty fun to manage your attacks, maybe have more than 3 stars when you level up enough and have more powerful attacks consume more than one star. I wasn't using magic for defense until last hob-goblin, he was pretty tough! MC got floored in that fight, the other girl was carrying the torch.
Now story wise you're going for Sailor Moon, huh? Magical cat, power to transform into a magical girl? I have to say that the beginning about random encounter with your friend that wants to die is a little... random? I mean, what are the odds you'll find your old friend of yours just at the time she was going to kill herself in an alley? And then she just grants you power to transform into magical being and now you know kung-fu! What I'm saying is it demands a lot suspension of disbelief for a player to go through. I didn't have that dilemma with Sailor Moon, she's just a moon child hiding among the people and the cat guardian finally found her and gave her pendant that activates her hidden abilities. Here the power transfer feels like anybody can be a magical girl if they get something. What was it actually, the magical essence? I'm not buying the lore. It has to be expanded, give it some air to breathe, don't just lump everything at once. Maybe even change the backstory a little. And is it imperative that the cat is a girl that uses some spanish? It was a real gut-wrencher for me.
Maybe I'm a little allergic to magical-girls themes, the fighting mechanic is fine, the minute details about the story must be refined.
Don't worry, everybody's been having issues with the writing and I've been taking it in stride. I've been focusing on refining the script and sharing it to my peers for advice. It'll be awhile before I put out another alpha but if anything will be addressed it will be the writing.
Wasn't really engaged. Intro cinematic is cool but without colors its kinda messy - could barely understand what's going on. Also doing the "I don't deserve to live" couple of seconds before the "I'm a magical girl" and "here have my power" is a bold move story-wise, but it also got me disengaged really fast.
Combat works. It's alright, reminded me of old flash games. Didn't really see the point in doing combos or whatever since spamming auto-parry and the very first attack worked.
It seems that every time there's a screen change - some input lag is introduced into the game. I got close to 1 second of lag.
Really cool, very creative take on the turn-based combat. Just needs stances to be more readable, I don't know who's doing low or high guards, and it's hard to tell when my parry is coming out since there's times where it'll completely miss a whole sequence and I can't tell if I'm just mistiming it or if the game didn't register it. But a lot of the art is still placeholder,, so there's lots of room to improve on something that shows a lot of promise already. Getting guard broken and juggled by a mob goblin is pretty wild.
At first the fights were a bit boring since they were all samey after I learned the grasp and idea on how I'm meant to play but they picked up near the end, in fact I almost lost but the blue haired girl ended up having a oneshot skill that saved me.
I wasn't able to figure out which stance to take since the attack animations were too fast for my reaction speed, it seemed like I was meant to learn a pattern. If there is a pattern Id suggest changing the enemies looks to differentiate the block combos.
I think I didn't use all fight mechanics as they were both needed and the game also finished fairly fast, I didnt use any item or understood the parry mechanic beyond standing still or ducking, but I was swapping to the second character while the enemy was flying.
Notes:
-At the main menu you're asked to press any button and I was a bit stumped because I'm in keyboard and mousee without knowing I was meant to hit specific keys
-City movement maybe feels too fast, although im not sure about it, its just a thought
-At one point an enemy lost all its hp and I swapped to the blue haired girl as a combo, she didnt do any action but still lost the turn, I would have preferred that the game checks for this and lets me play her turn, although its a fair punishment maybe, up to you.
-I had a crash I couldn't reproduce, I think it was when an enemy was following me to start a fight, see screenshot for the pop-up log
Really cool so far, I love the concept and all the juice and little details are a lot better than what the screenshots and the like show. Issues/concerns:
-Music is like 100x quieter than the sfx
-The end-of-battle screen Font is a bit hard to read at small sizes (looks good for title cards etc though)
-Story is kind of a big one, it goes by at a mile a minute and is way too fast, although I'm guessing you were just rushing out a draft to get the demo out quickly? There wouldn't be anything wrong with like, a scene of the main girl daydreaming about her childhood friend and thinking about all the impacts the incident had on their lives, or a long explanation by the cat about how the setting works, etc. Your entire game will go by in 1.5 hours if the final story is paced like the demo.
The gameplay is very interesting, but it's gonna be tough to balance. With randomness(of enemies blocking high or low or whatnot) it becomes a guessing game, and without randomness it becomes square-peg-square-hole simplistic, etc. I do like the way that attacks will miss on enemies who are too high up, and I think chaining/timing combos could be fun, like maybe you could have the randomness stem for how high they fly up when you hit them and whatnot so the timing is always a challenge.
Defensively, it's very hard to react to the attacks without telegraphing or noticeable patterns, in real fighting games most enemy moves aren't reactable and you have to read your opponent, but that's hard to do with a CPU. Could just be a skill issue though, I only had a few minutes experience with fighting the goblins, maybe it is reactable.
Going back to the offence thing, here are some random suggestions:
-Maybe make enemies alternate between crouch/stand blocking at set times (possibly with some randomness) at the start of an attack. There were times when they were crouch blocking but there was no animation to show it, felt kinda BS.
-You could try to make the gameplay center more around combos, with enemies who are heavier/lighter/smaller/larger having properties that make different attacks more effective against each of them? That's one direction you could take things, anyway.
-You could also maybe make a "break" style system where you have to inflict posture damage for a while before they juggle, maybe with stuff like weaknesses and whatnot making them take more posture damage, then make the juggling way bigger and flashier to compensate.
-Maybe some sort of limit break where it's a normal combo but with slowmo/time stop so you can make it optimal easily? Like a "chain attack" style thing.
Anyway a lot of that are just my random thoughts. I'm a huge fiend for difficulty/complexity and I don't think most players will want the game to be as deep as me, so take it all with a grain of salt. Looking forward to future versions though!
I guess it's like paper mario in terms of it being a turn based combat with action timings.
I'm not sure if the height of the enemy matters when doing attacks and combos, and I kinda hate the idea of going up and down in the menu in real time.
The combat felt pretty fun. The parry window was really intuitive which I was surprised by considering the animation style. Some of the dialog could flow better, but more polished and expressive portraits could also sell it better.
Also got this error in the second city screen after leaving the basement. (actually opened the IDE by reflex lol.)
Hey I don't know if it's a bug or I'm just stupid but I couldn't get past the main menu. Intro cutscene was nice though, the moment where her eyes turned red was kino
Okay, pressed Z to get through the main menu, so here is some real feedback
What I liked:
Art is great
Talking cat is based
I love when you can take specific actions during turns in JRPGs, like the guard switching
Suggestions:
Add actions during the player's attacks! A 3 piece punch combo is practically begging for timing your inputs for the punches a la Mario and Luigi RPGs
Some sound effects seem pretty loud relative to the rest of the audio, specifically the gunshot noise when you select something on a menu, and the noises when someone or something gets hit
Make the controls more obvious, especially in the main menu. It says "Press Any Button" and most of the keys on my keyboard do nothing lol
You have the makings of a great JRPG on your hands, keep up the good work!
Comments
I finished the demo, it has potential, fighting system is pretty fun, parrying window is a little short, but other than that selecting different areas of attack and timing when you should attack or switching your characters for extending your combo is pretty fun. I imagine it can be pretty fun to manage your attacks, maybe have more than 3 stars when you level up enough and have more powerful attacks consume more than one star. I wasn't using magic for defense until last hob-goblin, he was pretty tough! MC got floored in that fight, the other girl was carrying the torch.
Now story wise you're going for Sailor Moon, huh? Magical cat, power to transform into a magical girl? I have to say that the beginning about random encounter with your friend that wants to die is a little... random? I mean, what are the odds you'll find your old friend of yours just at the time she was going to kill herself in an alley? And then she just grants you power to transform into magical being and now you know kung-fu! What I'm saying is it demands a lot suspension of disbelief for a player to go through. I didn't have that dilemma with Sailor Moon, she's just a moon child hiding among the people and the cat guardian finally found her and gave her pendant that activates her hidden abilities. Here the power transfer feels like anybody can be a magical girl if they get something. What was it actually, the magical essence? I'm not buying the lore. It has to be expanded, give it some air to breathe, don't just lump everything at once. Maybe even change the backstory a little. And is it imperative that the cat is a girl that uses some spanish? It was a real gut-wrencher for me.
Maybe I'm a little allergic to magical-girls themes, the fighting mechanic is fine, the minute details about the story must be refined.
Don't worry, everybody's been having issues with the writing and I've been taking it in stride. I've been focusing on refining the script and sharing it to my peers for advice. It'll be awhile before I put out another alpha but if anything will be addressed it will be the writing.
Wasn't really engaged. Intro cinematic is cool but without colors its kinda messy - could barely understand what's going on. Also doing the "I don't deserve to live" couple of seconds before the "I'm a magical girl" and "here have my power" is a bold move story-wise, but it also got me disengaged really fast.
Combat works. It's alright, reminded me of old flash games. Didn't really see the point in doing combos or whatever since spamming auto-parry and the very first attack worked.
It seems that every time there's a screen change - some input lag is introduced into the game. I got close to 1 second of lag.
Really cool, very creative take on the turn-based combat. Just needs stances to be more readable, I don't know who's doing low or high guards, and it's hard to tell when my parry is coming out since there's times where it'll completely miss a whole sequence and I can't tell if I'm just mistiming it or if the game didn't register it. But a lot of the art is still placeholder,, so there's lots of room to improve on something that shows a lot of promise already. Getting guard broken and juggled by a mob goblin is pretty wild.
At first the fights were a bit boring since they were all samey after I learned the grasp and idea on how I'm meant to play but they picked up near the end, in fact I almost lost but the blue haired girl ended up having a oneshot skill that saved me.
I wasn't able to figure out which stance to take since the attack animations were too fast for my reaction speed, it seemed like I was meant to learn a pattern. If there is a pattern Id suggest changing the enemies looks to differentiate the block combos.
I think I didn't use all fight mechanics as they were both needed and the game also finished fairly fast, I didnt use any item or understood the parry mechanic beyond standing still or ducking, but I was swapping to the second character while the enemy was flying. Notes: -At the main menu you're asked to press any button and I was a bit stumped because I'm in keyboard and mousee without knowing I was meant to hit specific keys
-City movement maybe feels too fast, although im not sure about it, its just a thought
-At one point an enemy lost all its hp and I swapped to the blue haired girl as a combo, she didnt do any action but still lost the turn, I would have preferred that the game checks for this and lets me play her turn, although its a fair punishment maybe, up to you.
-I had a crash I couldn't reproduce, I think it was when an enemy was following me to start a fight, see screenshot for the pop-up log
Really cool so far, I love the concept and all the juice and little details are a lot better than what the screenshots and the like show. Issues/concerns:
-Music is like 100x quieter than the sfx
-The end-of-battle screen Font is a bit hard to read at small sizes (looks good for title cards etc though)
-Story is kind of a big one, it goes by at a mile a minute and is way too fast, although I'm guessing you were just rushing out a draft to get the demo out quickly? There wouldn't be anything wrong with like, a scene of the main girl daydreaming about her childhood friend and thinking about all the impacts the incident had on their lives, or a long explanation by the cat about how the setting works, etc. Your entire game will go by in 1.5 hours if the final story is paced like the demo.
The gameplay is very interesting, but it's gonna be tough to balance. With randomness(of enemies blocking high or low or whatnot) it becomes a guessing game, and without randomness it becomes square-peg-square-hole simplistic, etc. I do like the way that attacks will miss on enemies who are too high up, and I think chaining/timing combos could be fun, like maybe you could have the randomness stem for how high they fly up when you hit them and whatnot so the timing is always a challenge.
Defensively, it's very hard to react to the attacks without telegraphing or noticeable patterns, in real fighting games most enemy moves aren't reactable and you have to read your opponent, but that's hard to do with a CPU. Could just be a skill issue though, I only had a few minutes experience with fighting the goblins, maybe it is reactable.
Going back to the offence thing, here are some random suggestions:
-Maybe make enemies alternate between crouch/stand blocking at set times (possibly with some randomness) at the start of an attack. There were times when they were crouch blocking but there was no animation to show it, felt kinda BS.
-You could try to make the gameplay center more around combos, with enemies who are heavier/lighter/smaller/larger having properties that make different attacks more effective against each of them? That's one direction you could take things, anyway.
-You could also maybe make a "break" style system where you have to inflict posture damage for a while before they juggle, maybe with stuff like weaknesses and whatnot making them take more posture damage, then make the juggling way bigger and flashier to compensate.
-Maybe some sort of limit break where it's a normal combo but with slowmo/time stop so you can make it optimal easily? Like a "chain attack" style thing.
Anyway a lot of that are just my random thoughts. I'm a huge fiend for difficulty/complexity and I don't think most players will want the game to be as deep as me, so take it all with a grain of salt. Looking forward to future versions though!
I guess it's like paper mario in terms of it being a turn based combat with action timings.
I'm not sure if the height of the enemy matters when doing attacks and combos, and I kinda hate the idea of going up and down in the menu in real time.
The combat felt pretty fun. The parry window was really intuitive which I was surprised by considering the animation style. Some of the dialog could flow better, but more polished and expressive portraits could also sell it better.
Also got this error in the second city screen after leaving the basement. (actually opened the IDE by reflex lol.)
ERROR in action number 1
of Step Event0 for object oGame:
Unable to find instance for object index 129116
at gml_Object_oGame_Step_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_oGame_Step_0 (line -1)
Heads up, I forgot to show controls for the title screen ;_;
With keyboard:
Z to confirm, X to decline, arrow keys to select options.
Hey I don't know if it's a bug or I'm just stupid but I couldn't get past the main menu. Intro cutscene was nice though, the moment where her eyes turned red was kino
Okay, pressed Z to get through the main menu, so here is some real feedback
What I liked:
Suggestions:
You have the makings of a great JRPG on your hands, keep up the good work!