I loved working my way through this one up until it crashed/gray screen of doom on the web build. The visuals are incredible here. Loved the town and all of the different sprites y'all came up with for the enemies. And they're all animated too! The writing is a bit on the long side, but it's fun as long as you're paying attention. The battle dynamics are really good after you start to get into a groove with the different characters and their potential abilities, but there is so much text on screen that it felt a bit overwhelming. I'd loved to have seen some kind of visual representation for the battle timers for each character instead of having the rolling counters here, and maybe some other visuals for representing the other traits to break up all of the text. Thanks for making and sharing this one. If I didn't have others to rate, I'd likely be restarting my run and trying to dodge that gray screen of doom.
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The pizza curse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| NES Feel | #20 | 4.125 | 4.125 |
| Graphics | #22 | 4.156 | 4.156 |
| Overall | #32 | 3.719 | 3.719 |
| Gameplay | #40 | 3.469 | 3.469 |
| Audio | #51 | 3.125 | 3.125 |
Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Thanks a lot for playing and your extensive feedback. I'm happy you were enjoying the game, sorry for the gray screen of doom on the web version, I'll need to work it out, and don't worry we're trying to play a few more games too. There's definitely a lot of information and I like your suggestion of at least not displaying it all as text.
Cute game! I'm not very experienced with turn based rpgs but I really like the vibes of this game!
* The text can be pretty overwhelming, there's a lot on screen at once. I think splitting it up into smaller dialog chunks and maybe adding typewriter effect would make it easier to parse
* I ADORE the art, the animated character portraits especially are such a fun touch, and the enemy animations are all really smooth and expressive! The background is also unique and fresh I dig it.
* The music was really spooky. I don't think it was bad by any means but it didn't feel like it quite fit the vibe with the silly characters, especially since it was spooky and tense right off the bat and not a key tense moment. It appreciate that it seems to be dynamically more intense when you get into battle, but I think a whole separate battle theme/whole separate town theme would have helped break it up some too.
* The game was a little difficult in terms of onboarding, I'm not used to this genre of game so some of the stats like Ti/T (I'm guessing the recovery time?) were a mystery to me. Lots of numbers like crits and multipliers and recovery all thrown at you at once, a full party of four right from the get go, a lot of text between battles. Even the first menu you see has an overwhelming amount of options on one screen. Might be the nature of the genre I'm not sure. I can see it working as a vertical slice though.
Nice entry!
Thanks a lot for playing and the extensive feedback, I'm happy you appreciate the overall atmosphere and silliness (and agree the music should probably at very least sometimes reflect it). Don't worry there's a ton of information even for the genre including some which may only makes sense if you cross descriptions of menus from different places (and the first menu indeed ended up quite furnished) .
Haven't gotten too far with it, and still have some other games to check out, but I'd like to come back and play more! (Got booted out of the game while responding to a message from someone, which is an unfortunate bug but I'll try and be more careful. Was in the middle of deciding level-up options so I couldn't stop and save (or can you? idk, they probably don't expect people to be as indecisive as me, lots of good options to take!
From what little I've gotten into so far it seems really good! I like the character variety and all the art is very nice,both the portraits and the environments, staying true to NES limitations while being very stylish with a ton of character to them!
Liked having the option to name all of them too!
Only seen a bit of the enemies so far, but I enjoyed their designs greatly.
I'll need to play more to comment on the balance overall, but it felt real good so far!
I like the story so far, and I'm intrigued as to where it takes me.
Only thing I didn't vibe with as much was the music, It's a bit too uncomfortable with the notes, and doesn't change up enough making the environment feel very unwelcoming and eerie. It's not that it doesn't fit the game's mood, more that it's just not the sort of thing I'd want to have in the background constantly. It's mostly the main instrument, the long (strings?), and since the combat music builds off of them, there's no break from it.
But aside from that, the whole things is very enjoyable so far, I'll need to play more into it!
I'm happy you're mostly enjoying the game, and don't worry we're all trying to play a few more games before the end of the jam ;)
I'll need to work on the grey screen of death in the browser version, you indeed can't save while levelling-up because I put the save option only in the menu with the characters but not in the main menu with the settings options (for no particular reason).
We always appreciate comments about our music since it's the part we struggle the most with so thanks for that as well.
Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback!
Gotta admit, I'm not usually a big fan of this type of turn-based RPG, but this had enough cool ideas to keep me interested throughout. The goofy characters and enemies are very creative, lots of fun writing, and I like that each party member has their own unique set of perks. That interlacing effect when enemies are defeated is a nice touch. Very atmospheric town, although I feel the music doesn't match the mood, especially while fighting. I beat Toni. (Full disclosure: I played on easy mode.)
Congratulations for beating the game ! I'm happy you thought it flowed well enough despite not liking this sort of game.
Fun fact since you're mentioning it, the interlacing effect is the main reason why there needs to be a vertical offset between the enemies because it's kind of big sprite (most of the combat displaying including the enemies is background, the only other sprites are the bouncing numbers which are distinct from the common background writing, although to be fair they're another reason of the need of an offset) so when multiple enemies die in the same time they can quickly exceed the limit in a scanline.
The idea for the music is to set a Noir atmosphere and it switches to the same moment of a quicker version with more drums of the same song when you enter in combat so that the transition is smooth enough. Now that's the intent, how the result actually sounds is another story ...
Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback!
i like that almost each group of enemies has a description of the reason why they are attacking you
and the sprites are really cool
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