- loaded my save from last dd, so i skipped the dream tutorial, dunno if you changed anything
- the camp had a very close cam, but when i got into "my tent", and out again the cam went way back. dunno if it's a bug, or the cam setting was in the prev demo
- first time i got into the shop, the game felt a kick in the nuts, it froze for about 3s
- when katrina joined the team, i also got added modest, osheen and anna in the menu. but they ofc are not there
- kat wanted to be a follower, but got stuck in the wherehouse doorway (then she tp back to me when i got back enough)
- while you run, you "drift" if you turn
- dunno if kat atk is a real healing or not, if so funny idea/jojo reference
So after exploring i got into the dungeon with the pseuo scorpions, i got killed in 2 turns.
i wont spend another dd to smash my head against a wall for three hours to then learn that there is some hidden companion somewhere in a ball of hey; so i finished here.
general stuff
imo all the dialogues should be compressed by half, everything is too "wordy" for no real utility of what info we gather; and sadly i'm not very taken by the characters that i wanna know more about them
again, imo the combat difficulty is fucked. kat dies in one turn if 2 enemies gank her(since she has 20hp, probably 1atk is enough), and we last just 1 turn more. some nes games are more generous than this.
of course balance is the last thing to tune, but after last dd i wont try to understand what you want from your player.
for sure you know this balance is pretty harsh, i dont suggest you to make it super easy for "release", but imo this is beyond what a tester should endure. I dunno what else i can check in the dungeon because, again, combat is a thick wall.
ED: i forgot the positives: the atmosphere of the camp is very chilly, and i like the eterial feel of mosca and kat (even if they talk too much).
I appreciate the feedback but in all honesty I have no idea how you managed to play the game without starting a new save. I think most of the issues you experienced might have been the result of that because you'd only have 20 hp if your CON and STR were 1, and the starting value for Katrina is 6.
I think the game would've crashed immediately had you reached the new content.
I apologize for the issues, I'd make it clearer next time that save data is not compatible between versions yet.
* music and atmosphere are lovely. the piano theme is a bit repetitive
* controls took a lot of getting used to. rebindable keys would be a nice feature. i would much prefer wasd movement, f/e to confirm/interact, and esc where X is currently mapped. if you get around to implementing this in the future i think it would have ironed out a lot of the initial confusion for me as a player
* player character walking animation feels a bit stiff and the loud footsteps are not synced with the walking animation
* i frequently had to start over because i kept accidentally opening the pause menu while trying to navigate the character panel and stupidly navigating to return to menu, ending the game. this was just my poor knowledge of the controls but this ties into my general confusion about the controls.
* trying to equip a weapon from the inventory panel (use/discard) - use doesn't equip it. i can only equip the stick in the status/equipment panel, don't know if that's intentional.
* the UI sounds being musical notes made them blend into the music a little too much for my taste, i feel like something more percussive would make the UI nav sounds stand out better
* the fortified town of Bisita is pure comfy soul. i love the animals, the dialogues, the atmosphere and little details. no music in the town? as i explore (learned to run and that makes traversal much more pleasant) - i realize how vast the settlement really is. while i adore the detail and expanse of Bisita, some kind of map, mini or otherwise, would make it feel a little less sprawling. perhaps this is something i've yet to find?
* nice to see mosca back again and her name changing sequence was wonderful. typo in her dialogue: "inthe fortress"
* in micaela's sell menu, i couldn't navigate to slots other than consumables to sell them.
* combat feels a bit sluggish and repetitive after fighting through the dungeon. slayed the pseudoscorpion Q with a little health remaining and grabbed Katrina's sword.
* level up menu felt weird. key instructions would help here. pressing z over any attribute button didn't seem to do anything. closing and reopening the panel allowed me to add attribute points. could not X out of this menu either.
* found osheen the vampire and got his quest. the quest showed up in the journal, but there were problems with the UI nav. first, all journal entries were selected; so i closed and reopened journal panel. now i couldn't select any journal entry at all.
* made it back out to bisita. talked to hawk and sent him off. talked to micaela; journal not updated and the UI issues with journal menu persisted.
* wanted to meet the soldier/monk? at the winecellar - how do i know when it's afternoon?
overall an extremely charming and thoughtfully made adventure. i will gladly spend more time with this in the future. god bless you
Thank you trying out the game, and for the very detailed feedback.
Tutorials are my greatest weakness right now, and I think the only solution will be to add button prompts to all menus. I've actually already made a map this week because you are not the first person to bring that up.
The journal is indeed totally broken.
You can't equip weapons from the inventory, only from the stats / equipment screen so that was't a bug either.
If you want to know how to continue: Katrina should've said to visit Mosca after sending the letter, and then she gives you another quest, and upon finishing that one the sun will set and Modest will be waiting for you behind the chapel.
Nevertheless, it's crucial for me to know if people are getting lost so I earnestly thank your for the feedback.
First fight (with the stick) took quite a long time because both me and the enemies kept missing. Less than 50% chance to hit makes it kinda slow. This is an introduction to the game. I think you can afford to nerf the enemies quite a lot here. Make my chance to hit them be at least 60%. It still teaches the gameplay, and makes for a better pacing. You don't want to introduce your game to people, and make them have a bad feeling.
I am very confused about the skills menu. I can equip some, but not all? Some have points, others do not? I assume how it works is that when you get X point in a skill, it unlocks a technique, and you can only equip skills that have at least a technique unlocked. If that is how it works, there is no indication that that how it works, in the UI. You probably need to communicate it better somehow. Make the ones you have a technique available, a different color?
I'm playing on a controller. On the first fight, I select attack, and to rotate the character, I need to press the D-pad arrows. The character rotates very little, and I can't hold the button. So I need to press it a lot. I assume this is for precision, but I think you should be able to hold down the arrow, to keep rotating, or keep the d-pad pressing for precession, but allow continuous rotation with the analog stick.
The camp is great. So far I'm liking the art style, and the characters dialogue. I have recruited Katrina. I don't know if the UI for acquiring items is final, but it is not very good currently. A bit hard to keep track of what items I'm getting/loosing. Probably good to rework that somehow. Also, Katrina got stuck inside the warehouse when she joined my party, and asked me to kill the bug. It was funny. But after a while she spawned by my side.
Second fight in the tunnels, against 4 or 5 spiders, we are missing a lot! Both my party and the enemies. The combat and the mechanics are fun! But imo, you need to tweak the numbers. It is not fun in a turn based game, to spend 10 turns seeing "miss". Makes the game feel cheap. And this is the beginning of the game, and introduction. You need to present a fun experience to the player. Krank up those hit rate numbers. If you are worried about the increased hit rate, just reduce the damage taken/dealt for the amount of challenge you want to give.
The tunnels felt very dark (they are tunnels), but I wish I could see a bit better. This might be skill issue, since positioning is part of the combat, but I felt Katrina was tanking 90% of the hits. And at this point, she needs to attack melee, so is not like I could remain away of the monsters. I needed to get close to attack.
I don't know if there is a way to run, but the walking/default speed is very slow, for the size of the map.
I got lost trying to find the chapel/church, and spend a good few minutes walking around the camp. It is huge, there is no map, and my characters are so slow. That made me give up for the time being. I don't think you should hold the player's hand, but just giving me a run button would make exploring a lot more enjoyable.
I do like the combat. It is fun. On level up though, I can allocate points to my skills, but I don't know what each does, and there are so many of them. So that is overwhelming. I just allocated on the blade skill.
Thank you for trying out the game. I find your feedback very illuminating.
It's good to know that aiming doesn't work as intended on controllers because holding a direction should work.
Your guess about how skills work is 100% correct. I'll be sure to add descriptions for them later. If you don't mind telling me, did you notice that skills level up with use? Because I'm worried that the feedback is not noticeable enough.
Finally, you can run by holding x, and the reason your accuracy is so low is because you are hitting enemies from the front where they can see your attack coming.
i see you have done a great job fixing the AI. their attacks didn't miss, and i saw you added a failsafe so that they skip their turn after a while if their path is blocked.
i love your characters and writing, they always keep me hooked
the keep is HUGE. this added to the fact that running is comparatively slow and points of reference are not abundant makes it very easy to get lost. eventually i was tasked with entering the baths to investigate, but even after talking to the employee i was unable to actually enter the baths themselves.
i understand not wanting to add skyrim style quest compasses and arrows, but if you want players to not get lost then you need to hide more hints, both in how you decorate the exteriors to subtly "guide" them in the right direction, but also npcs that tell you where to find important places when you talk to them
this could be partly mitigated by a more fleshed out journal that actually summarizes the current objective and how to reach it, but right now it seems more focused on archiving completed missions (useless)
combat wise, since i played similar games in the past i figured out that attacking from behind makes my attacks more accurate and waiting restores my mp, but neither is immediately intuitive. it needs to be communicated to the player
occasionally i got stuck while maneuvering around an enemy, player collision seems very finnicky overall
Thanks for trying the game. I'll probably make a map at some point, and some sort of tutorial.
If you are interested in continuing the story, I think that you might have gone to the wrong baths. You want to go to the female ones across the stream from the male baths.
Comments
notes during play
- loaded my save from last dd, so i skipped the dream tutorial, dunno if you changed anything
- the camp had a very close cam, but when i got into "my tent", and out again the cam went way back. dunno if it's a bug, or the cam setting was in the prev demo
- first time i got into the shop, the game felt a kick in the nuts, it froze for about 3s
- when katrina joined the team, i also got added modest, osheen and anna in the menu. but they ofc are not there
- kat wanted to be a follower, but got stuck in the wherehouse doorway (then she tp back to me when i got back enough)
- while you run, you "drift" if you turn
- dunno if kat atk is a real healing or not, if so funny idea/jojo reference
So after exploring i got into the dungeon with the pseuo scorpions, i got killed in 2 turns.
i wont spend another dd to smash my head against a wall for three hours to then learn that there is some hidden companion somewhere in a ball of hey; so i finished here.
general stuff
imo all the dialogues should be compressed by half, everything is too "wordy" for no real utility of what info we gather; and sadly i'm not very taken by the characters that i wanna know more about them
again, imo the combat difficulty is fucked. kat dies in one turn if 2 enemies gank her(since she has 20hp, probably 1atk is enough), and we last just 1 turn more. some nes games are more generous than this.
of course balance is the last thing to tune, but after last dd i wont try to understand what you want from your player.
for sure you know this balance is pretty harsh, i dont suggest you to make it super easy for "release", but imo this is beyond what a tester should endure. I dunno what else i can check in the dungeon because, again, combat is a thick wall.
ED: i forgot the positives:
the atmosphere of the camp is very chilly, and i like the eterial feel of mosca and kat (even if they talk too much).
Thank you for trying the game again.
I appreciate the feedback but in all honesty I have no idea how you managed to play the game without starting a new save. I think most of the issues you experienced might have been the result of that because you'd only have 20 hp if your CON and STR were 1, and the starting value for Katrina is 6.
I think the game would've crashed immediately had you reached the new content.
I apologize for the issues, I'd make it clearer next time that save data is not compatible between versions yet.
* music and atmosphere are lovely. the piano theme is a bit repetitive
* controls took a lot of getting used to. rebindable keys would be a nice feature. i would much prefer wasd movement, f/e to confirm/interact, and esc where X is currently mapped. if you get around to implementing this in the future i think it would have ironed out a lot of the initial confusion for me as a player
* player character walking animation feels a bit stiff and the loud footsteps are not synced with the walking animation
* i frequently had to start over because i kept accidentally opening the pause menu while trying to navigate the character panel and stupidly navigating to return to menu, ending the game. this was just my poor knowledge of the controls but this ties into my general confusion about the controls.
* trying to equip a weapon from the inventory panel (use/discard) - use doesn't equip it. i can only equip the stick in the status/equipment panel, don't know if that's intentional.
* the UI sounds being musical notes made them blend into the music a little too much for my taste, i feel like something more percussive would make the UI nav sounds stand out better
* the fortified town of Bisita is pure comfy soul. i love the animals, the dialogues, the atmosphere and little details. no music in the town? as i explore (learned to run and that makes traversal much more pleasant) - i realize how vast the settlement really is. while i adore the detail and expanse of Bisita, some kind of map, mini or otherwise, would make it feel a little less sprawling. perhaps this is something i've yet to find?
* nice to see mosca back again and her name changing sequence was wonderful. typo in her dialogue: "inthe fortress"
* in micaela's sell menu, i couldn't navigate to slots other than consumables to sell them.
* combat feels a bit sluggish and repetitive after fighting through the dungeon. slayed the pseudoscorpion Q with a little health remaining and grabbed Katrina's sword.
* level up menu felt weird. key instructions would help here. pressing z over any attribute button didn't seem to do anything. closing and reopening the panel allowed me to add attribute points. could not X out of this menu either.
* found osheen the vampire and got his quest. the quest showed up in the journal, but there were problems with the UI nav. first, all journal entries were selected; so i closed and reopened journal panel. now i couldn't select any journal entry at all.
* made it back out to bisita. talked to hawk and sent him off. talked to micaela; journal not updated and the UI issues with journal menu persisted.
* wanted to meet the soldier/monk? at the winecellar - how do i know when it's afternoon?
overall an extremely charming and thoughtfully made adventure. i will gladly spend more time with this in the future. god bless you
Thank you trying out the game, and for the very detailed feedback.
Tutorials are my greatest weakness right now, and I think the only solution will be to add button prompts to all menus. I've actually already made a map this week because you are not the first person to bring that up.
The journal is indeed totally broken.
You can't equip weapons from the inventory, only from the stats / equipment screen so that was't a bug either.
If you want to know how to continue: Katrina should've said to visit Mosca after sending the letter, and then she gives you another quest, and upon finishing that one the sun will set and Modest will be waiting for you behind the chapel.
Nevertheless, it's crucial for me to know if people are getting lost so I earnestly thank your for the feedback.
Thanks again for playing.
Writing as I play
First fight (with the stick) took quite a long time because both me and the enemies kept missing. Less than 50% chance to hit makes it kinda slow. This is an introduction to the game. I think you can afford to nerf the enemies quite a lot here. Make my chance to hit them be at least 60%. It still teaches the gameplay, and makes for a better pacing. You don't want to introduce your game to people, and make them have a bad feeling.
I am very confused about the skills menu. I can equip some, but not all? Some have points, others do not? I assume how it works is that when you get X point in a skill, it unlocks a technique, and you can only equip skills that have at least a technique unlocked. If that is how it works, there is no indication that that how it works, in the UI. You probably need to communicate it better somehow. Make the ones you have a technique available, a different color?
I'm playing on a controller. On the first fight, I select attack, and to rotate the character, I need to press the D-pad arrows. The character rotates very little, and I can't hold the button. So I need to press it a lot. I assume this is for precision, but I think you should be able to hold down the arrow, to keep rotating, or keep the d-pad pressing for precession, but allow continuous rotation with the analog stick.
The camp is great. So far I'm liking the art style, and the characters dialogue. I have recruited Katrina. I don't know if the UI for acquiring items is final, but it is not very good currently. A bit hard to keep track of what items I'm getting/loosing. Probably good to rework that somehow. Also, Katrina got stuck inside the warehouse when she joined my party, and asked me to kill the bug. It was funny. But after a while she spawned by my side.
Second fight in the tunnels, against 4 or 5 spiders, we are missing a lot! Both my party and the enemies. The combat and the mechanics are fun! But imo, you need to tweak the numbers. It is not fun in a turn based game, to spend 10 turns seeing "miss". Makes the game feel cheap. And this is the beginning of the game, and introduction. You need to present a fun experience to the player. Krank up those hit rate numbers. If you are worried about the increased hit rate, just reduce the damage taken/dealt for the amount of challenge you want to give.
The tunnels felt very dark (they are tunnels), but I wish I could see a bit better. This might be skill issue, since positioning is part of the combat, but I felt Katrina was tanking 90% of the hits. And at this point, she needs to attack melee, so is not like I could remain away of the monsters. I needed to get close to attack.
I don't know if there is a way to run, but the walking/default speed is very slow, for the size of the map.
I got lost trying to find the chapel/church, and spend a good few minutes walking around the camp. It is huge, there is no map, and my characters are so slow. That made me give up for the time being. I don't think you should hold the player's hand, but just giving me a run button would make exploring a lot more enjoyable.
I do like the combat. It is fun. On level up though, I can allocate points to my skills, but I don't know what each does, and there are so many of them. So that is overwhelming. I just allocated on the blade skill.
Thank you for trying out the game. I find your feedback very illuminating.
It's good to know that aiming doesn't work as intended on controllers because holding a direction should work.
Your guess about how skills work is 100% correct. I'll be sure to add descriptions for them later. If you don't mind telling me, did you notice that skills level up with use? Because I'm worried that the feedback is not noticeable enough.
Finally, you can run by holding x, and the reason your accuracy is so low is because you are hitting enemies from the front where they can see your attack coming.
Thanks for playing.
Oh, thank you for letting me know. I'll probably play again and finish the demo, since I was honestly enjoying it.
And yes! I did noticed the skills leveling up by using them (in my case, the blades skill). So the feedback for that is noticeable.
Welcome!
i see you have done a great job fixing the AI. their attacks didn't miss, and i saw you added a failsafe so that they skip their turn after a while if their path is blocked.
i love your characters and writing, they always keep me hooked
the keep is HUGE. this added to the fact that running is comparatively slow and points of reference are not abundant makes it very easy to get lost. eventually i was tasked with entering the baths to investigate, but even after talking to the employee i was unable to actually enter the baths themselves.
i understand not wanting to add skyrim style quest compasses and arrows, but if you want players to not get lost then you need to hide more hints, both in how you decorate the exteriors to subtly "guide" them in the right direction, but also npcs that tell you where to find important places when you talk to them
this could be partly mitigated by a more fleshed out journal that actually summarizes the current objective and how to reach it, but right now it seems more focused on archiving completed missions (useless)
combat wise, since i played similar games in the past i figured out that attacking from behind makes my attacks more accurate and waiting restores my mp, but neither is immediately intuitive. it needs to be communicated to the player
occasionally i got stuck while maneuvering around an enemy, player collision seems very finnicky overall
Thanks for trying the game. I'll probably make a map at some point, and some sort of tutorial.
If you are interested in continuing the story, I think that you might have gone to the wrong baths. You want to go to the female ones across the stream from the male baths.
Either way it's good feedback.