itch.io

Colour accessibility isn't exactly a common consideration for a prototype, but for the official release, I could certainly add an extra option for accessibility (for the room types, but also for one particular puzzle and maybe for the character art?).

The first library book is clearly the way the player is intended to know their end goal (library is a very common room, but its 1-gold cost can be a bit daunting). Otherwise, there is another book in the basement staircase with the same info, and the book in the upper staircase clearly invite you to look for the basement staircase. So I'm not sure how much more I should telegraph that point.

I have 3 extra outfits planned (all are implemented, but they are waiting for their artworks), like 10 extra rooms planned (2 of them are already finished). I plan to also add a few illustrations, and I could maybe add some extra late game puzzles, but otherwise the game is mostly done.

Thank you for the extended stream. I will certainly come back to you at some point with an updated version. 🧚

Before I forget again, what I had to say about the game:
-The game is sometimes very funny (and the other times, I guess I either didn't had the reference or there was a language barrier)
-Being able to heal fully with glasses of water was both incredibly tedious and hilarious.
-There are fairies 🧚🧚🧚
-There is a Fortuna shop 🧚🧚🧚🧚🧚🧚🧚
-At the start, the game suggested there are hidden objects to find. However, I never found any of them except the one in the starting inn. I didn't even find any interesting interaction with the cupboards or bookshelves. I would suggest to either scrap this mechanic or use shinies to make them easier to get, as randomly hitting action gets old very quickly.
-I think you should not let the player get unwinnable random encounters just from visiting the world map, unless they are warned properly (like with the dragons panel). I got a medusa fight at the very start in a forest, and if I didn't save a bit earlier, I would have been fairy annoyed.
-Regular encounters very quickly become a joke when you have the level and the equipment. 95% of my fights were just spamming the attack button. I feel there is something missing here, if there is one thing I would expect a parodic JRPG to parody, it is that basic gameplay loop.
-The dungeon design is very basic. I don't get what the point of the first "dungeon" is with the low level shadows that didn't deal any damage and the secret area at the end that is just closed. I think a straight path to the boss would make some sense. The cave was also just a straight line with a single intersection for the side quest with tons of encounters against weak enemies. I feel there is some room for parody here too.
-I know it is 2k3 default tile, but it feels very weird to me that the torches are not animated.
-I think it would make more sense narratively for Sky ninja to have a higher starting level, as he is quite stronger than the heroin for quite some time (mine had actually more xp than him).

Thank you again for the stream. 🧚🧚🧚

Thanks for the upload.  🧚

-I will be pretty honest, I choose that background because it looked cool. I had to look out online to understand what you meant. Now that I saw what a biblically accurate Throne looks like, I'm not sure what to think about it. If anything it can be a pun about the main character's default name (Angel).

-To prevent the player from immediately going back to the previous room due to the new being flipped 180°, the next update will include a direction-lock to the exit for like 30 frame preventing the player from immediately going back by mistake, like you suggested.

-Your RNG was clearly not good, but I think everyone will agree the game isn't easy especially early game. I already made a few changes to help out the early game (for example, there is now an extra minor gem in the Upper landing and a guaranteed gold coin the first time you enter the Mystical elevator). I may do more if necessary. An idea I got from the streams was to give each outfit a passive effect (like the grey dress will tell you how much loot there is in a room like if you had a compass, or the starting one will give you a very small bump to your loot chance).

-The palindromes books and the note you found are useful clues, but they do not suffice by themselves to solve their respective safes. More info is needed.

-Like in Blue prince, you cannot pick up any clue with you, it is intended that you take notes or screenshot any valuable clue (the game even now has a build-in screen capture shortcut to make the process easier) and once you got all music scores, you deduce the code. I have not seen anyone solve that puzzle yet (mainly because the 7th music score is in an uncommon basement room), but once I get some feedback on that, I may change the starting clue. It seemed like the memo with music notes was confusing people more than helping them.

I will happily follow a more complete playthrough, even if it starts at 2 AM in my time zone. 🧚 

AnimationVoice, you robot! 

Thank you for trying out this prototype. 🧚 I will happily ping you when it is fully released.

The minimap was a clear problem for a lot of people, so the next update will make the minimap rotate to always match the room you are currently in. It should remove the confusion.

I also noted I may need to find an elegant way to explain how hp works in this game, as it isn't as intuitive as I thought it would be. Basically, the main character has 2 HP. Anything that can wound her always deals 1 hp of damage, anything that can heal her always restaure 1 hp. She can either be in normal condition, wounded or dead.  Hence why there are no health bar. Enemies have more hp, but they follow the same logic (at half health, their main animation change to reflect that they are close to death). 

The charred room seems to have confused a lot of people, would this new version be more clear about it does?

You also were confused by the Toxic room; it doesn't hurt you the first time you enter the room (you just were already wounded because you went to the altar before), but it does hurt you the 2nd, 3rd, 4th times... Would you have a suggestion to improve upon the current text?

Thank you for the upload.  🧚

-Banning Block-Block may be a good idea to solve the issue, yes. It would make the "plan" quite different. 
-I was convinced a combined cantrip would be free because of the keyword and because the effect of the base cantrip card was so weak.
-I don't have any problem with the fact that reckless assault is a skill per say, but I feel it should be called something else. Reckless assault evoke an melee attack card, not a skill card. Maybe something like "Barrage" (I am not good at finding names)

Glad you found my feedback interesting. 🧚

First the good:

-The first nodes are very good at introducing the game's unique mecanics
-Binding animations are cool. It is a good thing that they can be skipped, as I don't see myself watching them more than once per run.
-The aestetic is quite unique

The big point:

The game balance seemed off to me. With the binding/upgrade mechanics, the idea is that you want to quickly combine your skills together, forge a few powerful attacks and use card removes to get rid of extra attacks so you have a thin deck full of crafted powerful cards. Why not, it gives the game quite a different gameplay feeling compare with let's say slay the spire. My problem is that the game keep proposing in its card rewards a lot of cards that doesn't seem to justify their inclusion in the deck by themselves (except may be reckless assault who is the only high damage card I remember). For example cards like "deals 1 vuln to all enemies", "deal 3 damages to all enemies" or "next turn get an extra bead". It feels very weird that the cards the player can get have a very difficult time comparing against the basic block or the opportunity cost of simply combining two blocks. Attack augment follow the same pattern, why pick one when you could combine two blocks and card remove an attack?

The rational move is to skip card rewards until you get something really interesting or until you have already combined everything (and added a knob to every cards, for good measure). At least with this demo, the game didn't give me a reason to act in any other way, hence how I finished my runs with so few cards. Once a strong deck is assembled, basically nothing can perce through my block-blocks, not even the boss. I just need some extra damage.

In short, I don't know where you are going with the balancing, and since I don't have the full picture and can't say how much of a problem it actually is. I just wanted to share my thoughts on the matter.

=== Some other minor things I noted ===

It is very counter-intuitive that a cantrip card combined with a non-cantrip card doesn't cost 0.

Reckless assault being a skill seems like a big flavour fail.

Me trying the number change node:
-Wait, I only gain 3 on one of the two numbers of my block-block card?
-Wait, why can't I go back to choose another card?

Seymour enemy: It is very hard to keep track of their damage, as you need to take into consideration the hand discard (and possible reshuffle). I would suggest to use the scrap size when "end of the turn" is pressed instead.

The anchor has the same "hand discard at the end of the turn" confusion. Also, I don't think it should trigger the reflect effect, as the player will likely not realise that the anchor will deal damage at the end of the turn.

I saw the scrap pile saying it is empty when it wasn't (I think it was when there was no card in it at the start of the turn, after I just played one card)

Be wary with healing even if it up to 20HP, some degenerate people may stall fights until they get every scrap of heal they might get.

Conclusive: The "deals 5 extra damage" is not reflected on the card damage value, which is very confusing

Stretch => attack point => you mean attack bead?

Longer written feedback coming later as I will be busy for the rest of the day.

Time to test games in the train again! I played the game for like 1h and I think I barely scraped the surface. But it was enough to note quite a lot of things. Here is what I noted, in chronological order:

-The title screen looks nice.

-I’m not sure what the point is of having two launchers.

-The title screen looks like it is missing a title logo or something.

-Can you please stop hiding and showing again the quest window during the dialogues? It is so distracting.

-Maps could have more life in them. There aren't many NPCs, and most of them have a single line of dialogue that doesn’t change when the story advances.

-The design of the maps suggest that you may be able to use the stairs or explore beyond the limits of the maps, but actually, you can not, which was a bit frustrating to me. Especially since they are maps where you actually can and must go beyond those limits later.

-There is quite a few passability bugs in the game (I linked some), I would heavily suggest hunting them down.

-Oh, actually you can hide the quest window from the options. Good bye.

-I’m not sure having the enemy guard every 3 turns makes for very interesting gameplay, especially if they are supposed to prevent the player from running away or guard when acting last in the turn.

-I was able to easily go to the end of the cave without triggering a single fight. I didn’t even do it on purpose, I was just testing how long the enemies would follow me, and I ended up at the boss.

-I would suggest putting some numbers in the item’s description (like for example saying that the feta heals 20% max HP), especially since you can already see them in the item menu.

-Combat animations are cool.

-You probably should double check the attack movement setting of all characters so Marina can stop punching with her blade.

-The scene where Marina learned that her boss is dead and that her boyfriend is missing fell a bit off to me. I should have felt way more affected than I did. Maybe it is because I watched too much cliche shonen stories or because her sorrow was very quickly put under the rug in the same scene?

-The way exp is handled in this game looks interesting.

-Some footsteps used when going from map to map seemed way too long to me.

I have other games I plan to test this feedbackquest, but I get some extra time at the end, I may come back to this game, I shouldn’t have much trouble filling another note page.

PS:

Could please fix this UI abomination?

That was a quick update. Thank you for the support.

I will play a little with the tool in the coming weeks and I will let you know if I have any other bugs to report or suggestions to give. 🧚

Thank you for your answer.

For a moment, I thought this tool had been abandoned.
Nice to see that you’re still working on it, as this tool would be super helpful if it was 100% reliable.

From what I could see in the mean time:
-Conditions on switches are also missed in Common events.

I will let you know if I find anything else. 🧚

I bought the tool on Steam and I was very unpleased to realise that it misses variables conditions in the Common Events and it doesn't find anything in the Troops.

EDIT: The bugs seem to have been fixed. Thank you for the support. 🧚

Giving the game is in 64 bits, I guess you meant that you have a 32 bits computer that cannot run 64 bits applications?

I could make a 32 bits build when I return from abroad if it is the case. (Didn't see the point of having one since 32 bits computers are quite an old tech at this point.)

Alternatively if you don't want to wait, you can also download a random 32 bits RMMV game, delete the content of the /www folder and replace it with the content of the /www folder of this game, this way you will have a 32 bits version of this game.

I just updated the game right now in order to address your problem.
Can you tell me if you are now able to download the game properly?

Out of curiosity, there were tutorial videos on older builds? 🧚

Here are roughly the locations of the treasures on that map.

Given you are talking about "installing" the game, I guess you are using the itch app? If I understood you well, the app is proposing you to install the linux or the mac version despite you having a windows PC?

From a lore point of view, your "reward" would be to get a phase 3. I think it is better to stop the escalation here. 🧚

That sword is busted, it would break the balance of the rest of the game to let Angel go back with.

There is already a secret card for Terra Earth Dragon later in the game. Will you be able to find it? 🧚

That will be the idea, yes. By that point, those rare cards are overshadowed by the common cards given by regular enemies, so there is little reason to not give the player access to them (apart from bragging reasons, I guess).

I will first finish all the content I want this game to have before working on a New game +, but that could definitely be an option to consider for later.

It was assumed the player would be KO after the boss uses her super attack.
I completely forgot about that stupid ring...

In the sequence you are describing me, she will have an infinite amount of HP as she has the immortal status who prevents her from getting KO.

If you see to dialogue giving you the choice between stopping the fight or getting hit by her super, you have already "won" the fight, so it doesn't matter how well you survive at this point. 

I guess I should make Deadly Shard hit more than once so one can not survive it with the ring.

Indeed you are right. I will do a patch at once.

Thank you for the report. 🧚

The two missing cards are Arthur and Dungeon Master.
Arthur's card can be obtained if you beat him while using at least one healing spell/item on him.
To get the dungeon master's card, you need to steal from him during both his encounters (the first time you get the sleeve, the second time the card).

There are currently no other way in the game of obtaining them not even in boosters. Rare cards normally can not be found in booster (I probably should either change the Minor Demon's rarity to uncommon or remove it from the bronze booster pool for consistency reasons).
However the next update will include a few card shops who will have some of the early rare cards to sell.

By the way, your collection is very impressive, most players would just have maybe 10 cards at this point. 🧚

You just need to interact with the wall (first you will get a dialogue, second time the passage will open). If nothing happens, it means a decoy chest has already been open.

I can not deny it is not easy to get all the sparkles on such a big map. Do you think I should change some of the timers so that the sparkles appear more often?

To answer your extra question: those two chests are decoys whose sole purpose is to distract you from the strength sphere. The strength sphere is actually not far away from this room, hidden behind a secret passage (it is not particularly well hidden; a hint: look at the ground). Opening one of those two treacherous chests will seal that secret passage (and the sphere) forever. Nothing prevent you from looting them after you got the sphere, though.

Normally those two chests only count as one for the treasure tracker.
Is it possible you missed one of the other 7 treasures?

You are welcome. 🧚🧚🧚

If you take the sword, the fight isn't that hard. However, if you don't... 🧚

My sincere congratulations. You're the first player I've ever seen with this success. 🧚

There will be a big update in the coming months. 🧚 You can use the follow button if you want to be notified when it comes.

The puzzle solution is in the two notes you find in the house ("North - West - ..." and "... - East - South-East").
After entering the room hidden behind the sandfall, you need to go North, then West, then East and finally search the South-East walls. If you interact at the right place, a bubble with a question mark will appear. If you interact a second time, a secret stair will appear.

If you are stuck again, there is a Walkthrough.docx file to guides you through the main quest.

I guess you were underwhelmed by the boss in the hut at the end of chapter 2? It is indeed designed as a "story" encounter and not at all as a challenging one.

Don't worry, there are some more interesting bosses coming your way. 🧚

Until now, I've never heard of anyone other than myself whose difficulty of choice is unironically maniac. Let alone find it easy. 🧚
Out of curiosity, how far did you get in the adventure, and what was your current level? 🧚

If I ever wanted to experience a best-off of all the streams of this game's author, well I just did. 🧚🧚🧚

Thanks. 🧚

Un des combats de l'escape game:

-You can propose it, but I won't do it. As the rightmost enemy is the one selected by default, I want the "first" monster of the pack (usually the stronger one) to be selected by default, just so the player has to think about their target more. 🧚
-I will add an earlier place to reset skills points in a coming update.

So I tested the game, in my "don't capture any digimon" run. I reached the space sector and played a little there.

Some random thoughts so I can say I did my job 🧚:

-I missed the treasure chest with the propaganda AI. If i wasn't a fairy dev who could easily get it back in an hacky way, I would hope there are other ways to get them.
-The more I play this new version, the more I have the impression of playing a persona game trying to guess the weakness of each opposing enemy.
-Storm of feeling doesn't seem to have the same element as Anemos despite the common icons.
-There is no space between Crypto and the amount of money won at the end of the battle, and that troubles me.
-Space-Flora looks silly on the battleback2 picture.

I have quite a lot to say about this short game.

What I liked about the game:
-The game's setting
-The simple story who goes straight to the point
-The character(s?)
-The skip function as I forgot to take a screenshot the first time...

What I think could be improved:
-More content. Currently the game feel like it is missing multiple hours of playtime to build upon its universe, its combat system and the people living in that world. I was disappointed when I saw the end screen.
-The AI generated musics were actually nice to listen to, but they don't have any loop, which cause the game to be in silence mode after a while. I would suggest finding some nice futuristic stock music to replace them.
-The font used makes it very difficult to make the difference between 2, 5 and 8, which is problematic in particular for the idle phase.
-The AI generated backgrounds don't feel too out of place compared with the rest of the game in pixel art, but they would definitively shine more if they were pixel art themself.

Dev questions:
1) I didn't have the impression the game changed at all between the different stages. It was "1 cutscene, 2 get new powerful ability, 3 battle" all along.
2) All the special effects in battle seemed quite strong, to not say too strong.
3) I don't anything against the concept of having a different gameplay for the upgrades. However I feel the current system is way too simple
4) See above. 🧚