itch.io

Always good to see more retro-inspired entries in these jams! ARPGs are a bit hit or miss for me, though generally the closer a game is to classic Zelda or the early Mana series the more likely it is to hit.

Overall this one left me with mixed feelings; for each cool idea, there's an odd decision design that undercuts it, and when combined with some of the other friction points I would say that I spent about half of my 90-ish minutes of playtime at least moderately frustrated at one aspect or another.

I felt like this game was at its best when the player was allowed to explore and incrementally discover new items, locations, etc. without being gated by the occasional super powerful enemy, deadly environment, or some other hazard that made the area in question unexplorable until "later". Sadly, later also didn't come for me, despite leveling up my Attack, Defense, HP, and Mana to values at least moderately above those of the starting Hero - progression was just a bit too slow, re-treading the same few areas just a bit too unrewarding, and the slow trickle of new goodies not quite compelling enough for me to commit to continuing my adventure.

Ultimately, I think it's a mistake to make the first Guardian so darn powerful. I wasted a LOT of attempts on that guy before realizing he had at least 50 HP and probably wasn't intended to be defeated at starting levels. So that made me question why the forced backtrack out of the dungeon was necessary, and by the same token why the dungeon itself had a forced backtrack built into its puzzle / gimmick. I haven't really come up with a good answer yet as almost any scenario I can think of winds up at the same conclusion of, "make the dungeon just plain linear and cap it off with a somewhat easy tutorial boss", which would help the player establish a feeling of momentum (as opposed to one of being brick walled the moment they unlock combat).

Combat itself does need some work, especially things like funky collision, inconsistent i-Frames, and some unfriendly enemy patterns. But the rough spots might be more manageable if the Hero didn't start off quite so flimsy. While I do like the concept of literally farming upgrades, it also slowed down the pacing a bit in a way I wasn't super keen on, and put an extra layer of padding between combat and the progression earned from combat. The names of the upgrade plants were super cute though!

The pixel art has a lot of charm and is generally solid for the style of game. I'd suggest redoing the inventory icons, though, as they don't use the same pixel ratio as the other assets which creates a "mixels" issue. The retro audio I was a bit less impressed with, not because the music or sound were bad, but they just felt sparse - somethings didn't have sound effects that I think should have, and there was no boss music, for example.

I'd also agree with a prior reviewer that the unintuitive controls could sour some players, and while having the key bindings listed on the itch page is nice, I feel like that info should also be available somewhere in game. Also an option to rebind keys would be great.

Critiques aside, I appreciate what this game set out to do, and I think with some refinements and tuning, the adventure-sandbox concept would absolutely resonate with fans of old-school, exploration-heavy games. Good luck with the rest of the jam and I hope you get a lot of useful info for your project!

Hi there, thanks a lot for playing and for your comments!

I do my best to strike a balance between retro and contemporary so it is great to know that shines through while playing.
Is there anything that would like to see more (or less) of as the project continues, or anything that you felt could be improved in general?

Also: I remember Turn by Turn Villain from a previous Feedback Quest. It just clicked when I was looking at your itch profile, and I remember that game being pretty neat. I have your submission for this FQ bookmarked and plan to put some time into it tomorrow.

Thanks again and glad to see another returning developer in FQ9!

Hi there and thanks for the stream & review! Sad I didn't catch more of it live, but I've watched the VoD which was super informative.

The game is made in RPG Maker MZ, which I highly recommend using given its QoL features and extensive plugin suite.

There's quite a bit more demo left (it goes all the way through Chapter 2) but I have no expectations of folks in a jam with 200+ games getting anywhere near the end. Thanks for getting through a very respectable chunk and I am glad you enjoyed it so far.

Side note, I did play your entry several days ago, but haven't had a chance to type out my thoughts yet. Should be this upcoming weekend.

Hey there, thanks for the stream and feedback (and for covering Feedback Quest 9 in general)!

The OBS audio issue is something I'll have to mess with. After the stream I realized that I've never used Game Capture in OBS and always defaulted to Screen Capture, and it might be for the very reasons you mentioned. So if I can't fix that interaction, I can at least make a note of it on the game and jam pages to help streamers and LP-ers down the line.

Glad you thoroughly explored the options menu and found that font / text box issue. I will have to do a full run with each font at some point, as time permits.

Regarding the intro, the starting perspective is meant to establish that Odette and Cafer are very capable, while presenting the antagonists as significant threats in spite of that. Sort of like every time Worf gets beaten up on an episode of Star Trek: TNG, I suppose. There's also some subtle implications about Odette and Estelle's relationship that, I hope, pays off in character moments players will see in later chapters. It is a bit of a risk and might not land with everyone, so I am always open to differing opinions there.

Appreciate the review and wishlist - every one helps a ton!

Thanks for the stream and detailed feedback!

Quick clarification on graphics: while I am using an asset pack as the "core" for visuals, there are a lot of custom sprites (and edits) to expand and improve upon what is already there. So any of those suggestions are totally fair game, and I've already started implementing a few tweaks based on FQ9 playthroughs.

I can look into hiding the character picture in some status pages. It does get a bit "busy" in some screens for sure.

I like the parameter tooltips idea. Tutorials for each param were my initial compromise but I'll look into your suggestion.

Happy to hear you enjoyed the game so far and I would be excited to get your thoughts on the rest of the demo after FQ9.

After completing a couple runs of the first 3-floor dungeon (and dying on floor 1 at least 3 more times in between) I can say this game is quite addictive. It's also very, very random, and there seem to be few guardrails preventing the character from becoming horrendously underpowered or overpowered, depending on what rolls you get. For the genre, it's "fine". OP is fun, and if you get bodied in the first 30 seconds, you can just reroll.

ASCII Terrain gets some getting used to, even with the text legend that says what each tile is. Incidentally, the icon for Mist doesn't match the actual tile on the map. Icons themselves are well done for the style, despite not being my taste, and I like most of the music tracks but some of them are grating, particularly when the dynamic stuff happens (low HP and status ailments for example can get quite manic sounding).

I do wish for some quality of life stuff:

• Controller support please!!
• It took me a while to find the "I" key for inventory. I wouldn't assume players know this is standard practice for these games, since even with some prior experience I forgot to try this until halfway through the second floor. I could have done the tutorial but I had assumed that would be more about explaining mechanics than explaining controls.
• Holding the move key down makes stuff go extremely fast. Unintentionally so, especially in combat. It would be nice to be able to move quickly, while also not "fast forwarding" through turns, though I am not sure how this could be implemented.
• I second the suggestion made below to give the player an overhead HP bar.
• Damage dealt to players and damage dealt by players should be different colors in the combat log. Heck, an option for damage pop-ups would be nice, if it's feasible.

A couple gameplay notes:

• Ice effect stunlock is extremely powerful both against and by the player. Though in the latter case it's kind of annoying to break out of especially when it's a single ice archer and all they can do is stall you, with no other threats around to inflict damage.
• Random teleport on equipment is super annoying, I wish there was a cooldown or something, haha.

I haven't used any of the Villager stuff yet and don't quite understand what it or the Upgrade orbs do. I assume that will be explained in time or I'll figure out on my own at some point.

All that being said, pretty solid game, I could see myself coming back to this to do a deeper dive once I've played all of the FQ9 games on my short list.

Thank you for the detailed review and feedback! There are definitely some action items I can incorporate into future builds, particularly as it pertains to default controls and key bindings. I play with a controller by default and it's easy to overlook alternate setups without input like this, so that is very helpful.

The page description is also food for thought. I can see the battle system especially as being "undersold", since my focus for this game was really the story and writing. So I will certainly consider how to convey the systems depth more clearly.

Thanks again!

Hi again!

Is there any chance you still have access to the old PC, or its hard drive? If so, you can copy the save files over to the new PC, and it should work as long as you include all of the files including the config and globals files.

I'm not familiar with any other mechanism to transfer save data on the standalone version.

(For reference, the Steam version is compatible with Steam Cloud for save files, but unfortunately I don't think that helps us in this case).

Thanks, and I hope this info is helpful!

One thing to clarify, I misspoke when I said OBS as I am actually using Streamlabs. I do have it set to capture a screen/display rather than an application or window, which is what surprised me about it failing to grab my testing footage. Still, I can try the non-windowed approach if I run into a similar issue with this (or another) game in the future. It sounds like you may have a viable workaround moving forward, as well.

The mouse cursor can't leave the game window when set in fullscreen mode, which is what I meant by "hijacking". I know this is not entirely uncommon, though I had a controller plugged in and for some reason expected that to take priority, allowing the mouse to interact with the OS or other applications.

Sprite work is tricky and time-consuming so I get that compromise. To me it does affect the readability of the game, rather than just being about presentation, and I'd personally prefer even very simple animations over having no visual indicators at all. But you'll of course need to weigh that versus the level of effort and how many other players have even mentioned it. I think quick, punchy animations like SaGa I's could work, but you'd want to avoid more elaborate sequences like the ones added to certain DQ III remakes.

I did see that status icons were displayed, I just wasn't sure how to easily identify what certain states did (especially the ones added by monster attacks). It's possible there was something I missed in the game guide or an NPC dialog.

I do remember checking the in-game manual for stat info regarding Defense, etc. and must have missed this one, or was perhaps overloaded and didn't absorb it.

The difficulty and economy are curious design choices to me because I generally associate transforming magical girl squads being much better aligned to a flashy power fantasy than to a sort of grindy, attrition-based experience. I'm not saying it can't work, though there are some points where I felt like there was a major disconnect between how our protagonists are framed, versus how they actually functioned in combat. And it's one of those things where, if subverting audience expectations was the goal, it may actually need to be more overt to really drive the point home.

I do agree it would be best to at least convey for the purpose of stat allocation that these choices will permanently impact equipment selection. Just because "cannot be changed" could come across more like "you cannot respec your build" rather than how it's actually intended. At least in my case, I saw that and assumed that I couldn't fiddle with the base scores after leaving char gen but they would still grow as we went through the game, either via items or possibly just levelling.

I didn't try changing any of my back row characters to better weapons mainly because it felt like their spells were barely keeping up as-is, and I was skeptical about conceding any additional spell power. While having slightly more meaningful basic attacks would improve MP economy, it's generally better to have one good skill with a cost and one bad free skill, than two mediocre skills (even if one of them is free).

The weight system seems OK to me. I may have been more inclined to theorycraft if I knew how much of a difference in hit rate 5 or 10 Defense might incur, since I could then compare that to average incoming damage and decide if it's worth the trade based on those criteria. But I think my friction was due to some game systems being a bit opaque not the system itself.

If it helps, I found the technical writing better than the characterizations. But either way, nothing to be sorry about!

Being able to flip the controls is welcome, it just struck me as an odd default configuration. Again, pretty subjective. Though I suppose even flipping that setting won't necessarily resolve the enemy back rows being partially hidden by the front rows.

I don't think there's a problem necessarily with the support skills being less "gimmick" driven compared to melee and direct damage abilities. Though support skills often get used less when healing is a frequent need, and MP reserves are very limited. So it may be worth revisiting costs for some of the peripheral stuff, before increasing / tuning their effects.

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!

Foreword / Disclaimer

I recorded a couple hours of gameplay footage for demonstrative purposes. Unfortunately, when the game client is changed to Fullscreen, it is no longer considered part of the designated display in OBS / Windows, so my recordings only captured audio along with a “frozen” image of the Options menu. This also means I won’t be able to provide specific details (including screenshots) of certain things I will be referring to in the write-up.

While I imagine this is an engine issue – though I am unsure which specific game engine this is built in – I’d consider it a reasonably high priority to fix, to ensure LP-ers and streamers don’t run into the same problem. I imagine a workaround to this would be to manually resize the game window instead of using the fullscreen option, but I just simply didn’t anticipate that being necessary. On a related note, the game client hijacks all mouse functionality when in Fullscreen mode, which results in a few extra steps when trying to exit out of the game.

Visuals

The general visual style of the maps and windows is appealing. Character portraits look very old-school and some of the parts vary quite a bit in terms of quality. Enemy sprites I am not a fan of stylistically, though they are competently drawn and align with the game’s dark / dungeon crawler aesthetic.

The lack of attack and spell animations is somewhat disconcerting, and icons are somewhat awkwardly placed and hard to differentiate during battle. I get that many early PC and console dungeon crawlers didn’t use animations (or reserved them for very special effects, like the original Phantasy Star did IIRC), but this is one aspect of the retro aesthetic I could do without; it makes it more difficult to parse what is happening in battle, and takes away the “impact” from certain skills. Particularly with how “squishy” most player characters are, I would like to be able to more easily see who is getting attacked, and by what. Since a lot of offensive skills (the majority I’d wager?) inflict status ailments, I found myself wishing for more digestible ways to see what states each actor and enemy have, as well as what those states do.

I’m not a fan of back row enemies being partially obscured by the front row. I get why this is done in a front-view / first person system, but it just makes the game interface and combat targeting feel awkward. (more about this when I get to controls)

I am not keen on how NPCs are just regular “search here” icons on the map rather than being full sprites – it doesn’t feel like an homage to old school technical limitations but rather more like a series of placeholders. It also makes the base map initially more confusing than it needs to be (though after a bunch of return trips you start to memorize the layout).

Audio

The map music is ambient and not particularly memorable. It’s not bad per se either, though the Subway track might be more interesting than the Hospital track, and you spend a lot of time in the Hospital stumbling through the map since there’s a very big jump in terms of complexity from the prologue to the first “real” dungeon, so it can get repetitive. I think the Base music is fine – it is very reminiscent of TES: Arena for some reason, possibly the samples used?

I’d like the sound design to be a bit more dynamic overall. What music is present adds some mood / tension but could go a lot further to enhance the experience; for example, I don’t remember if there is no regular battle music or if it’s just extremely subtle. Sound effects seemed generally in line with what I’d expect from a retro game.

Story

The world building seems fairly extensive, and I think the twists on both magical girls and magic-as-science are well done. I had a feeling that the Hate was named as a sort of socio-political commentary, and this was sort of evidenced further by one character’s dialog about how trans persons had been poorly treated historically. I am not sure if the magical girl transformations are intended as allegorical to other transitional experiences, but perhaps that is explored more later.

The dialog is competently constructed (I didn’t spot a single grammatical error or typo) but I feel like we only scratched the surface of having a full plot structure. That is OK, mind you – for a dungeon crawler, just having a justification to jump into the dungeon is fine, provided we uncover more lore / backstory / etc. later. I also felt like there was a bit of a lack of character voice – I don’t think I would be able to differentiate each NPC’s personality from one another’s without the context of A) what their job is, or B) what other characters have said about that person in their various dialog options.

There’s a few points where it is just a tiny bit too close to “wall of text”, which I think would be partially mitigated by having NPC sprites that had simple animations or something.

Gameplay

I love the create-a-character system. Party building is one of the most fun parts of CRPGs in my opinion, though occasionally that leads to a misfire like Drakken where building the team is more satisfying than actually going on the adventure with that team. While that wasn’t the case here, I did come away feeling like the game really wanted you to start with the default party, at least on a first run, as there wasn’t as much detailed game information as I would have liked to understand the choices I was making during char gen. So while the party builder is a highlight, it could also frustrate players that end up making sub-optimal choices (which seemed very easy to do, by the way, given how some of the Class and passive ability combinations had little to no synergy).

Equipment requirements being “soft”, resulting in attribute penalties rather than just being unable to use the item, seemed cool in practice but I don’t think I ever utilized that system. Without knowing more about how the various numbers and calculations work and being a risk-averse player in most cases, I didn’t feel like taking a chance with -10 Defense to gain +2 Armor, or whatever the case may be. On that note, is Defense just what other game systems call Evade? Or do they both influence incoming damage from physical? In the brief time I hung out on Hythrain’s stream of the game (I ducked out early due to wanting to play this game as “blind” as feasible), I noticed he had a lot of questions about stat abbreviations; though I was able to intuit what most stat abbreviations meant, I still didn’t feel like I knew what the actual effects of said stats were in many cases.

Balance is probably the biggest pain point for me with this game right now. Magic-users’ regular weapons deal near-insignificant chip damage, and their MP pools are very shallow considering the sheer number of enemies faced and how many hits each one takes to bring down. At the same time, player health pools are balanced on a razor’s edge; if an attack can successfully get through a target’s mitigation, it hurts a LOT, with magic attacks quickly taking down front row characters and physical skills often two-shotting the back row (thankfully comparatively few seem to have adequate range, but back row members are nonetheless always in danger of being sniped). A single dog-pile turn on any character (except maybe basic physical attacks against a heavy armor user) will result in a KO, which feels really bad when you had just set foot inside the dungeon again, after having left to restore everyone to full.

This leads me to the economy. I like the fact that it isn’t money from a narrative standpoint, even though Rem functions as money from a utilitarian sense – however this creates a bit of dissonance to me just because of how difficult it is to build and maintain any reserve of Rem while having to pay out frequent tolls of 30 or 60 bucks (though after a while I started save-scumming to avoid taking full party wipes, to be honest). Healing items cost a staggering amount of money for what they do, incremental upgrades cost about as much as you’d make from an entire dive of the hospital (barring the good fortune of locating a treasure box or two), and the player very quickly runs out of cheap upgrades to enable them to maintain a sense of progression and momentum.

This would not be quite as much of a friction point if not for the slow levelling. In the roughly 2 hours I played Minerva Labyrinth I only leveled up once, and that was from the first boss. It wouldn’t surprise me if, despite showing Exp after each fight, the actual level ups were somehow tied to story or exploration milestones, because I spent ages at level 2, only accumulating small upgrades through the occasional item find or shop visit. Encounters simply didn’t seem to yield enough experience to matter (and I don’t recall being able to see my Exp to next level shown anywhere). I also can’t be sure due to the loss of game footage, but it seems like stat increases from level are very small or non-existent. This isn’t necessarily a problem, though having that information might influence how a player does their initial party configuration – for example, if we know that END never increases, then we can plan accordingly during character generation, and not (for example) expect for our medium armor wearer to eventually graduate to heavy armor, as they do in many RPGs.

Skill design felt solid to me for the most part, with none of the skills in my chosen party (War, Moon, Earth, Storm, and Hunt) coming across as lacking a use case, though the specific numbers sometimes felt “off”. In particular I felt like War – or perhaps just greatsword users in general – dealt substantially more damage than other melee classes, and in fact their basic attacks were about on par with Moon or Hunt’s skills. I did like how the Hunt skills were designed around applying and managing debuffs, while the Moon skills worked predominantly with MP recovery; Storm and Earth didn’t use mechanical congruence but instead had abilities that felt “on flavor” for their respective elements, and I felt those were well conceptualized also. I should add that the DoT skill from Storm was very powerful, and it was welcome for the damage proc to occur before an enemy acted, which could sometimes finish them off and thus prevent incoming damage.

UI and Controls

The default enemy targeting scheme feels backwards to me: up / down would intuitively change rows and left / right would intuitively change targets within a row, IMO. This is an opinion / preference thing and in any case, I believe it can be changed but felt worth mentioning since I found myself frequently fumbling when trying to target the back row of an enemy group.

It took me a while to understand the various menu hotkeys (playing on an X Box 360 controller by the way, I should have mentioned that before!) and it seemed easier to just go to the main menu by pressing Start. This may be less of an issue on keyboard, where the default key binds would ideally make sense as a sort of mnemonic device to help the player remember (M for Map, etc.) I didn’t think to try that as I eventually got acclimated to the controls well enough anyways.

Map movement itself felt fairly responsive, and the addition of sidestep / strafe keys was quite welcome. Some of the glyphs on the minimap were a tiny bit odd (letters instead of icons for example) but it didn’t hurt anything in terms of readability. Just having a minimap is certainly an upgrade from some of the very old-school dungeon crawlers, after all!

Closing Thoughts

I did enjoy my time with this game overall. The core gameplay loop felt satisfying and I think it could end up being quite addictive with some of the details and balancing tuned just a bit more. The cycle of exploring, returning to town to recharge, and upgrading before going on the next dive did remind me a bit of the SNES game Arcana, now that I think about it further. The experience wasn’t quite compelling enough for me to clear the entire hospital dungeon, but I am confident audiences looking for a crunchy dungeon crawler will be engaged.

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!

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!)

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!

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 forgot to check the Windows box when uploading a previous build. Easy fix / already done! Incidentally, good tip about the itch client as well.
• Things do open up a bit later, though I'd say the first act is fairly linear. One compromise I've considered is to allow players to step into the Chapter 2 / 3 dungeons as soon as they access the world map, though it would require arbitrarily blocking off the critical story sections until they are intended to be explored (E.G. the old "guards blocking the rest of the dungeon" trope). Some players may find this less fulfilling than simply not being able to go to those locations, so I'll need to weigh the options.
• I hope it won't be too disappointing that the split segments do return at least a few more times. Though, certain chapters do predominantly (if not entirely) feature a full, 4-person team.
• Much appreciated! Improving my writing is one of the goals of this project, and I still have a ways to go!
• Good point. I drew Spark's battle sprites to match his map appearance, but the other characters have larger, more detailed sprites in combat, so I can easily justify that on the basis of consistency.
• The Free Turn Battle system isn't for everyone, but I am glad to hear I was at least able to mitigate some of the pain points and make it reasonably serviceable.
• Fair point. I've gone back and forth about enabling an option to display a prompt or something when standing next to a "hidden" item - it depends on how much similar feedback I receive.
• Good catch on that mis labeled name box! Fixed for the next build.
• Adding appropriate glyphs for gamepads of all types is on my backlog. Thanks for letting me know so I can bump up that issue in the priority list. In the meantime I can put more informative labels on the control re-mapping options.
• I think a couple players were stymied by the torch puzzle, so far. I'll brighten up the torches or otherwise make them more visible.
• Not defaulting to a selection for certain menus was intentional to prevent overzealous mashing, but I can see the inconsistency being more annoying than just having to be more careful in the menu. Will ponder that further.
• I think I know where that dialog line is. Thanks!
• Will look into a more "moderate" animation speed value between normal speed and the various flavors of "super fast" currently available.
• The party does move around somewhat frequently, though I think it is only implied once or twice from some of Estelle's dialog. While some NPCs reference the southern half of the continent being dangerous / inhabited by powerful monsters, that may seem more like a warning to the player rather than a justification for the party avoiding the region. Noted!
• I can see why that shift to blaming the Empire by name might seem jarring. From the characters' perspectives, there was always suspicion of an external force behind the coup, but I don't think that was explicitly stated. So that's something I can foreshadow better.
• Ah yes, that math bug has vexed me for some time, I really need to dig into the code to figure it out at some point!

I'll let you know once I've had a chance to check out Minerva Labyrinth.

Hi!

Thanks for your interest in the game. At this point I am not in need of additional music, but appreciate the offer nonetheless.

Best of luck with your musical endeavors!

Hello there OMI, thanks for checking out the project.

I'd never noticed in all the times of playtesting that Relics didn't show up in the accessories section of the item menu, that's definitely a bug!

I hope to have Chapter 2 ready soon (TM).

Cheers

Polished, atmospheric, and exceptionally original. A well-crafted experience only held back by the battle system IMO. Good job overall with this update!

Clever systems, funny, (aside from a few MGS memes that I didn't understand) and nails the Game Boy visual + auditory motif convincingly.

Great to see a definitive edition for this, and I hope to see these concepts used in a larger project in the future!
HINT HINT

Fun, challenging, and surprisingly charming. Would love to see a full version of this.

Great work!

Hi Typical_Name! Thanks for your comments!

The Panacea issue is a problem with the item description accuracy rather than a bug specifically. I will try to address that in a future update, but the gist of it is that Curse is supposed to be the "ultimate" debuff that only an Elixir can remove, yet that caveat got left off of some item and skill descriptions. A Curse spell is available to the player as well - but is well hidden - and causes the targets to take additional damage, while lowering many of their attributes significantly.

Defeating the final boss unlocks a specific feature that can be brought into a new run. I don't want to give too much away, but that information is crucial to seeing the "true" ending and breaking the cycle.

As far as the upgrade system goes, there is a bug/exploit that is possible to achieve with the scenario you mentioned. It's sort of a technical limitation with the engine, though I don't know if I would patch it out regardless as some players really dig those sorts of things. I'm glad you like the Mana Bolt skill! I think it flies under the radar a lot but is quite effective and supports a lot of builds. (that said, once you unlock a few specific upgrades I think you might replace it eventually :) )

Heyyyyyy! Glad you were able to close out the trilogy.

Yes, the jam format was the game's biggest (but certainly not only!) weakness, and I learned a ton of stuff both about scope control and about how I would want to implement this system within a larger project, should the opportunity arise later.

The Extended Haroldverse and ever-present cameos are one of my favorite things about this series, and I plan to keep some aspect of that alive however "TBA" comes together.

But yeah, all your points are valid, and I've heard several other concerns about not being able to take full advantage of the full cast due to the investment issue (skill levels and permanent skill learning, etc.) I also could have explained pretty much everything related to Attunement and Equip skills about 10x better.

Thanks for playing and sharing your insights!

Hi Human!

I'm glad you enjoyed the first 45 minutes and eagerly await your thoughts on the rest of the game :D

I actually tried to make this one shorter, I promise! Though I didn't account for how much the new turn system extended battles, among other things. That said, I am planning on doing something completely different next time and will accept your challenge regarding whatever time constraints are imposed.

Followers of the HBW continuity probably got more out of the intro than new players, but I think it was worth it. And Oath Games absolutely nailed the tiles and retro character sprites for the other areas!

Everything else I will leave to you to discover since your playthrough is still ongoing.

Thanks a ton for playing!

Hi LegoNenen,

Thanks for checking out the game, and sorry to hear you got some lag! I didn't go too crazy with the lighting on this one, but I have a feeling it was likely what caused performance issues on your PC. Can I assume it was mostly out of combat or did you see lag in battles too?

I think the skill equip system needed a better tutorial but I ran out of time. While any character can use / learn any skill, some types of skills (body, head, and arm slots) are exclusive, so you may have run into that issue at some point. But if you experienced a different problem and can recall any details I'd be happy to look further into it once the ratings are done.

The story probably would have had a bit more weight playing the earlier installments, but this was definitely not the most plot-heavy game, as a lot of dialog had to be cut for time.

I'm glad the turn system was at least intuitive enough to figure out, even if not immediately.

I appreciate your feedback!

Thanks for playing Reim!

Yes, regrettably the game is much longer than I had aimed for, so I am hoping folks see the disclaimer on the page to only rate the first 45 minutes (but I will be happy if they enjoy the entire experience after submitting their reviews, of course!)

Oath Games did the sprite work for everything after the "shift", and I absolutely love how it turned out.

I do hope to utilize the skills-as-equipment system in a future project. If you have any thoughts on how that system could be made friendlier to players that are uh... averse to spending resources, I'd be glad to hear that perspective.

Much appreciated!

Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback Frogboy!

Your surmise was kind of correct in that this game was essentially a prototype for a system I am considering in the future for a full-length project. I anticipated it might be too big or over-scoped in a few ways, but also made some miscalculations in terms of fight length and pacing to boot, having had to trim a lot of story and dialogue because the game was already running long.

While I think the mechanics turned out OK, and some players were very invested, others were put off by the level of complexity given the jam format, which is understandable.

Glad you were able to give the game a try and found some elements to be enjoyable!

Thanks for playing Gensun!

It certainly was too big for a jam for reasons you may be familiar with by now (TLDR: it's a prototype for a system I might use later). I'm grateful you were able to drop 25 minutes - or any time at all, really - into giving it a try.

Hey there! Thanks a ton for playing and for the great feedback!

I do want to show a bit more of the confrontation towards the end of the prologue, and if I can find a way to smooth the transition into the main party as well, I think that's a solid suggestion.

The demo (the version submitted to the Feedback Quest jam) used to end right after the final cutscene that closes out Chapter 1, but I wanted to give players a bit more of a preview of the game world by opening up the beginning of Chapter 2. As a result, the game currently ends at an awkward spot, until I get back on the horse and release more content :)

Seeing your LP of the project was great fun. Thank you for all the awesome content!

Totally fair! I definitely have similar regrets when it comes to the format of my entry for this jam but also don't plan to make any revisions - those will be lessons learned for a future project.

I did see that the mages had a different barrier skill name than the first boss, but without a State pop-up or tooltip advising how it was different, I didn't connect those dots.

I'll look forward to seeing a boss rush style game one of these days, perhaps?

I liked the custom art, icons, and menus, but the art style kind of clashed with the RTP in my opinion. Not sure if there would have been a way to address that without a significant scope increase in either sourcing or drawing new tiles, but it's something to consider.

Tonally the bust/character art also clashed with the very dramatic music and dark-fantasy-inspired gear and skill names. As well as the story, come to think of it, but I'm less sure on that because I got a somewhat goofy vibe from the writing at times (not sure if it was intended). David seemed one-dimensionally arrogant, and Davina was almost exclusively a foil for that personality. I did get more "character" from the HTML crew, mostly along the familiar tropey lines we normally see them as.

A pretty basic "you're the bad guys" scenario which isn't bad per se, but it wasn't executed in such a manner that made me excited to see what happened next. I didn't get to the very end, because the enemies were very spongy and combat got repetitive quickly, with a slow trickle of new skills and occasional side-grade Equipment not being enough to keep me invested. A lot of things felt "off" in terms of battle balance, and many of the skills dealt exaggerated numbers of hits, so it was tough to parse how much damage was actually being done at any given time.

I actually liked being required to use Dispel Strike on the first boss, unlike some of the reviews I read after my playthrough. To me that was one of the better aspects of the battle system, and I wish there were more interactions like that instead of pure big-number spam.

Playing as a demon with an innate weakness to fire felt bad, and the fire mages liked to dogpile that character with their strongest skill. It wasn't unmanageable, just sort of a chore, as was learning that the Glass of Water item didn't provide any protection against being re-burned immediately, so it was almost pointless to use. Having to then Dispel Strike each fire mage in turn felt like just a more tedious version of the preceding boss fight, unfortunately. I think a new gimmick for that battle would've been advisable.

Overall I think this game might have benefited from being reformatted into a boss rush. There were a lot of encounters and most of them semi-trivial, which felt somewhat padded, but I could see it being quite fun given some streamlining and re-focusing.

I got to punch a god in the face with the power of friendship / 5.

A very clever way to make a point about cooldowns. I think you defended your thesis adequately - not a home run, as the game doesn't hold up as well as re: Punch or RATD in terms of strategic depth, but the character variety was (mostly) a plus and there were still a lot of cool interactions.

Balance among characters was a spot that I felt could've used improvement, as well as conveying what certain things did a bit more clearly. For example, playing against Therese was a nightmare unless you'd used her beforehand, as it was unclear what triggered a very specific ability of hers. Oldhar felt amazingly OP as befit a "boss" character, but it at least felt earned, unlike the Reid exploit that was just game-breaking and unfortunately took away from otherwise clever design.

The music was great and I liked that most characters had unique themes.

RTP graphics felt OK but the missing animations took away a lot of the "impact" from battles IMO. I would have included them but set the defaults in YEP battle core (or whatever the MV equivalent is) to Fastest speed. Just my preference.

The interwoven story was one of the best parts. I almost didn't play the unlockable characters but felt obligated to see their story lines and am very glad I did. I don't think there was as much humor or heart as in your more traditional RPGs, but that felt partly due to the tournament format.

A few minor bugs: One of Harold's skills has a typo regarding the type of damage avoided, and there are some "phantom" character selections available from the player select screen.

There's a lot going on with this.

I'll start by saying the presentation is generally quite good and there's a lot of polish in some areas, though some things are comparatively wonky (like the Transfer events in the driving section that can be skipped, allowing the player to drive infinitely off-screen with a control scheme that is extremely difficult to guide when you can't see what direction the actor is facing).

From a technical perspective there's obviously a very strong command of the engine. It's from a design perspective where I am less sold as there are some good decisions alongside some questionable ones.

Sound design in terms of SE, ME, etc. is solid. But the music choices I did not like whatsoever as they both sounded bad (to me) in a vacuum and also undercut the generally cute vibe of the graphics. Not sure if it's older RM compression or all the music tracks selected had an odd "tinny" sound to them, but it wasn't pleasant.

Visually it's kind of cozy, and Harold is the familiar lovable buffoon with a sort of innocence to him, but the narrator and Marsha have potty mouth issues. The narrative and stylistic clashes may be intentional, but I don't think they particularly land. That said, the art is pretty amazing.

I don't know if there's any way to stop this from happening in 2k2/3 but if you press right during actor battle command input it skips that actor's turn, which is unfortunate because I first thought that it might be some sort of free turn battle only to find it's just a waste of an action. Marsha's skill list is interesting but I'm not sold on her action economy - taking a lot of turns off to forage would make sense if her skills were a bit more impactful. But I guess she's also more flexible, so it's still reasonably balanced in that sense.

I won't harp too much on having random battles in the middle of a puzzle section as it's been covered in other discussions. Being able to run with (that I can tell) 100% success is a semi-mitigating factor, but it's not perfect. The sign puzzle itself is pretty clever and a good use of having a nonverbal visual media direct the player. Same with the wind puzzle and audio cues. The stone puzzle felt like an easier version of the sign puzzle, but it was "fine".

The mansion goes on for quite a while too long and combat doesn't feel great with the overzealous level scaling and slow trickle of new skills not quite offsetting an otherwise perfunctory battle system. Losing occasional turns to the battle command issue is also a drain on patience. Yeah, the entire second floor was unnecessary now that I'm through it. It's super repetitive and doesn't add much of anything. Fights aren't tricky, they're just kind of slow and drain resources. And the only things you get besides new skills are the ability to buy more granola potions - er, bars. It's kind of funny that the characters complained about that episode being a chore, because it sort of was. So I have to award a partial point back for the double meaning, intentional or not.

The final battle was pretty decent and encouraged using a variety of skills. Skills that kept the boss locked down or debuffed had priority, but there was a sense of strategy I didn't really get from most of the other combat. I think fewer, more interesting battles would have been preferred overall. On the plus side, the best fight in the game was the last one, so that ended on a higher note.

The sprite work in the end scene was fantastic.

I can't say the humor did much for me, like some things were amusing but I have a feeling I missed a lot of references and some of the stuff was just weird. Speaking of references, the skill names were a nice touch and many of them seemed on point in terms of what they did.

The best part to me was the story, and largely in the sense that it's an adventure of self-discovery. I liked Harold's personality and dialogue much moreso than Marsha or Alex's as hinted at above, but even with that I think the writing was generally solid for what you were trying to do. I guess I have a slight hang-up about whether or not the entire sequence was just imaginary or real and in the latter case whether Alex used some reality bending powers to wrangle someone into an adventure without their consent. Apart from that, I think it's a clever way to set up Harold's character arc, and I think will resonate with a lot of audiences that have potentially been forced to face uncomfortable questions about self-identity.

I really liked the ideas but can only score based off of the (unfinished) state of the project.

I'd like to see this fully realized at some point!

Hey Loch!

Thanks a ton for playing and for your feedback. I'm very open to tweaking the UI and terminology for a potential full-size project and will keep your suggestions in mind.

Great to know someone is using the Vampire's Claw! One of the things I wanted to evaluate from this prototype is whether the advanced weapon skills with "bonus" abilities would be considered viable by players, despite the higher EP cost, and I am seeing that the answer is generally yes, which is awesome :)

Oath Games knocked the sprite work out of the park. (And did some great mapping and other design stuff, too!)

I really appreciate you sticking with it despite the play time going over. Thanks again!

--mooglerampage

Right a potential permanent lock was one thing I was afraid of as I ran out of Fire sources at one point.

Overall the writing was stronger than the marks I have for story, in other words the dialog and humor were pretty strong.

Thanks Nowis!

The skill learning menu being jam packed with unlearnable stuff would be my top priority to fix in a full-length game, followed closely by the issues with the Wait command as I had designed it poorly.

I'm glad the battle system itself seemed OK and I appreciate you sticking through what ended up being an unintentionally lengthy entry due to the battles.

Oath Games did an excellent job on the new tilesets and map sprites! (I can't take credit for anything other than the 2k3 styled areas)

Hot jams, good sprite work, an interesting puzzle/battle mechanic, and a silly story with lots of gags - pretty well-rounded and solid entry, here. I think the story was the weakest link but it was by no means bad, though I thought the motivations of the bad guys felt tonally a bit off versus the cute aesthetic and otherwise goofy vibe. In a longer entry I would've liked to see that explored more, but it was fine.

I wasn't keen on the statue fights locking out forage because if your item management & RNG didn't cooperate you could just waste a few turns. Otherwise the battles felt intuitive and had a nice variety of patterns. I personally did not see any bugs but was grateful for the frequent save prompts regardless.

Ronald, thanks so much for playing! I will definitely address the issue with the format of skill costs if this system is adopted for a future project. 

Glad you enjoyed the game.

Yeah man this is definitely top 3 for comedy, graphics, and music, and if the "story" category was instead a more general "writing" criteria it would be a contender as well.

As you said the other stuff is fixable. In a hypothetical scenario where this gets an update post jam, I would give it another go.

The humor is 11/10. Unfortunately, I can only judge much of the content loosely based on watching Padr's playthrough (which was a lot of fun to watch to be fair) as I was just not able to deal with the input system in any capacity.

You're supposed to match the rhythm of the inputs but the "check" for holding the input occurs so late that it's sometimes not always even possible to switch direction buttons quickly enough to meet the next check unless you're on a keyboard. I'm aware of the exploit to just hold multiple directions but I don't really like playing games to not engage with their systems, if that makes sense. (I also prefer to use a controller when supported)

And the lack of warning before the enemy timer makes it nearly impossible to parse their patterns before it checks for the first input and fails you. You might be able to fake it by holding down a random direction when they queue an attack, which fortunately the enemies seem to go second most of the time, but all told I would've just rather had a MGS parody flavored DQ clone. EDIT: one alternative suggestion for making the "CQC" less punishing would be to make it more like the Mario RPG / Mario and Luigi series where you get a bonus for landing the input, but the skill does something if you miss.

Art, music, vibe, and writing, all very good.