This game is SUPER cool! Such an awesome aesthetic and sense of style, and the music is GREAT!
It's a criminal act that there's not any playthroughs of your game down here in these comments. I played the first act of chapter 1 on stream and I was thinking about it all day at work and how I needed to jump back in and finish... Thought I'd go ahead and share it here! I play around 3:24:50
I absolutely loved your video, and yes, there is plenty more to go for the current demo. If you do get through it, there are also quick access to alternate paths available through the cheating room. There are three endings available for chapter one and one "dark route". Everything gives greater exposition of the general narrative.
I do not know how to, though I know it can be played with some emulator builds. If I learn how to in the future, I for sure will. Working on getting an exe instead of a folder at the moment.
Played through act one, was going to play through everything before saying my thoughts but I really want to let you know the music is very, very good. Especially the battle music. The intros for the characters and the weapons are also very cool, I particularly like how the gun puts itself together when you get it. Winter has a lot of charm, love emo guys with oneitis.
Thank you, you have plenty more content to go! Chapter 1 is four acts, act 3 alternates between two vastly different options depending on your choices, act 4 has three different variations.
If you want to check out all the content but not replay everything at the end you can use the cheating room. I will make it more user-friendly at some point...
I ended up finishing the neutral and bad ending for chapter one. Liked it quite a bit! Billy is by far my favorite character, I like all the development he gets and the fact that he's humanized despite all his shortcomings and past actions. Neutral ending Billy feels like a really bittersweet conclusion to the turmoil he's faced and it makes me glad he and Sarah can manage to contact each other after everything. Arthur joining in the Rotten Tree story line wasn't something I was expecting, but it was entertaining to see how heinous and evil he is. Beef Wellington's a cool looking guy and I love how bluntly Arthur explains him existing. Winter's dad is cool too. I wanna know what's up with Velouria so badly. Again, the music is great. Favorite was the song that plays in Sarah's hotel room. I played on an old version so I'm not sure if I should share any glitches I encountered, I don't know if they've been fixed yet. The most notable one was opening the menu during the party sequence and removing the filters from the screen. Jungian Shadow can also be infinitely rebattled in Rotten Tree if you go upstairs.
>I ended up finishing the neutral and bad ending for chapter one. Liked it quite a bit! Billy is by far my favorite character, I like all the development he gets and the fact that he's humanized despite all his shortcomings and past actions.
Yeah, Billy really is the heart of the story in chapter 1, he is my favorite too, although Arthur comes close...
>Neutral ending Billy feels like a really bittersweet conclusion to the turmoil he's faced and it makes me glad he and Sarah can manage to contact each other after everything. Arthur joining in the Rotten Tree story line wasn't something I was expecting, but it was entertaining to see how heinous and evil he is. Beef Wellington's a cool looking guy and I love how bluntly Arthur explains him existing. Winter's dad is cool too. I wanna know what's up with Velouria so badly.
Thank you for giving my game this amount of time, not a lot of players get to view the nuances of the story. Velouria will be further developed as the chapters progress, last one is Winters own chapter where it all comes together.
>Again, the music is great. Favorite was the song that plays in Sarah's hotel room.
Thank you, more music to come!
>I played on an old version so I'm not sure if I should share any glitches I encountered, I don't know if they've been fixed yet. The most notable one was opening the menu during the party sequence and removing the filters from the screen. Jungian Shadow can also be infinitely rebattled in Rotten Tree if you go upstairs.
Bugtesting is hell, any reports are appreciated, I did not know about the ones you reported.
Yet again, thank you. Anything in particular you want to know you can just ask, I myself do not really care about spoilers, if you are likewise inclined I do not mind laying stuff out.
When Sarah gets her package from Billy, you can activate this event twice and reap x2 amount of the items he sent her.
In Chapter 2's intro, you can open the menu and save your game before the phone stops ringing
When going to the shooting range where Sarah gets her first kill, I interacted with the sign as something that looked like a soul sickness demon came out of the ground but I went back to the room before and it was gone. I'm unsure if this counted as sequence breaking and didn't retest it when I did Rotten Tree because I used the cheat room.
Like Jungian Shadow, Underwater Billy's fight can be redone over and over again if you revisit the area.
The 3-Eyed Jack you get in the area across from Sarah's hotel room changes its sprite if interacted from the sides
As for spoilery questions I'd rather wait to see the story unfold, a lot of the intrigue for me comes from not really knowing where anything is gonna go next.
Finally back! Took me a while to progress in the game xD. I admit my airhead had a lot of trouble getting pass the combat bits. But I rather enjoyed myself a lot with it! I think smol Sarah to be cute, unlike big Sarah who's kind of edgy, but she's still fun. I've warmed up to the old man, and think he's fun too. Was all the music made by yourself? Because it's very good. The track in the forest reminds me of Nirvana. And the main theme used in battles and in the trailer is a banger. Tried to always maximise my Love points, hopefully it will land on a happy ending! Good game, and the literary references makes it extra-cultured. P.D: The scene when Sarah takes the bus, and the crazy busman with his dog appears will stay with me.
Billy is meant to be a bit of an acquired taste, once you learn of his circumstances and understand more of his personality I think he comes across as much more sympathetic.
Was all the music made by yourself?
Yes, second camp track is a reference to nirvana, forest one is a reimagining of House of the Rising sun. All music has been made by me.
Tried to always maximise my Love points, hopefully it will land on a happy ending!
Very likely would have! The "saviour ending" is the most good one, you can play it by using the cheating room at the moment. The normal ending is also finished. Working on the final ending now, the "dark path" for players who choose to play hatefully alters act 3 greatly and is also in now.
Overall, glad you enjoyed it. Still improving a lot of the material and polishing stuff but chapter one is nearly done. The story of Winter will continue for a long time still, as traverses through the experiences of other people.
The 4.4 version. I boot up game, I see the loading bar, it loads into main menu. Then it starts getting laggy and in a few seconds everything freezes, not even alt+f4 or ctrl+alt+delete works. Im running it on windows 10. Here is my debug log if its of any use https://justpaste.it/aw00j
Truth be told, I'm not typically a fan of games that require a deep emotional investment in the story to fully grasp the gameplay. However, this one was an exception. As I played through it, I found myself genuinely caring about the characters and the intriguing mysteries that unfolded. It just got more and more captivating.
It's fascinating how the levels evolve based on your interactions with the characters. The 3D characters are exceptionally well-crafted, and the dedication to writing is clearly evident. Great work.
The visuals are amazing, a lot of time have been spent here to make both the enviroment and the characters feel alive. And some really creep me out, so bonus points for that.
I adore the RPG elements of the game. Your consistent style, both in terms of the story and gameplay, comes together really well. When it comes to gameplay, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the combat system. The moods mechanic was really interesting.
The tutorial seamlessly integrates with the gameplay, making you forget that there are tutorials at all. They only appear when necessary to explain something relevant in that moment, which I find to be just great.
Other than some bugs with the UI I had a great time playing this game!
Thank you! There are quite a few problems with the U.I (and everything else), I don't know if you noticed that the bars in combat does not perfectly fit the "character boxes" for instance but these things will be ironed out eventually. At the moment I am focusing on getting the entire story for chapter 1 done, after that I will spend a month or two polishing everything before beginning work on chapter 2.
* In that computer watch tower zone, when you check the browser history section you get stuck, so I had to close the game but at least I saved
* The UI when shopping seems to crop the buttons
But other than that, there's a lot of cool stuff in the game and I reached the end of the demo (Which involved a boss after some childhood memories of a character and then another leaving them... sorry if these details are too spoiler-y).
Its combat is easy to get attached to because of how Swagger scales during fights, so you learn something about how some values work.
Not sure when ACT3 will come because I believe there's probably going to be even more after that.
Act 3 is is almost ready for testing. I thought I had fixed the bug with the computer so thank you for noticing that there is still something wrong there! I am touching up some stuff for act3 now but I will release its first version once /v3 drops, then it will be time to improve it further. Once act3 is in a decent enough state I will work on act4 and an alternate version of act3. A lot of stuff in the game was pretty rushed, once the entirety of chapter 1, act1-4, can be played through I will go back and rework a lot of assets. Thanks for playing!
Playing this was an excellent way to spend an evening. There’s quite a lot to say about this game even in its incomplete state but I’ll try to outline the important bits. Hopefully this will fairly represent the game and do it justice.
Gameplay
Admittedly, I’m not the best person to give proper analysis of this kind of RPG gameplay as I don’t often play games with it and usually I am not a fan. Despite this, I enjoyed the combat in this game. It may feel basic at first but, once you gain levels and party members, the range of strategies opens up and you get to experience each member's list of moves/abilities which are all derived from their characteristics and story. The combat system itself has its own twist on the usual turn-based RPG format and is fun to engage with. Most of it revolves around managing 3 resource pools (evaporation, phantasm, and swagger) which are all impacted by player and enemy actions but can also be exchanged during combat, allowing for strategising and calculated risk-taking. A basic example would be, if you don't have enough phantasm (a hybrid of sanity and mana as you would see in other games), you can gamble by sacrificing some evaporation (health) to increase it and therefore set yourself up to use a strong ability on your next turn.
Weapon and armour equipment options are currently limited but the equippable card system creates a little more build potential and the ability to slot moods and intentions like equipment is reminiscent of Omori or Disco Elysium in the sense that it makes the player character's psyche part of the core gameplay, emphasising its importance to the overall narrative more-so than if it were solely explored in dialogue.
The depth of the system plus tying stats and abilities to the game narrative and themes means that combat doesn't feel tacked on like it's an after-thought or simply there to pad out a narrative-driven game.
The combat animations are simple but serviceable while the sound effects were satisfying enough to trigger dopamine in my ape brain.
Enemies are diverse both in terms of their appearance and their abilities, the latter ensuring you can't rely on the same tactics every encounter. Aesthetically, they are suitably visceral and ominous with some unique designs in the mix that, again, are tied to the narrative and themes.
The lack of random encounters prevented the sense of tedium I usually get from RPGs and stopped me from excessively grinding (either intentionally or accidentally), becoming overpowered, and undermining the gravitas of the boss fights by turning them in to easy stomps.
Difficulty-wise, the game is challenging but fair, forcing you to do more than just brute-force every encounter with normal attacks. How to tackle a given enemy is intuitive enough that you don't have to attempt trial and error or go searching for information outside the game itself. Furthermore, difficulty is tuned so that, if you do hit a roadblock, an effective solution is to go gain some more XP to level up (which doesn't take too long) and try a different approach, likely with a new ability in your arsenal as they are, gratifyingly, awarded frequently. The RNG can be a bit harsh but the mechanics and the consumable items you can find or buy are enough to compensate for bad luck and often salvage a fight.
I chose to play with the tutorial NPC who was concise and clear while also providing a bit of entertainment and extra hints about the story.
The ability to move quickly around an area with just a mouse click is a nice little bonus especially when it comes to making back-tracking less tedious; it is often sorely missing from similar games. However, sometimes I did find myself using manual movement as the pathfinding can get stuck on obstacles.
Collision with enemies on the over-world map can be iffy. At times their sprites clearly touch yours but still don't initiate combat and even trying to force them to attack you can be fiddly.
Story/Setting/The Main Attraction
Despite there only being two acts, the game has a lot to say and there are a lot of things to say about it. It’s the kind of game that provokes thought and, dare I say it, *introspection*. It reminds us of the darker aspects of life such as the necessity of killing to survive, the loss of innocence, the inevitability of death, and the inexplicable naming convention that caused the sequel to "Deerhunter II" to be called "Deerhunter 3".
The starting story hook is strong and I am eager to find out more about the world as well as what the culmination of my dialogue choices and actions will be. The idea that I am shaping the main character’s disposition and opinions on people and things that existed or happened prior to the start of the game is very intriguing.
Characters have well defined personalities and motivations and, most importantly for the kind of story this game wants to tell, your fellow travellers are engaging and sympathetic. Though the characters are archetypes most players likely will have seen before, they are instances of them being done well.
Dialogue is short and sweet, it never meanders and is always geared towards revealing something about the world and characters or driving the plot forward while avoiding excessive lore dumps or long, boring character monologues. Something I found refreshing is that the writing is confident in its bleakness and seriousness as hardly any of it is hedged with humour. There are quite a few grammatical and typing errors which I did find a bit distracting but these are of course easily fixed and to be expected in early development.
The world-building is simply great and might be a close tie with the music for what I enjoyed the most. While you can sense the DNA of other IPs in this game, there isn't a point where you are thinking "the creator just ripped this off" or where it feels overly derivative; the world is very much its own thing with its mixture of alternate history, spiritualism/occultism, and technology.
It is a visually interesting world that sits somewhere between a dreamscape and a hellscape and it has a distinct flavour of Americana that I personally love and found to be evocative of Silent Hill and Twin Peaks. You are able to build an even better picture of this world’s nature and history through environmental storytelling, audio/music, and interactable objects. I won’t spoil anything but the dev has done a few clever things that suddenly click if you stop to take a look at your environment.
Music/The Other Main Attraction
The music is fantastic. If you are fan of the likes of Silent Hill 2/3 or Disco Elysium then I can almost guarantee you that the ambient tracks will scratch your itch. The combat tracks too are absolute bangers that don't become irritating even though you’ll hear them frequently. In fact, a lot of the tracks in this game are, frankly, earworms that are now stuck looping in my head and I might have to sue if they persist.
Good choices have been made on when and where to play tracks. For example, the choice to keep a certain track running after exiting a cell allows the (disturbing) things you have just seen in that cell to linger in your mind. It's hard to describe exactly what I mean here without spoilers but you'll likely know when you get there.
Additionally, tracks undergo variation as you travel, changing with escalating threat or tragic moments. This results in the music being another way in which the unfolding narrative is skilfully conveyed to the player; it was very satisfying to hear a familiar tune that I already liked return with altered lyrics and instrumentation now suited to new events.
Graphics/Visuals
The character and environment art is simple but more than adequate and respectable for a solo dev, with the visual experience often elevated by some out of left field artistic direction. Character appearances/expressions are limited to one portrait each but still effectively communicate their personalities overall and I never found their static nature distracting.
Summary
A comfy but also melancholy journey with its own identity that will manage to tease out feels through a brilliant world and soundscape. You get the impression a lot of care was taken constructing the overall experience with virtually all aspects from music to gameplay working in accordance to produce a consistent tone and narrative with emotional pay-offs. I'm looking forward to the next parts and ultimately how it all ends!
I'm glad I've helped your motivation. I really did enjoy the experience you created and hope that it gets completed. I did a second playthrough of the demo and made screenshots of some of the issues I found during; most are just to do with text. Would these be useful to you? I can add annotation if needed.
Yeah, it's hard to spot it in your own stuff even when it's just writing, nevermind when you're building a whole game on top of that. There's quite a few so, if you want, you can add me on Discord (John Green#4655) and I'll DM them (with the corrections posted underneath each), unless you have another idea that's more convenient for you.
I've played about a half hour so far with definite plans to continue my file. The world building is done very well and I love the creepy Tim Burtonesque art style, though somewhat obviously not "professionally" done, I find they more than suffice and add some character if anything. The "dark psychological" atmosphere is something I'm very much a fan of, seeing the mind's of our characters expressed through disturbing and very real imagery and concepts I've found has always given characters a very intriguing depth. Combat seems well balanced, enemy designs are interesting, the mysterious nature of the story hooks you for sure. It's a well put together project so far!
Thank you, current version is between 2 and 3 hours long depending on how much enemies you want to grind out before the end. There is a storyrelated cutoff point with an "ending message". Once you have fought the mother the tutorial section is over and the real shit begins.
Wonderful aesthetic. Getting a good atmosphere is hard, and you did great on that department. While I have yet to finish the second act, I still want to come and leave a review.
Probably the only real complains I have are:
-sometimes it's not clear what tiles are you can walk through. I often get stuck in the enviroment
-during the dialogues, you could add more obvious clues to show who is currently talking, since both portraits are shown at once. (maybe something like someone's portrait darker when they are not talking).
on a sidenote, I love your enemy designs, good stuff.
When the portraits are up their name is at the top of the box when someone "starts talking" and then disappears if they continue. Maybe it should just always be there as someone is talking?
I really like this demo. Really interesting world. Combat was almost always challenging. Usually I just walk past as much encounters as humanly possible in rpgmaker games, but I actually found myself getting bodied 20 mins in and had to go back to level up more. Nice to actually be challenged.
^Actually realized I just wasn't equipping my insane jack card. Still all the combat encounters feel fresh and not grindy so I enjoy them.
Music is also really good, I like the music in the fish folk area.
I do think you should consider getting an artist to redo the character art, or redoing some yourself. The current mspaint stuff isn't completely terrible, but it's not good. And since this art is getting reused constantly throughout the entire game I think there would be a lot of value in upgrading it. But there is a certain style to it currently.
I got to the bottom of the well, probably going to finish it later
You are almost through the tutorial ;). That was not a joke, keep going, the good stuff is still ahead of you.
Thanks for the input. I will never be able to afford an artist but I do want to improve the art along the line. I am, hopefully, getting better as I continue to work, so at some point I may have to redraw stuff.
I got to the watchtower, and after interacting with the computer, the background for it got stuck on the screen, which ended up overlaying everything. I've tried reloading my save file a few times, but maybe it is something to do with my save file since it's still stuck on the screen when I load it.
I think I know what this is, use the "quit" option at the computer.
If this does not work tell me, I can port a savefile with your progress and see if that works, or port a build at the point you should have been.
Thing is the options at the computer loops back to the start, if continue on like you would a conversation the options should appear again, one of them is "quit".
I tried to emulate your problem and I think just pressing space and then choosing quit at the computer should solve it.
If you for any reason just cant be bothered and still want to know what happens I have a full playthroughvideo here:
I'm not actually able to see where I am or what the room I am in looks like, since it still overlaps everything. Sadly, there are no options, if I can even interact with anything. I've tried finding the computer in the room again, but I haven't been able to. Although I would rather not put you through the trouble of porting a save file for me, I do actually want to play this as it was intended, rather than watching the playthrough video.
Its no trouble at all, I am heading to bed now but tell me what level you were at and I will port a build for you tomorrow, I think that will be simpler and it is guaranteed to work.
I've played through everything I found in version 1.5 (not sure how to update to 1.6 while keeping my savefiles, also I don't think I ever found that fourth party member), including past the end-of-demo message, and I think this has a lot of potential! I like the artstyle, the music and the general surreal atmosphere, and the story is positively harrowing so far. I also find it interesting how you’re seemingly able to retroactively decide what Winter’s relationship with Velouria was like, or at least his views on it, through your ingame choices.
Here's some issues I did have with the game, though admittedly I have no idea whether some of these are intentional or not, or if any of them have been fixed on 1.6:
It seems that the game will always autosave right after you die, locking you out of playing on that slot. I’ve actually lost a significant amount of progress once because of that, so if it’s intentional I’d at least try to communicate that you have to frequently save manually in order to avoid it.
The Simpleton and Finish stat screens appear to be identical, and both of them cut off near the bottom, preventing you from seeing the character’s Swagger bar and Biography.
There’s generally a lot of issues with sprites transforming when you interact with them from certain angles. Lacey Door turns into Billy when she’s talked to from the side or from behind, and I remember a similar thing happening to one of the carcass enemies as well. The mirror that gives you the Gaslight skill disappears if you interact with it from the side or behind, and the rope sign in front of the well turns into a blue potion if you interact with it while standing right on top.
On a similar topic, it seems like interacting with the mirror for the first time in the unfinished part of the map shows the text for gaining the Gaslight skill, even if you already got the skill from the previous mirror.
The default attack being “blasting with bullets” ends up being weird when paired with the Confusion status, since it makes enemies without any visible guns start shooting themselves or the party out of nowhere.
Enemies appear to skip their turns very often. Not by guarding or “waiting to see what happens”, they just don’t do anything and there’s no combat message indicating it’s intentional. It was especially noticeable with the Crowcrone, who permanently stopped attacking me after she used the Butchering self-buff.
The PCs’ sideways walking cycles are very odd: there are visible black lines in the air above their sprites, and they appear to be missing a second contact pose which is very distracting imo.
The game seems to stop responding to keyboard inputs when you run away from the Euthanasia, but only if you started the fight by interacting with her instead of colliding with her. I don’t know if any other enemies have this issue.
The Crackerleader gun skill is kind of busted, in my opinion. The high total damage is one thing, but because it hits multiple times it can also easily make back like double its Swagger cost when used, so it’s effectively free to use and very easy to spam. The closest thing to a drawback it has is that sometimes you won’t start combat with enough Swagger to use it on the first turn, but it only takes one or two attacks for it to become spammable again.
On the other hand, does Sarah’s Curse work on anything? It never affected any of the foes I used it against (Hallowed Mother, the flesh guy before her and the fishmen), and I haven’t felt the need to test with later enemies because she had the seemingly superior and actually working Deathcurse by then. I can’t tell if they were all immune to it or if it just had a very low chance of activating, but either way it felt quite underwhelming.
When you recruit Sarah again post-demo, her talking instance seems to remain in the pond for some reason, only becoming invisible.
For some reason, the text box for the Rusted Key (East)’s pickup text permanently stays on the screen after picking it up, and not even closing and reopening the game seems to fix it. It also seems like the Crowcrone’s overworld sprite doesn’t disappear when she’s defeated until you leave and reenter the area.
Overall, a pretty good demo and I’m very interested to see where it goes from here. I hope this feedback helps.
Thank you! This is great input and you have spotted a lot of problems which I would have had a hard time to find myself.
- I don't think I ever found that fourth party member.
I guess i phrased it a bit incorrectly, the "fourth" partymember (should have been playable character) is the teenage Sarah you get to control when she is on her first real hunt, the scene where you unlock the bloodrites skill. She will be able to join you as a companion at a later point though.
- I also find it interesting how you’re seemingly able to retroactively decide what Winter’s relationship with Velouria was like, or at least his views on it, through your ingame choices.
You are on the right track. Lets just say that even if you choose to view their relationship through rose-tinted glasses, the reality of it is implied even in the "it was good" choices. You will get to know more later on in the game. What you choose do change stuff though, there are 8 hidden "personality-values" which will change up stuff way further into the game.
It seems that the game will always autosave right after you die.
Yes, it does not work properly at all, I have added a "make manual saves" message up top. I dont know how to fix it for now but I have to look in to it at some point.
The Simpleton and Finish stat screens appear to be identical, and both of them cut off near the bottom, preventing you from seeing the character’s Swagger bar and Biography.
The cut off is something I need to fix. "finish" was actually supposed to be the "I am done" button at one point, guess I forgot to remove it. I should take a closer look at the menus overall.
There’s generally a lot of issues with sprites transforming when you interact.
Yes, this is easy to fix and due to me being sloppy when creating spritesheets and disabling animations. Thanks for pointing the instances out.
Gaslight skill, even if you already got the skill from the previous mirror.
Yes, this is just not done yet. You will get two new introspection skills, berate and belittle, which works as debuffs once I have made their animations.
The default attack being “blasting with bullets” ends up being weird when paired with the Confusion status, since it makes enemies without any visible guns start shooting themselves or the party out of nowhere.
I added that mood pretty recently so I haven't given it a lot of testing, I am guessing this can be solved by altering the "confused" state. If you had chosen the other option at the scarecrow you would have gotten a mood which protected against the confusion state.
Enemies appear to skip their turns very often. Not by guarding or “waiting to see what happens”, they just don’t do anything and there’s no combat message indicating it’s intentional. It was especially noticeable with the Crowcrone, who permanently stopped attacking me after she used the Butchering self-buff.
This is due to the enemies speedstats, they can get more or fewer actions than the player, it certainly needs a lot of adjustments.
The PCs’ sideways walking cycles are very odd: there are visible black lines in the air above their sprites, and they appear to be missing a second contact pose which is very distracting imo.
Probably some stray pixels in the spritesheets, funny that I dont notice this myself. Please elaborate on contact pose, I am not sure what you mean.
The game seems to stop responding to keyboard inputs when you run away from the Euthanasia, but only if you started the fight by interacting with her instead of colliding with her.
I will look into this.
The Crackerleader gun skill is kind of busted, in my opinion.
The combat system needs a lot of tuning overall, but I guess my gut feeling is to leave overpowered stuff alone and instead increase the difficulty later on in the game. There are some things yet to be implemented that are designed to be broken by an observant player. I also recently nerfed the enemies in part 1 since most people thought that it was too difficult.
On the other hand, does Sarah’s Curse work on anything?
Both curses are actually pretty OP if you play your cards right. There are at this point no enemies immune to curses, but curse only has a 40 % success rate while deathcurse has 80 %, success meaning that "it takes hold".
When you recruit Sarah again post-demo, her talking instance seems to remain in the pond for some reason, only becoming invisible.
Minor oversight from me, there is collision there that is supposed to go away if she enters the party.
For some reason, the text box for the Rusted Key (East)’s pickup text permanently stays on the screen after picking it up, and not even closing and reopening the game seems to fix it. It also seems like the Crowcrone’s overworld sprite doesn’t disappear when she’s defeated until you leave and reenter the area.
These have been fixed. The next demo will contain the entirety of act 2, so you will have to wait for a bit! I think I will add a cheat area sometime soon with teleports and other stuff for people who wants to keep testing without playing it all again from the beginning.
Again, thank you! If you want to be credited as a playtester once it gets to that point you can send me whatever you want to have written.
Glad to be helpful! I'm admittedly not too knowledgeable on animation myself, I only learned this recently trying to look up an explanation for why the walk cycle was bothering me, but I'll try to elaborate on the whole contact pose thing.
Basically, walk cycle animations tend to have 4 key frames: one contact pose where both legs are on the ground, one on the front and one on the back; a second contact pose where the legs' positions are reversed; and two passing poses in between where the legs are superimposed. So for example, you could animate a character like this:
With their left leg on the front and their right leg on the back (first contact pose, idk if it matters which leg goes on the front first)
With the right leg raised behind the left, both right below the body (first passing pose)
With the right leg in front and the left leg on the back (second contact pose)
With the left leg raised in front of the right leg (second passing pose)
Loop back to the first contact pose.
It's admittedly a bit hard to tell because the animation is so fast, but here, each of the playable overworld characters seem to have only one passing pose where the legs are perfectly still, which I think is acceptable under this limited pixel artstyle; but also only one contact pose that repeats after every passing pose, with the same leg on the front and the same leg on the back (which one is which depends on the side, since the sprite is mirrored) every time. So it ends up looking like the character is only ever taking steps with one of their legs somehow, if that makes any sense.
Again, I wasn't even sure if this was intentional, especially since the forward and backward walk cycles look much better, and it's argurably a very minor thing many players won't even notice. But I did find it quite distracting myself, so I thought it was worth mentioning. Hope this helps!
(Oh, and I'll have to think about the playtester thing)
I will see what I can do about this, I am not really knowledgeable about animation either which is pretty apparent if you look at the enemy animations in combat. Now those I dont think I have the skills to improve, but I should be able to figure something out concerning the sideways walk.
Perhaps if I need something truly special, otherwise the amount of work I would ask of you would be staggering. Anyhow, you should be in the credits too, if you want to just send me the text you want added.
Demo2 is up Dinoman! You can now play until the end of ACT2, which also wraps up the beginning of the story, hopefully giving a satisfying end to the demo! Act 3 and 4 will be like s2 of a tvshow in a way.
There was no way at the moment to make sure that you could continue on your old savefile, but I recommend replaying it either way. A lot of things have changed, autosaves works, enemies have healthbars (?!) and I encourage people to see what different information the dialogue choices bring.
You could also play as a straight up monster and get some unique things at the end and in the future.
Here are a few tips if you want to try the dark path, do not read further otherwise:
SPOILERS:
- Make sure to not save the fish
- Always behave like a hateful asshole in conversations, but not a "sarcastic" asshole.
- Take butchering and get butchering 2: make sure to butcher rabbits to rack up your hatred.
- Take Deerhunter X
- Take King of hatred
- When prompted to have an opinion about Arthur Sweich say that "he was a legend".
Thanks for letting me know! Already finished replaying the normal route, haven’t done the evil route (I don’t think I have the guts for it, lol) or managed to beat the Warbear yet.
My previous praise still stands, and most of the new additions are pretty neat! I don’t know how many of them are new and how many I just missed on my previous playthrough, but I like the optional interactions that depend on your current party, like young Sarah staying behind if you try to take her to the fight against the Majestic Deer, or Billy being confused at the Sarah in the tree claiming he’s still in his camp. The trapped bunnies are a nice way to liven up some rooms, and the fact that they become shadows when you free them is pretty intriguing story-wise, especially since the same thing happens to the one young Billy butchers near the end. Speaking of, I also really liked the nuance added to Billy’s character at the end, and the apparent parallels between his childhood and Sarah’s. And it might not be quite for me, but the addition of a dark route is bound to make the game a lot more interesting and replayable.
I did notice some of the things I mentioned in my previous comment aren’t fixed yet (mirror disappearing, Swagger bar not being visible in the Strats menu, young Sarah’s collision in the hidden pond), but I understand they might take some time. As for some new issues I had:
I don’t remember if this was also an issue in the original version or not, but some of the rabbits seemed to have their animations “reversed” from the side. Their midair pose is the default and they periodically switch to the grounded pose instead of the other way around. I don’t remember which specific ones had this issue, unfortunately.
I found another instance of sprites transforming when interacted with from the wrong angles: the chest in the room below the Hunter’s Camp momentarily transformed into a completely different chest sprite when I opened it from behind. I haven’t noticed this with any other chests, though.
I forgot to ask this in my previous comment, but is there any way to reach the red slime things in the room below the Camp? They really look like they should be able to be fought or otherwise interacted with.
I’m very confused about how Swagger carries over between combats. On the previous version I was under the impression that it only reset when you use a healing spot like Sarah’s room, but now I’ve noticed I’ll sometimes lose a lot of the Swagger (but usually not all of it) I built up and didn’t use in one combat when I start another. Doesn’t help that the Strats screen will always display the amount as 0 regardless of how much you have at the beginning of a fight.
The Euthanasia never used the healing move she had in 1.5 when I fought her this time. Is that intentional?
A minor one, but the bosses’ health bars seem to go a bit offscreen while you’re attacking them, making it harder to tell how much HP they have left. It also seems like boss minions, like the Majestic Deer’s organs and frozen Sarah’s jellyfish, don’t have health bars of their own, which makes the mechanic feel pretty inconsistent, but that might be intentional.
The computer on the Southern Fields tower is pretty broken. Someone already brought up the background being stuck on the screen, but on top of that the AI chatlog file won’t open at all.
The second paragraph of the message on top of the path to Anatea’s grave seems to be missing one or more letters at the start.
It seems like when you talk to the Sarah instance in the Frozen Lake, she’ll refer to Winter as James regardless of what first name you actually gave him. Don’t know if that’s intentional.
In the Frozen Cavern, to the right of Sarah’s memory of Anatea in the hospital, the entire wall is missing collision, allowing you to walk into it.
I also felt like the difficulty spiked a lot towards the end, with the Spirit of Rebellion and the Jackalope both being able to one-shot my party members on a whim; but I didn’t fight a lot of enemies that run, so maybe I was just underleveled, and either way I managed to beat both of them in 1-2 tries each. And I don’t quite understand rebel Sarah’s role in the story, particularly the way she attacks Winter and hardly acknowledges it after you beat her, or how the scene where she leaves home is abruptly cut to from the Jackalope fight; but you could argue that the ambiguity enhances the surrealism of the game.
Either way, I’m still very interested to see where the game goes from here! Hope this feedback helps.
Speaking of, I also really liked the nuance added to Billy’s character at the end, and the apparent parallels between his childhood and Sarah’s.
- I am happy that this gets through. Once the game is a lot bigger and new chapter are added it will be pretty clear that one of the points of the story is more or less character study. As so most characters wont fit neatly on the spectrum of good/bad, and those that will (Arthur) will be the exceptions that clarify someone else. Billy was never evil, he was a hurt man who loved his daughter and did the best he could. He never intentionally harms Sarah, he was acting in what he thought would be her best interest. His own father is the opposite, carelessly enjoying hurting others and with a grandiose sense of self.
The dark path will be just one of many once I am finished with it all, I want some serious replay value. There are 8 hidden stats managing your "personality", in time I want these to change which dialogue is available to you, meaning slowly changing Winters personality in the direction you are pushing him, and letting this influence events. The dark path will be awful, and I feel bad sometimes when I write it, but the game is not called Dreams of Joy Still here ;).
I did notice some of the things I mentioned in my previous comment aren’t fixed yet (mirror disappearing, Swagger bar not being visible in the Strats menu, young Sarah’s collision in the hidden pond), but I understand they might take some time. As for some new issues I had:
- These are still on my list. I took part in jam this weekend and the people who have played my game went from 10 to 40. I have tons of feedback and bugs to get through. I am juggling this with my need to make new stuff too.
I found another instance of sprites transforming when interacted with from the wrong angles: the chest in the room below the Hunter’s Camp momentarily transformed into a completely different chest sprite when I opened it from behind. I haven’t noticed this with any other chests, though.
- Thanks for pointing these out. Hopefully an improved workflow and understanding of how rpgmaker handles sprites at least will make it so I dont repeat these problems in the future.
I forgot to ask this in my previous comment, but is there any way to reach the red slime things in the room below the Camp? They really look like they should be able to be fought or otherwise interacted with.
- Not at the moment. One of the things at the bottom of my list is adding more secrets. In this instance there will be an "invisible" path, but I dont have a good reward for it yet so I have not removed the collision and opened it up.
I’m very confused about how Swagger carries over between combats.
It is SUPPOSED to carry over as long as you are on the same map, and reset every transition. I am guessing this is pretty wonky at this moment.
The Euthanasia never used the healing move she had in 1.5 when I fought her this time. Is that intentional?
Healing triggers once she is below a certain health-threshold, most people destroy her with crackerlacker and jack of the torpid before it has a chance to trigger. If one wants to face her early she becomes a real challenge. Perhaps low-level running could become a thing.
A minor one, but the bosses’ health bars seem to go a bit offscreen while you’re attacking them, making it harder to tell how much HP they have left.
- I will add looking over them and adjusting the placements to my list.
It also seems like boss minions, like the Majestic Deer’s organs and frozen Sarah’s jellyfish, don’t have health bars of their own, which makes the mechanic feel pretty inconsistent, but that might be intentional.
- It got too messy when they had them since the enemy sprites are so close to each other.
The computer on the Southern Fields tower is pretty broken. Someone already brought up the background being stuck on the screen, but on top of that the AI chatlog file won’t open at all.
- AI chatlog is just not written yet, since it is a hard piece to get right. Its a conversation between Billy and an AI-chatbot where he asks the bot for advice on how to propose to Anatea. The background bug is now fixed, it was a stupid mistake on my part.
The second paragraph of the message on top of the path to Anatea’s grave seems to be missing one or more letters at the start.
- I will check it out.
It seems like when you talk to the Sarah instance in the Frozen Lake, she’ll refer to Winter as James regardless of what first name you actually gave him. Don’t know if that’s intentional.
Its not, will fix, thank you.
In the Frozen Cavern, to the right of Sarah’s memory of Anatea in the hospital, the entire wall is missing collision, allowing you to walk into it.
- Will fix this too!
I also felt like the difficulty spiked a lot towards the end, with the Spirit of Rebellion and the Jackalope both being able to one-shot my party members on a whim; but I didn’t fight a lot of enemies that run, so maybe I was just underleveled, and either way I managed to beat both of them in 1-2 tries each.
This is intentional, and by the end you should be able to buy a couple of remembrance and remembrance all from MR.TV.
And I don’t quite understand rebel Sarah’s role in the story, particularly the way she attacks Winter and hardly acknowledges it after you beat her.
Spoilers: The world you are in as you are going through chapter 1 is created out of Sarah and Billys emotions and memories, though the main focus is Sarah. You can view it as a speedrun through the key points of her life. Everything you meet represents something , some of this is obvious, other things less so. Spirit of Rebellion is the end point of Teen Sarah, what she ends up as after going through what Margarette and Billy puts her through. In act3 you will continue playing as her for a while, seeing what happens once shes freed herself from their influence and gets out to experience the world. The motif of fire she has is also in opposition to young Sarahs motif of water and fish. The ocean represents freedom in a way to young Sarah, and sympathy. The fire also represents freedom, by burning the past, but not sympathy.
Very interesting, I guess the "speedrun" aspect explains the sudden cut from the Jackalope fight as well. And I had no idea Swagger was tied to screen transitions, I didn't pay a lot of attention to them so maybe it is working more-or-less as intended.
About Euthanasia, though, I did beat her without Crackerlacker this time around (I can't remember if I hadn't unlocked it yet or if I did and just forgot). The fight was pretty long, and yet she didn't use the healing move a single time, hence why I brought it up. I don't know how much RNG there is to enemy decisions in this game, though, so maybe it was pure dumb luck.
There is quite a lot of RNG, but some attacks or moves are dependent on "if this is true, this is available". Her healing move does not autotrigger at a certain a % of health, it gets "available" and has a higher priority. These things need to be tweaked over time I think, once I am done with act3 I might just fiddle around with the enemies for a week or two.
I will check it out! If you want to try the demo, wait until tomorrow. I am going to upload an updated version later on today. Also. I followed you on twitter. I only lurk there but you have a lot of good taste.
Checked out some Rusty Lake videos on youtube and it sure seems like my kind of thing, thanks for the tip. The new demo is out now, as well as a fresh gameplay trailer. Fair warning though, no NSFW material, but plenty of disturbing shit which might bother you.
Good thing! The disclaimer I am hopefully going to have to write some day is going to be painful. If you try out the demo, give me your thoughts. Input is greatly appreciated,.
I really love the element of choice and how those choices effect gameplay, it embodies my ideal modern RPG! That also makes several different ways to beat it, like with the cards changing stats and the different choices for your "mood" stat. It's all so detailed and mechanically fleshed out!
One thing that was unclear was your inability to fight or run until you get the rifle. I actually struggled with this for a while (I initially missed the table where the rifle was, it's a little hidden in the shadows), I was stuck in many of the deer fights and had to keep restarting the game to get out of them (it's also confusing how you already have a gun before you get the rifle?). Maybe make a way to run away from them before you get it?
Also, is there like a Pokémon Center-esque place anywhere? I found myself depleting all my phantasm and on 1 HP for a while without levelling up again, so that would really help.
This is the kind of demo I'll have for my game one day!
Thank you for giving the demo a look! The rifle at the table really is hard to see, its already fixed so it will be changed in the next version. Basically I have put a hoovering rifle-icon over the table, an icon which will then be reused later when you get a stronger weapon.
I dislike giving the player straight up "game mechanic" instructions so I am a bit unsure on how to handle the situation where you can go into combat and not have a rifle... I guess I could just block the paths that lead to enemies in some interesting fashion.
There is a "pokemon center", two actually, that you can unlock. If you save all the fish at the lake (not the fishguy enemies) and then talk to the Sarah at the lake the instance of Sarah in the attic of the house provides you with an inn service. If you kill the bonepicker (crowlady north of the house) the grandma in the house offer you bonebroth which also refills everything. I dont know if you got that far, but above the place with the crow lady there is also a sort of shop.
You are supposed to be able to run away from the deerdudes, you can run away from most enemies, so I will give that a look.
If you get through the entire demo, to the point where somebody says "this is the end of the demo", tell me what you thought of it. It might be too hard overall btw, in my latest build I have nerfed some of the enemies.
I think its definitely got potential. The art style is unique and interesting there is a music video I like by Aesop Rock called Dorks with a similar neon high contrast style you may like to check out.
If I was to mention a few elements I found a little frustrating they would be the interact hit boxes on the NPC's seem small. I would of liked the interactions to be a bit easier to start. I sometimes found myself walking around them and clicking for bit before the dialogue triggered.
Also when fighting the ghost deer the reuse of the gun particle was a little out there and broke the flow a little bit. Would of really liked some of the art style to be used against me.
Other than that I enjoyed and will keep my eyes open for more to try out.
Noted, thanks for the input. I will think about what to do with the interaction hit boxes, it seems to be especially finicky when you use a mouse. You are totally correct about the ghost deer, will make a new effect for its attack.
This looks phenomenal! Although, I'm so bad at RPG's that I can't really seem to progress much of anywhere. This 100% feels underrated though, more people should see this.
What you need to do is talk to the hunter, get the rifle, equip it in the inventory and start leveling up. In the house where the grandma is there is a ladder, you can bring this ladder to access new areas. Once you are strong enough (about level 5) you can kill the Sickened Spirit, north of the weird tree. At the end of the hospital is a rope, you can use this rope at the well to access the final parts of the demo. If you wanna go easymode you follow these tips:
1: Equip Jack of Traitors for most combats, but Jack of the torpid for the combat against Euthanasia. Choose powerful after killing the deer at the killing fields, this is a "mood" which raises your attack significantly. The fishguys at the lake are a good source of XP for leveling. Choose "bad" as your intent once you have gotten the rifle, this also raises attack. Then its time to smoke some enemies.
The game appears to soft-lock when I attempt to fight some of the enemies in the area below the shooting range. The roar sound effect does play, if that helps.
It does, once youve spoken to the hunter and have gotten the rifle you need to equip it in the menu, press esc to access the menu. Plenty more to discover once you can kill things. The demo has about an hour of gameplay.
If you play through it all there is a point where someone tells you "this is the end of the demo". If you play through it, tell me what you thought and give me some feedback.
I think it's already a masterpiece! it has unique atmosphere, also I like characters and enemys and soundtrack<3 Sorry i'm not good with giving detailed feedback, all I can say I love it:D but i'm not sure if i can finish it - i can't beat sickened spirit, she kills me too fast:((
Either you level up by killing the fishguys by the lake, (a pathway to the east opens up once you have the gun in the screen next to the big tree) or you use the gaslight ability which you can find in the area with the strange mirror. Gaslight counters "emotional" attacks and turns them back on the attacker, which is very effective against Sickened spirit.
Also, check your equipment, some hidden triggers gives you new stuff from time to time. The Jack of traitors card also makes it a whole lot easier to kill things. At level 5 you unlock a new gunship ability which smokes enemies pretty easily.
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btw is your game indexed? i never could find it in the search...
I have honestly no idea what this means.
https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed?ysclid=m1i3spimll845746446
sometimes a game is not indexed and doesnt show up in the search. that's how it gets less viewings:(
This game is SUPER cool! Such an awesome aesthetic and sense of style, and the music is GREAT!
It's a criminal act that there's not any playthroughs of your game down here in these comments. I played the first act of chapter 1 on stream and I was thinking about it all day at work and how I needed to jump back in and finish... Thought I'd go ahead and share it here! I play around 3:24:50
I absolutely loved your video, and yes, there is plenty more to go for the current demo. If you do get through it, there are also quick access to alternate paths available through the cheating room. There are three endings available for chapter one and one "dark route". Everything gives greater exposition of the general narrative.
Publishing a linux version will be really good!
I do not know how to, though I know it can be played with some emulator builds. If I learn how to in the future, I for sure will. Working on getting an exe instead of a folder at the moment.
Played through act one, was going to play through everything before saying my thoughts but I really want to let you know the music is very, very good. Especially the battle music. The intros for the characters and the weapons are also very cool, I particularly like how the gun puts itself together when you get it. Winter has a lot of charm, love emo guys with oneitis.
Thank you, you have plenty more content to go! Chapter 1 is four acts, act 3 alternates between two vastly different options depending on your choices, act 4 has three different variations.
If you want to check out all the content but not replay everything at the end you can use the cheating room. I will make it more user-friendly at some point...
I ended up finishing the neutral and bad ending for chapter one. Liked it quite a bit! Billy is by far my favorite character, I like all the development he gets and the fact that he's humanized despite all his shortcomings and past actions. Neutral ending Billy feels like a really bittersweet conclusion to the turmoil he's faced and it makes me glad he and Sarah can manage to contact each other after everything. Arthur joining in the Rotten Tree story line wasn't something I was expecting, but it was entertaining to see how heinous and evil he is. Beef Wellington's a cool looking guy and I love how bluntly Arthur explains him existing. Winter's dad is cool too. I wanna know what's up with Velouria so badly.
Again, the music is great. Favorite was the song that plays in Sarah's hotel room.
I played on an old version so I'm not sure if I should share any glitches I encountered, I don't know if they've been fixed yet. The most notable one was opening the menu during the party sequence and removing the filters from the screen. Jungian Shadow can also be infinitely rebattled in Rotten Tree if you go upstairs.
>I ended up finishing the neutral and bad ending for chapter one. Liked it quite a bit! Billy is by far my favorite character, I like all the development he gets and the fact that he's humanized despite all his shortcomings and past actions.
Yeah, Billy really is the heart of the story in chapter 1, he is my favorite too, although Arthur comes close...
>Neutral ending Billy feels like a really bittersweet conclusion to the turmoil he's faced and it makes me glad he and Sarah can manage to contact each other after everything. Arthur joining in the Rotten Tree story line wasn't something I was expecting, but it was entertaining to see how heinous and evil he is. Beef Wellington's a cool looking guy and I love how bluntly Arthur explains him existing. Winter's dad is cool too. I wanna know what's up with Velouria so badly.
Thank you for giving my game this amount of time, not a lot of players get to view the nuances of the story. Velouria will be further developed as the chapters progress, last one is Winters own chapter where it all comes together.
>Again, the music is great. Favorite was the song that plays in Sarah's hotel room.
Thank you, more music to come!
>I played on an old version so I'm not sure if I should share any glitches I encountered, I don't know if they've been fixed yet. The most notable one was opening the menu during the party sequence and removing the filters from the screen. Jungian Shadow can also be infinitely rebattled in Rotten Tree if you go upstairs.
Bugtesting is hell, any reports are appreciated, I did not know about the ones you reported.
Yet again, thank you. Anything in particular you want to know you can just ask, I myself do not really care about spoilers, if you are likewise inclined I do not mind laying stuff out.
Alright, found the list I wrote for bugs:
As for spoilery questions I'd rather wait to see the story unfold, a lot of the intrigue for me comes from not really knowing where anything is gonna go next.
Finally back! Took me a while to progress in the game xD. I admit my airhead had a lot of trouble getting pass the combat bits. But I rather enjoyed myself a lot with it! I think smol Sarah to be cute, unlike big Sarah who's kind of edgy, but she's still fun. I've warmed up to the old man, and think he's fun too. Was all the music made by yourself? Because it's very good. The track in the forest reminds me of Nirvana. And the main theme used in battles and in the trailer is a banger.
Tried to always maximise my Love points, hopefully it will land on a happy ending! Good game, and the literary references makes it extra-cultured.
P.D: The scene when Sarah takes the bus, and the crazy busman with his dog appears will stay with me.
old man, and think he's fun too.
Billy is meant to be a bit of an acquired taste, once you learn of his circumstances and understand more of his personality I think he comes across as much more sympathetic.
Was all the music made by yourself?
Yes, second camp track is a reference to nirvana, forest one is a reimagining of House of the Rising sun. All music has been made by me.
Tried to always maximise my Love points, hopefully it will land on a happy ending!
Very likely would have! The "saviour ending" is the most good one, you can play it by using the cheating room at the moment. The normal ending is also finished. Working on the final ending now, the "dark path" for players who choose to play hatefully alters act 3 greatly and is also in now.
Overall, glad you enjoyed it. Still improving a lot of the material and polishing stuff but chapter one is nearly done. The story of Winter will continue for a long time still, as traverses through the experiences of other people.
I love the art style of your game! It's very weird and the music is cool too.
I'm gonna play it.
Thank you, its long and will get updated again soon! Probably tomorrow, so you might want to wait. Have reworked a lot of the beginning.
Doesn't work, after starting the game and loading in main menu it freezes my entire PC and I can only restart it.
Game only loads while the window is up, which version did you try?
I have no problems with it, if its not you changing windows and it not loading I unfortunately do not know what the problem is.
The 4.4 version. I boot up game, I see the loading bar, it loads into main menu. Then it starts getting laggy and in a few seconds everything freezes, not even alt+f4 or ctrl+alt+delete works. Im running it on windows 10. Here is my debug log if its of any use https://justpaste.it/aw00j
Yes, you can.
Truth be told, I'm not typically a fan of games that require a deep emotional investment in the story to fully grasp the gameplay. However, this one was an exception. As I played through it, I found myself genuinely caring about the characters and the intriguing mysteries that unfolded. It just got more and more captivating.
It's fascinating how the levels evolve based on your interactions with the characters. The 3D characters are exceptionally well-crafted, and the dedication to writing is clearly evident. Great work.
The visuals are amazing, a lot of time have been spent here to make both the enviroment and the characters feel alive. And some really creep me out, so bonus points for that.
I adore the RPG elements of the game. Your consistent style, both in terms of the story and gameplay, comes together really well. When it comes to gameplay, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the combat system. The moods mechanic was really interesting.
The tutorial seamlessly integrates with the gameplay, making you forget that there are tutorials at all. They only appear when necessary to explain something relevant in that moment, which I find to be just great.
Other than some bugs with the UI I had a great time playing this game!
Thank you! There are quite a few problems with the U.I (and everything else), I don't know if you noticed that the bars in combat does not perfectly fit the "character boxes" for instance but these things will be ironed out eventually. At the moment I am focusing on getting the entire story for chapter 1 done, after that I will spend a month or two polishing everything before beginning work on chapter 2.
So far, I've encountered one issue: you put this in a jam and the theme is NOT whatever this is, instead it's "cwuuute puuuppies"
Might have been a bit too eager to join in, removed it.
Just so you know though... there is both a cute dog, a rabbit and a cute fish in it. It takes some time to get to them however.
oh, welp ok
So far I've encountered 2 issues:
* In that computer watch tower zone, when you check the browser history section you get stuck, so I had to close the game but at least I saved
* The UI when shopping seems to crop the buttons
But other than that, there's a lot of cool stuff in the game and I reached the end of the demo (Which involved a boss after some childhood memories of a character and then another leaving them... sorry if these details are too spoiler-y).
Its combat is easy to get attached to because of how Swagger scales during fights, so you learn something about how some values work.
Not sure when ACT3 will come because I believe there's probably going to be even more after that.
Act 3 is is almost ready for testing. I thought I had fixed the bug with the computer so thank you for noticing that there is still something wrong there! I am touching up some stuff for act3 now but I will release its first version once /v3 drops, then it will be time to improve it further. Once act3 is in a decent enough state I will work on act4 and an alternate version of act3. A lot of stuff in the game was pretty rushed, once the entirety of chapter 1, act1-4, can be played through I will go back and rework a lot of assets. Thanks for playing!
Playing this was an excellent way to spend an evening. There’s quite a lot to say about this game even in its incomplete state but I’ll try to outline the important bits. Hopefully this will fairly represent the game and do it justice.
Gameplay
Admittedly, I’m not the best person to give proper analysis of this kind of RPG gameplay as I don’t often play games with it and usually I am not a fan. Despite this, I enjoyed the combat in this game. It may feel basic at first but, once you gain levels and party members, the range of strategies opens up and you get to experience each member's list of moves/abilities which are all derived from their characteristics and story. The combat system itself has its own twist on the usual turn-based RPG format and is fun to engage with. Most of it revolves around managing 3 resource pools (evaporation, phantasm, and swagger) which are all impacted by player and enemy actions but can also be exchanged during combat, allowing for strategising and calculated risk-taking. A basic example would be, if you don't have enough phantasm (a hybrid of sanity and mana as you would see in other games), you can gamble by sacrificing some evaporation (health) to increase it and therefore set yourself up to use a strong ability on your next turn.
Weapon and armour equipment options are currently limited but the equippable card system creates a little more build potential and the ability to slot moods and intentions like equipment is reminiscent of Omori or Disco Elysium in the sense that it makes the player character's psyche part of the core gameplay, emphasising its importance to the overall narrative more-so than if it were solely explored in dialogue.
The depth of the system plus tying stats and abilities to the game narrative and themes means that combat doesn't feel tacked on like it's an after-thought or simply there to pad out a narrative-driven game.
The combat animations are simple but serviceable while the sound effects were satisfying enough to trigger dopamine in my ape brain.
Enemies are diverse both in terms of their appearance and their abilities, the latter ensuring you can't rely on the same tactics every encounter. Aesthetically, they are suitably visceral and ominous with some unique designs in the mix that, again, are tied to the narrative and themes.
The lack of random encounters prevented the sense of tedium I usually get from RPGs and stopped me from excessively grinding (either intentionally or accidentally), becoming overpowered, and undermining the gravitas of the boss fights by turning them in to easy stomps.
Difficulty-wise, the game is challenging but fair, forcing you to do more than just brute-force every encounter with normal attacks. How to tackle a given enemy is intuitive enough that you don't have to attempt trial and error or go searching for information outside the game itself. Furthermore, difficulty is tuned so that, if you do hit a roadblock, an effective solution is to go gain some more XP to level up (which doesn't take too long) and try a different approach, likely with a new ability in your arsenal as they are, gratifyingly, awarded frequently. The RNG can be a bit harsh but the mechanics and the consumable items you can find or buy are enough to compensate for bad luck and often salvage a fight.
I chose to play with the tutorial NPC who was concise and clear while also providing a bit of entertainment and extra hints about the story.
The ability to move quickly around an area with just a mouse click is a nice little bonus especially when it comes to making back-tracking less tedious; it is often sorely missing from similar games. However, sometimes I did find myself using manual movement as the pathfinding can get stuck on obstacles.
Collision with enemies on the over-world map can be iffy. At times their sprites clearly touch yours but still don't initiate combat and even trying to force them to attack you can be fiddly.
Story/Setting/The Main Attraction
Despite there only being two acts, the game has a lot to say and there are a lot of things to say about it. It’s the kind of game that provokes thought and, dare I say it, *introspection*. It reminds us of the darker aspects of life such as the necessity of killing to survive, the loss of innocence, the inevitability of death, and the inexplicable naming convention that caused the sequel to "Deerhunter II" to be called "Deerhunter 3".
The starting story hook is strong and I am eager to find out more about the world as well as what the culmination of my dialogue choices and actions will be. The idea that I am shaping the main character’s disposition and opinions on people and things that existed or happened prior to the start of the game is very intriguing.
Characters have well defined personalities and motivations and, most importantly for the kind of story this game wants to tell, your fellow travellers are engaging and sympathetic. Though the characters are archetypes most players likely will have seen before, they are instances of them being done well.
Dialogue is short and sweet, it never meanders and is always geared towards revealing something about the world and characters or driving the plot forward while avoiding excessive lore dumps or long, boring character monologues. Something I found refreshing is that the writing is confident in its bleakness and seriousness as hardly any of it is hedged with humour. There are quite a few grammatical and typing errors which I did find a bit distracting but these are of course easily fixed and to be expected in early development.
The world-building is simply great and might be a close tie with the music for what I enjoyed the most. While you can sense the DNA of other IPs in this game, there isn't a point where you are thinking "the creator just ripped this off" or where it feels overly derivative; the world is very much its own thing with its mixture of alternate history, spiritualism/occultism, and technology.
It is a visually interesting world that sits somewhere between a dreamscape and a hellscape and it has a distinct flavour of Americana that I personally love and found to be evocative of Silent Hill and Twin Peaks. You are able to build an even better picture of this world’s nature and history through environmental storytelling, audio/music, and interactable objects. I won’t spoil anything but the dev has done a few clever things that suddenly click if you stop to take a look at your environment.
Music/The Other Main Attraction
The music is fantastic. If you are fan of the likes of Silent Hill 2/3 or Disco Elysium then I can almost guarantee you that the ambient tracks will scratch your itch. The combat tracks too are absolute bangers that don't become irritating even though you’ll hear them frequently. In fact, a lot of the tracks in this game are, frankly, earworms that are now stuck looping in my head and I might have to sue if they persist.
Good choices have been made on when and where to play tracks. For example, the choice to keep a certain track running after exiting a cell allows the (disturbing) things you have just seen in that cell to linger in your mind. It's hard to describe exactly what I mean here without spoilers but you'll likely know when you get there.
Additionally, tracks undergo variation as you travel, changing with escalating threat or tragic moments. This results in the music being another way in which the unfolding narrative is skilfully conveyed to the player; it was very satisfying to hear a familiar tune that I already liked return with altered lyrics and instrumentation now suited to new events.
Graphics/Visuals
The character and environment art is simple but more than adequate and respectable for a solo dev, with the visual experience often elevated by some out of left field artistic direction. Character appearances/expressions are limited to one portrait each but still effectively communicate their personalities overall and I never found their static nature distracting.
Summary
A comfy but also melancholy journey with its own identity that will manage to tease out feels through a brilliant world and soundscape. You get the impression a lot of care was taken constructing the overall experience with virtually all aspects from music to gameplay working in accordance to produce a consistent tone and narrative with emotional pay-offs. I'm looking forward to the next parts and ultimately how it all ends!
This made me extremely happy as I was reading it, thank you! You are one heck of a writer, I look forward to seeing how your games turn out.
Motivation to make game = 300%.
I'm glad I've helped your motivation. I really did enjoy the experience you created and hope that it gets completed. I did a second playthrough of the demo and made screenshots of some of the issues I found during; most are just to do with text. Would these be useful to you? I can add annotation if needed.
It would be extremely useful, I read through my stuff all the time but it is so hard to notice your own mistakes I have found.
Yeah, it's hard to spot it in your own stuff even when it's just writing, nevermind when you're building a whole game on top of that. There's quite a few so, if you want, you can add me on Discord (John Green#4655) and I'll DM them (with the corrections posted underneath each), unless you have another idea that's more convenient for you.
I am a fairly antisocial bastard so I dont really use discord, but I will make an account. Thank you.
I've played about a half hour so far with definite plans to continue my file. The world building is done very well and I love the creepy Tim Burtonesque art style, though somewhat obviously not "professionally" done, I find they more than suffice and add some character if anything. The "dark psychological" atmosphere is something I'm very much a fan of, seeing the mind's of our characters expressed through disturbing and very real imagery and concepts I've found has always given characters a very intriguing depth. Combat seems well balanced, enemy designs are interesting, the mysterious nature of the story hooks you for sure. It's a well put together project so far!
Thank you, current version is between 2 and 3 hours long depending on how much enemies you want to grind out before the end. There is a storyrelated cutoff point with an "ending message". Once you have fought the mother the tutorial section is over and the real shit begins.
Chapter 1 is made up out of 4 acts, current version contain ACT1 and 2. I am currently working on act3, things get increasingly crazy.
Wonderful aesthetic. Getting a good atmosphere is hard, and you did great on that department. While I have yet to finish the second act, I still want to come and leave a review.
Probably the only real complains I have are:
-sometimes it's not clear what tiles are you can walk through. I often get stuck in the enviroment
-during the dialogues, you could add more obvious clues to show who is currently talking, since both portraits are shown at once. (maybe something like someone's portrait darker when they are not talking).
on a sidenote, I love your enemy designs, good stuff.
When the portraits are up their name is at the top of the box when someone "starts talking" and then disappears if they continue. Maybe it should just always be there as someone is talking?
yeah, that would be better
I really like this demo. Really interesting world. Combat was almost always challenging. Usually I just walk past as much encounters as humanly possible in rpgmaker games, but I actually found myself getting bodied 20 mins in and had to go back to level up more. Nice to actually be challenged.
^Actually realized I just wasn't equipping my insane jack card. Still all the combat encounters feel fresh and not grindy so I enjoy them.
Music is also really good, I like the music in the fish folk area.
I do think you should consider getting an artist to redo the character art, or redoing some yourself. The current mspaint stuff isn't completely terrible, but it's not good. And since this art is getting reused constantly throughout the entire game I think there would be a lot of value in upgrading it. But there is a certain style to it currently.
I got to the bottom of the well, probably going to finish it later
You are almost through the tutorial ;). That was not a joke, keep going, the good stuff is still ahead of you.
Thanks for the input. I will never be able to afford an artist but I do want to improve the art along the line. I am, hopefully, getting better as I continue to work, so at some point I may have to redraw stuff.
I got to the watchtower, and after interacting with the computer, the background for it got stuck on the screen, which ended up overlaying everything. I've tried reloading my save file a few times, but maybe it is something to do with my save file since it's still stuck on the screen when I load it.
I think I know what this is, use the "quit" option at the computer.
If this does not work tell me, I can port a savefile with your progress and see if that works, or port a build at the point you should have been.
Thing is the options at the computer loops back to the start, if continue on like you would a conversation the options should appear again, one of them is "quit".
I tried to emulate your problem and I think just pressing space and then choosing quit at the computer should solve it.
If you for any reason just cant be bothered and still want to know what happens I have a full playthroughvideo here:
I'm not actually able to see where I am or what the room I am in looks like, since it still overlaps everything. Sadly, there are no options, if I can even interact with anything. I've tried finding the computer in the room again, but I haven't been able to. Although I would rather not put you through the trouble of porting a save file for me, I do actually want to play this as it was intended, rather than watching the playthrough video.
Its no trouble at all, I am heading to bed now but tell me what level you were at and I will port a build for you tomorrow, I think that will be simpler and it is guaranteed to work.
You can just start it off at the very beginning of Act 2, since I didn't do anything important in Act 2 yet.
Sure thing, guessing you were level 6 or 7?
I've played through everything I found in version 1.5 (not sure how to update to 1.6 while keeping my savefiles, also I don't think I ever found that fourth party member), including past the end-of-demo message, and I think this has a lot of potential! I like the artstyle, the music and the general surreal atmosphere, and the story is positively harrowing so far. I also find it interesting how you’re seemingly able to retroactively decide what Winter’s relationship with Velouria was like, or at least his views on it, through your ingame choices.
Here's some issues I did have with the game, though admittedly I have no idea whether some of these are intentional or not, or if any of them have been fixed on 1.6:
Overall, a pretty good demo and I’m very interested to see where it goes from here. I hope this feedback helps.
Thank you! This is great input and you have spotted a lot of problems which I would have had a hard time to find myself.
- I don't think I ever found that fourth party member.
I guess i phrased it a bit incorrectly, the "fourth" partymember (should have been playable character) is the teenage Sarah you get to control when she is on her first real hunt, the scene where you unlock the bloodrites skill. She will be able to join you as a companion at a later point though.
- I also find it interesting how you’re seemingly able to retroactively decide what Winter’s relationship with Velouria was like, or at least his views on it, through your ingame choices.
You are on the right track. Lets just say that even if you choose to view their relationship through rose-tinted glasses, the reality of it is implied even in the "it was good" choices. You will get to know more later on in the game. What you choose do change stuff though, there are 8 hidden "personality-values" which will change up stuff way further into the game.
Yes, it does not work properly at all, I have added a "make manual saves" message up top. I dont know how to fix it for now but I have to look in to it at some point.
The cut off is something I need to fix. "finish" was actually supposed to be the "I am done" button at one point, guess I forgot to remove it. I should take a closer look at the menus overall.
Yes, this is easy to fix and due to me being sloppy when creating spritesheets and disabling animations. Thanks for pointing the instances out.
Yes, this is just not done yet. You will get two new introspection skills, berate and belittle, which works as debuffs once I have made their animations.
I added that mood pretty recently so I haven't given it a lot of testing, I am guessing this can be solved by altering the "confused" state. If you had chosen the other option at the scarecrow you would have gotten a mood which protected against the confusion state.
This is due to the enemies speedstats, they can get more or fewer actions than the player, it certainly needs a lot of adjustments.
Probably some stray pixels in the spritesheets, funny that I dont notice this myself. Please elaborate on contact pose, I am not sure what you mean.
I will look into this.
The combat system needs a lot of tuning overall, but I guess my gut feeling is to leave overpowered stuff alone and instead increase the difficulty later on in the game. There are some things yet to be implemented that are designed to be broken by an observant player. I also recently nerfed the enemies in part 1 since most people thought that it was too difficult.
Both curses are actually pretty OP if you play your cards right. There are at this point no enemies immune to curses, but curse only has a 40 % success rate while deathcurse has 80 %, success meaning that "it takes hold".
Minor oversight from me, there is collision there that is supposed to go away if she enters the party.
These have been fixed. The next demo will contain the entirety of act 2, so you will have to wait for a bit! I think I will add a cheat area sometime soon with teleports and other stuff for people who wants to keep testing without playing it all again from the beginning.
Again, thank you! If you want to be credited as a playtester once it gets to that point you can send me whatever you want to have written.
Glad to be helpful! I'm admittedly not too knowledgeable on animation myself, I only learned this recently trying to look up an explanation for why the walk cycle was bothering me, but I'll try to elaborate on the whole contact pose thing.
Basically, walk cycle animations tend to have 4 key frames: one contact pose where both legs are on the ground, one on the front and one on the back; a second contact pose where the legs' positions are reversed; and two passing poses in between where the legs are superimposed. So for example, you could animate a character like this:
It's admittedly a bit hard to tell because the animation is so fast, but here, each of the playable overworld characters seem to have only one passing pose where the legs are perfectly still, which I think is acceptable under this limited pixel artstyle; but also only one contact pose that repeats after every passing pose, with the same leg on the front and the same leg on the back (which one is which depends on the side, since the sprite is mirrored) every time. So it ends up looking like the character is only ever taking steps with one of their legs somehow, if that makes any sense.
Again, I wasn't even sure if this was intentional, especially since the forward and backward walk cycles look much better, and it's argurably a very minor thing many players won't even notice. But I did find it quite distracting myself, so I thought it was worth mentioning. Hope this helps!
(Oh, and I'll have to think about the playtester thing)
I will see what I can do about this, I am not really knowledgeable about animation either which is pretty apparent if you look at the enemy animations in combat. Now those I dont think I have the skills to improve, but I should be able to figure something out concerning the sideways walk.
If you guys need any animation help, I'd be glad to help you out. I'm a budding animator!
Perhaps if I need something truly special, otherwise the amount of work I would ask of you would be staggering. Anyhow, you should be in the credits too, if you want to just send me the text you want added.
Demo2 is up Dinoman! You can now play until the end of ACT2, which also wraps up the beginning of the story, hopefully giving a satisfying end to the demo! Act 3 and 4 will be like s2 of a tvshow in a way.
There was no way at the moment to make sure that you could continue on your old savefile, but I recommend replaying it either way. A lot of things have changed, autosaves works, enemies have healthbars (?!) and I encourage people to see what different information the dialogue choices bring.
You could also play as a straight up monster and get some unique things at the end and in the future.
Here are a few tips if you want to try the dark path, do not read further otherwise:
SPOILERS:
- Make sure to not save the fish
- Always behave like a hateful asshole in conversations, but not a "sarcastic" asshole.
- Take butchering and get butchering 2: make sure to butcher rabbits to rack up your hatred.
- Take Deerhunter X
- Take King of hatred
- When prompted to have an opinion about Arthur Sweich say that "he was a legend".
- Accept the help of Arthur Sweich.
Thanks for letting me know! Already finished replaying the normal route, haven’t done the evil route (I don’t think I have the guts for it, lol) or managed to beat the Warbear yet.
My previous praise still stands, and most of the new additions are pretty neat! I don’t know how many of them are new and how many I just missed on my previous playthrough, but I like the optional interactions that depend on your current party, like young Sarah staying behind if you try to take her to the fight against the Majestic Deer, or Billy being confused at the Sarah in the tree claiming he’s still in his camp. The trapped bunnies are a nice way to liven up some rooms, and the fact that they become shadows when you free them is pretty intriguing story-wise, especially since the same thing happens to the one young Billy butchers near the end. Speaking of, I also really liked the nuance added to Billy’s character at the end, and the apparent parallels between his childhood and Sarah’s. And it might not be quite for me, but the addition of a dark route is bound to make the game a lot more interesting and replayable.
I did notice some of the things I mentioned in my previous comment aren’t fixed yet (mirror disappearing, Swagger bar not being visible in the Strats menu, young Sarah’s collision in the hidden pond), but I understand they might take some time. As for some new issues I had:
I also felt like the difficulty spiked a lot towards the end, with the Spirit of Rebellion and the Jackalope both being able to one-shot my party members on a whim; but I didn’t fight a lot of enemies that run, so maybe I was just underleveled, and either way I managed to beat both of them in 1-2 tries each. And I don’t quite understand rebel Sarah’s role in the story, particularly the way she attacks Winter and hardly acknowledges it after you beat her, or how the scene where she leaves home is abruptly cut to from the Jackalope fight; but you could argue that the ambiguity enhances the surrealism of the game.
Either way, I’m still very interested to see where the game goes from here! Hope this feedback helps.
Speaking of, I also really liked the nuance added to Billy’s character at the end, and the apparent parallels between his childhood and Sarah’s.
- I am happy that this gets through. Once the game is a lot bigger and new chapter are added it will be pretty clear that one of the points of the story is more or less character study. As so most characters wont fit neatly on the spectrum of good/bad, and those that will (Arthur) will be the exceptions that clarify someone else. Billy was never evil, he was a hurt man who loved his daughter and did the best he could. He never intentionally harms Sarah, he was acting in what he thought would be her best interest. His own father is the opposite, carelessly enjoying hurting others and with a grandiose sense of self.
The dark path will be just one of many once I am finished with it all, I want some serious replay value. There are 8 hidden stats managing your "personality", in time I want these to change which dialogue is available to you, meaning slowly changing Winters personality in the direction you are pushing him, and letting this influence events. The dark path will be awful, and I feel bad sometimes when I write it, but the game is not called Dreams of Joy Still here ;).
I did notice some of the things I mentioned in my previous comment aren’t fixed yet (mirror disappearing, Swagger bar not being visible in the Strats menu, young Sarah’s collision in the hidden pond), but I understand they might take some time. As for some new issues I had:
- These are still on my list. I took part in jam this weekend and the people who have played my game went from 10 to 40. I have tons of feedback and bugs to get through. I am juggling this with my need to make new stuff too.
I found another instance of sprites transforming when interacted with from the wrong angles: the chest in the room below the Hunter’s Camp momentarily transformed into a completely different chest sprite when I opened it from behind. I haven’t noticed this with any other chests, though.
- Thanks for pointing these out. Hopefully an improved workflow and understanding of how rpgmaker handles sprites at least will make it so I dont repeat these problems in the future.
- Not at the moment. One of the things at the bottom of my list is adding more secrets. In this instance there will be an "invisible" path, but I dont have a good reward for it yet so I have not removed the collision and opened it up.
It is SUPPOSED to carry over as long as you are on the same map, and reset every transition. I am guessing this is pretty wonky at this moment.
Healing triggers once she is below a certain health-threshold, most people destroy her with crackerlacker and jack of the torpid before it has a chance to trigger. If one wants to face her early she becomes a real challenge. Perhaps low-level running could become a thing.
- I will add looking over them and adjusting the placements to my list.
It also seems like boss minions, like the Majestic Deer’s organs and frozen Sarah’s jellyfish, don’t have health bars of their own, which makes the mechanic feel pretty inconsistent, but that might be intentional.
- It got too messy when they had them since the enemy sprites are so close to each other.
- AI chatlog is just not written yet, since it is a hard piece to get right. Its a conversation between Billy and an AI-chatbot where he asks the bot for advice on how to propose to Anatea. The background bug is now fixed, it was a stupid mistake on my part.
- I will check it out.
Its not, will fix, thank you.
- Will fix this too!
I also felt like the difficulty spiked a lot towards the end, with the Spirit of Rebellion and the Jackalope both being able to one-shot my party members on a whim; but I didn’t fight a lot of enemies that run, so maybe I was just underleveled, and either way I managed to beat both of them in 1-2 tries each.
This is intentional, and by the end you should be able to buy a couple of remembrance and remembrance all from MR.TV.
And I don’t quite understand rebel Sarah’s role in the story, particularly the way she attacks Winter and hardly acknowledges it after you beat her.
Spoilers: The world you are in as you are going through chapter 1 is created out of Sarah and Billys emotions and memories, though the main focus is Sarah. You can view it as a speedrun through the key points of her life. Everything you meet represents something , some of this is obvious, other things less so. Spirit of Rebellion is the end point of Teen Sarah, what she ends up as after going through what Margarette and Billy puts her through. In act3 you will continue playing as her for a while, seeing what happens once shes freed herself from their influence and gets out to experience the world. The motif of fire she has is also in opposition to young Sarahs motif of water and fish. The ocean represents freedom in a way to young Sarah, and sympathy. The fire also represents freedom, by burning the past, but not sympathy.
Very interesting, I guess the "speedrun" aspect explains the sudden cut from the Jackalope fight as well. And I had no idea Swagger was tied to screen transitions, I didn't pay a lot of attention to them so maybe it is working more-or-less as intended.
About Euthanasia, though, I did beat her without Crackerlacker this time around (I can't remember if I hadn't unlocked it yet or if I did and just forgot). The fight was pretty long, and yet she didn't use the healing move a single time, hence why I brought it up. I don't know how much RNG there is to enemy decisions in this game, though, so maybe it was pure dumb luck.
There is quite a lot of RNG, but some attacks or moves are dependent on "if this is true, this is available". Her healing move does not autotrigger at a certain a % of health, it gets "available" and has a higher priority. These things need to be tweaked over time I think, once I am done with act3 I might just fiddle around with the enemies for a week or two.
Here is a little sneak peak of what the future holds, not a spoiler, just the continuation of the final bus scene. Not done though!
I hadn't played the game, but this image gives off HUGE Rusty Lake vibes.
I will check it out! If you want to try the demo, wait until tomorrow. I am going to upload an updated version later on today. Also. I followed you on twitter. I only lurk there but you have a lot of good taste.
Oh, Rusty Lake is a series, not a singular game. It's a pretty cool series, though!
Checked out some Rusty Lake videos on youtube and it sure seems like my kind of thing, thanks for the tip. The new demo is out now, as well as a fresh gameplay trailer. Fair warning though, no NSFW material, but plenty of disturbing shit which might bother you.
I saw a character jizz into a jar in one of the Rusty Lake games (it was in his pants, but still); nothing can faze me!
Good thing! The disclaimer I am hopefully going to have to write some day is going to be painful. If you try out the demo, give me your thoughts. Input is greatly appreciated,.
Hey horbror, this is a really solid demo!
I really love the element of choice and how those choices effect gameplay, it embodies my ideal modern RPG! That also makes several different ways to beat it, like with the cards changing stats and the different choices for your "mood" stat. It's all so detailed and mechanically fleshed out!
One thing that was unclear was your inability to fight or run until you get the rifle. I actually struggled with this for a while (I initially missed the table where the rifle was, it's a little hidden in the shadows), I was stuck in many of the deer fights and had to keep restarting the game to get out of them (it's also confusing how you already have a gun before you get the rifle?). Maybe make a way to run away from them before you get it?
Also, is there like a Pokémon Center-esque place anywhere? I found myself depleting all my phantasm and on 1 HP for a while without levelling up again, so that would really help.
This is the kind of demo I'll have for my game one day!
Thank you for giving the demo a look! The rifle at the table really is hard to see, its already fixed so it will be changed in the next version. Basically I have put a hoovering rifle-icon over the table, an icon which will then be reused later when you get a stronger weapon.
I dislike giving the player straight up "game mechanic" instructions so I am a bit unsure on how to handle the situation where you can go into combat and not have a rifle... I guess I could just block the paths that lead to enemies in some interesting fashion.
There is a "pokemon center", two actually, that you can unlock. If you save all the fish at the lake (not the fishguy enemies) and then talk to the Sarah at the lake the instance of Sarah in the attic of the house provides you with an inn service. If you kill the bonepicker (crowlady north of the house) the grandma in the house offer you bonebroth which also refills everything. I dont know if you got that far, but above the place with the crow lady there is also a sort of shop.
You are supposed to be able to run away from the deerdudes, you can run away from most enemies, so I will give that a look.
If you get through the entire demo, to the point where somebody says "this is the end of the demo", tell me what you thought of it. It might be too hard overall btw, in my latest build I have nerfed some of the enemies.
I think its definitely got potential. The art style is unique and interesting there is a music video I like by Aesop Rock called Dorks with a similar neon high contrast style you may like to check out.
If I was to mention a few elements I found a little frustrating they would be the interact hit boxes on the NPC's seem small. I would of liked the interactions to be a bit easier to start. I sometimes found myself walking around them and clicking for bit before the dialogue triggered.
Also when fighting the ghost deer the reuse of the gun particle was a little out there and broke the flow a little bit. Would of really liked some of the art style to be used against me.
Other than that I enjoyed and will keep my eyes open for more to try out.
Noted, thanks for the input. I will think about what to do with the interaction hit boxes, it seems to be especially finicky when you use a mouse. You are totally correct about the ghost deer, will make a new effect for its attack.
This looks phenomenal! Although, I'm so bad at RPG's that I can't really seem to progress much of anywhere. This 100% feels underrated though, more people should see this.
What you need to do is talk to the hunter, get the rifle, equip it in the inventory and start leveling up. In the house where the grandma is there is a ladder, you can bring this ladder to access new areas. Once you are strong enough (about level 5) you can kill the Sickened Spirit, north of the weird tree. At the end of the hospital is a rope, you can use this rope at the well to access the final parts of the demo. If you wanna go easymode you follow these tips:
1: Equip Jack of Traitors for most combats, but Jack of the torpid for the combat against Euthanasia. Choose powerful after killing the deer at the killing fields, this is a "mood" which raises your attack significantly. The fishguys at the lake are a good source of XP for leveling. Choose "bad" as your intent once you have gotten the rifle, this also raises attack. Then its time to smoke some enemies.
also: your introspection abilities can be used outside of combat to heal yourself.
Oh, ok thank you! I'll try again.
The game appears to soft-lock when I attempt to fight some of the enemies in the area below the shooting range. The roar sound effect does play, if that helps.
I have no words it's fantastic!
(but the "attack" button dosnt do anything, why?TvT)
It does, once youve spoken to the hunter and have gotten the rifle you need to equip it in the menu, press esc to access the menu. Plenty more to discover once you can kill things. The demo has about an hour of gameplay.
ohhh, I see now. thank you:>
If you play through it all there is a point where someone tells you "this is the end of the demo". If you play through it, tell me what you thought and give me some feedback.
I think it's already a masterpiece! it has unique atmosphere, also I like characters and enemys and soundtrack<3 Sorry i'm not good with giving detailed feedback, all I can say I love it:D
but i'm not sure if i can finish it - i can't beat sickened spirit, she kills me too fast:((
Either you level up by killing the fishguys by the lake, (a pathway to the east opens up once you have the gun in the screen next to the big tree) or you use the gaslight ability which you can find in the area with the strange mirror. Gaslight counters "emotional" attacks and turns them back on the attacker, which is very effective against Sickened spirit.
Also, check your equipment, some hidden triggers gives you new stuff from time to time. The Jack of traitors card also makes it a whole lot easier to kill things. At level 5 you unlock a new gunship ability which smokes enemies pretty easily.
Abra, I have noticed that you play a lot of itchgames and test them, you are a hero. My game has been updated to hell and back, give it a try again!