MZ - Remnants Of The Witch [NEW 0.4 UPDATE}

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Started by JeuneDanielSoleil 5 posts View original ↗
  1. JeuneDanielSoleil
    #1 Source
    Remnants Of The Witch is a story-heavy RPG game. It takes place in a magic-based 1930s-inspired setting.

    NmdH5A.png

    The story follows Mari, who joins a witch-hunting organization to save her friend Annie. The main story follows her as she learns more about herself, her companions, and the world of witch-hunting she has entered. Joined by her comrades, she will go on various missions to defeat the witch threat that has suddenly appeared.

    Z%2Bz0hH.png

    The game currently features up to around 3 hours of the main story, with various side activities and many more to be added. The main loop of the game is to go on main story missions, and then return to the city to spend time hanging out with teammates or do side content. The city will change based on the progress of the main story. Side quests will become available, some will disappear if missed. It's all supposed to be an immersive, seemingly dynamic city.

    MpTjAA.png

    When you enter a mission it becomes a fairly standard RPG affair, explore, get items, and defeat enemies for loot and EXP. I don't want the gameplay to be too revolutionary, it doesn't have to be. I want it to be tight and enjoyable. I wanted all the party members to have distinct skill sets and unique mechanics inspired by 7th Dragon Code vfd. I want battles to be snappy, but engaging. I focus on unique equipment with special effects that will change the playstyle of party members, with many more to come.



    It's a large project for one person, but it's one I'm highly passionate about. I just want to tell a story with engaging gameplay. It's a classic RPG at the core.

    The new 0.4 update has added a multitude of changes and additions to the main story, including the first floor of the super dungeon.

    Feedback would be highly appreciated.

    --------------------

    Credits can be found in-game.

    Itch.io Link

    Gamejolt Link
  2. doomthey
    #2 Source
    Hey I got around to playing your game and wanted to give you some feedback!

    Story Feedback
    • Props to your character writing! Each character had a unique voice and charm to them. It genuinely made me smile seeing how they bounced off each other.
    • Reading your page, it says the game has a 1930s-inspired setting but I didn’t really get any vibes of that. It just felt like a modern-fantasy setting maybe set in an alternate 1990s or 2000s (the existence of mobile phones and how advanced they are has instant implications about setting in time for an audience).
    • The counter group of witches you play as serves as a fascinating foil to the witch hunters. I’d be really excited to have certain scenarios where you get to play as them and clash with your main team. It’s like getting to play as SEES and Strega to reference Persona 3.
    • The Davenport scenario was genuinely super fun. You did a great job setting up the witches as underground but potentially very dangerous, to where them disappearing a whole town both made sense and escalated their danger level.


    Gameplay Feedback
    • For an RPG, I think the game takes way too long until your first battle. I feel like Mari getting attacked by the witches was a good opportunity to teach the basics of the battle system through a cool scripted battle. Then learning to use her first magic weapon was a great opportunity to introduce us to the magic skills by themselves.
      • For the record, if you did just want this game to be something like a visual novel with RPG elements, I think the writing would be able to carry it. Sometimes we design RPG battles into games through a sense of habit, so it can be good to do a sanity check and investigate how these mechanics add to the experience/themes of your game specifically and fine tune them/reconsider how they fit into your game.
    • I enjoyed how explorable the world was. It was cool to be rewarded with going to a new, perhaps nonessential, building and being rewarded with fun character interactions. Still, I’d be cautious as to how much side dialogue you add because writing it may add a lot to your development time. There’s a phrase that the shorter your runtime the more budget you can put into every part of your runtime.
    • The “save-anywhere” notebook was a really cool way to implement it as an optional accessibility feature.
    • After finally reaching battles, they’re okay so far. Standard JRPG fare, but JRPGs are inherently pretty fun so not much to complain about. Personally, I’m not a big fan of random encounters, but I think you implement them well here. In the first dungeon they aren’t too frequent especially compared to the size and open-endedness of the dungeon
    • Design-wise I think I’d try streamlining the dungeons a bit more. I notice you often fill up the full dimensions of a map (granted, you do a good job of filling the corners with stuff to explore). I’d recommend practicing using black space effectively in future maps to help them feel less square. The entire map doesn’t have to have tiles on it.
    • I think the hangout scenes are extremely fun and provide some cool upgrades to characters. I also think it’s cool that they’re somewhat limited, since it adds some replayability to the game. Be careful about how frequently characters learn abilities from hangout scenes since I can imagine a world where it contributes a lot to ability-creep and/or balloons their spell lists with really niche spells. I think small but impactful stat increases with the occasional ability every few ranks is a good mix.
    • It looks like hanging out with Wendi and Lucile doesn’t decrease the hangout count… Which is fun since I got to hangout with everyone, but probably not intended.
    • I ran into Oswald during the change in perspective scene leading to a surprise glitch Mari sightingAD_4nXeDlXwLxADl5X4SUXz_jM0lB8iRAg0WYPWN2TDp9ZQk_T4x15WFAnyQtk9kAH6yWL0gtFvtxofgqkWsc6g6egIjvCp_-ehx0X6ASjUUsuow20Ved43TPdTPlyvriKWdAbHUVlE2bQ
    • I like how frequently you get your EX skills. They aren’t too powerful, but they pack just enough of a punch to be fun to play around.
    • In my opinion, a bag of Chips and Chocolate Milk shouldn’t both be 15 Marks when one of them is a team heal for 60 hp and one is a single heal for 45 hp lol
    • I feel like the enemies during the Davenport scenario may be just a bit overly strong. There’s a difficulty spike once you’re separated from Mari, which I think is a fun challenge but ends up feeling a tad unfair. I think during the part where you only have two party members, it may be good to tone the enemies strength down a little since your options are kinda limited and your healing items don’t compete with multiple enemies attacking you in one turn.

    Aesthetic Feedback
    • I really liked the music. I wasn’t sure if some of it was just RTP music that I just haven’t heard, but your selection was good and Devin Chin did a great job with their contribution. I’d love to have an OST playlist to listen to while working tbh!
    • The art is rough in places, but it honestly grew on me after seeing the sheer number of character bust sprites in this game. It was cool to see how you interpreted different characters in your style. I got the sense that as you drew more characters you quickly got better with proportions and detail. Down the line, I think it’d be good to redraw some of your character art (especially Mari who you see the most) to be more on par with the more detailed/clean CGs.
    • See if you can replace more of the RTP used. Even if the battle sprites are a bit sketchy/look like placeholders, I think there's some charm in you actually drawing them out. I’m not totally anti-RTP, but I think that every personally drawn sprite or every custom tileset injects the game visuals with that much more of your game’s unique personality.
    • Consider experimenting with map lighting effects. I’m not too familiar with 2D RPG maker development but there should be a wealth of plugins and picture techniques to help your maps have more atmosphere.
    • Be sure to reread your script for spelling errors. They weren’t unreadable but were somewhat frequent

    Misc. Feedback
    • See if you can add name boxes to important character’s dialogue (or at least the first textbox that shows when you speak to them). I personally have a perennial problem with remembering character names and being able to see them more frequently than when it comes up in conversation would help a lot.

    Overall, what I've played (about over two hours in) has been a pleasant surprise! It's not perfect but I can tell your heart is in it and you've really put some thought into its development. Thanks for making the game and I wish you luck with its development and your future endeavors.
  3. ATT_Turan
    #3 Source
    I played your game for the forum’s Web Feedback Festival. I recognize the effort it takes to get a game in a playable state and released for people to try, so if you don’t care to read constructive criticism, all of my thoughts are in spoilers. If you do read it, I hope some of it provides you useful thoughts when working on this or future projects.

    Spoiler
    I spent about half an hour in the game and there wasn’t any gameplay. It’s okay if it’s just an interactive novel kind of thing, but if there’s more to the game than social interactions, you might want to get to it a bit faster (my notes about the maps could help with this).

    The very first thing in a new game is a glimpse of a map and a blurb of music before the controller type selection appears. You should place the character start location on a blank map to avoid this.

    What controller type do you “perfer” is misspelled.

    The character is not immediately likable for all of the “I guess,” “or something” - perhaps this is intentional, but generally speaking most people will be more immediately interested in a game/story where they like the characters they're controlling.

    The controls tutorial might list more extensive options, or at least the most convenient ones - if you’re using the arrow keys, it’s easier to hit Enter to interact than Z.

    All of your maps are very large and open for how few details and NPCs there are. They’d look much better if you just sized everything down.

    Some features also appear to be misused - for example, your mall has air vents visible in the middle of the three-tile walls. I’ve never seen any building like that - vents are always up by the ceiling.

    For some reason, you have line breaks in your messages very far to the left. There’s maybe 25% of the message window that just sits blank all the time; it looks odd.

    When you change to control the new character and enter the mall, like the beginning of the game there’s a blip where you see the map load before it fades out again and starts the cutscene.

    The notion that her friend was publicly abducted but there doesn’t seem to be any fuss about it and it’s okay for the character to just not show up for a few days…it’s rather odd.

    The English in the game is rather poor. Many missing apostrophes, misused words, and some things are really egregious:
    AD_4nXejmq3RR-7j08Y2PbbJmTTuMRiP1iyKCvOdZfA6LaRsd8Pz7AWrccDIt7lAh0Dr7Ntib5jvxV18PIFksF4gavhqTd5kU0-T-HG07olFaYvxS3nXEHeoPGiMOxofs6NrihixirSC

    You also have a little bit of a habit of creating nonexistent compound words like "highschool" and "heartattack".

    I appreciate you spent time and effort on drawing your characters, but it would take very little effort to drop your text into Microsoft Word or Google Docs and at least run spell check on it. If that and the size of the maps weren't so hard to push through, I may well have wanted to play some more of the game to see what combat was like.
  4. JeuneDanielSoleil
    #4 Source
    ATT_Turan said:
    I played your game for the forum’s Web Feedback Festival. I recognize the effort it takes to get a game in a playable state and released for people to try, so if you don’t care to read constructive criticism, all of my thoughts are in spoilers. If you do read it, I hope some of it provides you useful thoughts when working on this or future projects.

    Spoiler
    I spent about half an hour in the game and there wasn’t any gameplay. It’s okay if it’s just an interactive novel kind of thing, but if there’s more to the game than social interactions, you might want to get to it a bit faster (my notes about the maps could help with this).

    The very first thing in a new game is a glimpse of a map and a blurb of music before the controller type selection appears. You should place the character start location on a blank map to avoid this.

    What controller type do you “perfer” is misspelled.

    The character is not immediately likable for all of the “I guess,” “or something” - perhaps this is intentional, but generally speaking most people will be more immediately interested in a game/story where they like the characters they're controlling.

    The controls tutorial might list more extensive options, or at least the most convenient ones - if you’re using the arrow keys, it’s easier to hit Enter to interact than Z.

    All of your maps are very large and open for how few details and NPCs there are. They’d look much better if you just sized everything down.

    Some features also appear to be misused - for example, your mall has air vents visible in the middle of the three-tile walls. I’ve never seen any building like that - vents are always up by the ceiling.

    For some reason, you have line breaks in your messages very far to the left. There’s maybe 25% of the message window that just sits blank all the time; it looks odd.

    When you change to control the new character and enter the mall, like the beginning of the game there’s a blip where you see the map load before it fades out again and starts the cutscene.

    The notion that her friend was publicly abducted but there doesn’t seem to be any fuss about it and it’s okay for the character to just not show up for a few days…it’s rather odd.

    The English in the game is rather poor. Many missing apostrophes, misused words, and some things are really egregious:
    AD_4nXejmq3RR-7j08Y2PbbJmTTuMRiP1iyKCvOdZfA6LaRsd8Pz7AWrccDIt7lAh0Dr7Ntib5jvxV18PIFksF4gavhqTd5kU0-T-HG07olFaYvxS3nXEHeoPGiMOxofs6NrihixirSC

    You also have a little bit of a habit of creating nonexistent compound words like "highschool" and "heartattack".

    I appreciate you spent time and effort on drawing your characters, but it would take very little effort to drop your text into Microsoft Word or Google Docs and at least run spell check on it. If that and the size of the maps weren't so hard to push through, I may well have wanted to play some more of the game to see what combat was like.
    Thanks for the feedback!

    I've since fixed the map blip at the start by just making the controller prompt pop up in-game instead of on a black screen.

    I am trying to reduce map emptiness, but I plan to fill the city map with characters and quests in the future.

    There's a ton of dialogue, so a lot of mistakes slips past, and I'm constantly touching up the dialogue with every update.

    I am currently working on a update to improve first impressions overall, new title screen, custom tiles, etc.

    Thanks for playing and I appreciate the feedback!

    doomthey said:
    Hey I got around to playing your game and wanted to give you some feedback!

    Story Feedback
    • Props to your character writing! Each character had a unique voice and charm to them. It genuinely made me smile seeing how they bounced off each other.
    • Reading your page, it says the game has a 1930s-inspired setting but I didn’t really get any vibes of that. It just felt like a modern-fantasy setting maybe set in an alternate 1990s or 2000s (the existence of mobile phones and how advanced they are has instant implications about setting in time for an audience).
    • The counter group of witches you play as serves as a fascinating foil to the witch hunters. I’d be really excited to have certain scenarios where you get to play as them and clash with your main team. It’s like getting to play as SEES and Strega to reference Persona 3.
    • The Davenport scenario was genuinely super fun. You did a great job setting up the witches as underground but potentially very dangerous, to where them disappearing a whole town both made sense and escalated their danger level.


    Gameplay Feedback
    • For an RPG, I think the game takes way too long until your first battle. I feel like Mari getting attacked by the witches was a good opportunity to teach the basics of the battle system through a cool scripted battle. Then learning to use her first magic weapon was a great opportunity to introduce us to the magic skills by themselves.
      • For the record, if you did just want this game to be something like a visual novel with RPG elements, I think the writing would be able to carry it. Sometimes we design RPG battles into games through a sense of habit, so it can be good to do a sanity check and investigate how these mechanics add to the experience/themes of your game specifically and fine tune them/reconsider how they fit into your game.
    • I enjoyed how explorable the world was. It was cool to be rewarded with going to a new, perhaps nonessential, building and being rewarded with fun character interactions. Still, I’d be cautious as to how much side dialogue you add because writing it may add a lot to your development time. There’s a phrase that the shorter your runtime the more budget you can put into every part of your runtime.
    • The “save-anywhere” notebook was a really cool way to implement it as an optional accessibility feature.
    • After finally reaching battles, they’re okay so far. Standard JRPG fare, but JRPGs are inherently pretty fun so not much to complain about. Personally, I’m not a big fan of random encounters, but I think you implement them well here. In the first dungeon they aren’t too frequent especially compared to the size and open-endedness of the dungeon
    • Design-wise I think I’d try streamlining the dungeons a bit more. I notice you often fill up the full dimensions of a map (granted, you do a good job of filling the corners with stuff to explore). I’d recommend practicing using black space effectively in future maps to help them feel less square. The entire map doesn’t have to have tiles on it.
    • I think the hangout scenes are extremely fun and provide some cool upgrades to characters. I also think it’s cool that they’re somewhat limited, since it adds some replayability to the game. Be careful about how frequently characters learn abilities from hangout scenes since I can imagine a world where it contributes a lot to ability-creep and/or balloons their spell lists with really niche spells. I think small but impactful stat increases with the occasional ability every few ranks is a good mix.
    • It looks like hanging out with Wendi and Lucile doesn’t decrease the hangout count… Which is fun since I got to hangout with everyone, but probably not intended.
    • I ran into Oswald during the change in perspective scene leading to a surprise glitch Mari sightingAD_4nXeDlXwLxADl5X4SUXz_jM0lB8iRAg0WYPWN2TDp9ZQk_T4x15WFAnyQtk9kAH6yWL0gtFvtxofgqkWsc6g6egIjvCp_-ehx0X6ASjUUsuow20Ved43TPdTPlyvriKWdAbHUVlE2bQ
    • I like how frequently you get your EX skills. They aren’t too powerful, but they pack just enough of a punch to be fun to play around.
    • In my opinion, a bag of Chips and Chocolate Milk shouldn’t both be 15 Marks when one of them is a team heal for 60 hp and one is a single heal for 45 hp lol
    • I feel like the enemies during the Davenport scenario may be just a bit overly strong. There’s a difficulty spike once you’re separated from Mari, which I think is a fun challenge but ends up feeling a tad unfair. I think during the part where you only have two party members, it may be good to tone the enemies strength down a little since your options are kinda limited and your healing items don’t compete with multiple enemies attacking you in one turn.

    Aesthetic Feedback
    • I really liked the music. I wasn’t sure if some of it was just RTP music that I just haven’t heard, but your selection was good and Devin Chin did a great job with their contribution. I’d love to have an OST playlist to listen to while working tbh!
    • The art is rough in places, but it honestly grew on me after seeing the sheer number of character bust sprites in this game. It was cool to see how you interpreted different characters in your style. I got the sense that as you drew more characters you quickly got better with proportions and detail. Down the line, I think it’d be good to redraw some of your character art (especially Mari who you see the most) to be more on par with the more detailed/clean CGs.
    • See if you can replace more of the RTP used. Even if the battle sprites are a bit sketchy/look like placeholders, I think there's some charm in you actually drawing them out. I’m not totally anti-RTP, but I think that every personally drawn sprite or every custom tileset injects the game visuals with that much more of your game’s unique personality.
    • Consider experimenting with map lighting effects. I’m not too familiar with 2D RPG maker development but there should be a wealth of plugins and picture techniques to help your maps have more atmosphere.
    • Be sure to reread your script for spelling errors. They weren’t unreadable but were somewhat frequent

    Misc. Feedback
    • See if you can add name boxes to important character’s dialogue (or at least the first textbox that shows when you speak to them). I personally have a perennial problem with remembering character names and being able to see them more frequently than when it comes up in conversation would help a lot.

    Overall, what I've played (about over two hours in) has been a pleasant surprise! It's not perfect but I can tell your heart is in it and you've really put some thought into its development. Thanks for making the game and I wish you luck with its development and your future endeavors.

    Wow! Thanks for this detailed reply!

    ROTW is very Persona inspired, which is why it's slow paced. I am working on first impressions at the moment though, I might speed up the opening.

    Going forward I think ROTW needs a more consistent pace and tone. While I think Davenholt turned out fine, looking back It was pretty rushed and some scenes could use some reworking.

    Currently working on polish and unique visual assets.

    This feedback was much appreciated. Thank you.
  5. Silver_Crusader
    #5 Source
    Played the demo!

    I like how you implanted the Magic and Technology into your world!

    Dungeons were a challenge, Especially boss fights, almost died at the first boss.:rtear:

    I like how you made the battlers, both player and enemy sprites I can tell you put effort, but theres some missing sprites, like the escape and some are just static, like Hye's attack.

    And of the character portraits were what really grew on me, your art style is really unique!

    The game was great, cant wait for the full game!:kaopride: