Hey drassray! After following your stream I decided to see if you had a game on these forums and found this thread. Wow, I hadn't seen this before (probably because I rarely check the Early Project forum) and considering how much content is in your demo, I'd think this would be better suited in the Project Development forum instead!
Anyway, I played through the demo up until the Tower of Venus, where I THINK I have a progression blocking bug. I've compiled feedback that I wrote as I played. It's pretty lengthy, and so I think I might try to categorize it by section of the game so its easier to read.
Spoiler
Beginning (up until entering the first dungeon)
- I like how concise the text is that displays over the world map. I was worried I was about to sit through a history lesson at the start of the game but nope, just a few lines and bam we're in the game.
- When Daryl wakes up in his bed and you resume control of him, maybe have him jump out of bed first. I think it would be clearer that the player now has control of Daryl if he does that, rather than staying in bed and having the Player move him from there.
- I notice that you don't capitalize "Dad" whenever Daryl references him. I'd think it would be capitalized when used to reference someone specific.
- Haha, I like that if you talk to your Dad enough before going to school, he starts to get pushy with you. I also like how you can talk to him about different subjects, and how he always answers briefly before telling you to rush off to school. It helps give a sense that time matters when the Player can still ultimately decide WHEN they go to school.
- I know why you can ask Dad where the school is, but in story terms, I don't think its realistic for Dad to answer it properly. If I asked my dad where my school was when I had been going there for even just one week, he wouldn't give me a proper answer. Personally, I'm not sure if you even need to tell the player where the school is. If the building is distinctive to other buildings, players should be able to discern it almost right away or at least guess which building is the school.
- Hahaha, I love how the girl that said she ate pancakes starts zipping around super fast.
- The woman you talk to in a blue dress near the Transport thingy has a typo. She says, "If YOU'RE mother was still here, you would get an EARFULL." (should be "earful")
- I like the custom (?) classroom signs.
- I like the town music. It's very catchy! I find myself humming along with it.
- I snickered at Joe's "Yes, when will you go out with me?"
- If Charles, a student in Daryl's class, went missing in a forest, why send just a student to look for him? Shouldn't there be more of a precaution and send either someone like a teacher, or multiple students?
- Talk to Joe and there's a typo: "Man, I'm so jealous the teacher chose you to go. But, I guess it's to be EXPECED..."
- For some reason, Laura does not talk if you approach her from the right side.
- Similarly, you can't interact with Eric from the left side.
- Talk to Erin, she doesn't capitalize her last sentence. "you've always been really good at magic!"
Spoiler
- This might be out of your control, but it's a bit annoying during the tutorial messages of the first battle that the battle hud keeps trying to show up in between messages.
- Two fights and I'm level 2! I like it!
- I think its a bit weird to not have a sound effect when finding items like the mushrooms in the dungeon.
- Oh nice, I like that I learn Spark at Level 3, and that you managed to slip in an explanation to its function in an earlier scene.
- I like how the Spiders charge after you a short ways and that the Slimes don't. It's neat to have different characteristics for different monsters on-map.
- I'm not sure how normal it is for people to save others in your world, but Daryl's reaction to saving Charles doesn't seem real to me. He says, "Don't mention it." when Charles thanks him. "Don't mention it" is for helping someone with their homework, not saving their life!!!! I would expect Daryl to feel good about himself for saving Charles, concerned that Charles isn't suffering from any wounds or poisons (he WAS attacked by spiders after all), etc. Likewise, Charles merely "thanks" Daryl for saving his life, and does not attempt to do anything more, such as offering dinner, or just trying to find a way to repay Daryl. The way it is now, saving someone's life seems very undervalued or underplayed in this world. Maybe this is just typical JRPG stuff at work, but it still stands out as unnatural to me.
Spoiler
- In Erin's house, you can't interact with the red haired man from below.
- when buying items, there's a clipped box where I think the "x" symbol should be. A problem with the font or a script? Screenshot:
- Revisiting the school now, and the same kid is in the detention room with the teacher still sleeping. To better show the passage of time, maybe that kid is gone, or at least says something new. Maybe the teacher is awake now, or maybe there's a new student in the detention room.
- Teacher in Room 1A doesn't say anything new either.
- I've noticed an inconsistency regarding which tile triggers you to exit rooms. For example, in Room 2C of the school, you actually step on the bottom most tile with the arrow to exit. But in Room 2B, you exit one tile above the arrow. There are many other houses that go back and forth between these two options.
- In the Synthesis tutorial, the game forces you to enter the main menu, and Daryl's face graphic is of what I assume an old place holder from the character generator.
- The Synthesis system sounds pretty neat (I'm not familiar with this script at all so it's all new to me). I like the idea of adding traits to your items! Being able to also purchase a synthesized item is also really nice and avoids the tedium of grinding for materials.
- Got Corran in my party now. So he uses SP instead of MP, but if you enter his Status page, it displays his MP instead of SP. Viewing his Skill or Equipment page will display his SP instead of MP.
- Corran's victory line, "Wanna know how I got this scar?." has a period after the question mark. Also, I chuckled at the line because I imagined him saying it to the dead monsters for some reason.
- Corran's MP goes up as he levels up? Does he eventually learn something that consumes MP or is it just there because of the script?
- Enemy drops page, Corran has a line with a typo, "We needed
someTING like this."
- Random battles on the world map seem too frequent to me. It greatly diminishes my desire to explore and makes me just want to reach my destination instead. Not being able to sprint is also a factor.
- Haha, ok so this probably sounds nitpicky but Corran's victory line, "After what I've been
THOUGH (typo), this is cake." sounds a bit Engrishy to me. Why not stick with the proper version "that was a piece of cake."? Unless its meant to be a characteristic of Corran's.
- In the next town, there's a passability problem with the clothesline. Screenshot:
- Ooooh, nice of you to fully heal me before fighting the Skeleton Boss!
- After beating the Skeleton, the sky just lightens up? And the flame on the church just goes out on its own? That didn't seem right to me.
- Hmm, another thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of dialogue boxes where the text doesn't continue to the end of the box and seems to randomly break to the next line instead. It just looks kinda weird.
- The nun that you speak to after the Skeleton boss spells priest as "preist" in one of its dialogue boxes (I skipped the box too quickly to be 100% sure, but I think I saw it spelt that way just as I pressed the spacebar to proceed...)
- I can't return to the town from the Church section. There's nothing that tells me why I can't go there either. I just step on the edge tiles and nothing happens.
Catacombs
Spoiler
- Oooh, it's nice to have a shop incorporated into the save points.
- Now before I start the Catacombs dungeon, I just gotta say that this really REALLY sounds like one of those "filler" dungeons. I mean, I expect that vampire dude to have story significance later and all, and maybe something significant is going to happen when I reach the end of the dungeon, but the whole reason to enter the dungeon is at odds with the character's overall quest. I always find these dungeons to flow against the story, even if at the very end they somehow DO progress the story further. For example, you're on a quest to reach the capital city for story reasons but you have three dungeons along the way of the heroes just doing errands for villages. Does that make sense or am I just talking nonsense/rambling?
- The book on the altar has a line, "The Gods blessed the people with gifts of rain plentiful harvests." There's a problem with "rain plentiful harvests".
- The crate puzzle in the Church F2 took me a few tries to figure out. I like that the reward was well worth the effort though!
- I really like the level pacing. It never takes more than a few fights to level up, and if it starts to take more I know I'm as strong as I need to be for the area. I feel no need to grind.
- Wow the sparkle graphic for hidden items really blends in with the skeletons, making them properly "hidden" compared to the sparkles on the mushrooms back in the first dungeon.
- Wow, Ice has such strong base damage. It does 500 damage right now, while my Spark spell only did ~330 and Ignite's damage per turn is something like 180-200. Ice does so much upfront damage that I don't even care about using Spark or Ignite anymore. It takes too many turns for Ignite's DoT to exceed one turn's casting of Ice, and the stun effect of Spark is so far not really needed. Daryl has a huge MP pool, so I'm not even worried about spamming Ice every turn.
- In the Catacombs, the sparkle graphic for the switch inside a sarcophagus appears in the wrong place. Screenshot:
- In the Catacombs F2, after I push a button and it tells me a sarcophagus to the south moved, the sarcophagus does not properly have the shiny sparkle graphic on it. I guessed the correct sarcophagus randomly, and when I interacted with it, I saw the sparkle appear on my character and move up to where it SHOULD have been. THEN, I could interact with the sarcophagus as normal and open the door. Though you can't see the problem in the following screenshot, I just wanted to be clear which sarcophagus I'm referring to:
- Hehe, I reach Catacombs F3, and I see the barrels and pots arranged so that there's only one space through. That's like placing a save point before a boss room
:p
- I like that using Corran's Strong Attack allows you to then use Stronger Attack. However, it seems you place a state on Corran, and this prevents him from using Strong Attack a second turn in a row. This means that if I use Strong Attack with less than 30 SP, I can't use either of those skills next turn. Is this intended?
- Was the Head Priest Brand supposed to first appear as a a white sparkle slowly moving toward the glyph? It seemed kind of strange to me.
- It breaks the flow of battle to have the first phase of the Head Priest fight to end, transition to the map, then immediately transition into a new battle. I think you could merge it into one fight and just summon the skeletons once the Head Priest's HP is low enough.
- I feel like the Head Priest has too much HP. At a certain point, nothing new is happening in the fight, and it just becomes a matter of wailing on him while healing when necessary. It felt like the fight could have ended maybe 2000 HP/damage ago, and would have been more satisfying. Actually, maybe its simply because you fully heal him once he gains his skeleton minions? If he retained his HP, the fight might have a better pace to it. The challenge has long left by the time I get his second form down to half HP again.
- OK, the scene immediately after defeating the Head Priest flows very awkwardly. First off, the characters move WAY too slow if they are meant to be running away from that explosion. It seemed like they were casually strolling out of the chamber, and when the explosion occurs, they go, "That was close!" like they were in any sort of rush! Next, the Head Priest comes out of the chamber, and a battle triggers...the Head Priest has one "line" of dialogue, and then the battle immediately ends without me doing anything. What was the point of transitioning to a battle for that? It just seemed awkward to me.
In between 2nd and 3rd Dungeon
Spoiler
- Now inside a house with the Head Priest and Ghorn, and Ghorn says, "He did mention seeking help at the Capitol." If you mean a capital city, then you have a typo.
- OK, so I'm not going crazy. At first I had been using "High Priest Brand" in my notes, but then I realized you were calling him "Head Priest Brand" and I thought I had simply misread it before. Now, back in the village, it's changed back to "High Priest Brand"!
- Scene in front of the teleportation thingy, Corran says, "If that's true. Then this "Dark Lord" must have had been corrupting the world long before we were around." It's the 'must have had been' part, where you don't need the "had". More nitpicky, but it would flow better to bridge the two sentences instead of just having "If that's true." as its own sentence.
- And now Brand is back to being a Head Priest. :p
- After the scene and you talk to Brand, he says, "Before I know it, I felt like I was trapped..." Conflict of tenses. Then he says, "When, You three defeated me..." Unneeded comma and capitalized "You".
- Talk to Naomi, she has a line, "My people have always had heightened senses when I comes to the magic of the world." You have "I" instead of "it".
- Talking to the Contractor, and Daryl says, "I think I might can help you with that."
- OK, so I have the quest to go get wood from the southern forest, but I can't leave the town because I have to use the teleportation statue.
- I went back into the Catacombs, and all the way back to the boss area. The door is open but nothing happens when I step on the door.
- So now I've teleported back to the hometown, and the soldier is talking to me. Corran has a line, "I think we ought to get some rest tonight. Then, go this Tower of Venus in the morning." You're missing a 'to' for "go to this Tower".
- Ooh, it's nice to see there's Repellent in the item shop now! At least there's a way to work around the high encounter rate on the world map, but I'd still recommend lowering it.
- It's weird how I can't go to the east part of town or to the school after Corran and Naomi leave for the inn.
- After interacting with Dad's letter, I can't leave the house. Nothing tells me I can't leave...it's just that the tile with the exit arrow is not passable anymore.
- In the dream, when your dad gets struck by the dragon, it doesn't seem as impactful for him to just fall to the level below. Not when there's lava even further below!
- When you leave the dream, Naomi is invisible for a second and just "pops" into existence before her first line.
- Naomi seems very open about herself. Every time there's a prompt to ask her about herself she just unloads a lot of stuff that I'd normally think is weird to reveal to someone you hardly know. Right now, I'm passing it off as part of her character, because Corran doesn't act that way.
- When asking Corran about the Tower of Venus, he says, "Say, Daryl, do ye know anything about this Tower of Venus?" This is the first time he says "ye".
- When asking Corran about Naomi, he says, "Theocia seems to be a much friendlier place then I was lead to believe." then -> than . and lead -> led
- Haha, I like the maid in the room Naomi stayed in. "What's with all this hair?"
- Ah, now that we're all ready to go to the Tower of Venus, NOW I can go exploring freely :p
- HOLY CRAP GIANT TREES ARE CHASING AFTER ME.
- Man, the thump thump thump of the trees stomping really adds a POW to it. And I love how enemies in general tend to have pretty good pathfinding. The trees seem to get stuck a bit more, but that's probably because of how big they are? Do they even register as taking up multiple tiles?
Spoiler
- In the Tower of Venus F1, there is a sparkle on a wall that is inaccessible. Is this a bug or is there actually a way to get it? Screenshot:
- In the Tower of Venus F2, when you re-enter the tower after going out on the balcony, you can see the triggered green square for a second before vanishing (I haven't activated it yet so it shouldn't have appeared green yet at all). Screenshot:
Actually this isn't specific to this one case but any green square tile that is visible from an entry point.
- So far I'm enjoying your dungeon design. They are fairly simple but fun to traverse. Not having random battles helps a lot in this regard, and the event encounters not respawning is nice as well.
- The music is really nice in this game. I see you compose yourself! I really love the piano in the Tower of Venus battle theme.
- I'm starting to find that monsters have more and more health and that battles are taking a bit too long. Now, whenever I get into battles with 2+ enemies (which is almost every fight) I just spam abilities that hit everything. Quake, Cleave (when I can), and Holy Fire. I realize the Snakes are weak to Ice, but I can use Ice on a single Snake for 650-675 damage, or use Quake and deal 330-360 damage to both snakes. The enemies aren't really posing a threat to me, so I'm not having to use any real strategy either. One Heal spell can heal like 6-8 hits worth of damage so its not hard to keep my team healthy.
- Yeah, I'm looking in the Bestiary now, and Snakes have 1500 HP and the Man-Eaters have 1400 HP. Battles take 4+ turns minimum, which is a bit too much considering I'm not feeling any challenge from them. The fights would be more engaging if their attacks did more damage and their HP was lower. If you intentionally want your fights to be of this slower pace, then I'd recommend adding more interesting abilities or behaviours to the enemies so that its not just "Attack" or "Inflict Sleep".
- Going further, I feel that if Ice is super effective against Snakes, then I shouldn't still find it more effective to use Quake. The damage that a super effective Ice spell deals is pretty much 2x that of Quake's damage, but Quake hits both/all enemies, so it equals out anyway. I think this is a big factor in why I'm starting to lose interest in the battles. I'm never finding a need to use the different spells in my arsenal.
- It's also taking much longer to level up, too, so battles feel even less rewarding than they did back when I was levelling every 3-5 fights. For the record, I was Level 11 when I entered the Tower of Venus, and I'm currently Level 12 after clearing a few floors.
- Whoah I ran into a small snake sprite but it was just another 2 Snake fight. That's the first small snake sprite I've seen so far - everything else has been these GIANT snake sprites.
- Ah man, I had been searching for a key for a while for the door on F3 but I couldn't find it. I re-searched the floors below, didn't find anything new, and THEN I finally saw that shiny sparkle that blended in with the skeleton by that book. It's pretty hard to notice that!
- Aw what??? I'm pretty sure I've found the only door left for me to open but when I try to interact with it, nothing happens. Now I DID interact with it once before when I didn't have the key, and it told me I didn't have the key, but it would never say anything on subsequent attempts to interact with it. It seems that even with the key, the event does not run, and so I think I'm blocked from progressing further. Screenshot:
This is a really nice project all in all. Obviously lots of work has gone into this game, and it really shows. My save file clocks in at 3 hours 32 minutes. Wow! If there is a fix for the door bug that allows me to keep my save file, I'll finish off the demo and post any remaining feedback or bugs.
This will be a part of the Niflheim Temple