Regarding the QTE sections, they do feel a bit intense relative to the other parts of the game. I understand the desire to have there be a challenge so that the player doesn't just easily 'opt out' of the perils, but on the other hand, the current state adds a fair amount of tedium to the battles, which themselves can turn a bit repetitive after a bit.
Since there's already evidence of the intention to use stacking negative effects in the forms of cursed equipment and bad status passives, I would suggest using some of those to alter the QTE difficulty. Make the baseline struggling and avoidance easier, but have passives add the number of commands needed and/or reduce the time allotted for the inputs. If the difficulty of the QTEs gradually ramps up in this manner, it can create a more organic experience of the player being overconfident at first and then finding themselves in over their head.
Otherwise, there's a solid foundation here; don't let me critique of the QTE take away from the rest of the game. Looking forward to see what is added next.
Oh, and a quick bug report: The Stuffed Sheep seems meant to remove a cursed Cold Hairpin, but it actually removes Silky Stockings. Guessing the curse removal items were cloned from one another when created, but it should be an easy fix.
I played one run and got captured then game over'd after my second fight against goblins, which are very cute. didn't see any cursed items. I could certainly see myself going back to play more. Here's some notes I took while playing:
- Apple stealing is good, I wish I could steal more of them
- Good note on the magical gate mechanism having receptacle for elements on two different sides. that also proved a good way to get me to look at the menus and abilities available to me
- Entering past that gate rotated my direction of travel 90 degrees: Enter going left, continue going up. Might not be possible to change that now, but best to keep direction of movement consistent in future
- I like all the stuff being interactable and getting dialogue responses
- Music looping is abrupt
- Distance mechanic in combat could be interesting, I like it instinctively
- Cool ass music on the piano
- I suspect these adorable silly goblins are placeholder. if so I hope their design doesn't change too much
- The QTEs are an interesting twist on RPG combat
- Spell circle and getting teleported to jail was rather abrupt
- Often there's no indication of confirmation when you do something. You have two moves in combat but on completing the first of two there should probably be a sound effect and visual effect or something to show that
- I think if you order a manoeuvre to a different distance, the spells available should change to reflect the new distance
Wow, a lot to reply to! One of the most fun parts of releasing this demo is all these comments. As an artist before this, I grew used to people being so quiet and shy, but this is great! Truly, thank you.
The apple-stealing is in part a matter of balance (a Noble Festa Apple is a full recovery of your Willpower) and in part simply because Gentiana as a character would only take one. I've tried to confine the player's actions to "what would Gentiana do" - in the hopes I can keep the scope of development reasonable but still varied and prepared for many types of player. Sometimes the boundaries are because I as a developer did not think of something, but sometimes the answer is simply that "Gentiana wouldn't do that". And that is just the result of needing to draw the line somewhere.
The tutorial is both some of my worst and best work. I broke a game design guideline by making it very early in development. It's often wisest to work at first on the middle of a game and then branch out, but I only partially did this. The tutorial is in some ways most purely reflective of my design philosophy and in other ways showcasing just how new to this I really am.
When I design areas, I rarely if ever place things without a purpose. I have a lot of fun hiding away dialog and characterization and even items in strange places. I think one of the best examples of my approach is the bunk beds throughout the Monster Cave. Most if not all of them provide different pieces of dialog from Gentiana, sometimes producing different dialog when interacting with different parts of the same bed.
I hadn't given much consideration to how the music loops, so I will have to look into how most games solve the problem of abrupt looping. Nice catch!
There is, as of now, no placeholder art in the game. At least, not that I can recollect. My art is rough and unusual as I'm still quite new to drawing, but I intend to stick with most if not all of what I have drawn. A day might come where I take another pass through the game, but I only want to do that if my skill has significantly increased and quite a bit later at that. I have seen too many beloved projects fall to perfectionism and I know I am not immune to that myself.
The spell circle is abrupt - I think I want to make the hint for it more clear. Feedback suggests I hid it away in an obnoxious way. I want people to be thinking about what they're doing and treading very carefully, and my priority is a dungeon that feels dangerous more so than fair. But I think the entry of the Monster Cave in general is poorly communicated and I intend to clean it up.
Really good stuff! Great attention to detail, and the main character is so cute. The writing is also very elaborate, with an impressive amount of dialogue for just being a demo. I also personally really enjoyed the artwork!
The escape minigame is enjoyable, but becomes repetitive. Maybe different microgames other than the string of arrow keys and buttons depending on what restraint you're struggling out of/what kind of "fun" you're trying to resist? ;)
One thing I was confused about were the cursed items. Maybe I missed something, but I didn't understand exactly what they did or how to uncurse them/take them off.
The combat system is fun and UNIQUE!! The distance system is awesome, requiring you to strategically plan whether to advance of retreat, as well as what type of spell to use. So cool to see RPGM games give a fun twist on turn-based combat.
Your words are very kind, thank you! I've received a lot of praise for how different combat is, and this I am overjoyed about. It took a lot of investment to produce and, while I think it is messy and flawed, what matters most to me is people seem to be having fun with it!
I have a lot of work to do as an artist, but it heartens me to see people enjoying my art regardless. I only started learning to draw around August, so I am still learning very basic things and making an amateur's mistakes. I hope to improve a lot as I work on this game! Producing art assets for this project has really pushed me!
Cursed items are something I need to add an in-game explanation for. There are a few systems in the game which I designed and then failed to convey their function appropriately to the player. The short explanation for cursed items is that they require a specific item to be removed. For example, to remove a Chastity Belt, you must have a Chastity Key. But, cursed items and the items required to remove them were added when the pool of items was considerably smaller than it currently is, so they might be too punishing in the current version of the game. I need to gather more feedback and opinions on the matter, though.
Some items are excessively punishing in the current version of the game. For example, the Sealing Choker wasn't designed with current restrictions on items in mind. I will likely need to adjust the balance of cursed items just a little for this demo before I move on.
My goal is to appeal to a variety of tastes while still remaining within my own. I hope to show you things you didn't know you liked! But I'm sympathetic to appreciators of possession and I may or may not have similar plans for another scene. I can't divulge many details right now, but I hope I won't disappoint you!
Wanted to give my detailed review for this first demo after I found everything (I think):
The Good:
- There is definitely a lot of care and attention to details. You can interact with almost everything and there are many ways you can complete every room in the dungeon: you can be stealthy or fight every monster and there are many hidden treasures and interactions within the dungeon itself.
- The fighting system is quite original for a RPGM game: I like the ability to flee the fights by actually using skills instead of pressing a button and the various items and elemental skills are well-balanced. The arrows minigame during the fight is too hard for me.
- The writing is really good, MC is well characterised and I like her reactions to the various perils she is forced into.
What can be improved:
- The art is quite rough: there is a good amount of CGs with the same art-style which isn't very detailed; however I really liked the facial expressions!
- The escape system is quite rudimental; most of the interactions with the monsters are minigame based which makes them quite repetitive. Maybe having different interactions based on the choices you make during dialogues or when trying to escape is a better solutions but I guess it might be too hard to code for a first-time developer.
In conclusion I liked this first release and I can't wait to see what the dev can create. This project has a lot of potential and can become a really solid game. I will follow the development with great interest!
Thank you very much for your feedback! I currently plan to adjust the resist/escape minigame based on the great advice many players have provided. There are a lot of changes to be made: I cannot guarantee they will be made to this demo, but they will make it into the final release.
I am very grateful for how tolerant and patient you have all been of my, shall we say, amateur art. I hope to improve a lot as I work on this project!
Oh, and last thing for today I think, is there any chance the escape/resist minigames can be made arrows only? I feel like this sort of game works best if it can be played with one hand at any given point.
Hmm! That's wise and I will certainly include it as a consideration in rebalances to come. That change may not come to this public demo, but the struggle minigame will be rebalanced for the completed game quite some time from now. I hope to see more feedback like this as I ponder the details of that balance change!
If you need to mention that your game is in development, use the splashscreens in the Made with MV plugin, just replace the made with mv pic with your splashes.
Other than that, nice designs, mapping and overall tone of the game. Great job.
Thank you very much! I appreciate your advice, and I will keep it in mind as I continue my work. The struggle minigame is something I plan to rebalance - my goal is for it to be a tight window to squeeze through, but I think I may have made it too narrow. As I work toward a final release, I will tinker with and adjust the struggle minigame.
Oh, and another thing I've found, submissive mode seems to load in her eyes, mouth, blushing, and her restraint textures, but not her body. Instead there's just her overworld sprite in a box.
Thank you so, so very much for this report! Another player has reported this issue but I couldn't replicate it, so I assumed it was a one-off issue. I will try more rigorously to replicate this now that I know it wasn't a fluke!
Edit: Pv1.01 should remove this issue. Since it's a rather major graphical issue, I saw fit to publish a fix immediately.
Played it for the first time, one thing I think might make the escape sequence a bit better is moving the assess options to just being a ui element displayed automatically, instead of being a menu option. In something like didnapper, having it be in a menu makes sense, since you're limited by time, and assessing takes a time unit. With your energy system it doesn't seem like there's any downside to just spamming out an assess every round, and if that's the case, then I think it would be better to just display any information that's available automatically. Great work in general tho, I can't wait to see where this project goes.
Thank you so much for your feedback! You make a good point and I will keep this in mind when I polish up the escape sequence later. My intent was to keep the information provided by 'Assess' from bogging down the Struggle menu, though it contorted into a mostly descriptive affair.
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Regarding the QTE sections, they do feel a bit intense relative to the other parts of the game. I understand the desire to have there be a challenge so that the player doesn't just easily 'opt out' of the perils, but on the other hand, the current state adds a fair amount of tedium to the battles, which themselves can turn a bit repetitive after a bit.
Since there's already evidence of the intention to use stacking negative effects in the forms of cursed equipment and bad status passives, I would suggest using some of those to alter the QTE difficulty. Make the baseline struggling and avoidance easier, but have passives add the number of commands needed and/or reduce the time allotted for the inputs. If the difficulty of the QTEs gradually ramps up in this manner, it can create a more organic experience of the player being overconfident at first and then finding themselves in over their head.
Otherwise, there's a solid foundation here; don't let me critique of the QTE take away from the rest of the game. Looking forward to see what is added next.
Oh, and a quick bug report: The Stuffed Sheep seems meant to remove a cursed Cold Hairpin, but it actually removes Silky Stockings. Guessing the curse removal items were cloned from one another when created, but it should be an easy fix.
I played one run and got captured then game over'd after my second fight against goblins, which are very cute. didn't see any cursed items. I could certainly see myself going back to play more. Here's some notes I took while playing:
- Apple stealing is good, I wish I could steal more of them
- Good note on the magical gate mechanism having receptacle for elements on two different sides. that also proved a good way to get me to look at the menus and abilities available to me
- Entering past that gate rotated my direction of travel 90 degrees: Enter going left, continue going up. Might not be possible to change that now, but best to keep direction of movement consistent in future
- I like all the stuff being interactable and getting dialogue responses
- Music looping is abrupt
- Distance mechanic in combat could be interesting, I like it instinctively
- Cool ass music on the piano
- I suspect these adorable silly goblins are placeholder. if so I hope their design doesn't change too much
- The QTEs are an interesting twist on RPG combat
- Spell circle and getting teleported to jail was rather abrupt
- Often there's no indication of confirmation when you do something. You have two moves in combat but on completing the first of two there should probably be a sound effect and visual effect or something to show that
- I think if you order a manoeuvre to a different distance, the spells available should change to reflect the new distance
Wow, a lot to reply to! One of the most fun parts of releasing this demo is all these comments. As an artist before this, I grew used to people being so quiet and shy, but this is great! Truly, thank you.
The apple-stealing is in part a matter of balance (a Noble Festa Apple is a full recovery of your Willpower) and in part simply because Gentiana as a character would only take one. I've tried to confine the player's actions to "what would Gentiana do" - in the hopes I can keep the scope of development reasonable but still varied and prepared for many types of player. Sometimes the boundaries are because I as a developer did not think of something, but sometimes the answer is simply that "Gentiana wouldn't do that". And that is just the result of needing to draw the line somewhere.
The tutorial is both some of my worst and best work. I broke a game design guideline by making it very early in development. It's often wisest to work at first on the middle of a game and then branch out, but I only partially did this. The tutorial is in some ways most purely reflective of my design philosophy and in other ways showcasing just how new to this I really am.
When I design areas, I rarely if ever place things without a purpose. I have a lot of fun hiding away dialog and characterization and even items in strange places. I think one of the best examples of my approach is the bunk beds throughout the Monster Cave. Most if not all of them provide different pieces of dialog from Gentiana, sometimes producing different dialog when interacting with different parts of the same bed.
I hadn't given much consideration to how the music loops, so I will have to look into how most games solve the problem of abrupt looping. Nice catch!
There is, as of now, no placeholder art in the game. At least, not that I can recollect. My art is rough and unusual as I'm still quite new to drawing, but I intend to stick with most if not all of what I have drawn. A day might come where I take another pass through the game, but I only want to do that if my skill has significantly increased and quite a bit later at that. I have seen too many beloved projects fall to perfectionism and I know I am not immune to that myself.
The spell circle is abrupt - I think I want to make the hint for it more clear. Feedback suggests I hid it away in an obnoxious way. I want people to be thinking about what they're doing and treading very carefully, and my priority is a dungeon that feels dangerous more so than fair. But I think the entry of the Monster Cave in general is poorly communicated and I intend to clean it up.
Really good stuff! Great attention to detail, and the main character is so cute. The writing is also very elaborate, with an impressive amount of dialogue for just being a demo. I also personally really enjoyed the artwork!
The escape minigame is enjoyable, but becomes repetitive. Maybe different microgames other than the string of arrow keys and buttons depending on what restraint you're struggling out of/what kind of "fun" you're trying to resist? ;)
One thing I was confused about were the cursed items. Maybe I missed something, but I didn't understand exactly what they did or how to uncurse them/take them off.
The combat system is fun and UNIQUE!! The distance system is awesome, requiring you to strategically plan whether to advance of retreat, as well as what type of spell to use. So cool to see RPGM games give a fun twist on turn-based combat.
Overall very fun! Can't wait to see what's next!
Your words are very kind, thank you! I've received a lot of praise for how different combat is, and this I am overjoyed about. It took a lot of investment to produce and, while I think it is messy and flawed, what matters most to me is people seem to be having fun with it!
I have a lot of work to do as an artist, but it heartens me to see people enjoying my art regardless. I only started learning to draw around August, so I am still learning very basic things and making an amateur's mistakes. I hope to improve a lot as I work on this game! Producing art assets for this project has really pushed me!
Cursed items are something I need to add an in-game explanation for. There are a few systems in the game which I designed and then failed to convey their function appropriately to the player. The short explanation for cursed items is that they require a specific item to be removed. For example, to remove a Chastity Belt, you must have a Chastity Key. But, cursed items and the items required to remove them were added when the pool of items was considerably smaller than it currently is, so they might be too punishing in the current version of the game. I need to gather more feedback and opinions on the matter, though.
Some items are excessively punishing in the current version of the game. For example, the Sealing Choker wasn't designed with current restrictions on items in mind. I will likely need to adjust the balance of cursed items just a little for this demo before I move on.
Pretty good game! Do you plan to extend existing fetishes like the ghost possession?
Thank you! I've worked very hard on it.
My goal is to appeal to a variety of tastes while still remaining within my own. I hope to show you things you didn't know you liked! But I'm sympathetic to appreciators of possession and I may or may not have similar plans for another scene. I can't divulge many details right now, but I hope I won't disappoint you!
Wanted to give my detailed review for this first demo after I found everything (I think):
The Good:
- There is definitely a lot of care and attention to details. You can interact with almost everything and there are many ways you can complete every room in the dungeon: you can be stealthy or fight every monster and there are many hidden treasures and interactions within the dungeon itself.
- The fighting system is quite original for a RPGM game: I like the ability to flee the fights by actually using skills instead of pressing a button and the various items and elemental skills are well-balanced. The arrows minigame during the fight is too hard for me.
- The writing is really good, MC is well characterised and I like her reactions to the various perils she is forced into.
What can be improved:
- The art is quite rough: there is a good amount of CGs with the same art-style which isn't very detailed; however I really liked the facial expressions!
- The escape system is quite rudimental; most of the interactions with the monsters are minigame based which makes them quite repetitive. Maybe having different interactions based on the choices you make during dialogues or when trying to escape is a better solutions but I guess it might be too hard to code for a first-time developer.
In conclusion I liked this first release and I can't wait to see what the dev can create. This project has a lot of potential and can become a really solid game. I will follow the development with great interest!
Thank you very much for your feedback! I currently plan to adjust the resist/escape minigame based on the great advice many players have provided. There are a lot of changes to be made: I cannot guarantee they will be made to this demo, but they will make it into the final release.
I am very grateful for how tolerant and patient you have all been of my, shall we say, amateur art. I hope to improve a lot as I work on this project!
Thank you for cheering for me!
Oh, and last thing for today I think, is there any chance the escape/resist minigames can be made arrows only? I feel like this sort of game works best if it can be played with one hand at any given point.
Hmm! That's wise and I will certainly include it as a consideration in rebalances to come. That change may not come to this public demo, but the struggle minigame will be rebalanced for the completed game quite some time from now. I hope to see more feedback like this as I ponder the details of that balance change!
Struggle's allotted time is a bit short.
If you need to mention that your game is in development, use the splashscreens in the Made with MV plugin, just replace the made with mv pic with your splashes.
Other than that, nice designs, mapping and overall tone of the game. Great job.
Thank you very much! I appreciate your advice, and I will keep it in mind as I continue my work. The struggle minigame is something I plan to rebalance - my goal is for it to be a tight window to squeeze through, but I think I may have made it too narrow. As I work toward a final release, I will tinker with and adjust the struggle minigame.
Oh, and another thing I've found, submissive mode seems to load in her eyes, mouth, blushing, and her restraint textures, but not her body. Instead there's just her overworld sprite in a box.
Thank you so, so very much for this report! Another player has reported this issue but I couldn't replicate it, so I assumed it was a one-off issue. I will try more rigorously to replicate this now that I know it wasn't a fluke!
Edit: Pv1.01 should remove this issue. Since it's a rather major graphical issue, I saw fit to publish a fix immediately.
Played it for the first time, one thing I think might make the escape sequence a bit better is moving the assess options to just being a ui element displayed automatically, instead of being a menu option. In something like didnapper, having it be in a menu makes sense, since you're limited by time, and assessing takes a time unit. With your energy system it doesn't seem like there's any downside to just spamming out an assess every round, and if that's the case, then I think it would be better to just display any information that's available automatically. Great work in general tho, I can't wait to see where this project goes.
Thank you so much for your feedback! You make a good point and I will keep this in mind when I polish up the escape sequence later. My intent was to keep the information provided by 'Assess' from bogging down the Struggle menu, though it contorted into a mostly descriptive affair.