Storms of April

A year since this was added and no download, one assumes dead?

First of all, calm down. Relax. The game looks nice and is fun to play and I'm sure everybody here has seen way, way worse.

I've played through the prologue up until the group can enter the rainforest and did some battles there. I have a few comments on the game in general and some nitpickings.

author=fallenlorelei
- I want to add an introduction cutscene to introduce players to the main conflict (spoiler: a war), but there's already an introduction in which April gets kidnapped, so I am torn. Do I really want to add more cutscenes?

My suggestion is not to do this. Backstory dumps at the start of a game tend to be scrolling masses of text and nothing's more boring than that. If you can think of a way to have that cutscene in a different, more interesting manner, go ahead, but a backstory dump is a horrible way to introduce people to your story.

From what I can tell, you've worked that war pretty well into the storyline so far. The player is completely clueless about it because April is completely clueless. There were a few hints and I think I can piece together some of the story already. It's more interesting to slowly learn about it.



I thought the floating zone was a bit overused in the beginning. Does April really have to float everytime she passes out for a minute? It got explained later on, but cutting out one of the visits might make things more interesting.

author=fallenlorelei
Is April too Mary-Sue?

To be honest, that was my first impression of her in the introduction (must be the name/title/power combo). She turned out surprisingly well, so I wouldn't worry too much.

The menu listing April's class and abilities gives the plot twist of her being a mage away really early. Since it's only needed for saving before the reveal, why not disable the menu until after the first war room meeting? Just make Esc bring up the save menu until then.



The battle icons move a bit slow. Can you speed them up or would that mess with the balancing later?


Aaand now for the nitpickings!

There's a general problem with screen transitions. Weather effects or lighting effects stay active for a second when you switch screens, or they only start after a second. The same goes for sprite changes like in April's flashback.



Not sure about the alchemy minigame. I've only made a potion so far, but is it necessary? Can't you just click the button and the items gets made?

Finally, while April rightfully stays out of the boy's bathroom, Tavin and Alec have no problem following her into the girl's bathroom, which is highly inappropriate!

enjoying this game so far, i would love to see this get finished, though there are some small issues, one being the alchemy parts, like the ell1e said, it'd be better to just have it automatically be done for you, and i also think that instead of simply putting you straight into combat do some sort of introduction for the combat, well not necessarily for the combat itself as that is really easy to figure out, but the top bar for the overdrive stuff confused me a bit till i figured out what it was. I prefer using wasd instead of the arrow keys for movement, but the s button seems broken where april will change directions facing down, but wont move, i think that enemies spawn a bit too fast and maybe have them spawn a bit slower after killing them, i think that april and alec should be a bit stronger when using their normal attack, even though they have high mp and their magic attacks do deal lots of damage, if you're like me and like to do lots of exploring/dont know where to go so that you end up fighting lots of enemies, you'll eventually run out of mp and have no ethers so now tarin is doing all the fighting, also, make some of the prices for items cheaper, in other rpg games i've played at this point of the game you could at least buy like 3 potions and 3 ethers, and i've killed lots of enemies too but they don't really give lots of gold, a smaller gripe is how the drawings of the characters are different in the level up screen, while i do think they look nice, it feels weird going from kinda short hair april to april with longer hair, and a black haired tarin to a redhead one, but this i think isnt a big deal, and now this thing pissed me off quite a bit (it's mostly my fault though), so since i realized how short the demo was i didnt feel the need to save, so i got to the point where i finished most sidequest, but i got to the one where you go to the enchanter girl in the library, she tells you to make that mirror, and when i did and came back to her, the game froze(not exactly) what happened was, the dialog box came up but with no dialog, and the box was "squished" so it was thinner and stretched out from top to bottom of the screen, kinda hard to explain though, and i was so pissed because i didnt save, ehh whatevz, ill just go through with what i did but skip anything optional, anyways, thats it, i really enjoyed this game while i lasted all throughout that glitch, these issues i had i dont really think are particularly huge, except for that last one and the ones about characters being stronger, great game and i hope you get this think done, i'd love to be a tester but seeing as to how crappy my laptop is i think i wouldnt do you any good if i cant tell a difference between lag and glitch, though i guess if you released more demos and possibly the entire game, me and whoever else downloads it can give you some advice, now go on and make this game a huge hit, if you dont i'll stalk your family....... just kidding........ or am I?





Edit: ok i just read the stuff about the level up thing and the mirror, why did i get that weird box glitch though? and yes i did spam enter a lot of times, anyways, whatevs, if you dont finish this game i will find you and i will make you my girlfriend.......wait whaaaaa

Ehh it's alright, I'll just get back in and destroy all those monsters and finish rain excursion, btw, where do I go while in the forest? I was walking around so much but couldn't find where to go, didn't know where the machine was or the leysphere

wow, a true southern storm :)

Download in progress.
Maps look really nice/pretty as does the battle screeniethingy :)

I know NOTHING about game making but if needed, I would enjoy helping with the testing of the game :)

Going to try demo :)