ANARYU'S PROFILE

Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it overall, and let me say thank you for taking the time to do so! This is 100x more useful than a dozen reviews or beta tester feedback since I can see what's happening in real-time. (And why I held off on any tips until you were done!)

We have long-term hopes for the project and some recent blog posts are showing features and additions that really will kick in later in the game (and add some new things to find/do in dungeons!)

There was a lot of things here that I got to see and I can improve on:
1. The few rooms you tried were, I think, the ONLY ones without items (and there were quite a few NPCs with humorous dialogue, like the students in the room where you heard the speech in the beginning, the nurses office, etc.) I'll probably have Flynn guide you to at least one and mention the advantages of exploring.

2. Enemy strengths/weaknesses weren't as apparent as I'd hoped. Smaller enemies usually have strong skills or hard attacks, so they should die first (they also die much more quickly) - enemies that you do tiny damage to need to have their DEF dropped, or your ATK/SPI incresed to effectively smash (although Piercing Ice is good in those cases too.)

3. An Escape idea is good, and easy to add, consider it done. : )

4. Buffs/Debuffs/Shields/Break - I tried to make it so even if you couldn't understand it well the combat would still be possible, and it looks like it worked overall, but there's a lot of mechanics there that make life easier:

a. Break - If you hit an enemy as they start casting (especially with higher break skills) you can stop their turn and cancel it. Absolute Zero can instantly break basically every enemy casting when you use it!

b Shield - Reduce damage by a set % - you saw some of this in the final fight, Ice Shield made you easily survive 2 major skills in a row, versus having no shields. These can be more useful than heal skills!

c. Buffs/Debuffs - Spirit basically increases the damage and effectiveness of almost all skills. Alaria's Frost Ray is actually BROKEN - buff her SPI and she can do insane amounts of damage. Edan with a Boost can rip through easy enemies instead of having to hit over and over again. Blaze Kick is +Hate, so it's attack damage is weak but whatever you kick will focus on you (Provoke basically), etc.

Most buffs/debuffs are major too, 35-50% is often the minimum value - Flash Fire is nice because -50% ATK on an enemy basically halves their damage/healing at least.

5. A 'Wait' feature is actually done and you can see it in the 4th Level Skills video, so no worries there. (I plan to add a reward system that will more greatly reward those in the active time system though!)

6. Some clarity in that last boss fight that you can't kill the Phoenix, but you DO want to break the skill that was called: "===Final Flame ==="

7. I'll probably add some fun interaction the first time the party fights each kind of enemy in a new area, to describe it's strengths/weaknesses and possible strategies.

When I talked about the 7-sins, it was actually the coin and blob and train, etc, enemies (we only got to make 5 though):
- Coin is greed (too cheap to even buy good equipment, attacks are money centered)
- Blob is gluttony (gross attacks, a blob filled with junk)
- Train is sloth (an untied shoe, and used 'lazy' attacks except "Pain Train" which I couldn't resist)
- Rock heart with lacy tentacles is lust (creepy attack names too)
- The boss with the shadow was Pride (and his strength was all an illusion, albeit one that hurt!)

ps. The skit where she uses that combo on Flynn is real, and it's VERY effective, Blessing + Eternal Winter is deadly, but not easy to pull off since they're in different trees.

Again, thanks for playing - so much good can be done if a developer gets someone to do this and watches it and takes it seriously. When you say to yourself "But he missed this obvious thing!" it's not usually their fault - it's the devs!

author=calunio
I could almost think that was a joke.

I can't afford to doubt that anyone would ever make a game just for the sake of making it, but... having finished a few projects, some made in 4 days, some made in 7 years, I can undoubtedly say that the best part (but not the only good part) is having people play your game and talk about it. That's the part that makes the arduous 2years/4h/day process worth it. Working on games to learn more about making games is definitely possible, even if you don't get to finish them. But what's the point of becoming a better game designer if your games will never see the light of day? And how is this becoming a better person?

Finishing games is definitely NOT overrated. I've come to a point that I don't get excited as much about lots of projects in RMN, mainly because I know (almost sure) they will never be finished. And many times have I caught myself working on games and hating it, but knowing that if I quit, lots and lots of hours put into it will have been in vain.

Actually, I agree with him to a point.

It's important to finish - you can only really improve or get metrics by letting people play your stuff, something we're all afraid to do to some extent.

But it should be the journey that makes us want to reach the destination, even if the journey is a lot of hard work and frustration, there's value in that.

That said you should still try to finish your stuff, otherwise all your effort is no different than "playing" RPG Maker as if it were a PC game.

These are bloody amazing, thanks for playing it!

I won't spoil or give any tips, since it's most interesting to see what people notice or don't notice - it's already given us about a half-dozen things to improve (in addition to ones I already fixed.)

EDIT: I will note that the monsters are all original and Krisanna's design. They're themed (the first are instrument, the second area is the 7 sins, and later ones are a bit more obvious.)

Attack names give clues as to what they represent as well as my attempt at being funny with puns. : )

You can have multiple active projects, but it's best if you can complete one project at a time, or at the least achieve important milestones before switching gears. Switching projects when the going gets tough or boring on the first means you really, REALLY won't want to go back to it later, and it just gets harder to return and pick it up again over time (like leaving a game half finished and trying to come back years later and pick it up again.)

Deadlines are crucial, especially ones set by others, like for a contest or something. : D

This deals with play-testing, but has a lot of great info on criticism as well (since they go hand-in-hand!)

Definitely one of their most useful episodes:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/playtesting

I've found most of my feedback here to be useful, and even knowing someone didn't like something is useful information in and of itself.