ANNELAURANT'S PROFILE

Hello, I'm Anne! I make art, write stories, and apparently develop games now! Occasionally I sing and compose songs.

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Thrall

Woah, is this new? I'll have to allot a schedule for this!

Arcanium:Magia

author=Strak
Hoping this is still underway! Haven't seen you around much. Hope life is well and game dev is still something you're wanting to work on.

Hello, friend! This is still something I'm thinking about, for sure, but I do want to do a bit of an overhaul to 1) minimize player fatigue, 2) be more authentic to the vision I have for the story, 3) have more consistency, and 4) recover the progress I lost after a laptop breakdown. Due to real life updates and ongoings, I've been unable to give this project as much attention as I want, but I'm hopeful to give this game an update within the year.

Arcanium:Magia

author=Strak
I saw that a demo had been posted earlier this week, I just haven't had a chance to get around to it. I'll check it out today though!

Thank you! However, I had to pull the demo for the meantime because the asset encryption caused a major game-breaking bug that, somehow, I did not catch while playtesting Demo V2.0. :( I will be sure to upload a new version real soon.

One Hour

Man I missed that in the blog post, lol!

But yes, in terms of the systems and the puzzles, I think the game is good! Even if the puzzles themselves are not really new concepts, I think they hold each other up pretty well, and it is pretty difficult to keep puzzles within a single game of a more or less consistent quality. (I like puzzles a lot. Is that too obvious? XD)

If there is one thing about the puzzles I want changed, it's probably the level of information you feed the player, e.g. difficulty level, what must be done, what I should look for, etc.

Arcanium:Magia

author=Strak
Nice! Looking forward to the demo. Subbed, so I'll keep an eye out. You had said this is your first game, yeah? I hope you enjoy the game dev process!


Thank you! I used to be a programming student, so it's very fun for me to game dev! (Except I actually managed to break some plugins, so I'm off to an amazing start.)

One Hour

I'm hesitant about adding a review since the other guy pretty much summarized my personal thoughts about the game too.

So here's my feedback as a comment:

It IS pretty jarring! And the lagging (mind you I only have a 2-year-old laptop) adds to the atmosphere! XD In a way it really, really, really feels like you're alone and you got nobody but yourself for this game.

The puzzles are nice. The rocks gave me a good time and left me wishing for more of them. The vines maze is a good maze; while navigating it, it felt like I was doing something that had more impact beyond looking for the next path to cross. The cave maze too, while simple, really worked well with the lamp thing. The swimming while very standard is of good enough quality to complete the quad.

The story was pretty lacking, and I personally think it's the lack of set up. I'd rather have a short message on a black screen open up before we start with the character waking up. Put me in his shoes, you know? I'm also not even sure why I should care about the locked box in the first place. While twists and surprises are nice, not having a proper set up for game mechanics will likely leave the player feeling very, very confused - and this is something that my non-RM friends taught me when they played the initial demo of my own game.

It does leave me wanting more; I'm just not sure where you're taking this game to. (Open spoiler tag below for my personal recommendation.)

BUT if you took this to a horror level, perhaps an atmospheric horror game where the "enemy" is an unseen supernatural entity of the wilderness, I think it'd really pop out and shine. You can go "this is a horror game", and when people open its executable file and see "you have one hour" they'd really feel like, "Oh I gotta do something I gotta SURVIVE". Not only is our character poisoned, but something out there, whatever that unseen is, is watching our every step, waiting for our demise.

And I would love that. I love horrors based on everyday concepts. There's no real "killer" or "enemy"; just us and our fear amped up by our perceptions and our worries. And this game has the potential to be that; I just don't know if this is how you want your game to be.

But, if your intention is to merely show concepts, this is a good game. It did leave me thinking, "I want to see more of this guy's work," in a "That's it?! Don't leave me hanging!" kinda way. XD

Bloodstained Hands

Woops I forgot to post this! It's about my personal stats for the game. I haven't actually defeated the final optional boss because I can't put enough attention to do it. XD

Anyway, this post contains total MAJOR spoilers. (For other players: don't open if you haven't finished the game yet!)

I first finished the game with my active party at average Level 50-ish; the one where I finished all the hidden/optional bosses I could find in the first playthrough was at Level 55/56.

My winning active party consists of: Rain/Fang, Grey, Matthew, and Shadow.

In order, my favorite sidequests are:

Exports - Love that around the world trip I made, and I also adore your brilliant usage of the NPCs who just seemed they were just complaining about their day-to-day lives.

The Academy - The focus on Grey was an amazing change of perspective. Also, it was my chance to level up Grey's spells without the other guys in the way.

Treasure Hunt - For the unbreakable lockpick. I love the lockpick mechanics; I just hated breaking my lockpicks and having to buy them all the time! I carry like 20-30 lockpicks everytime I go out of the Sanctuary. XD The Alchemist might have paid me lots for doing missions for him, but I also paid him lots for the lockpicks.

Boss fights:

The boss fights against the generals and Kain annoyed me (in a good way) when I discovered they would heal themselves. Well, of course, why didn't I think of that? XD

Kouryuu was the hardest boss fight for me. I had to level grind in Abyssus to do this fight without having everyone die on my every 2-3 rounds of Kouryuu's attacks.

My favorite boss fight is Crevasse. I probably just didn't level up enough for her, but she was tough in a good way.

Bloodstained Hands

Thank you for your patience; I just submitted a review!

It's way more difficult to get the right kinds of screenshots VS playing the parts of the game I need to get to to grab screenshots. XD I almost got pulled into playing into the Amethyne arc, hahaha!

Bloodstained Hands

Hi, Strak!

I'm so sorry I haven't spoken in so long. Truth is that I've had difficulty with the last optional boss due to my short attention span and I've been procrastinating with getting non-spoiler screenshots (boo hoo all of my saves are in the later parts of the game), but I want to assure you I've had my review saved in my files for so so long!! XD Also, I totally waited for the Misao nominations and voted it, and wow congrats!!!

Anyway, the other reason I've been busy is that I started work on an original series and a game. Yipee! BSH did influence me to start on it, especially with how long you mentioned you worked on it. I'm looking to release a formal demo before the end of this year. (The informal one was distributed to trusted friends.)

Enough of me. If the game's been updated since I last popped in here, then I'll be glad to pick up the latest version, grab some screenshots from it, and submit that review. You deserve that additional review. I have no idea why there's only one until now. So sorry I dropped off the earth for a bit, but I'm still here! And congrats on the newer release(s)!

Oh and are the old saves compatible with this latest release? I think the version I have is 5.9. Even so, I don't know, the game wasn't that hard to master compared to how your blog update made it sound like. Or at least for me. I enjoyed the grind. XD

Anyway, thanks man! (I sound so hyper. I'm just excited for this new version release!)

Bloodstained Hands

author=Strak
Hopefully beating them isn't too much of a grind, but thanks for pointing that out, I realize it's not exactly the best "feature" and I may remove it later.

It was actually pretty funny to discover because I took both spellcasters for my "final" party build (no they will not be my actual final party build) and I couldn't figure out why I wasn't doing any damage lol. XD Fortunately, it wasn't too much of a pain to defeat without the spellcasters. XD

author=Strak
Also, out of curiosity, did you manage to find the secret final boss? You mentioned your party was at max level, I'm curious if you've stumbled across it yet!

Yup. ;^) It's a pretty sneaky one! I'll tell you if I beat it lol.
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