GALENMERETH'S PROFILE

Thanks for the great and in-depth review mate! :) I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your time with the game, and the feedback you provided is going to be helpful going forward. I do plan on expanding on this idea after this competition, and fix a lot of the things that I didn't feel worked as well as I'd hoped in their current incarnation. The plan is to make a sort of "version 2.0"--or perhaps a sequel--where I take the core concepts that are good, and improve upon all the rest, as well as evolving the game itself into a more lengthy and re-playable experience.

I definitely agree with the exposed stats: it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, but due to the deadline it felt better than the alternative of exposing none of the "innards". I'm not sure I feel the same now, however. What I want to do for the future expansion of the idea is to make these "hidden" stats you need to accumulate more intuitive and be a core part of the craft and trade gameplay, but without it being about obscure numbers.

Since you seemed interested in the technical details, I thought I'd explain about the scripts and team: Most of the scripts are actually custom made, or custom modified versions of the built-in scripts or external existing scripts. Even the save windows have been altered some from their default Yanfly origin :) The system driving the quests and hero "AI" (what items they want to buy, what price they want to sell their wares for and so forth) is all custom for this game too. The Team consists of only me--Tor Damian Design is my graphic design company name, which I use when I publish things.

Of course, it really helped to have the great testers I had, and a native English speaker (I'm Norwegian myself) go over all the dialogue with me: it wasn't bad before she did, but after going through it with her, most of the dialogue was improved rather subtly. However the end result feels a lot more polished and "readable" than before :) So I'm very grateful for the help these people provided.

That is actually a joke, referencing the illustration. It is probably a bit too obscure :D

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I can't see your review yet (does it need to be approved perhaps?), but I'll respond to what you've written here :)

author=nhubi
I did notice a couple of small glitches, in the tavern in your home town with the two guys dancing around the table, your character can walk right through them.

I actually did that on purpose, but a few players have thought of it as a glitch. The idea was that I didn't want the player to stand in the way of their awesome dancing, heh. But I guess it does seem weird that they can "clip" through you. So I'll change it :D

author=nhubi
I really like the idea of in-game achievements when you reach certain goals, and the opening of new frontiers and horizons. In you don't mind a suggestion, perhaps something could be added about buying and upgrading a home. After all mercantile ventures can be very profitable, and given the fact that your character's father is now retired, making a place for him with creature comforts and servants to wait on him in his later years could be a nice way of showing appreciation for all he's done for you.

Not a bad idea. Especially since I'm considering adding more content to the game--like an "infinite" randomly generated amount of quests--and having an additional goal to work towards will make it much more fun to turn a profit. I'll definitely look at this idea and see what I can do with it :D

author=nhubi
Oh and I made a suggestion in the review but I may as well reiterate it here, can we please have the Almanac be an actual item, like a bestiary? I had to keep hand written notes to remember the items I needed to source, having it in game would be so much easier.

Absolutely. It was very hard to fit everything I wanted within the one month of development, and a lot didn't make it. While the challenge of remembering all these details can be ok for a short game, with more content, the challenge will have to shift from memorizing details to managing your inventory and money instead, and so a proper beastiary--that lists all the details you've uncovered from NPC's--is something I'm going to add :)


Again, thank you for playing and giving your feedback, really appreciate it!

Just a small update on this: seeing as reception has been very positive so far, it's clear there's quite an amount of people that enjoy this kind of game. So that means the experiment is a success, and I will definitely build on this game.

Like I mentioned earlier, there is quite a bit of content I want to include. I also want to improve on the existing systems, like implementing haggling instead of "blind" price guessing.

I consider the current version a "full experience", so when I do implement some of these bigger features that change the game quite a bit, I will release that as a 2.0 release :)

Hi Fidchell! I'd love for you to play my game and to hear what you think of it: The Vendor.

It was made for the IGMC, but it's polished and thoroughly tested. I know that might sound a bit weird when I mention it, but a few people I've talked to have come to expect bugs due to the deadline, and I understand that it can hinder motivation to give contest games a try for some people.