HESUFO'S PROFILE

Nothing short of the best game of 2014 so far, Link!

In all seriousness, I found the custom sprites to be awesome. Especially Frosty. And it meets the contest criteria of 3 things you had to include minimum, which I'm guessing *some* games will probably have missed.

author=LockeZ
I absolutely guarantee you can, and it looks extremely stupid not to. Just don't have two NPCs walking opposite directions down the same sidewalk at the same time; how hard is that?

I'd say it's actually OK. Otherwise you couldn't have NPCs at all in the sidewalks without the player having to step into the road to avoid them which, I think you'll agree, defies common sense and is dangerous from a realistic point of view (which is the one you've used for your suggestions too)

I'd love to see the full city and the temple fading away in action. :)

Thank you for your feedback, fredo! :) Let me go over a few of your points:

- I felt like the dungeons were each about a map too long, especially the green tower. The mushroom valley to get back to the town felt unnecessary.

Did the other areas (the forest and the first cave) feel long, as well? The Mushroom Glade map is kind of a legacy issue, since the town investigation mission was previously a lot more complex. I decided to keep it for the extra treasure, though, and traversing it doesn't take terribly long either.

- I didn't love the idea of every character being able to use every job.

Fair enough - however, I don't think there's anything wrong with giving the option to the player (except that maybe story-wise it's a bit awkward to harness the spirit of the characters themselves). Even though every character keeps its starting class for a good while before accessing other classes, I didn't want to set their roles 100% in stone. As you can probably imagine, most players will keep Grin as the party tank and Hilias as the main magic attacker from their roots as Templar and Invoker, respectively. But the player can change their roles if they so desire and, say, have Javert go deep in the Templar's tanking skillset and let Grin become more of a damage dealer.

author
- I was intrigued by the second party. Are they a one-time gimmick or are they going to be a big part of the story? They sort of reminded me of the light/dark parties in Final Fantasy Dimensions. I really would have liked to see a bit more playtime for that party and maybe some classes of their own beyond just their starters.

In terms of a playable party, they will most probably be a one-time gimmick (I still haven't worked out the complete storyline, so they MAY come back late in the story). However, Javert's party will not be the only one the player will control. There will be break-ups and Chapters focusing on other new characters, so you'll be able to see and learn about new classes constantly throughout the game.

- The red-haired guy's skillset doesn't work quite right. Two of the three runes/orbs/symbols/whatnots look exactly the same in battle, making it hard to figure out how to pull his combos till you memorize them.

Yeah, I'm sorry about this really dumb mistake. The available download has fixed this though.

- Also, the red-haired guy would work better as a slower character.

I'll try this out. The idea is very nice and it does work very well with the concept of Invoke.

Thanks again for playing and for giving me your opinion and ideas! I take feedback to heart and I'm always open to suggestions, since they offer another view on the game's design and some ideas may work perfectly with the project.

author=Ratty524
Played some of it.

I ADORED the first chapter. I didn't think the shift key would actually be useful in a puzzle until I played that. I loved the timing elements in the dungeon and the items you could get were cool.

However, after that part, the fun kind of dies off a bit. It looks as if some doorknob decided that the game needed to be more of an RPG, introducing generic battles, rudimentary puzzles and dull fetch quests, not to mention OPEN EMPTY SPACES to run around in. I'd say the game no longer becomes fun around the time you reach the town (the mini-game with the maid cleaning the tombs was fun, though, too bad I'll probably never beat it with my awkward Xbox controller. xD).

I'll play some more, but WHYYYYY did this game need to shot itself in the foot after the sand temple? Also, you can save at any time in this game, so what's the point of save crystals?

The main reason is that this was an experimental Chain Game, and it was expected to be passed down upon many different users who may or may not be as skilled at eventing or introducing complex puzzles, so each one contributed to the best of their ability (and, except for Chapter 1 which I don't know how long it took to make, we all had a quite limited time frame, just a couple of days, before we had to pass the game along).

I was partly responsible for starting the "dull RPG" section, but I felt I had to introduce the battle system (it was going to, sooner or later), but also tried to mix it the chapter with minigames, puzzles and such (and the difficulty is pretty low in general, so the quests aren't all mandatory).

I advise you keep playing, because there are some other fun puzzles (the inverse building is pure genius) and interesting things.