LDANARKOS'S PROFILE

I want to share with you a storywriting trope that I've picked-up on a lot recently that you may consider integrating into your game.

I see a lot of times in tv, the main character will ask an innocent NPC to do something that is kind of a big ask, like something very risky, doesn't have to be. And then the NPC gets killed for doing the thing you asked them to do and you feel insanely guilty about it. An example would be like if police were about to bust a criminal that they have under surveillance, and they ask his abused wife not to leave him just yet, because it could disrupt the arrest that they're about to make. And then he kills her before the arrest is made. You'd feel pretty sh*tty if you were responsible for that.

The request could be anything big or small, such as asking them to stay here and stand guard (and then they get killed while doing it). Or maybe you talk them into taking a trip that they don't want to take, afraid to fly, but then they do as you asked and die in a plane crash. For this trope to have the guilty impact that you're going for, you have to ask the NPC to do something that they have misgivings about doing, i.e. they know the risks, and you talk them into it, reassuring them that the risks aren't so bad or that it's worth it.

This is also good for feeding into a revenge angle against whoever is more directly responsible for killing the NPC.

Hey. I haven't logged in in a while, so I just saw your review. Thank you so much for the thoroughness. You seemed to pick up on a lot of the stuff that I was laying down and played pretty much all the way through it. Very grateful for all the effort you put into this.

Good suggestion on creating a faceset for the blue-skinned possibly The Light character.

What you pointed out in your PS, there is some multiple meanings as far as The Sun / Son Is A Star in the title. I've wrestled with the idea of intentionally using inconsistent spellings to touch on different meanings or whether not to do that. The full significance wouldn't get revealed until the very end of the game. But I do know how to spell, in case that was unclear. I've just been conflicted about whether it was better to do this or to lock down one spelling.

I'll consider balancing the Burn spell, but personally I feel it's still minor compared to the high amounts of sustain that the healing spells give you. And I find the stat-reducing spells to be super strong against bosses. Usually I don't use Burn too much in boss fights and I don't burn through too much magic in random fights.

I'm glad that you noticed that this is a pretty grind-free game. I tried to set the monster exp so that the boss exp pretty much gives you the levels that you need, and that excessive grinding of the random mobs doesn't get you vastly over-leveled (but that it's still possible).

I have always felt that the monster stats needed some boosting to make the game more balanced, but I kind of have to go back over all of them and boost them evenly. Right now, you can kind of just walk through the game like a hot knife through butter.

The fact that you can't afford gear for everyone is something I find to be a little unique and interesting, as most RPG's, you just buy top gear for the whole party and still have tons of spare gold that you'll never use. This game, you're making strategic decisions about where to allocate your gear, which I think leads to more decisions. I tried to make this game something where you were making lots of real decisions rather than just buying max gear and spamming the same skills.

Btw, you mentioned that a lot of the skills weren't very useful. Your opinion is valid. But the way I designed the skills was that a lot of them were very competitive with the Fight command and would require some discernment to tell when they would give you more damage. Like an armor-piercing attack that only outperforms Fight if the enemy has high armor. A can't-miss attack that outperforms Fight if the enemy has high agility. A weak hit-all attack that is better than Fight if you are fighting a horde of weak insects. A Jab attack that refunds half of the initiative cost and is better than Fight if the enemy is almost dead. A Brawl attack that trades blows back-and-forth, that is better than fight against like mages with low attack; as well as another anti-mage attack that drains some of their MP, depriving them of what they need to cast powerful spells. Anyways, point being, I tried to make it so that the optimal decisions were fairly challenging to arrive at and didn't involve spamming the same selections against every monster; but the payoffs are a bit marginal.

author=zankokunoyami
I remember an opening sequence of a snowy area as it scrolled up. I think it played an enya song, only time or something like that?

Sunset Over Imdahl had animated maps including occasionally wintery seasons. Although, it didn't have Enya on the soundtrack.

I programmed MTG in Unity, and I suppose that's the way to go if you can program.

Game page says "Homoculous," title screen says "Homuculous," and neither are the correct spelling of homunculus. Seems amateurish.