MARREND'S PROFILE

I'm looking at your About page, it it doesn't differ all that much from what I remember from the manual that you had.

I think what you might want to do is brainstorm about how you want your characters to be described. Not a physical description, nor what they do, but their personalities. I wouldn't necessarily aim for huge paragraphs of information for everyone, but have at least enough information to be a little more fleshed out than the stock characters you have now.

If the Queen has the power to move Poley and Waffle into her reality, and grant access to other realities, why doesn't she just move into a reality where Sectron doesn't exist? On the flip side, why not just move Sectron into a different reality?

I can't say enough times how important the answer to this question is to the premise of the game. Depending on how it is answered, it can either make the game, or cause it to fall apart.

She has a music note bubble over her head before she says this line. However, that particular emotion bubble is generally used to convey happiness. I needed some way to convey the fact that she was actually singing. While having *signing* in the text box might not be the most professional answer, it was the quickest (read: laziest) one.

I might try delineating it, but I think it's more silly this way. And Toshie is supposed to be silly.

The Chapter 2 demo is updated, and re-uploaded.

Plyatest note: The Wind Trial was a bit easier, but all of Chapter 2 bosses are total cakewalks. I barely had to level up after defeating the Damned Spirit. Having two characters with Star Burst wins fights. Granted, I wanted to reduce the amount of time players grind for levels, but I think I might have overdone it a bit. I shall wait and see what others think about what I've done.

It has come to my attention that the critters of the Wind Trial are a bit on the difficult side, given the resources that can be acquired. Sodas do not heal enough damage, and relying on techniques (which are not disabled when a character is Silenced) isn't particularly effective. I actually found magic was a better answer than techniques. Given that the enemies can Silence a party member at any moment make for turns where a character does absolutely nothing. This is not a good thing.

I'm not quite okay on the idea of upping the effectiveness of the health restorative items. What I plan on doing is only allowing players to complete trials in the order they are "supposed" to do them in for Chapter 1, thus allowing me to unlock the more powerful restorative items with a more reliable base. This means, however, that the player will have less control over what is happening in Chapter 1. It might be a total hassle (re-writing Mina and Chojiro, mostly) but I think I can get away with it for Chapter 1. Chapter 2's slightly more open-ended nature will probably remain intact.

I'm also vaguely considering ditching the current magic learning system I have. I thought it was a neat idea, but I'm beginning to wonder how many people realize that when a "teacher" asks you to return later, that means, for the most part, to talk to them immediately after beating them. Since all characters learn magic at the exact same rate, you could, in theory, max out Toshie or Kojiro by the time you finish their trials in Chapter 2. I'll be looking into various possibilities as to the best way to deal with changing class without altering any stats or equipment.

In the case it hasn't been noticed yet, the bosses of the Trials stop acting after a certain time. This was probably most noticed in the Fire Trial. Now, I reveal why they do that: the only action I programmed them to do was spam skills according to their elemental type. They stop acting because they don't have enough mana to use whatever skill is being used. I've play tested a Level 7 party against the Fire Spirit with "normal" attacks enabled, and I was still able to beat it using my normal strategy of using Burst Attack and using Sodas.

I have no idea how quickly I will be able to implement these changes, but they will surely be done before the Chapter 3 demo is released. Hence, the reason I but these notes into the Chapter 2 blog and not the Chapter 3 blog.

Without caution, huh? Then why am I seeing this message on Rapidshare:

"This file is neither allocated to a Premium Account, or a Collector's Account, and can therefore only be downloaded 10 times. This limit is reached. To download this file, the uploader either needs to transfer this file into his/her Collector's Account, or upload the file again. The file can later be moved to a Collector's Account. The uploader just needs to click the delete link of the file to get further information."


Depressing, as I wanted to see how my suggestions helped.