RED_NOVA'S PROFILE

Ultimately the decision is yours and yours alone to make, but you need to know exactly what it is you're getting into. You say the work you're doing now is extremely taxing? It's a weekend beach retreat compared to the amount of work you'd have to do to make it as an indie dev even as a side gig.

If you're in this for the money, I can tell you right now that you aren't gonna make a livable income on selling an RPG Maker game. If you're seriously thinking about having game dev as supplementary income, then you need to be in the mindset of developing games, not a game. You have to think long term about your path to success as an indie dev, and you should count on not seeing commercial success until you're a few completed games under your belt. In other words, the question you're asking isn't "should I make my game commercial," it's "should *I* go commercial?"

Everyone has different life circumstances, and anyone who assures you that there is a surefire way to success is lying to you. Commercial success is a gamble at best, and you have to be prepared to lose the pot.

author=Strak
Level Requirements: So, there was a reason that equipping weapons was locked behind a level requirement. It has to do with the locker in the Keep. The one that allows you to move items between save files and playthroughs. Essentially, with that locker, you could put a level 99 weapon onto a level 1 character without the requirement. That said, I will admit it can be very frustrating to find an obviously better weapon only to find you can't use it yet.

I have a few questions about this:
1) If there is a level requirement for equipment, then isn't the idea of transferring equipment between save files already negated since anything I put in that chest will have to wait until my next party is already leveled up enough to use it? By the time I level up enough to use that gear, I likely would have found something just as good (or even better) for my party in my next playthrough since I can get lucky and get a high rarity item early on.

2) What exactly is the harm in letting players transfer high level gear in a subsequent playthrough? The chest can only store ONE piece of gear, after all, so it's not like you can completely deck out your party in OP gear in your second playthrough. Even if you could, I feel like anyone who would make use of this mechanic is to see the routes that that didn't take the first playthrough, and letting them use high level gear just makes it easier for them. If they wanted a subsequent playthrough to be fair and challenging, they would not make use of this item transfer mechanic at all.

I had a similar issue in Prayer of the Faithless where I added EXP decay once your party started to outlevel the enemies. I did this to discourage tedious grinding and to learn the actual battle mechanics. And yet I still got reports that some players would just grind anyway, EXP decay and all. Eventually, I just threw up my hands and said "fine. Make it easier for yourself. At least you've earned it."

Boss Fight: Ironically, I was trying to add additional gimmicks that fix the "damage sponge" boss that most RPG's seem to fall in to. Changing elements was the gimmick I went for with this boss. The HP bar changes color based on the bosses elemental weakness. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to essentially spawn in a new enemy, which heals it. I can work on an alternative solution that maybe spawns it in at the HP of the enemy that was despawned. Shouldn't be too tough to figure out.

I feel like the underlined statement goes against your stated intention of accommodating colorblindness. I haven't checked, but what changes about the HP bar if you enable colorblind mode?

As for the slimes, those were included because of one specific feature: Kill skills.

That's a dangerous reason considering each character has 3 different skill trees and so the possibility of a party with no kill skills is fairly high. I stand by what I said during stream that the additional enemies need to make the boss fight itself interesting and not exist purely as trash mobs to annoy the player. Kill skills should be a reward for diversifying your party's skill set, not a requirement for beating boss fights.

Narrative: I agree that you don't really get to spend enough time with any of the characters to develop any sort of emotional attachment to them, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix that, to be honest. Something tells me that making the prologue an hour long isn't the solution. I'm open to feedback, and I'll do some thinking about that myself, but I don't exactly have a solution right away.

You're right in that making a longer prologue isn't the answer. Depending on what you want to emphasize to the player, there are a few ways to address this:

1) Punch up the dialogue that is already there. You can use tutorial messages and other flavor text to help expand on the character's personalities more. Mel, for example, has absolutely no personality to work with at all. You can do pretty much anything with her dialogue and it would be an improvement. Brutus is alright, but pretty one note with his anger issues. I get that he's a Berserker (though not angry enough to actually Rage in the middle of battle, I guess), but the current dialogue leans so hard into it that it's his only character trait. Lionel is the group leader, but all he does is give orders and boss people around. He's done nothing (from my perspective) to earn the loyalty and trust of the rest of the team. All he did is bark orders and shut down any dissent. Why did he split the team up the way he did? What does he know about each one to know that they would work well together? Damian is... alright, actually.

2) Give the characters their Action Skill right away. As I mentioned on stream, most of the fights in the tutorial area were just "press space to win" fights. It wasn't nearly enough to give me an idea of how each character played (which is what I thought the point of splitting the party up in the first place was). Since you can guarantee that certain party members will be in certain places, it's the perfect opportunity to design enemies in such a way to make use of your character's Action skills. Making physical resistant enemies to encourage uses of Mel's Bursts, or poison/burning inflicting enemies to make use of Lionel's Aura skill.


Anyway, glad to help and glad to see the stream helped you! I'll give the next release a playthrough too with a different party setup and see what I missed.

Finishing the optional dungeon and all non-boss enemy sprites is a huge accomplishment! Congratulations!

Anyone that tangled with Darkloft and came out the other side has earned a little more confidence, lol.

Maps looking good as always!

I'm big into narrative design. I love figuring out ways to blend the story and the gameplay together into one coherent package. RPGs are the best way for me to scratch that itch by designing gameplay styles unique to characters and lore.