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Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
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RMN's Most Humblest!
Prayer of the Faithless
On the brink of the apocalypse, two friends struggle to find what is worth saving
On the brink of the apocalypse, two friends struggle to find what is worth saving
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Steam Page Live! + Demo Update Soon-ish
A tiny blog update
I didn't know this game had a page on RMN. Subbed. Can't wait to see more.
EDIT: You, uh, may want to update the font color on the CSS.
EDIT: You, uh, may want to update the font color on the CSS.
Censorship in Video Games
There is an artistic merit to replacing swear words with symbols: comedic relief. To me, at least, it's funnier to hear words bleeped out or censored than the actual words because it implies that the character is so foul mouthed or raunchy that even the game itself has to step in and apologize for all the swearing.
Just, uh, don't have someone swearing every other word in the first place in you're trying to be taken seriously. Otherwise, your heavy scene will suddenly have a Red Foreman in it:
Or, if you don't have a filter, you'll have Death:
I don't think a filter option for players is going to fix either of these scenes in a "seriously" project.
Just, uh, don't have someone swearing every other word in the first place in you're trying to be taken seriously. Otherwise, your heavy scene will suddenly have a Red Foreman in it:
Or, if you don't have a filter, you'll have Death:
I don't think a filter option for players is going to fix either of these scenes in a "seriously" project.
Censorship in Video Games
Accessibility settings are not censorship, and I feel like complaining about accessibility settings is like complaining about difficulty selection. The options are there for those that want/need them, and their inclusion doesn't detract from anyone else's experience. "How much is too much" is a question individual players have to ask themselves, and the settings let each person draw their own line. If only people outside the "target audience" use accessibility settings, then maybe the target audience isn't as narrow as players like to think?
I feel like "censorship" could only reasonably apply to settings that are beyond the player's control, like localization changes or games being outright banned from sale in certain countries. The party members in Bravely Default, for example, will always be 18 in the western release and 15-16 in the Japanese release, and there is no "age toggle" setting that would be natural in that game.
If a setting is in the game, then it's a choice made by the developers that it is okay to experience the game with that setting enabled. Whether they "should" exist is something developers must decide for themselves because each game is different, but the decision to include them should not be viewed as censorship or even self-censorship.
I feel like "censorship" could only reasonably apply to settings that are beyond the player's control, like localization changes or games being outright banned from sale in certain countries. The party members in Bravely Default, for example, will always be 18 in the western release and 15-16 in the Japanese release, and there is no "age toggle" setting that would be natural in that game.
If a setting is in the game, then it's a choice made by the developers that it is okay to experience the game with that setting enabled. Whether they "should" exist is something developers must decide for themselves because each game is different, but the decision to include them should not be viewed as censorship or even self-censorship.
Project complete!
Congratulations for completing this game! I'll be sure to give it a playthrough when I get the time.
Sprites Galore!
Those sprites looks awesome! Avee does some great work.
Take all the time you need for a short prototype. No need to burn yourself out over it. Good luck!
Take all the time you need for a short prototype. No need to burn yourself out over it. Good luck!
Hell on High Heels Review
Thanks for the review, lobo! Sorry you were let down by some of the aspects of the game, but I think I achieved what I set out to do, and pianotm knocked it out of the park with his additions. It's also a shame you aren't gonna do ng+ since that's where I feel the game is at its best. But hey, if the initial playthrough was at least amusing to you, then mission accomplished! Comedy games are unfamiliar territory for me, so I'm glad at least some parts of the game landed with you!
My intention for creating Nia was to take the trope of "spoiled princess growing as a person," and go hard in the opposite direction for laughs. With her tantrums being so loud and so obnoxious they break the game's design, her antics only get worse the more you play and mess around. I had absolutely no interest in giving her character any real redeeming qualities, and thought that seeing just how far she'd go to get her way would be enough of a reason for players to keep going.
Thanks again for the review!
My main question is what exactly is the inspiration for Princess Nia since this character archetype is rather common.
My intention for creating Nia was to take the trope of "spoiled princess growing as a person," and go hard in the opposite direction for laughs. With her tantrums being so loud and so obnoxious they break the game's design, her antics only get worse the more you play and mess around. I had absolutely no interest in giving her character any real redeeming qualities, and thought that seeing just how far she'd go to get her way would be enough of a reason for players to keep going.
Thanks again for the review!
Leafko
This game has a lot of heart and soul poured into the world and it's people! I tried Leafko on stream and had a good time all around. Initially, I thought the game was in Spanish only since that was the default language, but it's impressive that you have two different language supports that you can toggle in game.
The English is a bit wonky, but that wasn't enough to stifle the personalities of the characters (and even the NPCs). I liked Leafko, and wanted to see where events would take her. It really helps that this game's art style is very cute and endearing. The expressive faces sets and creative setting really come together to give this world a distinct feeling to it. There are some oddities, like how a fountain in the market square doesn't animate or how some of the RTP music tracks don't quite fit in well with the game's more relaxed tone (the victory theme in particular is a bit too bombastic and feels really out of place), but they aren't dealbreakers for me.
Battles are where this game takes a few missteps, though. Granted, I've only gotten so far as to beat the first cult member causing a scene in the town square, so I haven't done too much fighting, but the biggest issue I have is that the party's attacks tend to miss. A lot. And there is no way that I can tell to increase the party's accuracy or reduce the enemy's evasion. Battles are difficult and don't require too much strategy to win, so the frequent misses don't do anything but elongate an already simplistic fight. Also, while some semblance of similarities in skills are to be expected between Leafko and Fertile since Fertile is Leafko's teacher, but the game advertises itself as needing to utilize each partner's unique skillset to win battles. Not only are 90% of Fertile's skills identical to Leafko's but you can get through battles just by holding Spacebar and doing basic attacks. Fertile claims to be able to use fire magic if she could get her hands on a staff, so why doesn't she have a staff equipped at the very start? At least that would make battles a little more interesting if Fertile had a more distinct moveset at the very start.
Overall, though, I'm really enjoying my time with Leafko! I'm gonna keep at it and let you know more as I go along. Subbed!
The English is a bit wonky, but that wasn't enough to stifle the personalities of the characters (and even the NPCs). I liked Leafko, and wanted to see where events would take her. It really helps that this game's art style is very cute and endearing. The expressive faces sets and creative setting really come together to give this world a distinct feeling to it. There are some oddities, like how a fountain in the market square doesn't animate or how some of the RTP music tracks don't quite fit in well with the game's more relaxed tone (the victory theme in particular is a bit too bombastic and feels really out of place), but they aren't dealbreakers for me.
Battles are where this game takes a few missteps, though. Granted, I've only gotten so far as to beat the first cult member causing a scene in the town square, so I haven't done too much fighting, but the biggest issue I have is that the party's attacks tend to miss. A lot. And there is no way that I can tell to increase the party's accuracy or reduce the enemy's evasion. Battles are difficult and don't require too much strategy to win, so the frequent misses don't do anything but elongate an already simplistic fight. Also, while some semblance of similarities in skills are to be expected between Leafko and Fertile since Fertile is Leafko's teacher, but the game advertises itself as needing to utilize each partner's unique skillset to win battles. Not only are 90% of Fertile's skills identical to Leafko's but you can get through battles just by holding Spacebar and doing basic attacks. Fertile claims to be able to use fire magic if she could get her hands on a staff, so why doesn't she have a staff equipped at the very start? At least that would make battles a little more interesting if Fertile had a more distinct moveset at the very start.
Overall, though, I'm really enjoying my time with Leafko! I'm gonna keep at it and let you know more as I go along. Subbed!
Vesper Charm
So I gave the demo a shot on stream because I liked the core premise and found the character art charming. After playing it, though, I felt let down that most of that charm didn't translate into the actual game.
For starters, most of the lore in the game's description isn't even hinted at in the game itself. At least not in what I played. The most I could find is by reading Dew Claw's description, but it's never once brought up by the cast. Cheiki and Southpaw don't have much personality after the initial cutscene, and what little dialogue they do have is too focused on the immediate goblin base raid to dive into either of them as characters. Most of the lore in the game's description is also not only unsupported, but almost contradicted in the gameplay department. For example: if Cheiki bound her soul to Dew Claw in order to use fire magic, why is her one and only starting skill a wind-based attack?
The battle system, at least, was functional. The idea of guarding to restore MP and gain turns faster is a good one, but in practice, only the MP restoration really mattered. By the time I reached the Goblin King, most enemies were already doing 0 damage and I was running away from battles just out of boredom. My biggest issue was the fact that skills cost a LOT of MP. So much so that the flow of battle for every character fell into an unchanging loop of use skill --> guard --> use same skill. The MP restoration and turn order change effects added to the guard command is a good idea in theory and adds more incentive to use a often neglected command. In practice, however, guarding to restore MP just elongates the battle without really adding much tactical depth. Sure, you could use weaker skills successively to keep offense going, but then it takes two hits to kill a goblin when I can usually kill it in one with a stronger skill.
There are a number of ways to reduce the down time between skill volleys without sacrificing the pace of battles, such as adding MP charge to basic attacks, reducing skill costs, give party members MP regen per turn, restore all MP after every battle, etc. but it all boils down to how you want to pace your battles. Due to how rapidly you gain levels and skills, it's impossible to get a feel for the intracicies of your battle system before you become so overpowered that tactics just don't matter. Also, there were many typos, grammatical errors, and skill descriptions that need updates. A couple of things I found were 1) all the MP-restoring items referred to MP as SP. 2) Cheiki's Tornado Slash seems to inflict a defense debuff, but that isn't anywhere in the skill description, and Southpaw's Soul Slash says it inflicts Stun, but the behavior seems more like Confusion to me.
All in all, you put a lot of effort into creating custom character art, so I wish that you wouold bring the characters's personality and battle style to the forefront next time you work on this game. The artwork and intro showed a lot of promise, and I hope the final game delivers on that promise. Please let me know if I need to clarify or elaborate on anything. Otherwise, I'll be happy to play the game again once it's updated/completed.
For starters, most of the lore in the game's description isn't even hinted at in the game itself. At least not in what I played. The most I could find is by reading Dew Claw's description, but it's never once brought up by the cast. Cheiki and Southpaw don't have much personality after the initial cutscene, and what little dialogue they do have is too focused on the immediate goblin base raid to dive into either of them as characters. Most of the lore in the game's description is also not only unsupported, but almost contradicted in the gameplay department. For example: if Cheiki bound her soul to Dew Claw in order to use fire magic, why is her one and only starting skill a wind-based attack?
The battle system, at least, was functional. The idea of guarding to restore MP and gain turns faster is a good one, but in practice, only the MP restoration really mattered. By the time I reached the Goblin King, most enemies were already doing 0 damage and I was running away from battles just out of boredom. My biggest issue was the fact that skills cost a LOT of MP. So much so that the flow of battle for every character fell into an unchanging loop of use skill --> guard --> use same skill. The MP restoration and turn order change effects added to the guard command is a good idea in theory and adds more incentive to use a often neglected command. In practice, however, guarding to restore MP just elongates the battle without really adding much tactical depth. Sure, you could use weaker skills successively to keep offense going, but then it takes two hits to kill a goblin when I can usually kill it in one with a stronger skill.
There are a number of ways to reduce the down time between skill volleys without sacrificing the pace of battles, such as adding MP charge to basic attacks, reducing skill costs, give party members MP regen per turn, restore all MP after every battle, etc. but it all boils down to how you want to pace your battles. Due to how rapidly you gain levels and skills, it's impossible to get a feel for the intracicies of your battle system before you become so overpowered that tactics just don't matter. Also, there were many typos, grammatical errors, and skill descriptions that need updates. A couple of things I found were 1) all the MP-restoring items referred to MP as SP. 2) Cheiki's Tornado Slash seems to inflict a defense debuff, but that isn't anywhere in the skill description, and Southpaw's Soul Slash says it inflicts Stun, but the behavior seems more like Confusion to me.
All in all, you put a lot of effort into creating custom character art, so I wish that you wouold bring the characters's personality and battle style to the forefront next time you work on this game. The artwork and intro showed a lot of promise, and I hope the final game delivers on that promise. Please let me know if I need to clarify or elaborate on anything. Otherwise, I'll be happy to play the game again once it's updated/completed.
Uchioniko MZ
To be honest, it wasn't until after I made my initial post that I realized that the game has a calendar text file within the game. Looking through it, there are a surprising number of days that just have no events planned.
You absolutely need to cut out as many of those blank days as you can. Whether that involves filling them out with cutscenes where Ruri's friend circle discuss current events, or maybe just cut the days out entirely to move the main plot forward faster. Or maybe give each classmate unique dialogue every day to justify going through the current structure of the game. The fact is there is not enough content in the game already that the player can do by themselves to justify three consecutive blank days in a row. And this happens twice within the first fourteen days.
Well, the first thing you have to do before making any changes to the game is know. If you're not sure how to retain player interest, how is the player going to know? Once you decide what drives your game forward, knowing what changes you need to make will be a lot easier. Like I said before, my impression of the game was that it was character-centric. If that's true, then whatever decision you have to make about the game's plot and pacing needs to have the cast front and center of the player's attention.
You absolutely need to cut out as many of those blank days as you can. Whether that involves filling them out with cutscenes where Ruri's friend circle discuss current events, or maybe just cut the days out entirely to move the main plot forward faster. Or maybe give each classmate unique dialogue every day to justify going through the current structure of the game. The fact is there is not enough content in the game already that the player can do by themselves to justify three consecutive blank days in a row. And this happens twice within the first fourteen days.
it does seem like the biggest barrier to move the game forward is letting the player know when to approach that cave entrance. That, and retaining overall interest level in the game. I dunno.
Well, the first thing you have to do before making any changes to the game is know. If you're not sure how to retain player interest, how is the player going to know? Once you decide what drives your game forward, knowing what changes you need to make will be a lot easier. Like I said before, my impression of the game was that it was character-centric. If that's true, then whatever decision you have to make about the game's plot and pacing needs to have the cast front and center of the player's attention.
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