TRAVIO'S PROFILE

Just finished it, writing up my full review now.

All I can say is: holy shit, what the hell did I just play and where can I get more?

All right - if you're aiming to try to imitate the Team Ico games, I'm probably right in the middle of your target demographic. You also shouldn't ask for feedback and then immediately dismiss it as part of the artistic route; it might actually be something that needs addressed (and, in this case, some of it does).

That said, there's a few things - I'm playing through, I'll mark them as I go.

1) Your opening menu screen, it does take too long to be able to select an option. The animation is nice, but having not died once and only seen it when I loaded the game, it's already been too long to see it; if you must keep it, add in the option that pressing a key skips the animation and goes right to being able to select.

2) Your opening narration is fairly clunky, text wise. I get what it's saying but it feels like its trying to be wordy just for the sake of being wordy. And, in doing so, it creates some fairly weird sentence structures.

There is an old legend.
My father used to tell it to me a long time ago.
Far in the distance there is a massive citadel amid the ocean that rises out of the water every eon.
It is said that deep inside of the structure is a place of magic where any wish is possible.
If the legend is true, I know my wish.
To see you again, even after death.

Particularly that line about where the citadel is located... just seems wordy and suffers for it. You could probably cut out the "amid the ocean" part, or move it earlier in the sentence. Some like... "Far in the distance, amid the ocean, there is a massive citadel that rises from the water every eon." Also, you might want to add some contraction in to that speech; I'm lead to believe it's the character we're playing speaking/thinking it... and as it is, his syntax sounds fairly uncaring - maybe even personalize it a bit more so he sounds more attached (and less robotic) before the final lines? Something like...

There's an old legend.
My father used to tell me it when I was a child.
Far in the distance, amid the ocean, lies a massive citadel that's said to rise from the ocean once an eon.
They say that, deep inside the citadel, there's a place of magic, a place where any wish is possible.
If that old legend is true, then I already know my wish:
To see you once again, even after death.

That's just my initial thought revision and, personally, it sounds more like a person's saying it than reading it out of a book or some other 'neutral' source.

3) The crate puzzle - in order to drag a crate backwards, I could press the run button. Seemed a little counter intuitive, but once I realized why I was dragging them backwards, I started using it instead of running around the crate. Except running around the crate would have saved time, because after dragging backwards, I have to step away from the crate and back towards it again before I can drag it backwards again.

4) The stair climbing speed definitely needs fixed; no one slows down that much climbing stairs, especially given how fast you were moving before.

5) The hallway immediately after that puzzle, your light source is confused. It switches the direction your shadow is facing immediately after crossing the center. Which direction is this light coming from? If it's coming straight down, you shouldn't really see much of a shadow beyond directly underneath the character. (Also, related to the light thing, I liked how when I went back outside after being inside the first 'puzzle room' lead to a temporary brightness.)

6) This just came up again after finding the scroll - but aside from the opening narration, you should probably make sure all the text appears at a fairly consistent rate. And the fade in/out to read the scroll possibly takes a little bit too long.

7) That shadow fight immediately afterwards - I don't know if it was a bug or intentional, but I couldn't move until he was already on top of me, attacking me, and I took four or five hits before I realized I could move and was pretty much already trapped. Additionally, some general indication of your current health status would be nice.

And now I'm going back to the game itself to see if I can get further and give a bit more in the way of feedback.

Oh, and something else I just realized: the two paths to the sides of the first save egg: maybe make them move you to the rooms without pressing a button? It took me a moment to realize they were paths in the first place, as any other path I was immediately able to move through, up to that point, automatically transferred me when I touched it and I had to do nothing to initiate that transfer.

I'll continue to edit thoughts onto the end of this until you get a chance to see the post.

Also, I really don't get your continue system - sometimes it restarts me at a room not too far back, other times it forces me back to the menu? I can't seem to find any rhyme or reason for why it does one or the other.

author=Shadowsong
There must be a lot of floor damage for there to be an item that negates it.

Based on what I can see for the numbers, the item seems rather competitive, stats wise, for the items those characters can equip in what I'm assuming is a slot (I'm assuming that Mind is one of your equip slots). The effect just seems to kind of be a little bit of a situational bonus.

Coding is already in place for both Pavan and Gordon - that being the character who provides the permenant 'regenerate' effect - despite neither character actually showing up in the initial segment of the game that I'm working on (I want sections of code done before I need them to test game balance). The other two are still being poked at - one I'm doing the balance on numbers, and the fourth I'm questioning whether their effect is going to cause the game to be too easy - but will be added into the code as soon as I'm sure their numbers are good.

Also, the game will be tested with Pavan in the party as the support character; as he's the only one that will be recruited by the storyline, I'm not assuming players will have any of the other effects when designing and balancing battles.