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Starbaby Review

Greetings!

Thanks for reviewing another one of mine, much appreciated.

'Twenty minutes of fun' is what I shoot for with jam games, glad I met that bar for you here :)

Starbaby

author=malandy
Aw, peaceful far future!

Happy ship name, Festivus!


Heyooo, thanks for playing another one of mine Malandy!

lol yes space physics can explain virtually anything that wouldn't normally make sense...be it with puzzles, gameplay, story, even bugs! :)

I'll have to look into the 15/20 damage item...it's all done by a string of common events so should be consistent (until you get the jam-jams, then all damage is reduced).

Glad you like the baby sounds! It was funny finding and editing them, what a mad couple weeks it was working on this one.

Yeah one of the jam themes I chose was babies (my original vision was of a baby tossing a grenade), so after the intro it's all sounds and symbols to match Violet's perspective. I'm glad to learn you made the connection!

Thanks again for playing, stay awesome!



Sandstone


author=Malandy
Yeah, but IIRC the message still talks about the boots like they were made?


Ahhh, now I see it, thank you. Whether you have them or not, as you proceed to Act 4 the Thiccboots are mentioned. How I've missed that in playtest after playtest I do not know...I guess it's easy to get used to how things are, instead of how they should be. Enter the power of your fresh eyes and attention to detail!

author=Malandy
Well, I only really noticed / got confused because I smashed all / both of the available Act 3 Onyx, instead of just one? Maybe put all Act 4 Onyxes in the Act 4 section?

Is it Oryx or Onyx? Now I'm confused elsewhere too, hehe. Well, a replay will set me straight.


Heh yeah it's 'Onyx'. And you are correct, there are actually 2 in Act 3.

That's a great idea, I've moved the second Onyx over to the Act 4 side for the next release. So players get the one 'training' prompt in Act 3 making it clear that smashing them gives an item, and from then on won't have the extra text popup to keep things moving.

author=Malandy
For the purposes of completeness and knowledge, I'll try that path when you update! Unless the lack of knowledge gets too annoying. Hehe!


Nice! Hah no yer not annoying at all, this is great!

I'll post a changelog when the update is released (and credit you for the fixes you inspired), so you'll get a Notice. Also:

In case you didn't the first time around, pay Droppre (the herbalist) a visit with Wrix, he'll help you out.


author=Malandy
Helping people is fun and contributes to the game making community! But in more specific things to you... Gonna try your Starbaby!


Supercool, I hope it's entertaining for you! Just a quick bit of fun for a jam, lot's of goobly baby noises :)

I wonder what happened to the file here? That's so weird, I know I uploaded it when I submitted the game. It's up here again, glad you found the itch option.

Sandstone

Greetings, thanks so much for playing Sandstone!

I'll have to check out Alchemistress Vivi. I like it already as it somehow led you to Sanstone :)

Glad the description and vague cover inspired you to find out more!

Here are quick notes on some of your comments:

author=Malandy
Minor typo in the beginning:

"ravages of Sky, it's" > "ravages of Sky, its"


Just when you think you've got the text fine-tuned, a glaring grammatical error in your intro is pointed out by a new player...heee....

author=Malandy
Ah, and if I want to not need to spend 20 on a Balm, I should buy them early, and remember to sleep in my home tent. I didn't know that was possible until I tried!


Definitely there are ways to maximize resources through careful timing, and small helps to be discovered along the way like camping in a few places. Some are only apparent once it's too late (like the Balm pricing you mentioned), but come in handy to help you succeed on replays.

author=Malandy
Weird how Strong Hands isn't a full heal, just a 50 heal?


Strong Hands will be a full heal in the next release, nice catch!

author=Malandy
That Dangerous Pot! Ha!


lol yes Dangerous Pot is dangerous! :)

author=Malandy
How did the Thiccboots get made in the Alternate path? Aren't we missing an ingredient?


If you choose Wrix, you wait for the lava to cool instead of crossing it right away, which has consequences...


author=Malandy
Weird that the Oryx messages don't occur every time?


I set the Onyx message to play when you smash the one in Act 3 just to make sure players are aware they got one, but left if off on the ones you can smash in Act 4. One one hand they are needed to proceed so are a special smash, on the other I worried I'd annoy players. What are your thoughts?

author=Malandy
Fell off the tree and survived. Is that all I get out of it? No item?


Yep, the encounter with Wrix in the branches is just for fun, for story. It is slightly different if you choose WaiFoo over Wrix, but either way no item.

author=Malandy
There's no Skystone marker for the Balm-maker's town?


I'll add a Skystone marker to the Abandoned Town, another great catch!

author=Malandy
Took the Slow Ending and important event wasn't mentioned.


- Regarding the vengeance ending, WaiFoo isn't mentioned explicitly in that outro text, but is covered when you visit her in Act 4. Interesting, I'd never considered that someone may skip that! I'll consider whether/how to prompt/force the visit before the finale.



Thanks again for playing and for your great notes! I'm happy that you found a few laughs along the way, and that the adventure was fun enough that you took the time to see it through.





Sandstone

author=bicfarmer
hey, thanks for the detailed explanation!I actually had a backup save right before entering chapter 3 so I did manage to complete the game after all. Aside from that one bug with low hp smashing I didn't get any other major errors. Honestly this has more of a survival feel to it instead of simply mining everything on the map, good game!


Nice, thanks for playing through! I'm glad to hear that Sandstone ultimately proved a good game for you :)

Sandstone

author=bicfarmer
Tried this game and got as far as chapter 3 where i was permanently stuck with no rocks to smash. This is probably because i didnt smash all the rocks in chapter 2, but the reason I didnt is because there are several hidden game mechanics that work against you and you are never informed about them.

Thanks for trying out Sandstone!

Typically players do need to retry here and there during the adventure as they learn the ropes, thus the early notes to save often and leave no stone unsmashed, and the are you sure? save prompt at the end of Act 2, which is the only Act where you can get softlocked in the following Act for not breaking enough stones before you proceed.

In your case, it sounds like going back to Act 2 will be the ticket. One thing to help you is a free balm you may have missed: If you visit Droppre (the herbalist in the Act 1 abandoned town) while playing as Wrix (the elf girl), he'll help you out :) Also be sure to explore the abandoned fort Wrix guards once she moves, and it's a good idea to visit Droppre one last time before you proceed to Act 3 to cash in the Shrubs you've collected.

Here are some notes on your comments:

However, you are not informed WHEN your hands level up

This is not shown explicitly, as is often the case in RPGs, but it is a simple system to guess after the first couple levels. Each level requires double the Calluspoints of the previous.

when you smash a rock at low hp (you have 1HP more than the amount required to smash a rock), the game ignores the smash but takes your HP down to 1

Apologies for this, it is a bug that will be fixed in a future release. Losing HP but not breaking the stone when you have < the required HP will always be the case, but if you in fact have 1 more than is needed, the correct result would be for the stone to break. A fringe case, but one that can be frustrating when it happens, sorry again.

tbh Sandstone was my training ground for RPGM, and I did things in individual events (eg stones)that should have been common events. Over time I've rolled much of the stone behavior into common events, but as each of the hundreds of stones needs to be correctly replaced each time I refine the functions or fix issues like this, it's a slow, methodical process that requires great care.

Another thing, is that each type of rock do not appear to give equivalent rates of HP for points. Some of the rocks are 1 for 1 but others are not.

That's correct, only Hills are 1:1. Harder stones do more damage, and provide a chance at more Chips, but the damage -> Chips ratio is worse for them.

Thanks again for playing, and for your feedback!

No More Lonely Hearts!

Fun times.

The finished Pixel Quilt is wonderful!

Sandstone Review

author=TheRpgmakerAddict
Well done! I'd be caurious to hear other opinions about the game!


Thanks, me too! I always learn much about my games from players, fresh eyes are priceless.

In case you don't get around to revisiting, here's Xinn, the new guy in Sandstone (I named him Xinn instead of Xinos in case you name your wanderer Xinos again someday, there can be only one lol) :

Sandstone Review

I've just uploaded v2.3, an update that carries some changes based on your helpful feedback.

You may recognize the new NPC in Sandstone, and some of his dialog :)

Thanks again!!

Sandstone Review

Thank you so much for taking the time to play through (twice), and for leaving such a detailed review.

YOU ROCK! ha ha :)

I'm elated to hear that you loved the setting, idea, music, gameplay, and choices.

I will carefully consider each of your criticisms, and they will surely help make future versions better.

To address a few specific points:

- Mapping:

Absolutely. They are far from amazing. I'll admit that Sandstone was denied based on map quality alone when I first submitted it here last year, so a lot of additional work has gone into them since, and I will continue to improve this in new versions.

Could you clarify which trees you were able to walk through? Just in case it's the one in Sowthin (Act 3 town) just past the Skystone, this is actually a climbable tree that leads to an encounter.

- Getting stuck if you run out of resources:

This is an intentional possibility, though I apologize that it may have proven anti-fun for you. My primary objective is to provide players with a fun adventure. You described it perfectly with, "this is not a classical rpg, but an action adventure game and in a certain sense also a puzzle". Resource management is a huge part of the puzzle element; without it, there would be little challenge. I'm hopeful that being able to save (almost) anywhere will help balance the difficulty as you pointed out. I did add quite a few resources to reward exploration and reduce difficulty in v2.

And yeah, if you missed the island, it becomes very difficult to smash your way to the end! I'll note that the slime near Nortpost does mention there being three islands, but his slime-rhyme could be easily missed or not understood.

EDIT: Thanks to your description, I see that Puzzle is a better third choice than RPG in my genre tags. There are RPG elements, but they're a small part of a giant puzzle.

- Losing HP when you try to smash a stone without enough HP:

You're correct on this one, it does happen. It's intentional- my reasoning is that your hands get battered whether they can break it or not, but avoiding this does take careful observation of how many Handpoints each type of stone takes, and an eye on your remaining points (another part of the puzzle, if you will). I certainly don't want to be mean to players, but this makes logical sense and fits the brutal land aesthetic so will likely remain.

- More characters, stories, and events:

For sure! Sandstone will always be a short game, I'm not shooting for a 20-30 hour play, but I'd like to eventually get it to a solid 2-3 hours of playtime which calls for a richer world.

Another one of my key objectives is ensuring that there are no gamebreaking bugs, so expansion is admittedly slow and methodical to ensure I can test the hell out of each addition before it's released.

- Herbalists crafting all of your shrubs into Balms:

Great point! I actually changed this from a one-at-a-time approach to a bulk processing approach in v2 to make it more convenient for players. Your feedback helped me see the flaw in this (being forced to go all-in on the expensive vendor), so I'll update this in the future so that you have more control over how many are processed, leaving the option to process all if you wish to fly through it.

Big thanks again for your time and notes!











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