UNITY'S PROFILE

author=Error
So apparently I wrote "a day or two" when I meant "a week or two". That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Wow! This write-up is very detailed and insightful! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts! :DDD

author=Error
I loved it, but didn't know if I would going in. Urban horror isn't my usual genre, and I've never liked front-view Earthbound-style battles as much as side-view FF-style battles, and a save-the-child plot hook is...not an element for which the target audience includes me.

But I do love things that are dark as hell, and there were more than enough horrible things happening to keep my attention, and at some point I started to capital-C Care. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly when, which is a shame because that would probably be useful information.

I'm very glad you were able to get into it, despite it not being your usual cup of tea ^_^

author=Error
The skill system was simplistic on its face, but presented interesting and meaningful choices, which is exactly what a skill system should do. It's a bit awkward to use, but I'm guessing "walk around an abstract map to pick out skills" was a workaround for RPGMaker limitations. It worked well enough and I hope you don't mind if I consider stealing it.

Yeah, that was it exactly, a way to work around limitations, and feel free to steal it for any future projects if you like :D Originally I was going to have you "buy" skills from a shop menu, but that lacked the flexibility I wanted. Tho I have an idea for buying skills from a menu that *might* work that I may try in Luxaren Allure 2 if things go well.

author=Error
There are far too many quality-of-life details to list them all, but they were much appreciated. I'm thinking of things like indicating examinable objects (a feature I remembered from LA), providing maps, the boss warning (no fear of missing missables!), item descriptions that state what can be safely sold (ditto!), recording tutorial information as items for later perusal (a workaround for no in-engine help?), notes about how to rebind the controls, skill descriptions that are actually useful... I'm forgetting a whole host of things, but you've obviously thought hard about routine RPG annoyances and endeavoured to fix them.

Thanks! I'm still trying to find new ways to further improve quality of life, and this game was a learning experience in that regard. For example the maps were added in response to feedback and watching people play. If at all possible, I think having a map function for every dungeon in future games would be really nice.

author=Error
(I do wish there was a way to *interactively* rebind the controls, so I don't have to experimentally figure out which button on my pad corresponds to RPGM's notion of "A" or the game's notion of selection/cancel. But that's a gripe with RPGM, not WaU)

Yeah, that's an issue with VX Ace, I'm hoping newer makers are better about it (I'm working with MZ now, and as the default settings for controllers work for me, I haven't looked into rebinding yet).

author=Error
I'm not sold on the arrangement of enemy types and weaknesses. It's not *bad*, and it's certainly something new, but it usually wasn't obvious why type A had weakness B. Some of them made sense, others didn't, and I couldn't deduce them, only memorize them. Rather than memorize them or keep checking the in-battle help text, I mostly just used area spells to probe weaknesses on the fly.

Yeah, I was really happy with the idea when I came up with it, and some people take to it like a duck to water, but others don't, and now I can see that maybe it wasn't as elegant of an idea as I thought it was initially. Not sure how I can modify it to be better for a possible future WU 2 or spin-off, but I'll keep my thinking cap on.

author=Error
Zlonyth's private rooms and commentary were awesome and I always looked forward to finding them.

I'm glad! :DDD Had a lot of fun with Zlonyth! Huge thanks to Sooz for how Zlonyth talks, I could never have pulled that off without her!

author=Error
Balance:I played on the highest difficulty with a couple of additional handicaps: No selling items and no permanent-stat-boosters. My perception of balance is colored accordingly.

I agree with a lot of what you said in your Balance section. Tho I am curious as to why you decided not to use stat-boosters, as I had hoped they would allow players to tweak characters a bit, such as allowing certain characters to have expanded PSI point pools and adjust physical and psychic damage.

author=Error
Miriam's bullets seemed too rare relative to their worth, and (most of) her spells too expensive. For much of the game, I had trouble finding something for her to do after blinding (and later corroding) everything. Her other options often didn't seem worth the resource expenditure.

I'm not sure what the Right Thing would be here. Maybe expanded bullet effects. As-is, they only end fights faster, they don't help control the battle or otherwise get you out of trouble. Their rarity makes them impractical to combo with Overdrive, and maybe Overdrive itself should have been cheaper. Its opportunity cost is high at the beginning of a fight (where it competes with applying blind and acid one turn earlier), and it takes three turns to turn a "damage profit", and by then you've spent ~100 out of ~150 MP.

Dottie's chess pieces also seemed unusably rare until endgame, but in her case it's justifiable because their benefits are gamechangers.

If there's one thing I took from making and balancing battles in this game, it's that I don't think I want to tie skills to items like this in future games. It makes it way too hard to balance and like you said, Miriam's bullets are often just "battle shorteners."

It doesn't feel right for the kinds of games I make. A lot of things in this game were experimental for me and this is one case where I'm not super happy with the outcome. It doesn't break or ruin the game IMO (which is why they're still in there) but it does influence how I'll approach similar mechanics going forward.

author=Error
Story:

I'm not going to go too in-depth in responding to your story points, but I really enjoyed hearing your thoughts here. Thanks so much for that! :DDDD

As for the one mystery character you mentioned, I in fact did not allow you to save them through any means. In the future I think it *would* be fun to allow you to save a character like that through a very esoteric method, so I'll keep that in mind for future projects.

Also they are exactly who you think they are, tho I did poorly by giving them so little focus in the story before they joined the party. Again, something I hope I can improve on in future games.

author=Error
Margaret's late-game upgrade made me smile. A small nod towards sentimentality. Kind of like taking the Cael Hammer into the last level of Bastion. :-P

Haha, I love doing stuff like that XD

author=Error
Uiroq's presence makes me wonder if this is supposed to be in the same multiverse as LA, or if it's just fan bonus.

I needed a hell-merchant, realized I already had one from LA, and just ran with it. Who knows, maybe the games' netherworlds' are connected somehow. I'll probably use him again if I have another near-hell dungeon that needs a shop XD

author=Error
The school "dungeon" stuck out to me. It felt too long, but it was magnificently creepy. Grade schools creep me out to begin with, so I was primed for it.

Thanks! That dungeon was, in hindsight, waaaaay too big. And it was followed by a Vedim area. It just puts the breaks on the plot in a way that's not good for pacing. I love the place but yeah I went way overboard on its size.

author=Error
The Fool's Key areas (did they have a name?) also got progressively creepier throughout the game and it was great.

Thanks! Those were probably the most fun to make, and I felt like they were a good break from the usual cycle of battles. As for their name, I just call them "Fool's Spaces"

author=Error
I've yet to find the daughter's heart in the final dungeon. I found the clue regarding its hiding place, and I found the door that I think it's behind, but I lack the key and haven't been able to find it.

I've heard nothing about the key from any of the NPCs I can reach. It may be in Makyo, which I haven't explored much yet. I'm debating whether, before putting a lot of time into it, I should replay the game with the language decoding on. It might contain things that would be useful to know.

The Princess Heart, the Blue Face, and the two Triangles were put in as a "I wonder if anyone will find these" sort of thing (and yes, of course people found them, no matter how mysteriously I hid them).

If you want a hint...


Give that to the princess to get that key you are missing. If you want more exact instructions, let me know.

author=Error
Speaking of which, the decodable expanse languages. I *love* the concept (which is unlikely to surprise you, after AD), but never actually tried to decode them. The trouble was that I had no good way to transcribe them for later analysis. I can't copy-paste out of the game; and the letters don't resemble English ones so I can't type them into another window; and I have arthritis, so physically writing them down would be slow and painful. Nevertheless, I wanted to know what they said (I kept expecting them to contain warnings that the evocations were about to betray me, or something), and I'll play again to find out now that I can decode them. I'm not sure what to expect on the scale between "interesting but nonessential material" and "complete reinterpretation of events," but I look forward to finding out.

In retrospect, I should have taken screenshots whenever Expanse text came up; that would have worked just fine for transcription, and I'm pretty sure the language itself is normal English text with a custom font. I puzzled out a few lines along the way just eyeballing it. Oh well, too late now.

Yeah I think screenshots are the ideal way to go. I only found this out recently, but if you're on a window's machine and press the windows button plus Print Screen, it'll save a screenshot of the printed screen directly to a folder in your Pictures folder. Super useful!

If you ever decide to do a second playthrough, you can call up the password screen to input the code to auto-translate the languages by pressing Q as the screen scrolls up to Dottie's house.

author=Error
And, wow. I wasn't expecting to write a thousand words when I started typing, but I'm guessing you won't mind. I'm sure I had more to say, but at least for the moment it's lost in the last two months of memory. This will do for now.

Thanks again for all of your thoughts, it was an enjoyable read! :DDDDD And I'm so glad you ended up playing the game!

I've been doing a lot of brainstorming for an eventual Luxaren Allure 2. No promises yet, but if I can figure out the plot and systems, that may be my next big project! Here's hoping.

author=Liberty
Credits for the awesome goes to Mirak, who is running the event this year!

Well done, Mirak! :DDDDD

I look forward to seeing the entries!

You could make it a list on this site, as I believe there's a built-in functionality.

You could alternatively make it a thread here, or an article. Offsite, I guess a blog might work.

Thanks very much, so glad you loved the game! :DDD

Hope your cold gets better soon!

author=Error
I also just did a double take watching the credits. :-P

Haha, didn't expect that, did you? XD