Hello, MadLad224 here, back after a long break and I present to you…
An inflation focused rpg!
It’s got combat, quests, a semi-open world and a lot of lore to uncover.
Check out some pre-release footage:
You can play right now, pre-release version is on patreon - patreon.com/MadLad224
Check out my other free projects here: https://madlad224.itch.io/
Very good base you have here, leaves plenty of room to expand on, dohoho.
I’m sure you have plenty of plans laid out already for new additions, so instead of going ‘it would be cool if there was ___’, I wanna throw out some ideas to add onto what already exists to perhaps glean some inspiration from at your leisure.
(Spoilers I guess, we’ll spoil ‘em just in case.)
Looking forward to more!!
Thanks for the suggestions! I actually really like your idea of status stacking, it’d make it a lot easier to balance grounding poppy rarity in a way
Saw the teasers, love how it looks so far. I wonder if other methods of expansion would be present?
Yes! I have many types of expansion planned, their order of implementation will be voted on via patreon. The nearest update themes are blueberry, breast expansion, and some other third option I haven’t decided on yet
I have one idea for a throwable item that makes opponents dizzy, once dizzy, it could open up the option for puffkissing!
All of your previous games have been absolutely amazing. I just wanted to start out by saying that because my criticism here might come off as a bit harsh without that context. I don’t want you to end up discouraged. Some of these things might be fixed in the full game, but I don’t want to assume that. So better to point them out now than risk them being missed. I’ll kind of go through in order of what people will likely experience in the game rather than order of importance. Skipping past the main menu and starting with character creation (because the menu doesn’t have anything that stands out too much and isn’t worth focusing on this early into development). First off, I like the pronouns options separate from body types. And it’s good that you can adjust the ratios of human enemies to your preferences. It’d be good if it clarified what is considered to be furry features and had more customization in terms of levels of extremity, but still an overall good system. The skin menu is a little bit clunky to actually use. It’d benefit greatly from having preset colors, with the custom color as an additional option. At the moment, you kind of need to use external tools and then copy the hex code to get any real degree of control over color. (Speaking of. This one isn’t necessary for the game, but there’s a lot less variety of skin tones among NPCs than in your previous games. It’d be nice to see that variance again). The rest of character creation is fine. It doesn’t need to be much more as you aren’t looking that closely at your character most times. The character models look a little bit awkward, but I suppose that comes with the modularity. It would be great if there was a little more room for player control to justify the modularity, but the system is serviceable.
When it comes to actually playing the game, the spacebar button doesn’t actually skip dialogue. This isn’t an issue for first playthroughs, but the save naming system implies encouragement of multiple playthroughs. And repeated unskippable dialogue does not serve that goal. The dialogue itself is good (although if you need additional volunteers for writing, I have someone I can point you towards). The only real other issue is technical (the color codes flash on screen for a moment until completed as they generate the text one character at a time). The technical errors are mildly awkward, but not game breaking.
I’ve gone through a lot of the minor issues and am about to get into the real meat. But before I do, I just want to say. I don’t really think that these issues come from individual error. But an open world rpg is very much not compatible with indie development. It is inherently going to be much more challenging because it’s a format that inherently relies on a lot of content, while also needing technical skill to make work. Open world is make or break on how big they actually are. It’s really hard to do them with just an indie team, let alone a singular person.
Both the gamefeel and the game loop are extremely lacking. One of your best strengths is small games with an extremely satisfying gameplay loop. While you might experience all the content quickly, they’re immensely replayable. I don’t want to discourage you from making this, because I think it’s great for creatives to explore, but this is essentially the opposite of that. There’s a lot to look at, but it’s not satisfying to get there. The game is all friction. Friction is an important game development tool that modern devs (especially at big studios) are seemingly scared of. They don’t want to alienate any players. But it has to be used carefully. It’s good when a game is somewhat antagonistic to the player, but there’s nothing beyond the antagonism (aside from the admittedly still hot scenarios). Traversal is extremely unsatisfying. The game doesn’t need to have a unique traversal method, but it’s one of the best ways to justify a big world. It won’t matter how empty it feels if it’s fun to just go around the place. But the only real options are to walk or to hold down the sprint button while walking. Maybe even occasionally dashing. And there’s nothing to really do along the way, just obstacles. Nothing particularly interesting to look at in most places (only ones of note are the farm and the watch tower). Nothing that really makes you want to explore. Just signals saying “don’t go here”. Those thorny balloon plants that inflict you with helium poisoning if you touch them. (And helium poison isn’t particularly interesting to engage with as it’s either instantly solved with an item or a game over). Essentially blocking off significant portions of the map if you don’t want to be slowed down while going through them. A good tool for keeping the player on track, but there’s not much on the actual track. That is, aside from enemies. Another obstacle. And this actually wouldn’t be much of an issue. But combat is extremely unsatisfying due to the lack of depth. You get one basic attack with a visible cooldown. The attack requires you to get in extremely close due to the small and awkward hitbox. So you either have to wait for enemies to do their basic attacks just out of range and then one-shot them during their cooldown, or get in before their attack and one-shot them. And if you use your dodge to try and do that quicker, you leave yourself at risk to other enemies. And basically all enemies appear in groups. Once again, friction isn’t inherently bad, but there’s nothing to look forward to beyond that friction. There’s no actual rewards for taking down enemies and there’s nothing to master for intrinsic motivation. And if you start fighting and end up having to dodge into the aggro range of other enemies, you can very easily get overwhelmed. Clumsy combat is fine as an intentional choice early game. “This person just dropped in the world and has no idea how to fight”, but that feeling needs to go as the player progresses. The game would benefit greatly from something as simple as a basic combo. Anything to allow for skill expression or mix up gameplay. There’s a lot of routes to go. Whether it’s a basic numbers game of stat builds and trying to damage sponge while you out-DPS enemies (not my thing, but it’s a kind of gameplay). Or the action route where you chain abilities and/or items together. The game feels like an open world rpg that doesn’t know why it’s an open world rpg. Which is a problem a lot of AAA games have that gets brushed over with high technical design or pretty graphics. But without engaging combat or traversal, the only real motivator for play is fantasy. And this game does absolutely get that part right, but it would objectively benefit from being smaller with everything closer together. Even the town has two different stores for selling ingredients you don’t need and adventurer IDs. But with the smithy, there’s nothing really worth buying. (The ropes would be useful if you could tie someone down somewhere with them, but with how restrictive they are while being single use, they’re effectively just a novelty item. Potentially an annoying quest item that requires you to avoid engaging with the other features the game has).
There were other minor issues (both technical errors and design) and some critiques of quest design, but this is already long enough for now. I also had some ideas for solutions to the seeming lack of interactivity, but my philosophy is that players are amazing for identifying problems, but awful for identifying solutions. So I’ll keep those to myself for now to avoid distraction. But if this long critique didn’t turn you off, feel free to ask for any additional thoughts I have. I wish I had more positive things to intersperse, but a lot of the nice things about this game don’t actually shine due to interfering aspects. This early alpha version would mostly benefit from removing content, which isn’t a great place to be. I wish you all the best with development, because it’s certainly going to be a challenge.
Thank you for your feedback, you bring up some very valid points I haven’t seen anyone point out yet.
Without going into much detail - I agree, most of the design and systems are “just enough” to work, but need improvement. My internal update roadmap very much takes that into consideration and I plan on addressing the core gameplay and design before moving on to expanding the content.
And absolutely feel free to share any other issues you found with the game, the game lacks a proper feedback form (which is on the to do list), so I appreciate your input!
I’ll definitely try and get back to you next weekend after playtesting the game again. Want to give a review with details fresh in my mind rather than risk mixing imaginary issues with real issues.
