I just finished the demo and found it quite enjoyable. I loved the setting, story and art. I will be checking this out when you release updates.
Like some others, I also found the combat challenging. I think there were 3 things that I found tedious or annoying.
As others have mentioned before, the combat system is an all or nothing style of combat. I frequently would be able to time 3 out of 4 circle skill challenges and found it disappointing that the result is I take damage and deal none. If it was my game I would try a system where the number of successful challenges work as a damage multiplier. something like: DMG = base DMG * (passed challenges / total challenges). And I would use it for both the player damage and the enemy damage.
As a side effect of the failing combat if you missed one circle, it is possible to miss the first circle and still have more appear that are pointless to succeed or fail at. I think this bothered me the most but If you make a change to fix the fist issue this would also be a non issue.
The last part of combat that bothered me was the success range or area for the circle challenge felt too small to me. This is a minor issue for me though as it did not feel impossible. I think if stayed the same in the full game I would get use to it.
Over all I still liked the innovation to the combat system and am looking forward to seeing what you do with it in the future.
The combat is indeed unforgiving, but it certainly isnât unplayably difficult. Itâs based on the playerâs skill and timing, in the end the only person you can blame for your failings, is you.
If youâre playing a fighting game and failing to do a combo the game is actively showing you, thatâs not the gameâs fault, itâs yours. Itâs on you, the player to adapt to the game, not for the game to adapt to you. There are plenty of games that feel awkward at first, like old school Monster Hunter, but you need to buckle down and hone your skills and muscle memory and get used to it.
For up and down, I just pushed my middle finger down across the buttons.
Great start for a game, and Iâm looking forward to how it develops
Here are my thoughts, and issues I found with the game so far
As mentioned by LordOfGee the change in story from Nora story to chapter one was a bit disjointed from my point of view, I knew there was going to be a time skip as I donât think you wanted us to play as a young character in a game catering to weight gain fetish. But there was no indication that a time skip had happen until you finish the demo and see an adult Nora now a viking warrior. Which brings me to the end of the prologue, your given a choice at the end for Nora and unless that will come into play later it seemed a bit out of place and unneeded.
One question i have is, how is the weight gain going to be handled? Will it be story only gain or be based on player decisions for the story?, or will it be part of the game play loop?
My suggestion for it to be a part of the game play loop is that this being a Viking themed game you would go out in a raiding party and gain supplies to use for your fellow vikings, and these supplies would be used by the player to fatten up NPCâs, also another method would be to send out a NPC raiding party to raid for you and they would come back and auto fatten up all possible NPCâs. The difference being that the auto raiding would be spread out evenly for less weigh gain per NPC, and the player raiding would gather more to fatten up less NPCâs of the playerâs choice. Thatâs my suggestion for a game play loop.
My issue I found with the game is the combat. the QTE is a nice change from mashing âZâ to win all random encounters like in all other RPG Maker games, but I found this combat system was worse because of it. Because itâs qte if your too slow or too fast you fail and take damage, if your computer has any physical issues with the arrow keys from years of use then you might fail because the button pressed was not registered by your computer because the button is too worn to work all of the time, so a extension of the time needed to make the correct button press could help with that issue.
The next issue with combat, you donât see any health bars, either yours or the enemyâs, this make it hard to gauge how many times you might be able to miss the QTE and still win the fight unless after each fight you save and check your HP your going into each fight blind and if you lose you restart from your last save, which will make progress very hard unless you save after each fight and just made me want to skip as many fights as possible to avoid loosing any progress if I forgot to save every five seconds.
Other wise a very promising game and I look froward to see it progress and develop, I like that you used tall sprites of different heights to show character ages and not the box standard default short sprites to display a young character. I wish to ask where you found the resource for both tall sprites as Iâm trying to get into RPG maker myself and you did exactly what I wanted for character sprites.
Sure. But unlike monster hunter, fighting games or dark souls in the which the entire purpose is the combat system and in some cases difficulty/complexity. This is an rpgmaker game. One which the dev has indicated that the prologue being over tuned. Iâm all for difficulty, challenge or something having a learning curve/ time investing in order to learn and master a system. This didnât feel intended and the point of the game. So I played for an hour gave it a chance and then chose to give some feedback based on my experience.
The game being made in RPG Maker has nothing to do with what it is or itâs difficulty.
The difficulty being overtuned comes from their being too many circles at one point or it going too quickly.
Your complaints werenât about that, your complaints was just that it was hard to read and âPutting my fingers like is awkward.â It might have been a bit faster than it should, but it still falls to you to learn, adapt, and improve. The game isnât going to hold your hand and pleasantly guide you through out.
Iâm sure the speed will be toned down, but the âreadabilityâ, controls, and your other complaints really come down to you.
Disagree, its not always the playerâs fault, some QTEâs can be set way to high by mistake if the programmerâs hardware is better then the userâs, or if they think 3 seconds is too generous of a time limit. and some QTEâs can be very hard intentionally to create fake difficulty, look at 90% of game reviews with QTEâs in those games and all of those reviews will complain about the QTE in some way
Fighting games donât use QTE for its comboâs, it relies on combined inputs from the user to carry out its actions, and the slightest error can ruin a combo, fighting games controls are based on old arcade machines that only had a joystick and two buttons to work with, the first fighting game combo was a glitch caused by mashing buttons too fast for the game to react to
and on the topic of old school monster hunter games which combat was easier to what it is now, the old games it was âAttack, then dodge, attack, then dodgeâ repeat until monster falls down dead. This combat is not as simple as other games QTEâs, in other games QTEâs are part of the cut scene to keep the player engaged, and if you fail it then you would just do it again until you passed it, here if you fail to QTE you take damage and take enough you get a game over and have to restart from your last save which if that was not just before that fight you have to redo all of the lost progress again.
Right now the combat is less of combat and more of a cut scene, other then the player reacting to the QTE thereâs no indication that the player is making an attack and so far its only that the player is countering the enemies attacks⌠thatâs kind of boring for a game, if combat was taking turns attacking where if you missed up your attack QTE the enemy took less damage, and if you messed up the enemies attack qte attack you would take more damage. Right now if you fail the qte you just take damage and if you keep failing you lose the fight completely, its almost more unforgiving then a souls like game as you play those games the enemies actually get too strong for you to handle and that was the point, you had to learn the how combat worked in those games or you just lose
you losing a fight because you pushed a button too fast or too slow is not forgiving.
Sorry for the rant but your trying to compare apples to oranges and saying that both are the same thing
I had more posts and more feedback than what you are indicating, but it honestly doesnât matter. Iâm not here to argue with someone whose advice basically boils down to âget goodâ you only have yourself to blame. The dev asked for feedback within the first post, and I played and gave it. End of story. If I was the only person to have an issue with the combat system than that is one thing. But many people have said varying degrees of the combat system is frustrating/needs some work. @Seren is already balancing it and at the end of the day I will try it out again.
I agree with @Krodmandoon about the combat system, because you have to ask yourself this; âhow can the dev make combat harder later on in the game?â would they make it harder by requiring the player to learn to see the future and predict what button they must hit and when? or will they make so that players must use both hands to push four buttons at once? If each fight was scripted and plays out the exact same every time then sure its the playerâs fault for not seeing the pattern and memorizing it, but no two fights with the same enemy are the same, I know I died to the fight at the end of the prologue three times because I went back to it to check something at the end of the chapter
Alright, I spent about an hour and a half on the Seer Fight. Whatâs the trick? I got it to phase 2, got about 5 or 6 rotations in before I keeled over in agony. I cleared the final attack when the character tried to surrender during a different run to no avail, so at this point Iâm just frustrated at what win condition there is (The reason why Iâm doing this is because I really want to know what happens, and Iâm also a glutton for difficult systems apparently).
The Web Mechanic is quite almost an instant loss just because it messes with timing, even in phase 1. A suggestion would be to either make it itâs own attack (Maybe make it a quick constitution check? I donât know if you can insert that into combat, but might be cool) or delay the next attack for a few seconds to clear it, although I donât know if thatâd help or not. Also a quick pop-up on what the mechanic does would be nice since it took me like 15 tries to figure it out.
As for the attacks themselves, I actually liked them, despite how difficult they are to hit/ time. My favorite is the 3 key press attacks, but as Krod pointed out, itâs a bit of a rough learning curve to hit them without prior practice. I donât know how easy it is to implement remapping buttons, but if itâs within reason then Iâd highly recommend it.
thereâs about 6-7 total before youâre looped back into being fed by the seer regardless. unless you have fingers of steel I wouldnât recommend doing it manually. I started feeling physical pain by stage 5 and ended up having to use a macro. 10/10 would force feed again
Even if some parts of the game is made easier. I must say I really enjoy fighting the optional âeliteâ enemies like the dark boar and bear. Its fun to be challanged, and it was fun to feel my skill improve as I went trough the game.
-----List of bugs I found
-Chicken outside of the Jarls house has a chance to interrupt the pathing of other events in a scene, softlocking the game.
-The holy man leader has the top of his head cropped out when ridding his horse.
-Log with shiny event on it near bear cave cant be interacted with.
-0g found in intro chapter.
Game Update v0.1.1 - Damage Overhaul and bug fixes:
Changes:
Player can now partially succeed attacks, and deal reduced damage. 50% successes are needed to deal damage.
Enemies now deal damage in proportion to how many failures the player accumulates
Floating damage numbers reflect whether the attack was a success, partial success, or failure.
Combat encounter difficulty has been adjusted to account for these changes.
The combat encounters in the prologue area âGuildhaven Outskirtsâ have been toned down significantly.
The circle asset for the combat minigame has been redrawn to provide stronger contrast.
Bugfix: Abidaâs sprite can no longer be found in her room after the Atla encounter
Bugfix: Fixed some typos
Bugfix: The chickenâs pathing can no longer cause issues with village cutscenes, it will also not block entrances.
Bugfix: âThrallâ lorepage in the forest is no longer uninteractable.
Bugfix: Reward that gave â0gâ now gives the intended reward.
Itâs possible, but completely unnecessary. I developed them expecting players to lose both, but itâs possible to earn a few token textboxes remarking upon the success if the player still gets it. Donât give yourselves carpal tunnel syndrome please
The seer fight is intended to have a shock & awe element in that it bombards you with a series of attacks that you arenât prepared to deal with. A tutorial explaining the mechanic would kill the tension of the scene, imo. Iâll look for ways to explain the mechanic to the player when itâs encountered later in the game, and I might use some of these suggestions then.
Every enemy chooses randomly from a pool of attacks (Usually a small handful 1-3). These attacks can have random elements to them, such as which button they start off on, but they are predictable to a point. Attacks that canât be reacted to easily (feints, charges⌠to use the prologue as an example) give the player a tell first.
Kink will mostly be introduced as a story element, but there are mechanics that are influenced by the charactersâ sizes.
Yeah, Iâve had this thought. Iâm considering solutions, but I didnât implement one for the initial release.
I have to say, I havenât enjoyed the start to a new game like I did this one for quite a while. It even made me stop lurking and make an account!
Itâs always nice seing more nordic inspired games and if you combine that with fat girls, you get a combo I never knew I needed but now desperately crave more of. The unique mechanics of this game are definintely a nice change of pace from the usual turn-based combat RPGâs we see and I like where the story is going.
The only real concern for the game I have going forward is with the button mashing minigames and specifically the one linked to the stuffing scene at the end. I recently injured my shoulder which made it pretty hard to spam the up key as much as I would be able to normally without putting a lot of strain on it. This was mostly fine during normal gameplay since I could do the normal button mashing oneâs just fine with my non dominant hand but felt pretty hopeless during the stuffing one at the end where I couldnât get very far at all and it feeling kinda annoying after a while. Thankfully the mashing isnât required to actually complete the scene and move on but it kinda sucks knowing that youâre missing out on dialogue just because you physically canât press that fast (from what has been posted I would imagine that the only way to beat it is either with great strain or using both hands, which kinda defeats the point of it being a kink scene). This plus the fact that doing this every time you wish to re-view the scene which could definitely get tedious very quickly makes me hope that there will be an option to skip/auto complete the button mashing or make it significantly easier during story scenes and any other fetish content like this both for accessibily as well as a better replay experience.
That said, despite the lengthy section about my concerns, I am still immensly looking forward to the future of this game as well as itâs characters and wish all people involved with itâs development great luck going forward!
My going design philosophy when it comes to the skill minigames is to keep them easy. Theyâre mostly there to add some variety to the gameplay, and to give you another purpose for getting your stats up.
I might revisit that specific scene, because Iâm worried Iâll give people carpal tunnel syndrome lmao.
You donât really miss out on anything too sweet if you mess up the minigame. Itâs at most a chatbox or two per stage, but the real meat of the scene is whatâs available to everyone even if you fail early on with the CON minigame. The idea behind it was just to make the stuffing scene more interactive, and the button mash seemed the most appropriate. In hindsight, it probably doesnât seem intuitive to the player to let themselves fail.
Hearing that the minigames will be kept on the easier side is certainly reassuring! While I didnât expect to fail the stuffing scene if I couldnât complete it, a re-work for that one specifically would certainly still be appreciated since there is probably plenty of overly stubborn people (me included if my shoulder wasnât injured) who would self inflict themselves with carpal tunnel just for the sake of some fluff dialogue lol. It would also just make it much more convenient and less tedious to replay that scene in case you wish to have the fluff dialogue included.
