Tough call. I find the first much more appealing, although I hate the shade of yellow used in it. The first seems like it might fit your game better, though...so I'll say 1.

I do think it could be rearranged a bit, though. It's just personal opinion, obviously, but I feel like the face is cut off in a strange spot and should either be lowered or raised slightly. I'd probably go with "lowered" since there isn't a lot of room to lift it up and it might give it an intriguing/mysterious look with the mouth mostly hidden.

-Closing eyes is designed around screen-cheating. We've seen players put it to good use, though we have found many players don't immediately understand it.

I thought that might be the case, but closing eyes completely seems pointless as you can't see the other player either. With the gamepad, I can close my eyes partially. Maybe the keyboard should eye-closing should stop before closing all the way. That way, it's harder for someone to see where you are, but you can still see them if they get in front of you.

-Resolutions, hmm. What is your screen resolution?

1920x1080, so I would've expected 1280x720 to fit nicely or at least be widescreen.

The computer tells you to shoot at the drone but not to hit it directly (I forget the exact wording, but it's something to that effect). I fired at the ground below it multiple times before shooting it out of frustration and realizing I was supposed to. I imagine this is the same reason some of the other people didn't think of shooting the drones.

As for the aiming, that multi-character thing explains the up/down control but I still think it would make more sense with the controls switched since this isn't a flight game. Up should aim higher (ie. aim up). Maybe you could even give the player the choice.

I disagree on the too heavy chance-basedness of the game though. Poker and Mario Kart have scores, despite having huge luck components...I definitely want the game to support competitive play in form of a scoring system - just don't know what route to take with it.

Well, I personally hate the idea of being scored based on something I don't have control over. If the game had more of a skill component (and I realize it might later) then all right, but not if it's almost entirely unpredictable "luck". You can probably tell I'm not a big gambler.

There's something to be said for a person's ability to adapt to situations, though. Maybe rather than counting turns, you should just keep track of time. People who want a high score will need to be able to rush without making bad decisions, so the score will be at least partially based on skill.

Another approach would be to emphasize a gambling style of gameplay. Maybe you have to pay your adventurers. If you choose how much to pay for each quest, then every quest is a risk. You don't want to pay too much for something that will kill them because then you won't get anything out of it. In this case, I guess the score would be based on how much money you can make.

Open-world gameplay sounds like it could be a good idea for this sort of thing. I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Procedurally-generated quests...I don't know. As I said in my first reply to this post, the draw of the game seems to be the dialogue since the character doesn't have any direct control over things. I'm not sure procedurally-generated content works well with that. I actually feel like the game should be more hand-crafted, not less.

A "well thought out, branching quest structure where there are many designed paths through the game" sounds great. Some procedural side-quests as filler could potentially be all right, but I don't think the majority of the game should be like that.

I'm not a fan of score in an RPG-like game, but maybe you can make it work. Why do you feel like it needs to be there? To me, it feels like the game is far too luck/chance-based for any sort of score to feel fair.

The tutorial and initial cutscenes were pretty great.

I do wish that I could skip through dialogue faster with spacebar, though. Personally, I tend to prefer it when one button press makes all the text appear instantly and the second goes to the next but of dialogue (if possible).

There seems to be a delay after the text appears before the spacebar does anything.

The sound of the ship "landing" occurred before it actually touched down.

I really like the art. There are some really great little touches too, like the grass growing on blocks.

Aiming shots feels a bit weird. I kept wanting to use left/right and then when I reminded myself to use up and down it still felt off because up makes the character aim lower.

I tried to trap a drone and it escaped. That AI caught me by surprise. Pretty cool.

I died on level 1 in a strange and slightly-frustrating way. I had been building a bridge to get over the last drone before I found out that it could destroy it. I fell down the hole and started shooting at the wall to get through. The drone caught up to me and hit me so my last shot never fired and I got crushed by the screen. Also, the drone was "rescued" by attacking me.

I didn't feel like doing the whole level again because there's so much waiting. I would love it if the "walking" speed doubled.

This is a really good game. I'd probably play a lot more if there wasn't so much down-time waiting for the spacebar to respond or for the character to move. I love the character everything has. The writing is really good and the concept works great. I didn't encounter any noticeable bugs or slowdown.

Ok. Here are my notes. I didn't have anyone to try multiplayer with, so I missed out on what sounds like a fairly unique aspect of the game. Oh well.

-I was happy to see that there was a proper singleplayer option.

-I like the music.

-I like the menus and the interface. I didn't encounter any technical issues. Some buttons and text felt overly small (especially when trying to get my resolution set up in the first place), but it wasn't too bad. I would like to see some shortcuts put in place, though. For example, if I flip through interface pages and reach the last one then I should probably be able to continue and end up on the first page without having to go all the way back through the pages. Another thing that would be very nice is mouse-wheel control in the inventory window.

-Is there any way to open up the options in-game? I got into the game and realized I wanted to adjust my brightness and mouse speed, but at the time I couldn't see how to do it without quitting. I didn't spend too long on that, though.

-I would've liked some sort of highlight or hovering item name or something to show that I'm in range and able to grab/use the object I'm looking at.

-The voices and laughter sound really weird to me. I went and listened to some of the OGG files after playing and things like "GoblinSpot-01" just sound like a distorted human rather than any sort of non-human creature. Maybe that's just because I have preconceived notions of what a goblin should sound like. I mostly got used to it after 20min or so, but I'm not sure it'll ever sound right to me.

-When fighting a rat, the music stopped as soon as I attacked it and started again after the extremely quick battle. I never even got to hear the combat music because it didn't last long enough. Maybe it should start as soon as you see the enemy, rather than when the fighting actually begins.

-I seemed to get killed by a goblin warrior even though he wasn't swinging his weapon at the time. I felt like I was getting hurt out of nowhere with other enemies, but that was the first that I was sure was not attacking at the time. Maybe something snuck up on me, though.

-Brightness settings would be nice. I couldn't see anything half the time. I realize it's probably meant to be fairly dark, but it felt like it was a bit excessive, at least on my monitor.

-Moving around in the world feels pretty good, although moving backward or strafing feels useless. Combat seems almost entirely luck- and armor-based.

-I like the art style for the most part. There are tons of dead-ends, though. I also encountered a lot of locked doors that I could just walk around, and I cleared and explored a floor without ever finding a single key or the ladder. Maybe it was just too dark. I wandered into a chest in the dark that just looked like a piece of wall or something at first.

-Is there some way to know how encumbered I am, or am I just supposed to feel slow and realize it?

-Have you considered some sort of "scatter" button to let the player spread out items that are overlapping one another (or just do it automatically)? I'm thinking I must've missed a key in one of the piles I avoided picking up (because I was already nearly over-encumbered and had good stuff).

-This is not exactly game feedback, but I really like your logo and the bit of music that accompanies it. It may be one of my favourites ever.

I kinda liked Barony. The darkness really makes it difficult to see ladders, chests, pickups, walls...or anything else, but it's not a bad game. I really felt the urge to explore the areas that were actually lit and wanted to travel to other floors.

Your link to the download page is broken. It's got an "s" added to "download".

I'll likely be trying this out later, but I thought I'd mention that right away.

Stand-alone player: 60fps (constant)
Chrome: 55-60fps (fluctuating like crazy)
Firefox: 40fps (constant)
Safari: 40fps (constant)
Internet Explorer 9: 60-61fps (fluctuating constantly)

Wow...IE ran faster than the others? That's...crazy.

Anyway, I don't use Flash for anything, so I have no idea why it would be like that. You may want to try making the movement frame-rate independent, though. It looked a bit choppy in Firefox and Safari. Chrome, despite the fluctuations, actually felt really smooth.

As for the gameplay, I found myself wishing that the planets had a little more pull. A lot of the time, I missed them by a small enough amount that I thought I'd be pulled toward them but I wasn't. In another case, I went into orbit around a planet but the screen scrolled over and killed me. I wish the screen moved a little more slowly, or at least started off that way.

Apart from the frame-rate stuff, I didn't encounter any technical issues.

I just played through the prologue and found it pretty enjoyable for the most part. I decided to PM you the notes I made, since they're quite long.

I'm wondering if this type of experience (non-reliable healing) puts people off or adds flavor to the game.

Personally, I think if the rest of the game felt more balanced then this wouldn't be that much of an issue. In any case, you should really change the text so that nobody will say they got a "free heal" if they weren't actually healed at all.

Actually, if you roll a good enough character you might just breeze through the whole game with one character without much of a challenge

That's a big part of what I mean when I talk about balance. When you first roll a character, they probably shouldn't vary too much each time you play. Maybe some other party members should have some unbalanced skills, so they each have a very clear use, but the first character's abilities should probably be relatively predictable.

I feel like I'm missing something. Do you expect people to pay $15 to give you feedback? Is there a demo somewhere, or will there be one?

The graphics look really good, although the cars in the first screenshot look very, very clean, smooth and slightly plastic. I like the enemy designs and the fact that it doesn't all take place at night, which seems fairly uncommon for this sort of game these days. The interface is visually appealing too.

The cinematic trailer felt slightly "off" to me, like the music and footage didn't quite mesh well enough, but I thought the style was good. It was nice to get a close-up look at the enemies.

I like the music, especially in the non-combat video (Actually, I really love that track), but in the combat gameplay video it overpowers the weapon sounds far too much making them sound weak. The sounds themselves seem quite good, but they're just too muted.

It seems pretty good, as far as I can tell. I can't think of anything else to comment on at the moment.

It wasn't italic? Why was the title-screen font not slanted while the "cutscene" font was?

I might give it another go later to see how the changes turned out.

I'm most interested in singleplayer, or at least bots. I didn't even bother downloading it since I have nobody to play it with.

From the screenshots, I like the ship designs and the font you're using. The powerups look a bit out-of-place, for some reason. They just seem to stand out so much more than anything else.

Anyway, seems like it could be good. I would've tried it instantly if it had a singleplayer mode.

As strange as this may seem, I think I liked the old art better. I dislike how the main character and the enemies use completely different art styles.

Also, the new sprites for the main character seem to show bugs in the movement code. For example, if I aim up at an angle with the machine-gun recoil pushes me back but I also end up switching to a different pose for a few frames.

I agree that the difficulty is too steep. I don't think I came close to completing any objectives. Also, with the "collect # coins" objective, I didn't see a lot of coins. It seemed I had to last so much longer than I'd expect to with that sort of objective.

I didn't have anyone to play with, but I wanted to try it anyway because of the visuals.


-I really love the look of it and the way people can hide in their respective colors. It's great.

-Is closing my character's eyes useful in any way?

-I really like the sound effects. The flapping cloth sounds, in particular, are great.

-Is there any way to quit a level? I had to Alt-F4 just to quit so I could try a different area.

-I randomly tried three different resolutions (1280x800, 1280x720 and 1600x900). Only the last one showed up properly. The first two came out looking like 4:3, which seemed quite strange. It might just be my computer doing weird things, though.

-The visible mouse cursor is a bit irritating. I imagine it'd be much worse if I was the other player, having the cursor move across my view all the time.

-The default movement speed feels really slow. I found myself using the sword in order to actually move at a decent pace, but of course I can't do that often.

This is a really cool game. I think the quitting and the cursor need to be changed urgently, but everything else seems to work quite well. It's amazing how quickly you can get used to seeing a two-color world in 3D. I started one level and didn't understand it at all when I first saw it, but within seconds I was moving around it easily.

Is there any chance at all that you'll add singleplayer bots at some point?

I'm happy to help.

About the in-game font, my only issue is the italics. I like the font itself and it's easy to read on the title screen, but as soon as a slant is added to the characters the words can become much harder to make out.

#5 - This is the misleading part. You're using two different systems at different times, which means that players will have to try everything just in case. If I'm told that sparkles show that I can interact with something, then the rope doesn't stand out to me because it has no sparkle. If I'm told that an exclamation mark shows I'm near something useful, I have to wander around trying everything because nothing looks particularly useful.

#6 - I think all the non-tent buildings have grass in their doorways. If you walk up to a building and open the door, you'll see grass where the door was instead of flooring like there should be. It might seem like a small thing, but changing this will make the buildings seem like they have more substance/depth.

The screenshots weren't particularly appealing since they just look like most other RPG Maker games, but the list of features you gave made it sound intriguing.

-There are typos right from the start with "Unfortuante" and the structure of that sentence isn't really correct either.

-The music you chose is decent.

-I didn't like that I couldn't walk over a what appeared to be just a few pieces of paper on the floor.

-I like the idea of the exclamation mark, but I feel like usable items should still sparkle or something. As it is right now, seeing the exclamation mark seems to just mean I have to randomly press Space at near single object in the area.

-Some items look like they can be picked up, but can't (the helmet and the necklace) while others, like the journal, can be picked up but don't make the exclamation mark appear.

-It looks really weird to see grass in the space when I open the door of a building from the outside.

-It seems like a lot of the objects in the game exist solely to get in the way of the player. I don't enjoy the way RPG Maker characters handle, so having to maneuver around things constantly wasn't fun.

-There are some misleading graphics. My main issue was with holes in walls that are big enough to enter but are non-interactive and static ropes that use the same sprite as the one you picked up earlier. I realize you didn't make all the graphics, but you can still choose to use them in a different way.

-Bug? The rope respawned when I left the area and returned.

-Bug: Sometimes the exclamation mark still appears even when I've taken the object it was calling attention to.

-Bug: The pink-hair girl who is found unconscious turns into a completely different person when you interact with her.

It's an intriguing game. I like how the world feels, but I have trouble getting into RPG Maker games because I hate how they feel to control. I may still try it a bit more later, though because I do want to see more of the story and I'm curious how you've implemented a "simple stealth system".

I love the background art in this game.

-I think the menu needs some visual feedback. I wasn't sure if it was working at first because things my cursor hovered over didn't get highlighted, underlined or anything.

-I'm not a fan of the text style in the game. Italics combined with cursive made some of the words difficult to make out.

-This really looks like a game that should have an amazing piano soundtrack. Any chance of that? I do like the atmospheric sounds you've included, though.

-There should always be a way to quit to the menu, or to get back to the "level select" screen.

-The game really needs a "mute sounds" button, and I would recommend changing the Pastimes background sound. Endless church bells get annoying very, very quickly (at least, in my opinion). I actually quit at that point because of the sound.

-I would recommend mentioning that the cards have to be dragged, not just clicked. If you want an explanation that doesn't mention actual controls, consider "Place one card atop its match" or something like that. I don't like that the Instructions page mentions blank cards, since that element doesn't seem to exist here.

-I found it very strange that the cards reset if you get something wrong. Then you just have to go through the motions again. I didn't find that enjoyable, but I suppose some people would.

-It might be a good idea to shrink the collision boxes on the cards. It seems like it would be too easy to accidentally bump into a card you don't want while dragging one.

-I really like how finishing a level unlocks bits of story.

-The menu doesn't smoothly fade all the way into the Instructions page. I think the fades in general are a bit slow. Also, the initial loading of the menu takes a few seconds for me and it's just grey before the title screen appears. It would be nice if there was an image in place from the beginning.