Hi,
Have been following development of this for a while but not had a chance to try it till now! I really liked the HoMaM series (especially 2) so am interested to see games with similar battle systems!
Here's some feedback from playing around a bit, firstly some really minor menu stuff which may or may not be of use but I like messing with UI so gave it a playaround
- the scrollbar for changing resolution was really slow to move with the mouse wheel
- going from fullscreen to windowed and back again seemed to occasionally lead to the contrast being really dark (I dunno if that's to do with the 'enhance contrast' setting but it was ticked the whole time as far as I could see)
- I think I backed out of the options with discard and it reverted to original settings on starting the game of max resolution and fullscreen. It'd perhaps be more usual if it discarded only changes just made on that screen and not go all the way back to the original settings? I think this also doubled up the resolution options so there were two lots to choose from.
- On the new game options, the text for some of the skills in tooltips is cut off by the edge of the screen (this seemed to be in both window and fullscreen mode)
- Really like the detail on the character models. Perhaps a bit of a shame not to be able to rotate them on that screen? I first expected the arrows at the bottom for choosing monster to be rotation and not changing the type.
- The intro scroll was a bit slow, felt like I would like to have nudged it along a bit faster. Similarly when interacting with the first guy the speed of his text is cool for players who take their time but would be nice to have an option to fast scroll. (found out that enter speeds the dialogue along a bit later which is good).
- Really like the art ingame, it's pretty clear what everything is and the UI is nice and minimal. It perhaps loses a bit of the 3d spectacle from the camera not being able to zoom in or move around but I guess that is intentional to have a better handle on just having the graphics you want on screen and nothing else....
- I left it running for an hour while I went out, when I came back the music was still playing but the menu to resume seemed inactive. Alt-tabbing away and back again seemed to fix it. I've got powersave settings on my monitor so maybe that affected it?
- It might be nice to have the numpad keys work for selecting dialogue options seeing as they are nearer to the enter key?
- Would possibly be nice to have keyboard shortcuts to open the options during combat (spellbook/inventory/summon), couldn't find any existing ones...
- In combat, felt like I would have liked to see numbers for my creatures' health when hovering the mouse over it or perhaps hovering over the portrait bottom left.
- Found the icons on the top left a bit confusing at first, though they might be different units I had to fight? Perhaps an arrow between each would help clear up that they are turn order?
- The color for XP gained on the victory is quite a bright blue, found it a bit hard to read and perhaps a bit small? It'd probably also nice to see a progress bar at this point to get some sense of how close to levelling up a creature you are.
- On second battle I found the turn order top left a bit confusing. It seemed to suggest I would have two turns but I only got one?
- On third battle I noticed the turn count says 10, so it doesn't reset after each battle? (It also has a semi-colon where perhaps a colon would look better or just having a gap?)
- I dunno how serious you want to make the game, it seems more that way than a typical Japanese RPG, but wonder if a victory anim would be good as it doesn't feel like much of a celebration for winning currently.
- With other turnbased games there's normally a way to mouseover an enemy to see their movement to ensure that you can move just out of their range and strike next turn. I couldn't find a way to do this, not sure if you wanted to leave it more vague?
- With the single one on one fights, every time the enemy attacks, they tend to change position, is there a positional advantage to doing so like critical hits from behind?
- After levelling up my creature was a bit surprised to see his health was still damaged (I plead ignorance to how pokemon/homam do this from memory) but in other games typically level up would max their health?
- Leading on from that, I wasn't sure how or if I could recover his health as on the starting island (ah and then I picked up a health potion
). Is the game intended to be an attrition based one so you have to cycle creatures or use health pots? Perhaps my opinion will change further along but felt like I prefer the option of using inventory items out of combat if possible to heal creatures.
- Consumable tutorial started with the text already partly scrolled down, possibly it remembering it's previous position?
- The first (tutorial?) island seems a relatively wide open space, found it alright if a little repetitive and sparse in terms of landmarks. Finding enemies on it was a tad hard too because it was difficult to know where i'd been and there was no indication of enemies from a given direction. I dunno if this changes later, but it might be nice to have some kind of motion scanner like in aliens that flashes up when there's something in a particular direction?
- With the combat animations, they are alright but feels like they need a bit more oomph/dynamism to them. When the player's creature launches into a combo attack, perhaps there should be some sparkle or quick text popup?
- After finishing the fights on the island and having a little scour around I had to make it all the way back to the start with nothing to do... Feels a bit odd pacing, I wonder if maybe it'd be possible to click on the npc on the map and it would bring you back to that point (assuming there's no danger of random encounters to avoid?)
- on the journey screen, 'I only had captain Memnon to talk *to* and', I think the starred bit needs adding and possibly capitalising Captain?
- the selection area for right clicking seems to be limited to the bottom half of the unit, might be nice to change the cursor to have a question mark to indicate right click will do something?
- after getting to the island I chose to go to another island with a beach and crabs on it. Tried fighting them and found they were way too tough and I had no items to recover the health of my 1 creature (I perhaps didn't really look enough but is there a runaway option?). The crabs had a full screen attack that went through my creature's health quick before I even closed range with one. It would possibly be good to have an indicator for tough fights? And perhaps also an indicator showing the attack range on enemies?
- I gave up at that point for now as it didn't seem to have any game to reload and then at the start menu it said there was one to load but I think it was a fair bit earlier (could perhaps do with autosaves when entering a new region?). Loading the save did seem to mess with the contrast as it was fairly dark and the resolution went down to minimum.
So after all that bulletpoint feedback I'd just like to add a few thoughts so far:
- I think the artwork overall looks quite polished and nice. Felt like it does perhaps need a bit more boldness to it (like animated larger fonts or win animations) tho as it felt a bit flat winning battles.
- Gameplay wise it seems reasonably well put together but would need a good deal more of a play to see how the tactics form out. Perhaps felt a bit protracted with getting to a point where I had spells or multiple creatures to play or fight? It also felt like it could do with being a bit more generous with handing out potions or other means that heal creatures back up so it doesn't feel like your inevitably going to lose and can't do much about it(maybe each time you travel to a new location?).
Hope that feedback is of some help?
Cheers!
Developer
