RMMV Astrid & The Witch (Early Demo)

[leusyth]

Synopsis

Spoiler: SYNOPSIS

Crafting system based game where you find items to make spells in order to fight random encounters and bosses.

Screenshots

Spoiler: SCREENSHOTS

Story

Spoiler: STORY

Astrid & The Witch follows a 70 year old woman named Astrid trying to get her favorite book back after lending it to her new neighbor. Said neighbor,known only as The Witch, is an otherworldly entity hiding in Earths dimension in what she thought was an abandoned house in the middle of the woods. While she can't shake the feeling somethings up with her neighbor, Astrid isn't one to judge someone by how they look.

After this elderly lady manages to break through every one of her wards (and has the audacity to invite her to the neighborhoods weekly book club after doing so),The Witch has no choice but to send Astrid to a different dimension,leaving her to survive against whatever monsters she meets outside of earths physical plane.

Astrid still wants that book,though.

Features

Spoiler: FEATURES

- You are a grandma
- Original 16x16 assets and illustrations!
- Crafting system: Craft spells from resources you find around you
- Spell levels: The more you use certain spells,the more damage they'll cause.
- 4 different maps, 8 different enemies
- Debate system: Talk down bosses based on their personality.

Credits

Spoiler: CREDITS

Plugins
- Yanfly [site]
- SumRndmDde [site]
- Galv's Scripts [site]
- Mokusei Penguin [site]
- Victor Engine [site]
- Astra Cat [site]
- Burning Orca

Spoiler: CREDITS

[site]
- 0zuma [site]
Sound effects are a mix of default se and sounds made with Bfxr. https://www.bfxr.net/

All art by me! :]

Download

Spoiler: DOWNLOAD

DL: Itch.io

Thank you in advance if you give my demo a try! :] Its my first time making anything like this and I've had a ton of fun doing it.

 

[leusyth]

Made an itch.io page and cleaned up files for a smaller dl size! Also tried and failed to make it playable in-browser but too many of my plugins were incompatible. RIP TT___TT

 

[hiddenone]

Gave this a try because the medusa rocker looks amazing. Unfortunately the battles aren't balanced nearly enough to make playing fun at the moment.

Spoiler: Notes taken while playing

• Make sure to tell the player if you're using non-standard rpg maker controls (the arrow keys don't work and it took a while to realize I needed to use wasd)
• What's up with the 1hit skill? Sees like it's not meant to be one of Astrid's starting skills
• Whoops, missing image for Astrid's normal attack
  • Put renamed image in to keep playing
• I'm not getting enough items to craft anything. The only option is the Heal HP Potion, but because I'm not getting any HP Shards I can't make it... Maybe start the player out with some supplies just so they can do things
• Magma Sheep is OP, can take out Astrid in 3 hits with Fireball while she needs way more normal Attacks (takes 4 to get the sheep to half-health). Magma Sheep either needs to be weakened a ton, or Astrid needs other skills/items at the start. Having to rely on the 1hit skill doesn't make for fun battles
• Got the Bubbles skill, but it still takes 3 hits to kill a Magma Sheep, and unfortunately I still have no way to heal so I have to use 1hit. I only have 1 HP Shard, and don't want to waste it since I need 3 to make the HP potion & they seem extremely rare...
• Is the ability to consume more than 1 Bubbles Potion on purpose? Because I already know the spell, it seems like having the option to drink more means it's a waste. Having a check in the common event it calls that tells the player they already know the spell & replaces it so they can't waste the potions would be good (unless you want to punish players who drink more than one)
• Why can't Heal be used outside of battle?
• A mix of Bubbles and Heal makes Magma Sheep battles possible, but it's still a lot of MP used for a battle that isn't dropping all that many items
• Getting resources is a bit of a hassle. Because enemies don't drop much the best way to get more stuff is to hunt down resource spots, but those only give 1 random thing... So if you've got bad luck, then you may not get the items you really need. It would be nice if the resource spots gave 1-3 items each, so that less of the game had to be spent running from resource spot to resource spot
• Used 1hit on sheep until I could afford the Sleep Potion, and then tried to use it and the other skills against Agnes. Agnes can kill Astrid in 2 hits, which means that unless I heal every other turn there's no chance of winning... Which doesn't make for a very fun battle. The only way to beat her fairly is to use Sleep as often as possible, and luckily it worked each time (if it had failed, I would've lost the fight)
• Make sure to let the player know in some way what is just decoration and what is a resource spot. I didn't realize the pink shells were resources in the second stage until a few minutes in
• Coral Seals are even worse than Magma Sheep! Fireball and Bubbles do so little damage that it's better to just run from the battles than try to take 10~ turns to kill them. Going to stop here because I can't see any good way to win fights without relying on 1hit...

Overall, the art is amazing and I love the idea behind the game, it's just that the gameplay itself isn't ready. Balancing battles is difficult, but it's important to make sure the first few enemies aren't going to overwhelm the player while they're learning the mechanics. The Magma Sheep definitely need nerfed, and if you don't want players to have to grind to get enough money and items to craft potions it would be good to increase the amount of items they can find. The concept of crafting and using those potions to learn skills for battles is cool, but it would really help if Astrid started out with enough items to make a potion right away (I'd say the HP Potion, because I kept dying since I couldn't heal until I started spamming the 1hit skill). All that said, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes because the story is right up my alley, so good luck with the balance!

 

[leusyth]

Oh my gosh thank you so much for this feedback! This is incredibly helpful,I'm definitely going to work on balancing those battles and item drops!

 

[leusyth]

Updated with a bunch of fixes! Theres still a lot more to be done, but the game should be more user friendly now.

Spoiler: fixes

• Stats of all enemies and allies redone
• All skill damage redone
• Tutorial more cohesive
• Interactable objects more apparent
• Crafting costs redone (less grinding)
• Shops redone
• Can heal on map now!
• Minor changes like text color in battle,etc
• Some pop-up dialogue (will become more frequent in final release)

 

[hiddenone]

I gave the update a go, and so much has improved! Battles are a lot fairer now, though it's still tough so getting too cocky meant Euphyl easily smacked me down when I rushed to fight her as soon as I got the Shock spell. I didn't come across any of the new dialogue, but I'm assuming that's just because I didn't play long enough yet.

Being able to really battle with Agnes on my team did make me realize that she can learn the same spells as Astrid, which seems like a missed opportunity. It would definitely be more work but it would be pretty nice if each party member had their own skills and fighting style. They all have their own personalities, so it'd be cool if their skills could show that off a bit.

There's also a minor oddity with the lava autotile, I'm guessing the lines are caused by a issue in the corner section of it.

​

I'm looking forward to seeing the next update, good luck!

 

[leusyth]

Thank you again for the feedback! You're right,it would make alot more sense for everyone to have their own skills. And i totally forgot about that tile,thanks for reminding me!

 

[GMDev997]

I didn't get too far into the game, but I love the concept, and the designs, and what audio blips you have so far. It's very cute and quirky. I think adding some variety to the enemies or having a quicker level-up curve could help the pace along, but maybe I'm just impatient.

One small mapping bug I noticed is that one of the mushroom tiles overrides the wall tile it seems, such that you can walk on the wall in a couple of areas.

Good luck with your game! I'd love to give it another try in the future.

 

[leusyth]

I didn't get too far into the game, but I love the concept, and the designs, and what audio blips you have so far. It's very cute and quirky. I think adding some variety to the enemies or having a quicker level-up curve could help the pace along, but maybe I'm just impatient.

One small mapping bug I noticed is that one of the mushroom tiles overrides the wall tile it seems, such that you can walk on the wall in a couple of areas.

Good luck with your game! I'd love to give it another try in the future.

Thank you so much for trying it out and for the feedback! It would be a good idea to try making the levels pass a bit faster especially for a demo like this, so ill keep that in mind!

 

[Pix3M]

Downloaded and played today. I took on the first level boss at level two and won. Got clobbered by the seals the next level since I didn't have a shock spell. Eventually got a shock spell, then lost interest and felt like coming back to other things. I know the storyline is removed but often that's the very thing that usually gives me breathing room to not get worn out from constant battles . If it had break points like any regular RPG that goes back and forth from story/social to battles/dungeons I think it's easily a viable game design.

Also I get confused since battle animations aimed at my characters play on top of monsters?

 

[Rubescen]

@Pix3M bumping this to the top of the list reminded me I played this a bit ago and made some notes. Then forgot to share them!

Here they are:

Spoiler: Comments on playthrough

Dig the art style, look forward to seeing how the story plays out. As noted above, it's hard to get invested without any story.

note: I quit at second boss -- so nothing after that.

Wall passability Fire shrooms/Purple shells. Also can grab resource nodes on cliff edges.

The damage enemies do appears over them and appears to be affecting them, not agnes. It's confusing (until I died, ha!)

Is there any value in making more of a potion that grants a spell? If not maybe make it so you
can only get one of each potion, or they upgrade the skill as you take more (I made 3 bubbles potions by accident). This made a bit more sense once i got another party member to teach stuff to, but still, I'm not sure having mp/health potions mixed with skill potions is very intuitive.

The tutorial says ENTER sprints, but it's still just shift for me. Likewise, maybe don't disable the arrow keys, but also allow both WASD and Arrow.
Personally I prefer WASD, but there were several times trying to navigate the menus where I naturally defaulted to arrows. Unless you have a another use for the arrows, I don't see any harm in having both enabled.

Game lagged out during exp screen a few times. not sure how you're processing that, but probably needs looked into.

Combat needs a lot of balance still. There isn't much to do other than spam the attack they are weak against.

 

[leusyth]

Demo 1.2 is now out! New stuff like fancy moving backgrounds,poses and music have been added.

Spoiler: Screenshot

(still cant find a not-awkward place to put that enemy hp bar...)

Downloaded and played today. I took on the first level boss at level two and won. Got clobbered by the seals the next level since I didn't have a shock spell. Eventually got a shock spell, then lost interest and felt like coming back to other things. I know the storyline is removed but often that's the very thing that usually gives me breathing room to not get worn out from constant battles . If it had break points like any regular RPG that goes back and forth from story/social to battles/dungeons I think it's easily a viable game design.

Also I get confused since battle animations aimed at my characters play on top of monsters?

Thank you for the feedback! I think it will be a lot more enjoyable once the actual cutscenes are in,which i'm planning on doing soon. Its hard to balance between not wanting the story to be spoiled during playtesting and keeping the actual demo interesting. :[

And for the battle animations,since its all in front view i had to decide between not having the enemies have any battle animations or just leaving them in anyway despite it being a little confusing. I've now added a new feature where the enemies make a different pose when theyre attacking,so its easier to tell whos actually fighting.

Pix3M bumping this to the top of the list reminded me I played this a bit ago and made some notes. Then forgot to share them!

Here they are:

Spoiler: Comments on playthrough

Dig the art style, look forward to seeing how the story plays out. As noted above, it's hard to get invested without any story.

note: I quit at second boss -- so nothing after that.

Wall passability Fire shrooms/Purple shells. Also can grab resource nodes on cliff edges.

The damage enemies do appears over them and appears to be affecting them, not agnes. It's confusing (until I died, ha!)

Is there any value in making more of a potion that grants a spell? If not maybe make it so you
can only get one of each potion, or they upgrade the skill as you take more (I made 3 bubbles potions by accident). This made a bit more sense once i got another party member to teach stuff to, but still, I'm not sure having mp/health potions mixed with skill potions is very intuitive.

The tutorial says ENTER sprints, but it's still just shift for me. Likewise, maybe don't disable the arrow keys, but also allow both WASD and Arrow.
Personally I prefer WASD, but there were several times trying to navigate the menus where I naturally defaulted to arrows. Unless you have a another use for the arrows, I don't see any harm in having both enabled.

Game lagged out during exp screen a few times. not sure how you're processing that, but probably needs looked into.

Combat needs a lot of balance still. There isn't much to do other than spam the attack they are weak against.

This is alot of useful feedback,thank you! I've been racking my brain trying to find some better uses for spell potions after the initial use, but i think just having them be a one-time thing like you said or making the way spells are obtained a bit different. Gonna keep working at it!

 

[leusyth]

Demo 1.3 is out!

Download here.

Cutscenes are in the demo now (like,the whole story is in there!) and way more [from my devlog on itch]:

Spoiler: 1.3 changes

- Updated combat system. Updated enemy stats. Whole bunch of new buff/debuff moves and healing moves in the 'Special' tab.
-Music has been temporarily removed to be re-worked, but will be back next update.
- TP system.
- Tiny conversations will pop up between the characters while youre walking through maps! Theyre really cute and dont stop you from being able to keep walking,which is a plus.
- Slight battle UI changes. Will likely be changed more in final release.
- Voice of Reason ability. Astrid can debate bosses now. Each boss responds to your arguments differently, depending on their personality. When you win an argument, you get a huge stat boost, but if you lose, you'll get the opposite. (theres this really annoying thing that happens during debates where the enemies sprite cuts off in an awkward spot,but i'll *hopefully* get that fixed. All i want is to literally move the text box a little higher to cover it,but it seems to be incredibly difficult and i've had no luck in finding a solution. )

Pretty much getting ready to wrap up on the demo and release it fully once I get the music sorted out,but would still really appreciate any feedback or pointing out of anything I've missed during testing myself. Thanks for reading!

 

[leusyth]

Bump! Still chugging along on the soundtrack. Would really appreciate any feedback on the cutscenes/general pacing of the game, as i'm pretty sure the next update will be my final release.



an agnes for your troubles

 

[Fillip]

Hey, just started playing your game, it's really cute so far :3
I found some veeery tiny errors so far, I'll see how many more I collect and send them to you later ^^

Any deadline to when you need the feedback?

 

[leusyth]

Hey, just started playing your game, it's really cute so far :3
I found some veeery tiny errors so far, I'll see how many more I collect and send them to you later ^^

Any deadline to when you need the feedback?

I'm still gonna be working on things for a while,so take your time!

 

[Fillip]

Okay, here we go:

First of all, I loved the game, it's really enjoyable and the characters are amazing. Agnes and Astrid are my favourites, though the rest is awesome as well ^^

Spoiler: Small points to critizize:

Guard doesn't do much, neither on you nor the enemies. Maybe the guard state duration is too short, I noticed it disapperaring right after using it, but maybe I imagined things - problem with CTB system?
This is not that necessary, but guarding more damage would be helpful later on, for example Euphy took a lot of damage from the Tigers in Level 4, almost one shotting her because of her weakness to thunder. If I could have her defend and only take half the damage that would be helpful in a pintch.

A few too many misses for my taste... maybe increase Astrids Hit rate / lower the sheeps evasion rate
It's less annoying when you have more characters and more room for error

Potions that teach spells are used up again, even if the character already knows the spell

Battle against Agnes (all the bosses, but I only needed it against Agnes):
Voice of Reason can be used multiple times, not sure if intended. Maybe add a switch to prevent that. Seems kinda silly to talk about the same topic twice. Though if you got it wrong the first time there would be no second chance... Dunno, seemed a bit weird to me.

Level 3
I was Level 7
Had only one MP potion left
Enemies too strong, can't grind
Poison taking away too many MP, can't do anything in time
Can't heal poison, so eventually everyone's at 0 MP
Attack deals 0 damage
Then I noticed snake scales actually heal poison...
Euphyl's Minor Heal also heals MP, very helpful to know but not really all to clear, took me a while to find out, maybe make that clearer in the description of her skills

All in all that was the point where I was about to give up and restart the gmae to grind more in the previous areas, but it turned out I just overlooked some options, so I guess that's on me. In hindsight, for Level 3 the challenge was actually balanced enough.
Maybe make the double snakes appear only in the upper area and leave a space at the beginning where only single snakes appear, so the player can adjust and level up a little

Leveled to 10 just to be safe this time, now Hedera was way too easy compared to the snakes...

It seems a bit weird that Hedera has the lowest attack of the group, despite looking the buffest.
At this point in the game the attack command does 0 damage and is redundand anyway, but it still seems a little out of character...

Lumen was defeated in 4 attacks with only being able to use one attack. Put her to sleep, defended to get TP up, then used every buff and debuff and attacked.
Maybe add some resistance to sleep for her or make sleep wear off after 1-2 turns, sleep seems to get more overpowered as the game goes on. Especially with her being the final boss, I was hoping for a little more challenge...

Spoiler: And here some screenshots with typos and other small things (Careful, lots of big pictures, don't open on mobile data)

That tile is not passable, even though it should be.


You can step on that sea petal. Not sure if intended, but I'm pretty sure the petal would sink from that


After almost every comma there is missing a space. I almost thought it was because of the font, but then I saw a space after it every once in a while. So decide on one way and correct the others
Also I thought in the end there was a 3rd dot missing, but I later noticed you always only use two... I think.


Another example of the comma thing.


Comma thing and a missing ' in I'd, also the i needs to be capitalized.


A missing ' at the end of Witches'. Not 100% sure about this one but it seems like there's missing one (I placed it wrong in the picture lol)


You can climb up the wall here, maybe make those two tiles impassable.

I have another 7 or so screenshots, but I can only upload 10 at a time, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow, so I don't have to double post immediately

All in all I really love the game and all I found were just smaller inconveniences. I hope I could help a little ^^

 

[leusyth]

Okay, here we go:

First of all, I loved the game, it's really enjoyable and the characters are amazing. Agnes and Astrid are my favourites, though the rest is awesome as well ^^

Spoiler: Small points to critizize:

Guard doesn't do much, neither on you nor the enemies. Maybe the guard state duration is too short, I noticed it disapperaring right after using it, but maybe I imagined things - problem with CTB system?
This is not that necessary, but guarding more damage would be helpful later on, for example Euphy took a lot of damage from the Tigers in Level 4, almost one shotting her because of her weakness to thunder. If I could have her defend and only take half the damage that would be helpful in a pintch.

A few too many misses for my taste... maybe increase Astrids Hit rate / lower the sheeps evasion rate
It's less annoying when you have more characters and more room for error

Potions that teach spells are used up again, even if the character already knows the spell

Battle against Agnes (all the bosses, but I only needed it against Agnes):
Voice of Reason can be used multiple times, not sure if intended. Maybe add a switch to prevent that. Seems kinda silly to talk about the same topic twice. Though if you got it wrong the first time there would be no second chance... Dunno, seemed a bit weird to me.

Level 3
I was Level 7
Had only one MP potion left
Enemies too strong, can't grind
Poison taking away too many MP, can't do anything in time
Can't heal poison, so eventually everyone's at 0 MP
Attack deals 0 damage
Then I noticed snake scales actually heal poison...
Euphyl's Minor Heal also heals MP, very helpful to know but not really all to clear, took me a while to find out, maybe make that clearer in the description of her skills

All in all that was the point where I was about to give up and restart the gmae to grind more in the previous areas, but it turned out I just overlooked some options, so I guess that's on me. In hindsight, for Level 3 the challenge was actually balanced enough.
Maybe make the double snakes appear only in the upper area and leave a space at the beginning where only single snakes appear, so the player can adjust and level up a little

Leveled to 10 just to be safe this time, now Hedera was way too easy compared to the snakes...

It seems a bit weird that Hedera has the lowest attack of the group, despite looking the buffest.
At this point in the game the attack command does 0 damage and is redundand anyway, but it still seems a little out of character...

Lumen was defeated in 4 attacks with only being able to use one attack. Put her to sleep, defended to get TP up, then used every buff and debuff and attacked.
Maybe add some resistance to sleep for her or make sleep wear off after 1-2 turns, sleep seems to get more overpowered as the game goes on. Especially with her being the final boss, I was hoping for a little more challenge...

Spoiler: And here some screenshots with typos and other small things (Careful, lots of big pictures, don't open on mobile data)

View attachment 162733
That tile is not passable, even though it should be.

View attachment 162734
You can step on that sea petal. Not sure if intended, but I'm pretty sure the petal would sink from that

View attachment 162735
After almost every comma there is missing a space. I almost thought it was because of the font, but then I saw a space after it every once in a while. So decide on one way and correct the others
Also I thought in the end there was a 3rd dot missing, but I later noticed you always only use two... I think.

View attachment 162736
Another example of the comma thing.

View attachment 162739
Comma thing and a missing ' in I'd, also the i needs to be capitalized.

View attachment 162742
A missing ' at the end of Witches'. Not 100% sure about this one but it seems like there's missing one (I placed it wrong in the picture lol)

View attachment 162743
You can climb up the wall here, maybe make those two tiles impassable.

I have another 7 or so screenshots, but I can only upload 10 at a time, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow, so I don't have to double post immediately

All in all I really love the game and all I found were just smaller inconveniences. I hope I could help a little ^^

Sorry for such a late response, but thank you so much for trying out my game and giving me such good and detailed feedback. Theres a lot that i ended up missing during my own testing and i'm so glad you caught these things! I'm going to work on these issues right away. Thanks again

 

[Fillip]

I got a little lazy last weekend and didn't have Wifi until today, so here's the rest

For some reason I cannot upload more pictures currently, so I'm just gonna share them via One Drive ^^'

Astrid and the Witch

Folder

1drv.ms

Spoiler: Explanations:

Picture 11: With the normal combat window everything's fine, but when a dialogue window opens some battlers are cut off a little bit at the low end.

Picture 12: In the skill menu the spell descriptions are cut off. Not sure how to fix that one, since rebuilding them would make them look weird during battle...

Pic 13: Character's names are depicted twice in the menu. For an RPG Maker user it makes sense (name and class), but since you don't really use classes in this game it looks a bit weird. Easiest solution would be to just rename your classes to "spacebar", so that they don't show in the menu.

Pic 14: When defeating one enemy and there are enemies left, the HP bar of the defeated one still remains there...

Pic 15: band's

Pic 16: One space to many

Aaand that's it! Just some more small stuff that threw me off while looking extra critically