RMMV First Game

[PixelGamerDev]

The Potion

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SECTION A: SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

• This is literally the bare-bones here guys and gals. This game is super simple and just something to get creating that first game out of the way. All resources aside from icons were hand drawn. Feedback is welcomed, but remember this is in all cases a simple game.
• Feedback is more than welcome even though this is super basic. Please let me know if you enjoyed it.
• You are on a journey for your granny to obtain a magic potion to cure her deadly virus.

IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

DOWNLOAD LINK

Spoiler

The game is on Itch.io for download.
https://pixelgamerdev.itch.io/the-potion

 

[TheOddFellow]

What kind of feedback are you looking for? If not art, perhaps story? Challenging elements? Are there puzzles? Added systems you put in place perhaps? Music and atmosphere? What, in particular, are you looking for in feedback?

 

[PixelGamerDev]

What kind of feedback are you looking for? If not art, perhaps story? Challenging elements? Are there puzzles? Added systems you put in place perhaps? Music and atmosphere? What, in particular, are you looking for in feedback?

Just anything in general, likes, dislikes, things of the sort. There is no real story, so I can't look for feedback on that XD

 

[Clockwarkgate]

for a first game,. this looks interesting! I might give this a try. And I can give you a feedback about the overall graphics right now.

Simple but well-made! The sepia-color makes it more neat. The drawings are okay. Could be improve when colored. But still, I prefer the monochrome color. The font really fits, I love it! There's no battle screenshot (or is there?) so I cannot say something about the battles.

 

[PixelGamerDev]

for a first game,. this looks interesting! I might give this a try. And I can give you a feedback about the overall graphics right now.

Simple but well-made! The sepia-color makes it more neat. The drawings are okay. Could be improve when colored. But still, I prefer the monochrome color. The font really fits, I love it! There's no battle screenshot (or is there?) so I cannot say something about the battles.

Thank you, Your games look amazing, are they an ongoing series?

 

[Clockwarkgate]

Thank you, Your games look amazing, are they an ongoing series?

yerp, im working on a sequel and a smaller project.

 

[atoms]

Hey I played through your game so I've got some feedback for you.

Overall is was quite good for a simple game!

I thought your graphics were good, the first outdoors map reminded me of the paper mario style, so I liked it and thought it was good.

Your interior houses had huge space though, I felt they'd been better if you resized them smaller and had more detail to add in them. Also instead of just creating one large square with a few of them you could create a few different square shapes to change it up a little.

The battles were good except they were quite easy. Perhaps too easy. The skill sets for each class were good.

Even though it was a simple maze design, I enjoyed how you made the dungeon and thought you spent a good amount of time on a few maps for that dungeon.

Those are my comment anyway, hope you can keep improving and good luck with your future games!

 

[PixelGamerDev]

@Project CROSS Could you pm me the order in which they are played. I'd love to go through them.

@atoms Thank you for the feedback. The battles where intended to be fairly easy, I had the intent to do so just because with a game as simple as this I didn't want the difficulty to be overbearing. I do agree, the houses were quite big, I should resize them haha. As far as the graphics, it was my first time hand drawing it all so I could improve in a lot of areas haha.

 

[TheOddFellow]

Completed the playthrough. Here's my feedback.

Intro. Change the starting music. Tone is different than the music suggests.
Building #1; excess space. Had to re-enter to get music.
Town: Small and easy to navigate.
(Testing Note: It appears as though you doubled the sprite size so you would have less tiles on the map. This made it a little difficult for me to determine when I ran into another sprite and found myself chasing after any one of the NPCs to test dialog, shop, and recruitment.)
(Fighting Note: Fire was still colored. However; having everything but magic be colored could present an interesting note in your world. I only mention this because you said all but the icons were hand-drawn.)
Area #1: The fights are quite easy, and having the enemies go first ensures the players spend their well-earned gold. Though, having an area blocked off by enemies and guarding a chest might entice them even further to fight.
Area #2: One thing I noticed is that I can travel to the bottom of the map, but I cannot go beyond the boundry. Rather than leave this boundry as a mapping barrier, why not just enlarge the map a little more and surround with trees? Or use assets as a barrier instead. The mapping feels a little Chrono-trigger inspired, and I'd highly recommend simply looking at their maps just for reference. I've done the same as well. Lots and lots of map referencing...
(Also; the path made it quite easy to find the cave. Thank you.)
Area #3 (Cave 1-1): Music change? And it feels like it fits the tone? Score! I also instantly see a new enemy type. The slimes always gave me a potion, and it was always followed by a chest; this seems to cancel out the danger of the new enemy by awarding them the ability to heal always afterward. Also, I haven't needed to go to a shop yet because I wait to level-up 'till the right moment (which fully restores my resources.)
Area #4 (Cave 1-2): Got into the room and could not go back. No message as to why this would not work. But, if a shakescreen event and maybe a line of dialogue would explain this.
(Cave 1-3 - 1-5): While being barebones, it feels as those this dungeon is bloated as to increase playtime. There are many twisting and turning areas which result in deadends. And I had practically no need for healing items until the final boss. I found myself sprinting at the end just to find that one turn I didn't take, only to start methodically clearing out the monsters as a point of reference so I wouldn't revisit that same dead-end for the fifth time.

In short: The hand-drawn nature of the game is nice; and the music only partially attributes to this atmosphere. The battles start out difficult, and set the groundwork for a theme which I initially believed was: "you can fight to get stronger, but at the cost of your resources." However; every fight thereafter granted potions and magic waters; along with full-healing levelups which negated any and all danger.
The first few maps were reasonably sized, as well as Cave areas 1 & 2, but continued to bloat in size.
The final boss did present a form of danger, but I quickly cleared all the imps with my aforementioned, necessitated grinding by using my AoE attacks. The boss healed; which, as a note, is almost always annoying unless some sort of gimmick is involved (Seeth from Dark Souls had a healing gimmick).

Overall, I rather enjoyed the game, and the start is where the most promise feels to be. Don't feel the need to bloat your game; but rather, give it a satisfying end when it desire it rather than feel that hours hold all the power.

 

[PixelGamerDev]

@TheOddFellow Thank you for this indepth feedback. I'd say I probably ignored the proper placement of the music with this one. These are really good tips that you have given which will be taken over into future games for sure. I added the healing to the boss as the battles for the most part are super easy. Also I like making annoying bosses XD. I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

 

[TheOddFellow]

Sounds like an interesting theme for a game. I hope to see something improved. The first thing that made me want to play your game was the art. That's what grabbed me. If the game was stock sprites I might not have bothered without something else to entice me to finish the game.

 

[PixelGamerDev]

Sounds like an interesting theme for a game. I hope to see something improved. The first thing that made me want to play your game was the art. That's what grabbed me. If the game was stock sprites I might not have bothered without something else to entice me to finish the game.

I completely agree. The stock stuff was good back on the release date, but now you have to try something new.

 

[TheOddFellow]

So. We got a deadline for the next part?

 

[PixelGamerDev]

So. We got a deadline for the next part?

Nothing yet, currently working on a card game now. This game will also have hand drawn everything, with colors this time haha

 

[atoms]

I understand that you wanted to make the game easy and agree an easy game can be a lot of fun! I also agree not to make it overbearing. I guess I should clarify.

I felt no need to use items for most of the game. I felt you could've mixed in a few different enemies in the dungeon instead of just having one type. For example Saint deals a heavy amount of damage, so maybe there could've been one enemy that reduces that damage somewhat but is weaker against Fire so that'll deal heavy damage instead to that one enemy.

That would have added slight more strategy to the game without making it too much.

As for the item idea, it can be more fun to have to use the items or have a choice to use them, you wouldn't have to overdo it. Perhaps have the characters with magic run out of MP after 5-7 or so fights, to use up 1 Magic Water, still an easy game.

Those sort of things, things that could add slight more difficulty or a higher challenge to the game while still being overall easy to complete. If you wanted that is.

It's still feels mostly balanced though, so well done on achieving that effect!

If I was to rate the game though I'd still give it a high score, maybe 7.5/10 as I still found it fun, just wished I could've used the items and had a few more enemies to fight!

Well, good luck with your card game any further games you plan to make! Your art style is great. I can imagine the card game art turning out well based on the custom work in this game.

Is the card game going to be another simple and easy game?

 

[PixelGamerDev]

I understand that you wanted to make the game easy and agree an easy game can be a lot of fun! I also agree not to make it overbearing. I guess I should clarify.

I felt no need to use items for most of the game. I felt you could've mixed in a few different enemies in the dungeon instead of just having one type. For example Saint deals a heavy amount of damage, so maybe there could've been one enemy that reduces that damage somewhat but is weaker against Fire so that'll deal heavy damage instead to that one enemy.

That would have added slight more strategy to the game without making it too much.

As for the item idea, it can be more fun to have to use the items or have a choice to use them, you wouldn't have to overdo it. Perhaps have the characters with magic run out of MP after 5-7 or so fights, to use up 1 Magic Water, still an easy game.

Those sort of things, things that could add slight more difficulty or a higher challenge to the game while still being overall easy to complete. If you wanted that is.

It's still feels mostly balanced though, so well done on achieving that effect!

If I was to rate the game though I'd still give it a high score, maybe 7.5/10 as I still found it fun, just wished I could've used the items and had a few more enemies to fight!

Well, good luck with your card game any further games you plan to make! Your art style is great. I can imagine the card game art turning out well based on the custom work in this game.

Is the card game going to be another simple and easy game?

Thank you for the feedback. As for the card game, no, it will have a ton of strategy required to get through. No easy playthrough there XD.