The Clans - Cursed Souls

[Adellie]

Hi there,

I decided to try The Clans - Cursed Souls because i get the impression that you've put in a lot of work into your games series.

Liked:

* The Parallax maps makes the big empty mansion less boring.

* You have a lot of nice illustrations and collectible manga pieces.

* There isn't a harsh penalty for dying. You just need to walk back to your body.

Disliked:

* Battles are too difficult on Normal mode. One battle wears Bloodrose down almost completely so I find it's more effective to just die to spikes after each battle for replenishing hp/mp. Tons of deaths made progressing in the game very very slow for me.

* Your uis are quite fancy, but cluttered and lack focus. It's also difficult to read the damage numbers and notes when battling.

* I has no idea there was a secret passage until i watched a video. There were no visual clues or hints from npcs so honestly i don't know how I could've found out. To a lesser extent, same thing with escaping the room with Sachiko in it. I didn't know you needed to slam the door repeatedly.

* Personal preference, but i thought the bgm was too distracting in some rooms.

Issues:

* If two Shadow Creepers appear at the same time and you defeat one, the other stays in place and does nothing.

* The Shadow Creepers aren't smart enough to walk around a bookshelf.

* The top tile of the bookshelf also appears above the Shadow Creeper sprite.

* You become very slow after Catz joins your party until you leave that room.

* Crafting success window is transparent.

* Equipment Menu: I think these are bugs. (1) You can't unequip weapons. (2) Optimize works a bit strangely. For example, Assassin's katana is always replaced with sharpened katana despite having a higher atk and poison effect.

In the end, i spent ~2hrs but couldn't really get into it. I think the game may have been more enjoyable if i was already more familiar with the characters/gameplay. I haven't played any of your other games so this review is from the perspective of someone who's just kind of jumped head first into the clans world. Hopefully this feedback is a little useful anyway. 

Sorry for reviewing without finishing it. 

 

[Clord]

Thanks for the review. However many of your dislike points have already been addressed in the non-contest version.


Contest version: 1.00


Current non-contest version on other sites: 1.05

 

[Adellie]

Oh wut, i wish didn't realize the downloads were different! >-<

maybe i'll come back to this after a few others.

 

[kartersaint]

Thanks for the review. However many of your dislike points have already been addressed in the non-contest version.

Contest version: 1.00

Current non-contest version on other sites: 1.05

Why don't you upload your newest version to the comment section of your entry? The more people can enjoy more stretched version of your game and they may vote your game more than before.

 

[BlackMage]

I decided to play this, seeing how great the artwork is. I'm playing the version from the contest page, under AHAHA dificulty.

My first death is by the spike on floor, and then the creepy sachiko face appears. I was like, who the heck is this guy? Am I killed by him/her? My next action is to press F12 to return to title screen as many of rm games will do. But instead of returning into title screen, the game crashes. So, every time I died, I had to close the game and open it again to restart the game. YES, I didn't know that you'll reincarnate/respawn after dead until I got bored and left to find some snack to ead. I was like what the hell. Anyway, even after learned those, I'm still close the game and reopen it again. It faster to do it this way rather than have to walk to the place where you dead since I'm doing the saving a lot. There was a bug that can't save when using keyboard only but I heard you've got this fixed in the newer versiion so I think we can just skip this.

About the story... Well nothing much to talk about. It just a simple plot where main character got locked in some mansion, and you got to get out or something like that. I'm not saying that the plot is bad, but I think you can make it interesting by introducing some information for the further plot rather than leaving the player wandering aimlesly without information about this and that. Maybe more npc/interactables could help on this matter. Yes, I know there's catz and the other vampire, but they hardly leaving any impresion. They just appear once and never get any chance to further ther character development.

About the battle, I'm not so sure since I only got 3 or 4 battles along the game. I had no equipment upgraded since the first game and the healing potions are useless in battle. I rather to use it outside the battle after beat the monster. Lack of healing items is a pain in the ass, but I think that what I deserve for choosing the AHAHA dificulty. I hardly use the TP skill because rather than normal attacking the monster, it's easier to deal the damage using normal magic rather than waiting for the TP to increase in AHAHA dificulty. Maybe you can make the TP increase when the magic is used too.

Oh, about the person that trade the manga pieces with souls, I think there's a bug. He didn't take any of my sould instead of giving the manga pieces. And when we talked about the manga, what is the purpose of it? It feels that the event is out of place. I think that you include this because you want to advertise your work. But I think you can do it better by putting more story for it so it blends well with the game. Why the heck is butsu are doing her manga in this creepy mansion after all?

At last, I finished the game and found that it was only the 1st chapter of the entire game. The game is hardly leaving any impression for me, except the great artwork. I hope you improve many section of the game in the future updates.

I think that's all for my comments.Some might hars. I know that you've tried your hardest. Congrats on that, but I think you can do it more. Keep making games will ya.

 

[Clord]

Well if you like the have story, you should know that there could be more than you even want to read, so I intentionally refrained from making the game too story heavy for chapter 1.


We didn't have time to add them to contest entry version but there are indeed notes scattered around explaining stuff in the other public version (1.05.)


Not to mention much better beginning explanation to set you off with the story.

“There’s a legend about an old mansion that was owned by a powerful vampire known as Arclaud, the king of the vampires.”


“Legends tell that Arclaud was the first vampire who managed to suppress his feral instincts by making a magical collar to wear around his neck.”


“He started to seek other feral vampires and made the Crimson Vampires clan, counterpart of the age old clan system popular around the world.”


“However, the Council of Kings didn’t recognize the clan and sent an army of soldiers to execute all of them, but none of the soldiers ever returned.”


“Now it’s thousands of years later and the clans system is still in place.”


“On a road one stranger is bleeding out and so the story begins…”

http://rpgmaker.net/games/6522/The_Clans_Codex/

 

[BlackMage]

Yes there are some stories at the beginning, but it only serve the purpose as prolog. Nothing more are mentioned about it in the upcoming gameplay.

There's no need to feed the player all information at the beginning, but at least give them some lead and unfold it one by one.

 

[Adellie]

Alrighty, downloaded the latest version of the game and tried that.

I still think the game needs a lot of work, but this time around it was more pleasant being able to explore with worrying about death at every turn.

I agree with BlackMage in regards to the story. Even if chapter 1 is supposed to be mysterious, it could do with some character development. We know that Lilith Bloodrose is confident, a bit impatient, and strong enough to OHKO a witch, but what kind of person is Catz?

At the end, i got excited to see Sachiko talk rather than silently corner people... then a cliffhanger! Augh! D: (or maybe that's a good thing, i'm not sure.)

--

p.s. There's a shadow creeper lying on the floor in one of the rooms. He follows you around like that, and is placed suspiciously close to a bed for two. 

 

[Clord]

That Shadow Creeper bug is back.


Thanks for the report, I try to squash that bug again.


Also, are you implying what I think you are implying?


BlackMage, you're right. I could add some more information by making character talk more like in my RPG game projects. It seems that Catz and Lilith don't talk enough together before the chapter 2.

 

[Clord]

Chapter 2 character. Things are definitely getting weirder as the story progresses.

 

[Clord]

We ended up taking part of the Indrah's feedback to our actual changes. Especially since she was the first one being openly very negative about the game. Though even she saw some positive points but that was mainly in terms of art and music. Nowm of course opinions are fine because how else the games would be improved?


We will remove instant death spikes unless people are against that and think that they add to the experience (extremely easy to notice although pathfinder sometimes takes you to them by miss-click.)


Matters of story is fine as there is plenty of it already in latest public version without being overly excessive. All those collectable notes and stuff tell the story, plus once early part is went through there is a lot more of it. Although we are working on adding even more of it to chapter 1.


Seems that super simple mouse script doesn't like its pathfinder system spammed, so we will see what to do with that.

 

[Indrah]

Here's my very quick and sketchy take on the game (link for info on why it's so short and all that jazz)




+Nice character art.


+I am fond of footstep sounds on any game.


+Mapping outside was nice-ish (some blurriness was there but I’m willing to let it go).


-Story makes no sense and is not engaging in any case.


-Main character is unlikeable and she makes exploring a supposedly spooky place just boring rather that tense.


-Too many elements break immersion in sudden screaming deaths.


-Game does not have a solid CORE. What is this game? A horror game? An adventure game with horror elements? Decide and then work around that, but as it is it’s just a mess.


-Instant game overs for random crap are never okay.


-The combat system is visually broken. No background, dark battler blends in, character appears obsuring the screen.


-Main character’s portrait covers the middle of the screen, which is the most important place.


-Japanese themes but not Japanese names? Okay, whatever. (I’m biased on this, some people have Japanese names and no Japanese themes and now this).


-The comic strips are horribly forced in and add nothing to the game, breaking all immersion.


-Resources clash: sprites do not fit the portraits, battlers are in another style, the “jumpscare” girl is 3d rendered, etc.


-Mapping of the interiors is too barebones and blank.


-etc


I have a lot of issues with this game. Some of the polish details are well executed, but the core of the game is a bloody mess. I believe I ranted enough during the video, but the short version is: this has no solid core or theme. Find out what sort of game you want to make and then work with THAT. Do not add in stuff that works against that core. There is too much conflicting stuff in this mess as it is, and overall it’s just not fun to play or engaging.