Tinkles Must Die!

[Alkorri]

I appreciate that, ChalzZy! I'd been meaning to update it soon (Not today, but soon)

 

[Susan]

Overall, a great and fun game. I really enjoy playing it. Regretted not trying it out the first time since I thought it was going to be a dark story due to title (my bad).

 

I'm probably just a terrible player in comparison to the others here. It took me 5+ hours to complete the game (not inclusive of the numerous times I died in random encounters).

 

I'm pretty bad at reviewing things but here goes :

 

Spoiler

Things I love about this game
- The story, the way it was told, the humor, the neat bits and pieces you learn by interacting with people and objects.
- Jester-themed item/skill name and the funny descriptions (reminds me PS's Lunar game).
- Rewarding side quests like the one with ogre.
- Interactivity with the surroundings.
- The lovely soundtracks, especially the one used in the royal gardens.
- Ability to increase stats with feathers (due to difficulty(?) of the game). Have to grind for them though.
- Despite what you mentioned about making amateur edits, your facesets are great.

Quirks & Bugs(?)
- Passability of overhead boxes near where Burr seems change to impassable after examining them once. Maybe the second event page was changed to 'same as character'? Also, they seem to be examinable while the player is on the same tile, not next to it.
- Pressing the cancel button in conversations with choices brings up the second topic rather than exiting :
-> 'Slab of Mystery'
-> the dark knight guarding the entrance to the western tunnel.
The dark knight disappeared after defeating the 'spider boss'. Was that intended?
- In the corridor after the armoury & before the gardens, the pillars along the bottom part of the corridor appear below the player, not above.
- Is the combination of Horned Mage and Master's WIP too strong? Together, they can cast blind, MDF down, confusion & blindness all in one round. If the Horned Mage casts Ice subsequently, the player is a goner.

It's obvious that a lot of solid, great effort went into making this. Well done!

 

 

[Alkorri]

Susan, thank you very much for playing! I'm glad you had fun and it made my day (Well, twice if you count today's Restaff *coughs*)

Spoiler

This is awesome feedback! I have never come across anyone who took five hours to play Tinkles XD The longest was cabfe at 3hours.

I'll address the bugs first. Is something wrong with the Slab of Mystery? It's supposed to be used in Key Items, and it explains some gane terms.

I will check the passabilities of the Burr crates again. Hmm, which conversation was it than did not cancel, btw? I might have to chase that down! Thanks for reporting these bugs.

Yes, the knight was supposed to disappear, but I might make him reappear again with new dialogue I'm also sorry you had a hard time with the Horned Mage and Master's WIP - I thought they would be a nice challenge for players who knew how to use Lollipop and keep them down with debuffs. I've never had trouble when I replayed them with new stats, but I will see where I can nerf them slightly!

By the sounds of it, my battle encounters are giving you trouble. Out of curiosity, do you usually cast Lollipop in the first round? Which option do you usually choose when Tinkles has his special battle moves? This might give me an idea how other players tackle this game. The idea was to create a game with a character whose specialty is debuffs, since he is a jester after all, but I wonder if this might contrast with players' preferred playing style.

That lovely garden track is by Darren Curtis aka DesperateMeasurez. He's awesome.

You rock! And I'm glad you like the face edits! Took me hours and I tried not to make the faces too horrible

 

[Susan]

Hi, again! Just to respond to your questions :

Spoiler

'Slab of mystery' & dark knight :

- Referring to the conversations with choices, I think you have to re-edit the Show Choices command. On the right side of the box, there is a 'when cancel' option with choice 'x' under it. I think you might have accidentally left them at 'choice 2'. You'd probably have to set each of those commands to Choice '4' or disallow.
- The slab works fine. The conversation for both slab and knight flow correctly.
- Some people like me, tend to use the cancel button on the keyboard rather select the cancel choice on the screen. It's when pressing the physical cancel button on the keyboard that you will see the conversation going to the second topic of each conversation branch, rather than exiting the conversation entirely.

Burr crates :
- It's referring to the two upper tiles of the crates.
- The events' first page may have either 'through on' option selected or it is set to above/below player, thus allowing player to move through it.
- The events' second page may be set to 'same as character', thus preventing the player from moving through it even though it doesn't have graphics.

Battle encounters :
- Despite having trouble with those two enemies, I don't really think they need to be re-adjusted. As you said, you wanted your battle to have more strategy in them, and it's not like they are impossible to beat. You do have the Angel's Touch magic too.
- It's just my way of playing - I usually try to win battles ASAP so I tend to use damaging skills rather than debuffs & protection.
- Your battles just teach me to strategize. I like playing it the way you envisioned it better as it helps put me in his shoes and empathize with the way he has to deal with things. (Not everyone can be the big burly sword swinging hero, right?)
- Besides, there's always those 'feathers' right?
- I normally cast Lollipop only when I'm low on health or facing a boss. Again, it's just a personal style.

Oh, and please remember to check on the pillars along the bottom part of your corridor. It looks as though Tinkles suddenly decided to climb on them.

P.S. In case anyone complains about the random TP, you can easily change them yourself in the script editor under 'Game_Battler' line 730.

Your face edits are great IMHO! No hint of horrible(ness) at all. More like awesomeness!

Again, love your game!

 

[Marquise*]

You'd need a little white mouse sprite some day?

 

[Alkorri]

Sorry for the late reply, Marquise! Err, I'm not sure what you mean? I do have a mouse sprite

 

[Susan]

@Marquise* :

Spoiler

True, there is a cute little white mouse at the ending. ^^

 

[Marquise*]

I was wondering if you<d like it as in animated credits?

 

[Bastrophian]

i saw nothing bad about this game...loved the story, loved just clicking on EVERYTHING just to see what tinkles would say, loved the maps, the npc's....i do have a confession to make though. Im still trying to beat the final boss lol... i just never thought id actually HAVE to grind much in this game....now im kind of stuck at the end with no way to buy donuts or grind....sigh. lol 

 

[Alkorri]

Really sorry for the late reply, Marquise! I wasn't sure what you meant. Do you mean you want to make an animated mouse sprite..? You don't have to

@Deathswallow - Thank you for trying out my game! Makes me happy when people find it fun I am sorry you're having trouble with the final boss. For myself, I have these strategies for dealing with tough battles:

Spoiler

• The moment the battle starts, cast your strongest Lollipop. By rights you should have the third tier after defeating the Spider Demon.
• If you did it right, most people would have at least 5 donuts of health to use when Alain's health is too low. When Tinkles' health reaches a certain point, Alain will step in to take the damage meant for Tinkles. This means you need to stuff donuts into Alain's mouth when his health is too low!
• If you searched around the armoury and gardens, you should have a healthy amount of Smelling Salts. Sometimes it helps to let Alain die and revive him with the Smelling Salts because it gives back 500 HP. Remember to stuff Alain with donuts after he comes back! Let him soak the damage. Before the Point of No Return with the "Man", make sure you use the remaining buttons to buy Life Feathers to increase Tinkles' MHP.
• Whenever the boss or minions casts the spell to remove your Lollipop regen, cast Lollipop again!
• As for defeating the enemies themselves, this final battle goes a lot easier if you have the Kitchen Sink spell. The moment you get a chance, eat donuts of power (you've been saving this, yes?) to get your CP high enough to use these on your foes! If you don't have Kitchen Sink, you'd have to rely on Firecracker or Paralyzing Handshake, or the debuff items like Overripe Banana or Affectionate Ooze.
• Jester is a debuff character, so take advantage of this! Use every opportunity to harass the enemy with AOE debuff effects. The boss is immune to some of them, but the minions are more susceptible.

I hope these strategies help!

Edit: Just realised this was my 1,000th post XD

 

[Cluly]

Gotta play this one tomorrow I think! It looks great.

 

[Alkorri]

Thank you, Cluly! I hope you have fun

 

[Harmill]

I finally got around to playing this game. It's a solid game, especially considering it's your first game! Congratulations on finishing the game, as the act of finishing a game is a rare skill.

Spoiler

• I enjoyed Tinkles as a character. He felt relatable and sympathetic. I also liked how he had something to say towards pretty much everything on the map. Talk to a clock? He has something to say about it. That chair? Yeah, that chair meant something to him. That attention to detail is really nice in an RPG, and it helped to further flesh out his character. Despite Wizard Meeko never actually showing up in the game, I could still get a good idea of who he was and what his relationship was to Tinkles.
• I liked how much world-building you were able to fit into a 2-hour game! The Abyss was a very cool region, and that sense of liveliness, that there's a LOT more going on in this world than what concerns Tinkles, that was really cool. It definitely leaves you open for developing more games in this world that don't have to focus on Tinkles either. In a way, it reminds me of the Hobbit, and how Gandalf was always leaving Bilbo to tend to something more important going on in the world.
• I liked the variety of skills and how there was no instant-heal spell. Choosing to have a regen spell instead was an interesting decision and I liked how it affected my decision making. Normal attacks were pretty much useless, though. The damage output compared to the 8 CP dagger attack was maybe a third. And once I got the 12 CP dagger that hits three random targets, the 8 CP dagger became mostly ignored for the rest of the game. I didn't really use the spells very much, as many of them could only target one enemy and I found that most turns, I would need or want to use a multi-target move like the 12 CP dagger move or the 4 target Firecracker spell. I never used the Kitchen Sink spell, but I learned later on that it's OP and wouldn't made the final boss much easier for me.
• I liked the optional fight against the Ogre. I seem to remember learning the Blind move JUST before reaching him, and thinking how screwed I would have been if I learned that spell just a bit too late. I liked that the dungeon had two paths to get to the Orc town, though I didn't realize that at first. Originally, I took the west path, saw the Ogre, and immediately retreated and went east because I thought the Ogre was a story-event and I like to explore everything before moving on. So I explored the east side until I stumbled upon the Orc town and a cut scene started. I immediately press F12 and reload my save file (I save after every fight so I never worry about losing progress) because I wanted to explore the west side before entering the town. So I go to the west side, fight the Ogre, and then reach the Orc town from the west side. So with that long explanation over with, I think that means there are two possible cutscenes depending on which side you enter the town? It certainly makes me curious now.
• There were some enemies that gave me a headache. Once I reached the Abyss, I fought the green two-headed snake and it was fine. But I got into a fight with one green snake and one red one (red one is Betsy and Bertha?) and the strength of the red snake took me off guard and wiped me. I think what made them annoying was that they were faster than me, so when I realized that they were doing 200+ damage per turn and I needed to heal, it was too late. I choose to heal with an item but the red snake goes before me and kills me. That combination of speed and power made them unforgiving on my first two fights against them. After that, I learned my lesson and realized I needed to be more careful.
• The Horned Mage and Master's Work-In-Progress combination also wiped me, and this one felt completely unfair. First turn, I cast Lollipop, and the Mage inflicts Paralysis on me. From there, I'm a sitting duck, unable to do ANYTHING. I watch as the WIP just casts debuffs and the Mage casts buffs, and I think, "OK, I just have to wait the 3+ turns for this Paralysis to wear off". But no, the Mage then casts Ice dealing 400 damage to me and leaving me critically low HP. My paralysis still hasn't worn off. Next turn, the Mage finishes me off. There was no counterplay I could have done to prevent that, and that's the kind of design that should be avoided. I didn't even have access to the Angel move that prevents status ailments for 5 turns at that point in the game (I think I remember learning it very shortly after this encounter, and thinking to myself, "That would have been useful BEFORE reaching this dungeon").
• The final boss was also incredibly annoying and difficult to beat. First, let me say that I actually enjoyed how intense the fight is and that the player really has to think about his choices each turn. That is great. But I found this turned into another situation where I felt like I had nothing I could do to counter the Queen's abilities. Every time I try to attack her, her guards take the damage for her, preventing me from inflicting ANY status ailments or debuffs on her. Then she has that whip move that DECIMATES my party. Like, if I'm not at full health when she uses it, or if I don't dodge at least three of its hits, I'm dead. Nothing I can do about it except know ahead of time I need to be at full HP at all times. At first I thought it did 6 hits, and I was like, "Damn, what the heck?" but then when she used it while both Tinkles and Alain were at full HP, I was able to count the hits in full and I realized it did EIGHT hits. I think it did 200 damage per hit? Not less than 150, for sure. That move alone made me consult the internet for help against the boss because she wiped me three times with that move and I didn't feel like there was anything I could do about it. At this point, I didn't know there were limited reinforcements either because I didn't survive long enough to defeat more than three soldiers. So I looked at Indrah's Let's Play and realized that she cheesed the boss by just spamming the Kitchen Sink move. She kills the Queen in like four turns without breaking a sweat and makes the entire fight look laughably easy! I decided that I was determined to beat the Queen without using that OP move, and on my fifth try, I finally did. I think I regained my hope when I finally killed a soldier and a reinforcement didn't show up. Then I realized, "OK, good, NOW I can FINALLY damage the Queen!" From there, I was able to focus on healing after her whip move, and then going on the offense once I was back at 90%+ HP.
• Regardless of these balance issues, I still liked that you emphasized the usage of debuffs and status ailments. So many games ignore these or under-use them and it was refreshing to see them used effectively. I was always trying to inflict Burn on my targets, and the ATK debuff helped against the Ogre a lot!

 

[Marquise*]

All right then.  With the bedbug invasion at home my animator disc is quite too full anyway and the scan is about the same too.  *Sigh* 

I'll just find a way to beat up that pesky arachnid demon soon for now. 

 

[Evan Finkel]

Sorry, Alkorri I didn't managed to finished it due to lot personal works. Gonna finish this on these holidays~ *Hopes to have a ton of fun* ^^

 

[Alkorri]

@Evan - No worries. Everyone gets busy in the holidays

@Marquise - Good luck! It is much easier if you have a certain electrifying item hidden in town

@Harmill - Wow that is amazingly indepth feedback, thank you! I apologise for not noticing this earlier, as I was occupied with RL work. I'll try to respond as much as I can.

Spoiler

I'm glad you liked Tinkles, Harmill! I did want people to emphatise with him by the time the final battle and the big (if knowingly cliched) reveal comes along.

I'm also glad you mentioned Wizard Meeko because a sequence involving him and some other content had to be cut due to time constraints (I had to finish this game in a month, or else!). Anyway with that sequence cut, I ended up adding more dialogue Tinkles would comment about his tutor in quite a number of objects. You might be glad to know that in the next update, I plan to introduce some of the cut content

I did want to give players the sense that there's a lot more going on, sorta to remind that the whole world doesn't revolve around Tinkles. After all, all he cares about is getting back home, so this so-called war in the Abyss is the last thing on his mind. And yeah, I already know what's gonna happen in the sequel When you do worldbuilding, I feel you should only be letting players see what they need to see for story purposes, rather than ram a whole bunch of lore down their throats.

Cutscene upon entering the Orctown. It's basically the same cutscene. I just needed to set a conditional branch which accounted for which side you entered.

After some feedback I received, I did tinker with the cost of the Kitchen Sink spell and made other adjustments. One thing I learned from the very helpful people playing my game is that everyone has a different playstyle. Some like to use items a lot, some like spells, others just want to blaze through. So it's been interesting to see their LP. For instance, the Spider Demon is highly resistant to fire magics like Firecracker, so I expected players to learn and use other elemental magics. To my surprise, this one LPer kept casting Firecracker anyway, simply because I purposefully did not make the enemy immune to Blind and he just kept casting it to blind the demon even though little damage was inflicted. So that was interesting to see. My goal in providing the different skills and items was basically to allow players to customise how they played. The only thing which I hoped people would learn early is to know how to cast the Lollipops on the first turn or ASAP, because Tinkles was meant to be a solo debuffer character, not a healer. So to survive the tough fights, he needs to either regen or debuff the enemy.

I am sorry you found the final battle difficult, as I hoped that I had trained the player enough to use regen as often as possible, and to harass the enemies with debuffs in between Donuting Alain and casting Reflect and/or Luck. As you indeed noticed, I tried hard to make use of status effects

Thank you also for reporting on the difficulty of this battle, as well as that of the Horned Mage/Masters WIP. As I seem to be getting complaints about these battles, I think I will nerf them slightly. Take note that when you saw Indrah's playthrough, the queen fight was much easier and since then, I made her tougher. I have no trouble when I test the fight myself, but apparently I still need to find that balance between too easy and too hard!

(Whoops, apologies for the babble)

Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time for that amazing feedback. Despite the cliche story, I am glad you had fun? I hope the end cutscene was worth some of the pain ;D

 

[Bloodmorphed]

I'm curious Alk. As a fellow writer, how do you go about writing a short story for a game? I struggle because when I go to writing a story I tend to make it more complex then I really want to, and in order to tell the full story I'd have to write a short book. That is not something I'm wanting to do for my first game, I would like it to be short and sweet, like you got here. Your story here is good, and short.

Any suggestions?

Erm, idk if you want all that here, you can pm if you like. I don't know if it'd fit in this topic or not, as it does kind of touch on Tinkles but not really.

Anyways, cheers!

 

[Marquise*]

Oh thank-you for the tip.  Tinkle had some sort of weird reason to get red nosed from falling so often flat on his face!  P

(I was trying in my head to see if with electrodes on a AA battery I could catch more bedbugs XD... then I realized... XD)

 

[Nebuerys]

Spent a few good hours of my down time finishing the game in one go and I'm very impressed on how your first game turned out to be this well written!
 

Spoiler

Being able to interact with the environment made walking through corridors a thousand times better than simply pressing on a direction key for a few seconds. I think this is what exploring is all about, keeping the player curious all throughout the game and rewarding their curiosity with goodies and Tinkle-trivia.

Personally, I find the difficulty to be just right for me. Normally, when I play jRPGs, I always end up being stronger than normal enemies that each encounter feels more like a nuisance than a challenge. Although the only battle I had trouble with was the boss battle and I'll get to that later.

I enjoyed how you made the dialogue, descriptions, names, etc. clownjester-related, especially when TInkles sees an opening, I always chose(mainly for the easier fights) to tell a joke only because, well, who doesn't like to hear a joke? Among the many items, I loved the Miracle water's description of dunking it on your head when you're burning. It was really clever as it is clearly a reference to a clown or jester's standard routine.

The only problem that I had was with the boss fight. It was preceded by the fight with the spider demon which was also a difficult battle from my experience(plus I fought the ogre right after the spider demon). During my playthrough, I ended up using most of my health and power donuts against the spider that I was left with only a handful by the time I got to the final boss. Without enemies to farm or a shop to adjust my inventory with, unprepared players like me may have

an almost impossible chance of finishing the game.

With that said, I struggled to keep Alain alive with mostly apples since I cant survive the entire whip combo of the queen without Alain's help. In the end I won but that is because the queen didn't spam her whip as much as she normally would.

Anyway, overall, it was a great game and I hope to see another one form you.

 

[OliverAllix]

I had to ask here as well as GJ, I don't know which you check more often if at all, Alkorri, is there an official soundtrack, or is it just in the game files? I really like the music, and I really want to listen to it more. But if you don't see it on GameJolt, I'll comment the other two things here:

I just got done playing this. I absolutely adored this game. It stole my heart and made me laugh so hard. Thank you so much for making this game. It's amazing.

Spoiler

I also have to say, it really was a touching message. With how I am, I do get a lot of hate, for being random and hyper and really weird to many people for many reasons. Tinkles just really reminded me, "It's okay to be nuts and wild. Forget anyone that talks down to you. Be you." ...No matter how doomed Matty thinks the realm is.