A huge thank you to you coucassi for your patience and comments! It means a lot to me!!!
There are a few minor lines that felt off to me though, like "Home, sweet home". This phrase seemed kinda out of character for me, I'd rather let him express his joy of being home in a more polished way
Yeah, you are right, I will change that.
Talking about Ho-Ichi, maybe you want to change the design of his faceset, according to his sprite: His walking sprite looks way more interesting, due to the blind eyes, while his portrait's eyes are just greyed out, but still have an iris.
So, My first draft of the character was like that, but without an iris he was less expressive and a little creepy, which doesn't work well with the function of the character in the story.
- In general I think the atmosphere you create is the main strength of this game. As I already said, after playing the prologue, you did an awesome job making the music fit to your scenes (or the other way around?)
Thank you! Is kinda both, I take a LOT of time choosing each music with attention to be sure that it will create the right atmosphere. Once the music is there, I rewatch the cutscenes to make sure that the text and the music are in synchrony.
- The biggest flaw however is the gamepley, in my opinion (at least at this point). The riddles are good. I enjoyed the different yokai and I hope there will be more to come and also the decision making and the system with the five elements are great, but the parts in between seem kinda pointless, namely every time you actually play your character: You just wander from one scene to the next. So you could also make this whole game a visual novel, or - and that's what I would recommend - add more things the player can interact with! Your writing is good enough, that you can make exploring more fun just by having your character talk about things - preferably lore or story related, but also just for characterisation.
I will take that in consideration for part II, buuuuuuuuut I will not change part I (I need do get forward to end this project one day)
- The "Will-To-Life"-Mechanics on the other hand is quite cool! Adds a permanent thrill to making decisions. I also liked the way to restore it by being soothed by your friends and loved ones. Maybe you could even go further by having stat and/or story related penalties or benefits for high/low Will-To-Life-values to keep your players from just reloading after losing some points.
Don't worry, it was always my idea to do that in the game. Part II will go MUCH MORE DEEP in this aspect
- I also like the lore about the different clans, but I can imagine that it might be a bit boring to some players. I think it would be more interesting if you'd have met some plot relevant characters of these clans before or had the clans and their actions mentioned in some dialogues, so that they actual mean something to the player, when they encounter their embassadors.
Well the idea of part II is to visit each clan to know them personally, my idea with this part was to offer lore to the geeks like me who love sacrifice a good night of sleep, to study each detail of ancient kingdoms (fictional or not)
- Ignored the women attacked by the Yokai (died in my first attempt to save her)
It is possible to save her... but very hard.
I am happy that you have enjoyed it, part II will take a little time to be ready, but take a little sneak peek
