you guys clearly put a lot of time into making this.
The UI is very clean with on-point micro animations, something I have not seen often in this jam. The assets are well made and very creative. The combat is a bit confusing at first "killing is bad, try capture" needed half the dev-team in chat to figure that one out :D but once you get the hang of it, it's a fun!
Movement on the main map feels a bit slow, but there is fast travel so it's not a big deal. The dialog & papers are well written with a bit of humor in between. The music is very fitting does and not feel looped. Besides some combat understanding hiccups there is little bad to say about this game. Great job to all members of the team! <3
Provided additional feedback on the UX/UI in the Discord chat.
Thank you so much for all the feedback, both here and in chat :D
We definitely plan to clarify things in the coming full release
also, thank you very much for your community service of providing graphs to all those who submitted jams, it really did help everyone understand what was happening.
loved it xD was a little confused with combining elements but i got it eventually xD i don't think there is a back out of battle option because you're meant to capture it, but what if i wasn't ready for a fight? i went to the fish before i could learn to mix elements and i couldn't do much.
Music is fine. Title splash is great. I’m unsure if the missing-texture for the head of the staff is intentional. Combat mechanics are interesting, though I struggled with the snails. Hover over information is generally good also. I had a lot more trouble with the puppies though - eventually you run out of AP for Salt Cure and they just howl at you. Played until I got knocked out by dog about two dozen times or so, since I couldn’t get to the next map. Overall an enjoyable game though.
There’s a slight lack of feedback in some interactions - most notably for buttons and objects that have no hover-over text - so they don’t appear to react when you mouse over them. It’s generally a minimal issue, though, but it’d likely improve how the game feels - in addition to highlighting glass vials when dragging spirits into them.
The ground hintboxes stay in the world so reappear whenever you walk over it.
The instructions given for higher residues are a little unclear - it implies you can drag elements on your table directly onto the enemy (or the residue you want to combine with). I although thought perhaps that since combining residues removes all stacks I could make a bigger stack to deal more damage - but after several attempts I found this wasn’t the case. There’s no real feedback here to figure that out easily. You also realise very quickly that higher material attacks just aren’t as great for attacking the resonance meter as a couple of cheap attacks that require less elements and deal less actual power damage. This seems to make the Morph Ferret and Bombardier Beetle much less useful.
There was some slight railroading with the snails - because I was having issues with capturing them, I wanted to find another Earth attack that dealt less damage so I headed west, but was told I had to capture the snails. I feel like there’s a really missed game interaction opportunity here you could work with.
I noticed the notes were unsorted - or rather, they are simply listed in the order you collected them. It might be worth having them sorted since the books are numbered.
The dog’s gaia howl hits for for 3~5x 40~60 damage, dealing anywhere between 120 and 300 damage (KO’d after 4~8 attacks). No amount of Salt Cure & Fly seems to work. There’s also Purify/Whip/Fly but that deals too much power damage and you get knocked out at roughly the same point. Hydrate doesn’t really work against Gaia Howl either. This seems rather luck based, unless I’m missing something obvious.
We definitely had room to better introduce the battle mechanics in the game. This is something we aim to improve in the full release.
You bring up several good points with the combat itself. I totally agree that higher stacks of residue not applying more capture damage is confusing. Many of these mechanics were developed quickly, and I think you spotted a few loose ends :D
Sorting the notes is an easy win, good idea.
There are a few different viable strategies for the dog. One approach I know works is using Purify, Whirlwind, and then Dig. Purify heals over time, whirlwind will apply additional stacks of air residue over time, and dig deals high earth damage to apply the resonance.
You have given loads of helpful feedback here, thank you.
I never figured out that it was the damage on the resonance hit that subtracted from the resonance meter - especially since the game said power doesn’t matter. I figured it was just the number of times you could trigger it. the game does get significantly easier once you backload the damage.
Fortunately it’s pretty easy and quick to complete once you know what you’re doing. Shame there’s no mobs to do a philo-stone victory lap on!
I agree with other comments out there - content wise this game is awesome. Personally I like the simple art and approach. Its fun & simple, love it. Clearly you did a lot of great job with the game. The tutorial is a bit confusing but with trial and error you can get somewhere, that's great.
The amount of content and gameplay on offer here is quite staggering.
I'll admit I wasn't immediately drawn in by the game the premise and graphics seemed quite simple at first but as I got down into the cellar and picked got into the first fight the game jumped to an entirely new level.
The tutorial was kinda confusing to be honest but a little trial and error it turned out to be much easier than I thought. I really loved the resonance system and having to find the best combos to capture the shadows as you went through the game. As they got more complicated it took a bunch more thought to plan out my attacks. The dog was the hardest battle in my opinion.
I think my game bugged or something cos after I beat the cat I didn't really know where to go so I retraced my steps and found my shadow in the basement. It beat me the first time and I got the "thank you" message when i died. I went back and kicked his *** though and properly finished things.
I think the final scene bugged though cos when your mum comes back if you try to talk to her nothing happens. The game just hangs. You can press escape to leave what I assume is a bugged conversation but it made me kinda sad to not see the resolution of the game. (The thank you message was nice though).
Okay let's talk about the art. It feels kinda all over the place to be honest. The character and environments feel like multiple styles/skillsets mushed together (correct me if I'm wrong) but then when you get into battle. WOW the battle sprites are absolutely fantastic they are full of so much design/style and humour. The chicken having a t-rex shadow and the dog being right up in your face. 10/10 design choices absolutely loved it.
The audio is great throughout no complaints at all.
I wish there was a way to flee from a fight when you already know you aren't gonna win and I wish I could look at the resonance chart outside of fights but otherwise the game was great.
I wish there was more use for the inventory screen because it was really cute and I feel like people might miss it.
Overall a fantastic game that is a little rough in some areas but the highs of the game waaay outmatch the lows. The battle system and it's art are absolutely brilliant and had me hooked from beginning to end. I just wish I knew what the last conversation with mum was!
Thank you for such thoughtful words! The final dialogue should have been:
Clint, there you are! Were you down in that cellar the whole time? Well thanks for cleaning that up, but it is time for bed! We have a long trip in the morning. We are going to see your grandma and grandpa. The eclipse is going to be so exciting...
I played till I captured the cat shadow, but was unsure of where to go from there. It seems there's more content past that that I missed from looking at the comments. Oops!
I think the idea of working a child's imagination into the world is a lot of fun. Seeing the different shadows each animal held within was very cute. I very much enjoyed how the dog was portrayed.
Good job with the game mechanics. I think combining elements in order to capture animal shadows turns what otherwise could be just creature battles into a series of interesting puzzles instead.
Impressive what you were able to accomplish in 2 weeks for the game jam! Great job! (The only bug I encountered was being able to win on the same turn I died and then die in the next fight I went into.)
Thank you so much for playing so far! Yes unfortunately the cat final sequence did not trigger properly. After capturing the cat, the cat was supposed to lead you back to the cellar. This is where the final boss is after capturing the cat. If you go back to the cellar after catching the cat the final boss will be there, there is just nothing there to tell you that at the moment.
I lost to the cellar chaos boss, but I got a completion message anyway? I'll take it, the celestial dog already gave me a run for my money. ^^'
That's quite a lot of content; I know quite well how once you get past the core mechanics implementation adding levels/items/enemies/etc. becomes relatively fast, but still, it's quite a lot - especially with all those enemy portraits and shadows and other graphics. The tutorial might have had a tad too much text at once - would be nice if player input was permitted in the meantime, or some explanations (like matching element affinities) were pushed until they became truly relevant. Still, there were quite a lot of mechanics, and it was interesting, having to balance skills so that they target the affinity, but also don't defeat the enemy too early.
A little nitpick - I'd prefer if I could speed up the dialogue typewriter by clicking once, and then clicking again. In the first place, the typewriter effect feel pretty redundant if you interact with pre-written text, rather than speaking people. ;) But those are details.
Pretty nicely done, overall; some mechanics could be polished here and there, but overall the game has nice amount of depth and content to it. ^^
The tutorial is the most verbose one I've seen in ages, but the thing is, it's not clear either lmao. I was using earth spell on tree & worm then I came across some fish monster and I suppose I couldn't defeat it with what I had at the moment. This is why a flee option would be needed in combat
besides that, your art is marvelous, the execution is well done and the direction is well thought. I enjoyed this entry regardless of his shortcomings
I really enjoyed this! I like the battle system, very well done, I like the way it's all presented as well, love the table, love the menus. Some issues though, in the basement, if you go all the way up you can go behind those top objects, I'm aware the objects placement are y coordinate based, so if that's the case make sure you don't let people be able to go a y higher than the objects you don't want in front of you. When I'm reading books on the ground and an enemy attacks me it kicks me out of it and into battle. And putting the captured enemies into the equipment wasn't super clear. But other than that, great work!
This game is very unique and creative. The battle sequences are a turn-based, elemental style combat similar to Pokemon, but with a fresh and original take unlike anything I've played before. I really appreciated the art style and detailed lore books scattered around the open world. The intro and tutorial to the game felt slightly clunky, but I enjoyed the gameplay highly after I figured it out. I would definitely play this game, or a game in this style more if the development were to continue
Thank you so much for your kind words. We are really glad you enjoyed it. And yes we are considering continue a bit more development based off the feed back we are getting.
Really enjoyed this! Lovely art style, and the soft locks to get past so you dont miss anything in the beginning felt nice and natural. I think a new attack being introduced a little earlier instead of just the stick would be cool, just to keep things flowing and interesting. Great game!
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you guys clearly put a lot of time into making this.
The UI is very clean with on-point micro animations, something I have not seen often in this jam. The assets are well made and very creative. The combat is a bit confusing at first "killing is bad, try capture" needed half the dev-team in chat to figure that one out :D but once you get the hang of it, it's a fun!
Movement on the main map feels a bit slow, but there is fast travel so it's not a big deal. The dialog & papers are well written with a bit of humor in between. The music is very fitting does and not feel looped. Besides some combat understanding hiccups there is little bad to say about this game.
Great job to all members of the team! <3
Provided additional feedback on the UX/UI in the Discord chat.
Thank you so much for all the feedback, both here and in chat :D
We definitely plan to clarify things in the coming full release
also, thank you very much for your community service of providing graphs to all those who submitted jams, it really did help everyone understand what was happening.
loved it xD was a little confused with combining elements but i got it eventually xD i don't think there is a back out of battle option because you're meant to capture it, but what if i wasn't ready for a fight? i went to the fish before i could learn to mix elements and i couldn't do much.
I am glad you were able to figure it out! I agree, that is good feedback. We will definitely add a flee mechanic to the full release :D
Thanks so much for playing!
I can tell you put a lot of effort into the combat. Nice work
Music is fine. Title splash is great. I’m unsure if the missing-texture for the head of the staff is intentional. Combat mechanics are interesting, though I struggled with the snails. Hover over information is generally good also. I had a lot more trouble with the puppies though - eventually you run out of AP for Salt Cure and they just howl at you. Played until I got knocked out by dog about two dozen times or so, since I couldn’t get to the next map. Overall an enjoyable game though.
There’s a slight lack of feedback in some interactions - most notably for buttons and objects that have no hover-over text - so they don’t appear to react when you mouse over them. It’s generally a minimal issue, though, but it’d likely improve how the game feels - in addition to highlighting glass vials when dragging spirits into them.
The ground hintboxes stay in the world so reappear whenever you walk over it.
The instructions given for higher residues are a little unclear - it implies you can drag elements on your table directly onto the enemy (or the residue you want to combine with). I although thought perhaps that since combining residues removes all stacks I could make a bigger stack to deal more damage - but after several attempts I found this wasn’t the case. There’s no real feedback here to figure that out easily. You also realise very quickly that higher material attacks just aren’t as great for attacking the resonance meter as a couple of cheap attacks that require less elements and deal less actual power damage. This seems to make the Morph Ferret and Bombardier Beetle much less useful.
There was some slight railroading with the snails - because I was having issues with capturing them, I wanted to find another Earth attack that dealt less damage so I headed west, but was told I had to capture the snails. I feel like there’s a really missed game interaction opportunity here you could work with.
I noticed the notes were unsorted - or rather, they are simply listed in the order you collected them. It might be worth having them sorted since the books are numbered.
The dog’s gaia howl hits for for 3~5x 40~60 damage, dealing anywhere between 120 and 300 damage (KO’d after 4~8 attacks). No amount of Salt Cure & Fly seems to work. There’s also Purify/Whip/Fly but that deals too much power damage and you get knocked out at roughly the same point. Hydrate doesn’t really work against Gaia Howl either. This seems rather luck based, unless I’m missing something obvious.
First, thank you for the thoughtful feedback.
We definitely had room to better introduce the battle mechanics in the game. This is something we aim to improve in the full release.
You bring up several good points with the combat itself. I totally agree that higher stacks of residue not applying more capture damage is confusing. Many of these mechanics were developed quickly, and I think you spotted a few loose ends :D
Sorting the notes is an easy win, good idea.
There are a few different viable strategies for the dog. One approach I know works is using Purify, Whirlwind, and then Dig. Purify heals over time, whirlwind will apply additional stacks of air residue over time, and dig deals high earth damage to apply the resonance.
You have given loads of helpful feedback here, thank you.
I never figured out that it was the damage on the resonance hit that subtracted from the resonance meter - especially since the game said power doesn’t matter. I figured it was just the number of times you could trigger it. the game does get significantly easier once you backload the damage.
Fortunately it’s pretty easy and quick to complete once you know what you’re doing. Shame there’s no mobs to do a philo-stone victory lap on!
I agree with other comments out there - content wise this game is awesome. Personally I like the simple art and approach. Its fun & simple, love it. Clearly you did a lot of great job with the game. The tutorial is a bit confusing but with trial and error you can get somewhere, that's great.
Thank you for the kind words! We plan to continue development on this game :D
The amount of content and gameplay on offer here is quite staggering.
I'll admit I wasn't immediately drawn in by the game the premise and graphics seemed quite simple at first but as I got down into the cellar and picked got into the first fight the game jumped to an entirely new level.
The tutorial was kinda confusing to be honest but a little trial and error it turned out to be much easier than I thought. I really loved the resonance system and having to find the best combos to capture the shadows as you went through the game. As they got more complicated it took a bunch more thought to plan out my attacks. The dog was the hardest battle in my opinion.
I think my game bugged or something cos after I beat the cat I didn't really know where to go so I retraced my steps and found my shadow in the basement. It beat me the first time and I got the "thank you" message when i died. I went back and kicked his *** though and properly finished things.
I think the final scene bugged though cos when your mum comes back if you try to talk to her nothing happens. The game just hangs. You can press escape to leave what I assume is a bugged conversation but it made me kinda sad to not see the resolution of the game. (The thank you message was nice though).
Okay let's talk about the art. It feels kinda all over the place to be honest. The character and environments feel like multiple styles/skillsets mushed together (correct me if I'm wrong) but then when you get into battle. WOW the battle sprites are absolutely fantastic they are full of so much design/style and humour. The chicken having a t-rex shadow and the dog being right up in your face. 10/10 design choices absolutely loved it.
The audio is great throughout no complaints at all.
I wish there was a way to flee from a fight when you already know you aren't gonna win and I wish I could look at the resonance chart outside of fights but otherwise the game was great.
I wish there was more use for the inventory screen because it was really cute and I feel like people might miss it.
Overall a fantastic game that is a little rough in some areas but the highs of the game waaay outmatch the lows. The battle system and it's art are absolutely brilliant and had me hooked from beginning to end. I just wish I knew what the last conversation with mum was!
Thank you for such thoughtful words! The final dialogue should have been:
Clint, there you are! Were you down in that cellar the whole time? Well thanks for cleaning that up, but it is time for bed! We have a long trip in the morning. We are going to see your grandma and grandpa. The eclipse is going to be so exciting...
And just ilke that the cycle is complete! I can rest now knowing how it ended.... Eclipse...? Uh oh. Sequel?
I played till I captured the cat shadow, but was unsure of where to go from there. It seems there's more content past that that I missed from looking at the comments. Oops!
I think the idea of working a child's imagination into the world is a lot of fun. Seeing the different shadows each animal held within was very cute. I very much enjoyed how the dog was portrayed.
Good job with the game mechanics. I think combining elements in order to capture animal shadows turns what otherwise could be just creature battles into a series of interesting puzzles instead.
Impressive what you were able to accomplish in 2 weeks for the game jam! Great job! (The only bug I encountered was being able to win on the same turn I died and then die in the next fight I went into.)
Thank you so much for playing so far! Yes unfortunately the cat final sequence did not trigger properly. After capturing the cat, the cat was supposed to lead you back to the cellar. This is where the final boss is after capturing the cat. If you go back to the cellar after catching the cat the final boss will be there, there is just nothing there to tell you that at the moment.
I lost to the cellar chaos boss, but I got a completion message anyway? I'll take it, the celestial dog already gave me a run for my money. ^^'
That's quite a lot of content; I know quite well how once you get past the core mechanics implementation adding levels/items/enemies/etc. becomes relatively fast, but still, it's quite a lot - especially with all those enemy portraits and shadows and other graphics. The tutorial might have had a tad too much text at once - would be nice if player input was permitted in the meantime, or some explanations (like matching element affinities) were pushed until they became truly relevant. Still, there were quite a lot of mechanics, and it was interesting, having to balance skills so that they target the affinity, but also don't defeat the enemy too early.
A little nitpick - I'd prefer if I could speed up the dialogue typewriter by clicking once, and then clicking again. In the first place, the typewriter effect feel pretty redundant if you interact with pre-written text, rather than speaking people. ;) But those are details.
Pretty nicely done, overall; some mechanics could be polished here and there, but overall the game has nice amount of depth and content to it. ^^
Thank you so much for the kind words! There are definitely improvements we could make to both presentation, and QOL, so I agree with your thoughts.
The tutorial is the most verbose one I've seen in ages, but the thing is, it's not clear either lmao. I was using earth spell on tree & worm then I came across some fish monster and I suppose I couldn't defeat it with what I had at the moment. This is why a flee option would be needed in combat
besides that, your art is marvelous, the execution is well done and the direction is well thought. I enjoyed this entry regardless of his shortcomings
I think this is a fair criticism! The mechanics were evolving a lot, and we should have allotted more time to clarify the mechanics.
Thank you for playing, and for your thoughts!
I really enjoyed this! I like the battle system, very well done, I like the way it's all presented as well, love the table, love the menus. Some issues though, in the basement, if you go all the way up you can go behind those top objects, I'm aware the objects placement are y coordinate based, so if that's the case make sure you don't let people be able to go a y higher than the objects you don't want in front of you. When I'm reading books on the ground and an enemy attacks me it kicks me out of it and into battle. And putting the captured enemies into the equipment wasn't super clear. But other than that, great work!
Thank you for playing! I am happy to hear you enjoyed the experience :D
This game is very unique and creative. The battle sequences are a turn-based, elemental style combat similar to Pokemon, but with a fresh and original take unlike anything I've played before. I really appreciated the art style and detailed lore books scattered around the open world. The intro and tutorial to the game felt slightly clunky, but I enjoyed the gameplay highly after I figured it out. I would definitely play this game, or a game in this style more if the development were to continue
Thank you so much for your kind words. We are really glad you enjoyed it. And yes we are considering continue a bit more development based off the feed back we are getting.
Really enjoyed this! Lovely art style, and the soft locks to get past so you dont miss anything in the beginning felt nice and natural. I think a new attack being introduced a little earlier instead of just the stick would be cool, just to keep things flowing and interesting. Great game!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked our game.