Vignettes: The Dream City [DEMO]

Hi, another developer here!

First of all, respect for going with the Godot engine - I've made multiple failed attempts at getting used to it, definitely has its weird quirks and (especially debugging wise) technical shortcomings.

About the demo: it's very interesting, but unfortunately my session was doomed by technical and gameplay problems. Visuals were constantly glitching, random sprites appeared for single frames (was kinda headache inducing), and when I switched between windowed and fullscreen mode, the UI freaked out. Tinkering with one setting solved it thankfully. Honestly, not sure if these were Godot, or my GPU (or both) specific problems, but I've never seen anything like these in any other game.

Also, I think there might be a bug somewhere in the settings panel, some tinkering, or config saving made the fullscreen switching.

About the gameplay: I gotta admit I'm not a big JRPG player, but have played some (even one with a similar first person implementation), and can definitely enjoy these types of games. Here, I had no clue what was going on. I might have missed some text, but I don't get what's that diminishing Focus was about. Kinda reminded me of the game called Minit, where you get only 60 seconds in a time loop before dying (except there are some pickupables here that can regain or expand the Focus). Personally I felt this way too gimmicky - and if I may say, even annoying -, but looking at the other comments, I guess it's just me.

Another thing I didn't get was the combat. Frankly, I couldn't find out how to beat any of the enemies. Collected quite a lot of items, experimented with them in different ways, but nope. Nothing, not even close. Again, judging by the other comments, it seems that it's just me... though I have no clue what did I miss.

Well, even though my session went... like that, I still think the game has some cool potential - thus why I leave this hopefully rather constructive(?) post here. Either way, good luck with wrapping up the project!

I love this concept! The game runs very choppy for me, could it be a compatibility issue? I'm running it on Windows 10 (tried Windows 8 comaptibility, seemed to be a bit better but still difficult to play). It's not a gaming laptop but it's got a decent processor (AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 2.10 GHz). Any ideas as to what could be causing the lag?

Is there a reason why there's a health bar and a "dream" bar separately? Depleting either ends the dream so it seems to me like they could be merged into one (though I haven't gotten to far into the game, might make sense to keep them separate down the line).

I played around half an hour in total so take my feedback with a grain of salt. I'll definitely come back to it but as is it's really hard to play with the choppy visuals.

Can't wait to see where it develops!

This was really great demo game and looks very good well done keep it up!

Thoughts after about an hour or two of gameplay:

Thoughts (mostly positive):

- The aesthetic is pretty great. There's a potential worry of treading too close to the pink marble statue vaporwave aesthetic, and I would say it successfully avoids that. The models are nice, the items are interestingly unique.

- I like the names of the Focus abilities.

- I like the ability to parkour around the map, although that... may not be intentional in some cases. I can get on top of streetlights and find ways to bypass the bottomless pits and get on top of buildings in some cases in a way that lets me see the outside of the map quite easily.

- I like the look of the dungeons, both of the ones I visited-- what I assume is supposed to be the first one, and the one that's just a long hallway with the radio at the end.

- I like the music that exists, it is somewhat sparse, but it works well.

- I like the idea of throwing coins in the river, and the massive piles of coins visible when you jump in.

- I really liked exploring the world and I liked the characters/dialogue in the areas where you could speak to NPCs, particularly the 'art show' above the mall.

Other Thoughts (mostly negative):

- You can't see what your items do when you're in combat, and you can't see what your equipment does when choosing it on the equipment screen (which makes it a pain in the ass to compare equipment). I would humbly request that this description information be visible somewhere other than just when you click>examine in the items menu.

- I think the save/upgrade hourglass being a physical location is more frustration than it's worth.

- I think the save system in general is... odd. I worry there may be situations that you save after getting stuck in an area, and then you're just screwed forever because you saved in an area you can't get out of.

- It's an interesting choice but ultimately, I think, just a frustrating one to make it so that status effects are effectively permanent until you find the specific ways to remove them. Getting ennui and brain fog from one random enemy in a dungeon and then having it... presently, my entire experience of the game session forward is pretty rough.

- The foggy forest areas are quite samey, maze-like and generic, and as far as I can tell, I have no ability to actually hit the eyeball enemies, so my present understanding is that I'll just have to avoid ever getting detected by them, which means it's a forced stealth level, basically? Pretty rough stuff there. It may be fun to some, but not overly much to me.

- I went to an area that was a huge hallway using a consumable item and the first door I went inside took me to... an area I'd already been very recently. So, a waste of the book. No telling when I'll get another.

- The area you get to using the shifting stone on the rubble that has a long hallway/catwalk with a radio at the end doesn't seem to me to have any way to leave except falling off the edge. Luckily, that just seems to take you to a random area ala LSD, but it seems odd. 

- At first, I got the impression that the various cabinets, mailboxes, chests, etc around the world acted in a 'roguelike' fashion, where if I died and came back, they would occasionally have new loot. As far as I can tell, though, if you ever loot a 'container' or other loot spawn, it never comes back, and all that loot is manually placed. I would prefer, given that's the case, that the container stays visibly open or darkened, changed in some way so that I know I already looted it, because I can't keep myself from opening them just in case when I walk by. It *feels* like there should still be a chance to find something.

- Twice, I've had issues with the game thinking that I was falling through the ground and ending the dream prematurely. Once, when I entered combat while falling-- it kicked me out after I beat the enemy, and secondly when I was just walking along.

- There's a weird bug where the game freezes for what feels like a microsecond, but the mouse still moves a bunch, and messes up your jumping/aiming, quite disorienting. Hypnic jerks, if you will. It seems to happen more often sometimes and less often sometimes.

Overall, I think that it left me feeling somewhat lacking. I'd like to see more variety in the initial town that you start in, so the early game doesn't feel so samey. I'd like to see the mazelike areas get less tedious to go through, and I'd like to see future areas. But it's promising - I feel like in a year or so this could be a really excellent, unique dreamlike RPG. At present, there are enough painpoints I wouldn't want to buy it in an early access sort of situation.

this is a complete banger, haven't tried out the jump fix but i'm glad it's out.

This demo feels so good to play. I really like games where there's encouragement to roam around, not many instructions, and you have to do some detective work of your own. The added time pressure of the dream is the cherry on top because it made me play with urgency. I think you balanced this very well and I'm looking forward to play the game in future versions. 

I've been enjoying the game so far, even with its lower poly count the I'm having a blast just looking at my surroundings when I shift into a new area!

If there's one thing that hampers it a bit, and you're probably aware of this already, it's the jumping. I'm not sure if it's tied to gameplay, but the height you get out of it seems very inconsistent. Sometimes it feels like a proper jump but other times I feel like I'm glued to the ground. This did cause a softlock during a small platforming segment where I missed a jump and got stuck between the two pillars, unable to jump onto the neighboring ramps which forced me to wait out the timer so I could reset.

As this is a very early version of the game, I'm not too bothered by it and still thoroughly enjoyed my time playing.

Congrats on the demo release and I'm excited to see where this game goes!

So excited :)