I've really enjoyed the demo so far! And I hope to have more to say soon, but there are more pressing matters at hand: namely, I can't get out of the water!
The only places I've been able to leave water is where there's a ladder, like in the river. In the cistern, I just get stuck, and there's no combination of sprinting/jumping/crouching that gets me out of the water onto the ledge. The first time I encountered something like this (in the river area), I assumed it was intentional if a bit contrived that I couldn't crawl onto the ledge just barely above the water level, but now that I'm getting completely stuck, I think there may be a problem. I tested it with a fresh character, and the same thing happens.
I am really loving the experience, and I just want to get back to it!
Thanks for playing! Apologies about the water issue, a few people have been getting it - if I may ask: what refresh rate is the monitor you're playing with at? Are you playing with VSync enabled?
Gameplay loop feels unintuitive at first, as the player doesn't have the resources to fight the most common enemy type at the start, and there is no map of any sort. Searching around yields a stationary hourglass save spot location where you can save and power up, but equipment items have a much larger effect on gameplay.
HP+ 2 is helpful when all foes in the area deal 3 damage, extra attack didn't do much, extra focus is rendered irrelevant when you find a Faceless Fetish, and defense appears to be practically worthless, only providing a chance to turn a 3-damage hit into a 0-damage hit when the player takes damage. The most useful stat besides HP is agility so the player can strike first, but the Bismuth Bell takes care of that.
The valuable equipment items are the Somnus Shroud (greatly decreases focus drain, letting you travel longer in one session), Faceless Fetish (massively increases focus, meaning you can stay in the dream world indefinitely), Bismuth Bell (greatly increases agility, so you can always land the first strike against foes), and Idol of the Dreamer. The latter did quite a bit of damage at level 3, meaning I could take out the common foes in two hits, allowing me to conserve pink flesh healing items and other consumables. Broken Sword has far less damage per swing. Not sure what factors into the damage calculations. I thought that the Idol scaled based on focus, but equipping three Faceless Fetishes didn't boost the damage, and it made me realize how important the Bismuth Bell's agility boost is when in combat.
One thing I feel conflicted about is the deconsecrator item used to unlock blue doors. Metroidvania style-progression is what it is, though it looks like the best way to stock up on deconsecrators is to repeatedly slay weak foes over and over until they drop a Deconsecrator or another rare item.
The thing I feel iffiest about is stamina. The menu spell can restore 10 stamina per use, almost up to the maximum stamina. This means that there is no reason to use stamina restoration items, and the mechanic simply restricts the player's ability to sprint, which wasn't very fun.
Frankly one of the best experiences I've ever had with indie dreamlike games. The nomenclature, the environments, the sound design, a lot of elements feel very much in the right place and it's almost honoring to get to play it absolutely for free. Some interactions contribute even more to the immersion. I would love to see concepts like these explored more often and I look forward to the full release. Thank you 💙
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!
Thanks for playing, I really appreciate the feedback!
Apologies for the technical issues you faced during it - are you able to provide a screenshot or video of the visual glitching you mention? It doesn't sound like anything anyone has reported so far so not sure what would be causing that!
Hey, sorry for the late reply. Just wanted to let you know that the GPU related problems (glitching and whatnot) got magically solved meanwhile :D I suppose Windows has updated the driver in the background, or something. Should have known ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
The game has really cool aesthetics, so it would have been quite the shame if it struggled on certain computers.
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.
Thanks for playing! I'm not too sure what could be causing the lag, what year did that GPU come out? You could try running the game in windowed mode at a smaller resolution, and disabling things like anti-aliasing in the settings.
Lots of the mechanics and elements of the game are balanced around there being separate bars like that (determination and focus), I think it makes sense having them separate! They aren't necessarily a health bar and a dream bar :)
Let me know if the suggestions above make the game run any better, but if not I suspect the GPU may be on the lower end of what is supported!
- 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.
Thank you for playing, and for taking the time to write up the feedback, I really appreciate it! :)
I'll respond to bits and pieces of the feedback:
- All of the parkour is intentional! Especially the getting out of the map parts, there's a number of secrets in areas like that. I would be interested to know where you got on top of streetlights/buildings and bypassed a pit, as if they aren't places I'm aware of I'd love to add some secrets there ;)
- I've got plans to enhance the inventory/status menus similar to how you describe it!
- There shouldn't be areas you get stuck in without being able to get out, I would be interested to know if you encountered anything like that in your playthrough! You can always revisit prior save files too! Nothing gets overwritten.
- There are quite a few ways of damaging the eyes, but perhaps you missed those parts - it's tough when everything is nonlinear/optional. It's not supposed to be a forced stealth section, but it is supposed to be hard, and it's an optional area too :)
- Indicating when containers have been looted is for sure planned! The loot isn't manually placed however, it's randomly generated when you first start a new game and persistent in the same save.
- The long hallway and the place with the radio are directly inspired by LSD: Dream Emulator, so ending up in a random place you may have been before is intentional! Some random places you end up are more beneficial than others, and in the full game you'll be able to find many more of those books (you could find more in the demo even, as the loot is all random).
- The falling issue is related to a timer still ticking when the game should otherwise be paused, a fix is in the works for the full game!
- I'm not aware of any issue with the game freezing and the mouse jerking - if you are able to provide any more information for me to reproduce the issue that would be amazing!
Thanks again for playing, and for the really great feedback. I have no plans to launch the game in early access, it will be launched when it's feature and content complete later on this year!
One thing I will say is that parts of the game are intentionally designed to be obtuse, unfair, and frustrating if you haven't yet found the right way of dealing with them - it's in part a knowledge-based game so the intention is for the player to be experimental, try out different methods/strategies, make note of what they learn, and revisit with the new knowledge. If that's not the sort of gameplay that meshes well with you, than fair enough :)
- I have Mindfulness upgraded to lvl 3 and it still only seems to do 10 determination healing, which is what it did when I got it -- does it not actually upgrade when you upgrade it?
- The spiked helmet seems like it can't be picked up when dropped off enemies. Or maybe it's a candle?
- The hover sound when you hover over menu items is quite intense and can quickly get quite grating.
- The hitching seems to occur when the -1 focus / roaring sound happens.
Here's my speedrun using the probably most egregious parkour skip:
That definitely seems like a bug with Mindfulness, thanks!! Also with spiked helmet, I'll look into this :)
And wow great job! I'm definitely adding a secret there thank you hahah, I might even leave the whole skip in the full game as it won't end up being much of a skip outside of the demo and is definitely in the spirit of the kind of gameplay I'd like to encourage ;)
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!
Apologies about the jump issue, that's definitely not intentional, the jump is supposed to be a lot smoother (and was during my testing!) - I believe it may be tied to the framerate of the game in some way, did you happen to be playing the game on a monitor with a high refresh rate by any chance?
EDIT: I've just uploaded a new version which has potentially fixed this issue - if you could try it out that would be awesome :)
![Vignettes: The Dream City [DEMO]](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE1MjAyNTIzLnBuZw==/original/7vSTmQ.png)
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I've really enjoyed the demo so far! And I hope to have more to say soon, but there are more pressing matters at hand: namely, I can't get out of the water!
The only places I've been able to leave water is where there's a ladder, like in the river. In the cistern, I just get stuck, and there's no combination of sprinting/jumping/crouching that gets me out of the water onto the ledge. The first time I encountered something like this (in the river area), I assumed it was intentional if a bit contrived that I couldn't crawl onto the ledge just barely above the water level, but now that I'm getting completely stuck, I think there may be a problem. I tested it with a fresh character, and the same thing happens.
I am really loving the experience, and I just want to get back to it!
Thanks for playing! Apologies about the water issue, a few people have been getting it - if I may ask: what refresh rate is the monitor you're playing with at? Are you playing with VSync enabled?
That's all right! I tested it on 165hz and 60hz, with and without VSync, and experienced it under each of those conditions.
The experience is... interesting.
Gameplay loop feels unintuitive at first, as the player doesn't have the resources to fight the most common enemy type at the start, and there is no map of any sort. Searching around yields a stationary hourglass save spot location where you can save and power up, but equipment items have a much larger effect on gameplay.
HP+ 2 is helpful when all foes in the area deal 3 damage, extra attack didn't do much, extra focus is rendered irrelevant when you find a Faceless Fetish, and defense appears to be practically worthless, only providing a chance to turn a 3-damage hit into a 0-damage hit when the player takes damage. The most useful stat besides HP is agility so the player can strike first, but the Bismuth Bell takes care of that.
The valuable equipment items are the Somnus Shroud (greatly decreases focus drain, letting you travel longer in one session), Faceless Fetish (massively increases focus, meaning you can stay in the dream world indefinitely), Bismuth Bell (greatly increases agility, so you can always land the first strike against foes), and Idol of the Dreamer. The latter did quite a bit of damage at level 3, meaning I could take out the common foes in two hits, allowing me to conserve pink flesh healing items and other consumables. Broken Sword has far less damage per swing. Not sure what factors into the damage calculations. I thought that the Idol scaled based on focus, but equipping three Faceless Fetishes didn't boost the damage, and it made me realize how important the Bismuth Bell's agility boost is when in combat.
One thing I feel conflicted about is the deconsecrator item used to unlock blue doors. Metroidvania style-progression is what it is, though it looks like the best way to stock up on deconsecrators is to repeatedly slay weak foes over and over until they drop a Deconsecrator or another rare item.
The thing I feel iffiest about is stamina. The menu spell can restore 10 stamina per use, almost up to the maximum stamina. This means that there is no reason to use stamina restoration items, and the mechanic simply restricts the player's ability to sprint, which wasn't very fun.
Frankly one of the best experiences I've ever had with indie dreamlike games. The nomenclature, the environments, the sound design, a lot of elements feel very much in the right place and it's almost honoring to get to play it absolutely for free. Some interactions contribute even more to the immersion. I would love to see concepts like these explored more often and I look forward to the full release. Thank you 💙
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!
Thanks for playing, I really appreciate the feedback!
Apologies for the technical issues you faced during it - are you able to provide a screenshot or video of the visual glitching you mention? It doesn't sound like anything anyone has reported so far so not sure what would be causing that!
Hey, sorry for the late reply. Just wanted to let you know that the GPU related problems (glitching and whatnot) got magically solved meanwhile :D I suppose Windows has updated the driver in the background, or something. Should have known ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
The game has really cool aesthetics, so it would have been quite the shame if it struggled on certain computers.
Ah wonderful! Thank you so much for trying it out again and getting back to me, much appreciated :)
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!
Thanks for playing! I'm not too sure what could be causing the lag, what year did that GPU come out? You could try running the game in windowed mode at a smaller resolution, and disabling things like anti-aliasing in the settings.
Lots of the mechanics and elements of the game are balanced around there being separate bars like that (determination and focus), I think it makes sense having them separate! They aren't necessarily a health bar and a dream bar :)
Let me know if the suggestions above make the game run any better, but if not I suspect the GPU may be on the lower end of what is supported!
This was really great demo game and looks very good well done keep it up!
Thanks!! Glad you enjoyed it :)
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.
Thank you for playing, and for taking the time to write up the feedback, I really appreciate it! :)
I'll respond to bits and pieces of the feedback:
- All of the parkour is intentional! Especially the getting out of the map parts, there's a number of secrets in areas like that. I would be interested to know where you got on top of streetlights/buildings and bypassed a pit, as if they aren't places I'm aware of I'd love to add some secrets there ;)
- I've got plans to enhance the inventory/status menus similar to how you describe it!
- There shouldn't be areas you get stuck in without being able to get out, I would be interested to know if you encountered anything like that in your playthrough! You can always revisit prior save files too! Nothing gets overwritten.
- There are quite a few ways of damaging the eyes, but perhaps you missed those parts - it's tough when everything is nonlinear/optional. It's not supposed to be a forced stealth section, but it is supposed to be hard, and it's an optional area too :)
- Indicating when containers have been looted is for sure planned! The loot isn't manually placed however, it's randomly generated when you first start a new game and persistent in the same save.
- The long hallway and the place with the radio are directly inspired by LSD: Dream Emulator, so ending up in a random place you may have been before is intentional! Some random places you end up are more beneficial than others, and in the full game you'll be able to find many more of those books (you could find more in the demo even, as the loot is all random).
- The falling issue is related to a timer still ticking when the game should otherwise be paused, a fix is in the works for the full game!
- I'm not aware of any issue with the game freezing and the mouse jerking - if you are able to provide any more information for me to reproduce the issue that would be amazing!
Thanks again for playing, and for the really great feedback. I have no plans to launch the game in early access, it will be launched when it's feature and content complete later on this year!
One thing I will say is that parts of the game are intentionally designed to be obtuse, unfair, and frustrating if you haven't yet found the right way of dealing with them - it's in part a knowledge-based game so the intention is for the player to be experimental, try out different methods/strategies, make note of what they learn, and revisit with the new knowledge. If that's not the sort of gameplay that meshes well with you, than fair enough :)
Couple other thoughts:
- I really like the cloud shader.
- I have Mindfulness upgraded to lvl 3 and it still only seems to do 10 determination healing, which is what it did when I got it -- does it not actually upgrade when you upgrade it?
- The spiked helmet seems like it can't be picked up when dropped off enemies. Or maybe it's a candle?
- The hover sound when you hover over menu items is quite intense and can quickly get quite grating.
- The hitching seems to occur when the -1 focus / roaring sound happens.
Here's my speedrun using the probably most egregious parkour skip:
That definitely seems like a bug with Mindfulness, thanks!! Also with spiked helmet, I'll look into this :)
And wow great job! I'm definitely adding a secret there thank you hahah, I might even leave the whole skip in the full game as it won't end up being much of a skip outside of the demo and is definitely in the spirit of the kind of gameplay I'd like to encourage ;)
this is a complete banger, haven't tried out the jump fix but i'm glad it's out.
Awesome thanks for playing! :)
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.
Thank you so much for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
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!
Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Apologies about the jump issue, that's definitely not intentional, the jump is supposed to be a lot smoother (and was during my testing!) - I believe it may be tied to the framerate of the game in some way, did you happen to be playing the game on a monitor with a high refresh rate by any chance?
EDIT: I've just uploaded a new version which has potentially fixed this issue - if you could try it out that would be awesome :)
Upon playing the new version, the jump issue was fixed! Thank you so much and I'm looking forward to the new release!
So excited :)
update: i have played this game for maybe five hours and i am astonished
I'm so glad you enjoyed it :)