Before I begin, let me note that this game is perhaps not quite my style of game, and thus that my thoughts below should perhaps be taken with some salt.
That said, having played some of the demo--the reason for the "some of" should become clear soon--I would like to give some feedback:
First of all, I really like the aesthetics of the game. Gloomy without being dull, retro without being ugly, and overall lovely and atmospheric.
I similarly rather like the lore and setup presented as far as I got--there's a nice tragic romance to the whole thing, which I quite appreciate!
That said, I did find the early maze-like forest area to be a little unengaging after a time: while I liked the overall feel of it, there was fairly little to do or see (that I found) for a fair bit of exploration.
But that wasn't a major issue at all.
What stopped me, in the end, was the combat. (Or at least a violent encounter; maybe there was other combat elsewhere or later.)
In exploring, I encountered a strange creature, like a nervous system stripped of its body. It attacked me swiftly, overbore me, and proceeded to hammer on my prone form.
Something flashed up on the screen to the right. Perhaps due to the urgency and surprise and haste of the moment, I didn't get a good look at it--I was focussed on the creature on top of my character.
But seen just outside of my central vision I thought that it looked like an arrow, so in haste I tried a few upwards-motions. (At least of my mouse, possibly of key-presses--I forget.)
This, of course, did nothing, and I was killed.
I recovered, returned to the world, and had another shot at the encounter.
I realised--whether this second time or after--that the thing on the right wasn't an arrow, but a "press the button in this range" bar. I tried to match it--tried multiple times--but never did get it to work. I'm not even sure of which button I was supposed to press, and thus whether I was pressing the right one.
(I also had a few shots at punching the creature as it approached, to no avail.)
Eventually, I gave up.
Now, having the learning of a combat mechanic be achieved via experimentation isn't a bad thing--not at all.
However, the process of resetting the encounter is rather lengthy--long enough that it very much acts against rapid iteration and through it experimentation with the mechanics, for me at least.
On top of that, on returning to life one has only one health-point, meaning that after the first time one gets only one iteration of experimentation per death.
(Let me note here that I actually rather like the whole death-and-return sequence. I just think that it's at odds with experimenting with a mechanic that kills one quickly.)
And finally, there was little feedback (that I noticed) in the mechanic to tell me quite what I was doing wrong--was I pressing too early? Too late? The wrong button entirely?
All of this made the process of figuring out how to progress a little frustrating and difficult to carry out for me, and as a result I eventually set the game aside.
Which is a pity, as I was otherwise enjoying it.
For one, the business of either giving or taking "soul" to the dead that I find makes for an interesting choice, and fits nicely with the overall atmosphere.
All the above said, overall, from what I see, the game is a solid one and well-done! ^_^
Pretty game, a little short but yeah it's a demo so it's normal, i just have 3 bad points to say, the first one is the audio mix, you can barely ear the voices (Maybe you can add subtitles or an option) the next one is just a little bug with the choice, the game selects 2 options (See pic) the last one is just a gameplay logic (Maybe cause' i'm stupid) can you please add the choices "Continue anyway" or "Go back" for the first jump (at the beginning) cause we didn't understand "I can jump but i can't go back" but "I can't jump if i can't go back" Maybe it's just me btw... Rank : 4 Stars (Demo) !
that was dope. I really liked the camp for the night thing, and the vibes and aesthetic are of course amazing. Curious how/if combat figures into this game, and what the jar of fireflies is all about.
This game has some good potential. I loved the set up for the story and the graphics. It also has good atmosphere, multiple branching paths, decent voice acting and good sound effects. I'm definitely looking forward to the full game.
let me get into the conga line of fans. It was but a teaser but it still got me very interested in the game. I love the look and the atmosphere, I think the sounds are very effective (and raised my interest a lot, like, who was that by the cemetery)? I really hope, we'll get to see a next chapter, soon, because I want to find out about the well, the horse, the laughter, the spooder, EVERYTHING!
I'm speechless! This game looks and feels incredible. you're making all the right design choices, I think. Nice fluid motion with the character movement, too. This is definitely a game to watch for.
okay I actually loved this game 🤣 this was a lot of fun! And I loved the ability to customize the pixels and the colors!! Hess my video if you want a good laugh!!
I'm absolutely in love with the visuals and setting you've put together. This demo looks gorgeous and super promising, but is there any way I can increase the framerate? I'm running on windows 10 and the game is suffering from really bad input and audio delays for me. I'd like to know if there's any way to fix this?
I'm happy to hear you are enjoying the style of the game :)
About the lag, there aren't a lot of options to adjust the quality now but when you launch the game, you can choose between a couple of presets in that little window. I haven't tweaked the presets in a while so I can't vouch for the results.
Other than that, you may lower the resolution. With the dithering enabled, the quality difference shouldn't be noticeable.
I'll continue to find optimizations so keep an eye out for updates if you like :)
incredible work so far. the way the campfire scene is implemented is perfect. it was astonishing to see. even though influences show through, i love that it's quite idiosyncratic. been following on twitter and was surprised to see a demo!
feedback: -the mouse cursor would appear on the menu option when i'm using the controller, and it often hovered over 'yes' while i could also 'hover' over 'no' with gamepad. maybe the mouse can be disabled until it's being used. -mapping the 'quit to main menu' button to B (xbox) is a strange choice, but i assume it's going to be a menu? -i really wanted to hug/kiss the big skeleton. :OP
I watched ManlyBadassHero's lets play of the game and im really interested in it! So far there's a lot of walking but I find the graphics really pretty and the atmosphere is great.
This Game I Played To The Music Of Bonnie Tyler , And At The Same Time I Find This Game In My Opinion To Be The Second Game I Wish Could Come Out This Year.
Just played the demo! I love the atmosphere and visual storytelling. Wandering the forest was a treat. I enjoyed looking at the way you built depth into the forest through efficient use of 2d objects and layers!
my insights i already knew this game was a dark soul inspired one since the knight died and woke up in the catacombs i knew this game is something else the armor looks like from dark souls aswell like the warrior outfit but overall the game is fun as heck cant wait for the full release of this game :D
Hello, I played this game and I really enjoyed it, it had cool environments and sound effects, although imo, the visuals were too dark to see most of the time, so if you turn the brightness up a bit then it'd be great, I did notice after playing the game that there was an option to turn off the vhs-ish effect which made it look better but improving the brightness a little more would be neat, over all I liked it, great job :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the demo! I'll be sure to add in some kind of brightness calibration screen in the future to accommodate different monitors. Thanks for the feedback :)
I'm loving the art, emotion and atmosphere! Just needs the actual gameplay enhanced to be more interesting and this is going to be successful for sure! Great work, devs! :)
This is just stunningly well realised off the bat. I especially appreciated the moment beside the campfire - really immersive stuff. Can't wait to see more.
Pretty fantastic setting and style. I definitely see the Dark Souls inspiration and it's a great tease for things to come. If I were to give any minor feedback, the only thing I'd say is that I wasn't too fond of the way environmental messages were presented (was a little jarring just having text appear on screen with no button prompt). There was also one specific spot I was able to boundary break early on just before the first blocked path (screenshot below). Other than that, awesome demo.
Thanks for the feedback! I was thinking about having a prompt or something there or at least some signifier that there's a point of interest and something to read.
Also congrats on leaving the area! That's the first time I've seen :) That particular area has a few collision issues I need to take care of as well...
Awesome! So happy for you, man. Been following this for months and it's great to see it's finally coming together for ya :D I'll definitely be sure to give this a try.
Quick side note, any chance I could get the link for the Discord again? I accidentally removed myself from it a few weeks ago whilst organizing my channels.
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Before I begin, let me note that this game is perhaps not quite my style of game, and thus that my thoughts below should perhaps be taken with some salt.
That said, having played some of the demo--the reason for the "some of" should become clear soon--I would like to give some feedback:
First of all, I really like the aesthetics of the game. Gloomy without being dull, retro without being ugly, and overall lovely and atmospheric.
I similarly rather like the lore and setup presented as far as I got--there's a nice tragic romance to the whole thing, which I quite appreciate!
That said, I did find the early maze-like forest area to be a little unengaging after a time: while I liked the overall feel of it, there was fairly little to do or see (that I found) for a fair bit of exploration.
But that wasn't a major issue at all.
What stopped me, in the end, was the combat. (Or at least a violent encounter; maybe there was other combat elsewhere or later.)
In exploring, I encountered a strange creature, like a nervous system stripped of its body. It attacked me swiftly, overbore me, and proceeded to hammer on my prone form.
Something flashed up on the screen to the right. Perhaps due to the urgency and surprise and haste of the moment, I didn't get a good look at it--I was focussed on the creature on top of my character.
But seen just outside of my central vision I thought that it looked like an arrow, so in haste I tried a few upwards-motions. (At least of my mouse, possibly of key-presses--I forget.)
This, of course, did nothing, and I was killed.
I recovered, returned to the world, and had another shot at the encounter.
I realised--whether this second time or after--that the thing on the right wasn't an arrow, but a "press the button in this range" bar. I tried to match it--tried multiple times--but never did get it to work. I'm not even sure of which button I was supposed to press, and thus whether I was pressing the right one.
(I also had a few shots at punching the creature as it approached, to no avail.)
Eventually, I gave up.
Now, having the learning of a combat mechanic be achieved via experimentation isn't a bad thing--not at all.
However, the process of resetting the encounter is rather lengthy--long enough that it very much acts against rapid iteration and through it experimentation with the mechanics, for me at least.
On top of that, on returning to life one has only one health-point, meaning that after the first time one gets only one iteration of experimentation per death.
(Let me note here that I actually rather like the whole death-and-return sequence. I just think that it's at odds with experimenting with a mechanic that kills one quickly.)
And finally, there was little feedback (that I noticed) in the mechanic to tell me quite what I was doing wrong--was I pressing too early? Too late? The wrong button entirely?
All of this made the process of figuring out how to progress a little frustrating and difficult to carry out for me, and as a result I eventually set the game aside.
Which is a pity, as I was otherwise enjoying it.
For one, the business of either giving or taking "soul" to the dead that I find makes for an interesting choice, and fits nicely with the overall atmosphere.
All the above said, overall, from what I see, the game is a solid one and well-done! ^_^
Pretty game, a little short but yeah it's a demo so it's normal, i just have 3 bad points to say, the first one is the audio mix, you can barely ear the voices (Maybe you can add subtitles or an option) the next one is just a little bug with the choice, the game selects 2 options (See pic) the last one is just a gameplay logic (Maybe cause' i'm stupid) can you please add the choices "Continue anyway" or "Go back" for the first jump (at the beginning) cause we didn't understand "I can jump but i can't go back" but "I can't jump if i can't go back" Maybe it's just me btw... Rank : 4 Stars (Demo) !
The visual style and the atmosphere is just awesome.
that was dope. I really liked the camp for the night thing, and the vibes and aesthetic are of course amazing. Curious how/if combat figures into this game, and what the jar of fireflies is all about.
[Insert russian words]
Тору делает шмыг.
Legit, although the most unusual choice of words.
Сумна історія про скелета і кохання. Гарна картинка, та гемплей. Незважаючи на прямі коридори та невелику тривалисть демо .. було доволы цыкаво.
This game has some good potential. I loved the set up for the story and the graphics. It also has good atmosphere, multiple branching paths, decent voice acting and good sound effects. I'm definitely looking forward to the full game.
let me get into the conga line of fans. It was but a teaser but it still got me very interested in the game. I love the look and the atmosphere, I think the sounds are very effective (and raised my interest a lot, like, who was that by the cemetery)? I really hope, we'll get to see a next chapter, soon, because I want to find out about the well, the horse, the laughter, the spooder, EVERYTHING!
This is a great demo. I look forward to the full game.
Here's my channel for other games I have played. http://www.youtube.com/c/Levont
Beautiful demo! Hope to see postmortem of some kind after the release ^^
I'm speechless! This game looks and feels incredible. you're making all the right design choices, I think. Nice fluid motion with the character movement, too. This is definitely a game to watch for.
Much appreciated! Thanks for sharing your playthrough and before-and-after thoughts on the game.
okay I actually loved this game 🤣 this was a lot of fun! And I loved the ability to customize the pixels and the colors!! Hess my video if you want a good laugh!!
Great video! I love your commentary and editing. Very fun :) Also some good insight on a few of those bugs I'm working on...
Thanks for sharing the playthrough and I'm glad you liked!
Thank you! More to come :)
Мне дэмка понравилась,так держать. Жду релиза
Thanks for sharing your playthrough and I'm glad you liked it!
I'm absolutely in love with the visuals and setting you've put together. This demo looks gorgeous and super promising, but is there any way I can increase the framerate? I'm running on windows 10 and the game is suffering from really bad input and audio delays for me. I'd like to know if there's any way to fix this?
I'm happy to hear you are enjoying the style of the game :)
About the lag, there aren't a lot of options to adjust the quality now but when you launch the game, you can choose between a couple of presets in that little window. I haven't tweaked the presets in a while so I can't vouch for the results.
Other than that, you may lower the resolution. With the dithering enabled, the quality difference shouldn't be noticeable.
I'll continue to find optimizations so keep an eye out for updates if you like :)
incredible work so far. the way the campfire scene is implemented is perfect. it was astonishing to see. even though influences show through, i love that it's quite idiosyncratic. been following on twitter and was surprised to see a demo!
feedback: -the mouse cursor would appear on the menu option when i'm using the controller, and it often hovered over 'yes' while i could also 'hover' over 'no' with gamepad. maybe the mouse can be disabled until it's being used. -mapping the 'quit to main menu' button to B (xbox) is a strange choice, but i assume it's going to be a menu? -i really wanted to hug/kiss the big skeleton. :OP
thank you for this amazing experience.
Great feedback and I appreciate you took the time to tell me. I made myself a few tasks to approach those things in the future.
Also, it's important for me to know your feelings towards the messenger. I'll take that down in my notes.
And I'm really happy that you had a good experience with the demo. It's encouraging to hear :)
I realllyy liked this demo, good job dev and good luck on the full release :)
Loved watching through this :) Great commentary! You bring up a lot of important skeleton related questions...
And thanks for the shout-out!
Rip Albert.
Absolutely amazing! cannot wait to play more.
I watched ManlyBadassHero's lets play of the game and im really interested in it! So far there's a lot of walking but I find the graphics really pretty and the atmosphere is great.
I liked the demo very much, I love the atmosphere. The characters' animations are very complex, good job. I am looking forward to more!
eu amei o jogo ele é muito lindo
This Game I Played To The Music Of Bonnie Tyler , And At The Same Time I Find This Game In My Opinion To Be The Second Game I Wish Could Come Out This Year.
Excellent choice and we'll just have to see :)
Hiiii, I've made a video about the game and wanted to share some feedback about it, hopefully it is useful to you ^^
-The idea is pretty great-The visual style is really eye catching and feels unique ^^
-The gameplay mechanics work great.
-Some of the text could have some sort of border around it to make it easily readable.
-I NEEEED MOREEE hehe :)
Hopefully this is useful to you :D, also if you could subscribe that would help me a lot :)
Regards
Thanks for your positive feedback! There's more to come indeed!
You are welcome ^^, I'm really looking forward for it :D, good luck with the development! :)
Show post...
love it
Just played the demo! I love the atmosphere and visual storytelling. Wandering the forest was a treat. I enjoyed looking at the way you built depth into the forest through efficient use of 2d objects and layers!
Thank you! I'm glad you appreciate the game's style and atmosphere :)
Love the demo! Great job, I'll definitely play the full version
Thank you! I'm happy you liked the demo :)
Are you from Spain?
New England
Thanks for sharing your playthrough! I loved having your commentary :)
I found this through youtube and I love it!!! please finish it!! I have bookedmarked this page to come back and play it when finished <3
Hello, I played this game and I really enjoyed it, it had cool environments and sound effects, although imo, the visuals were too dark to see most of the time, so if you turn the brightness up a bit then it'd be great, I did notice after playing the game that there was an option to turn off the vhs-ish effect which made it look better but improving the brightness a little more would be neat, over all I liked it, great job :)
Edit: video is processing atm
I'm glad you enjoyed the demo! I'll be sure to add in some kind of brightness calibration screen in the future to accommodate different monitors. Thanks for the feedback :)
I'm loving the art, emotion and atmosphere! Just needs the actual gameplay enhanced to be more interesting and this is going to be successful for sure! Great work, devs! :)
You have 1000% of my attention in here! Amazing job! This is just soooooo unbelievably good!
Just watched ManlyBadassHero's video on this, and you have my attention. This already looks incredibly promising, I cannot wait to see more.
The game looks really nice
This is just stunningly well realised off the bat. I especially appreciated the moment beside the campfire - really immersive stuff. Can't wait to see more.
I appreciate you saying so. More to come!
Pretty fantastic setting and style. I definitely see the Dark Souls inspiration and it's a great tease for things to come. If I were to give any minor feedback, the only thing I'd say is that I wasn't too fond of the way environmental messages were presented (was a little jarring just having text appear on screen with no button prompt). There was also one specific spot I was able to boundary break early on just before the first blocked path (screenshot below). Other than that, awesome demo.
Thanks for the feedback! I was thinking about having a prompt or something there or at least some signifier that there's a point of interest and something to read.
Also congrats on leaving the area! That's the first time I've seen :) That particular area has a few collision issues I need to take care of as well...
Is there a twitter account to follow for the project?
@acornbringer on Twitter: twitter.com/acornbringer
Amazing game. The atmosphere is great and the visuals are awesome. The plot looks very interesting. Congrats!
I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for sharing your playthrough :)
Brilliant stuff! We posted a playthrough on the itch.io channel:
Looking forward to the full game!!
Excellent! Thank you so much for making this :)
Awesome! So happy for you, man. Been following this for months and it's great to see it's finally coming together for ya :D I'll definitely be sure to give this a try.
Quick side note, any chance I could get the link for the Discord again? I accidentally removed myself from it a few weeks ago whilst organizing my channels.
Yes! You can find the discord link on my site:
acornbringer.com
Many thanks, friend. Again, wishing you the best with the development of this project! :D