Finally got around to playing the whole demo, I really enjoyed it!
Bugs & Issues:
First, getting these out of the way... (there probably aren't as many written here as it may seem, i go into a fair amount of detail)
- In most apps that hide your mouse pointer, you can see your mouse if you navigate it out of the window in windowed mode; however, when trying the demo in windowed mode, I had to alt+tab to a different window to get my mouse pointer back.
- A notification popped up when I was playing an earlier build a while back (1.0.4 I think), and the game broke. Not sure if this issue happens in the current build, as I didn't bother figuring out how to cause a notification pop up, but it's worth looking into. (I'm talking about the Windows notification popups that appear in the bottom right corner.)
- Not sure if any of this is a bug or if it's all just a consequence of features not yet being implemented, but there are multiple issues related to erasing save data. First of all, Zee remains in the party after a save reset if you already have them (leading to a funny awakening cutscene, if Zee is at the front of the party at least), and items in the world don't respawn, except for items in presents (assuming that hasn't been changed since 1.0.4 or so). Also, unless this has been changed since I saw it happen a patch or two ago, the player's inventory isn't cleared on save erasure. I managed to do a full reset by deleting the Zephyr Star user folder, AppData\Local\ZephyrStar. Again, I know all this might just be features not yet implemented, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
- When loading a save, the player's camera can be rotated what is presumably the wrong way. For example, loading from the first save cat puts the camera on the opposite side of the player, compared to where it would normally be in that area. Moving around some brings the camera back to normal.
- Once or twice, the little description at the start of the battle went away too fast to read. Can't remember if this happened consistently with specific encounters, or if it happened randomly. Very small issue, but thought it was maybe worth mentioning?
- When I fell into water near the first Llewellyn grapple jelly, I got respawned in the same spot Bat spawns at the beginning of the game, leading to a bit of an inconvenient trek back.
- The Verevi fruit present at the box puzzle was empty when I found it.
- The depth of field blurring messed with me, I'm not used to seeing such strong blur in a 3d game. Some of this might not be noticeable with a small monitor, but the characters are a little blurry with normal camera angles, and the blur issue becomes more clear when the camera pulls back for the box puzzle. At the very least, it'd be nice to see a setting to adjust the blur; I felt like the blur messed with my eyes more than the bright and flashy colors. Perhaps it'd work better if it only applied in the far distance?
- After playing the demo yesterday, I continued the game today, and... all my consumable items seemed to be gone...? Llewellyn left the inventory, too, though the Llewellyn rope still works. Notably, all my materials are still here. Not sure when this bug happened, or if the items will return.
Other Stuff
Those issues aside, I really liked the demo! I hope that bugs & issues list didn't suggest otherwise.
The rhythm-based combat was great and left me wanting to fight new enemies just to see what their patterns are like. I've struggled a lot on Galaxy Guardian (I gave it several attempts but haven't gotten past its set of giant TPK lasers; I still plan to beat it eventually), but I enjoyed all the enemies I managed to beat. I also loved the dialogue and descriptions, it's the kind of witty stuff I've come to expect from Earthbound-inspired RPGs. The characters' overworld abilities were fun, and I liked their different attacks, be it their default attacks, Bat's special, or the Fizzy Bomb. I appreciate the inclusion of the battle area at the end; it was a cool way to try out extra battles that weren't found elsewhere in the demo. The swing rhythm battle is hard!
(An update on Galaxy Guardian: I did a lot better today and managed to get past its TPK lasers; furthest I've gotten is the octahedrons. I probably could have beat it if I still had items; perhaps I'll still manage to beat it regardless, though that'd be quite a feat. It's a fun battle, if not a rather difficult one for me!)
Thanks for putting out this demo, I'm glad I got to play it. I'm excited to see where this game goes!
Fantastic demo! I love the characters (totally not biased in favor of bats or anything) and the combat is a lot of fun - great take on rhythm gaming. It's a joy to look at, and I really enjoy the weird combat backgrounds. I'm super excited to see more of this game!
One minor frustration, which is very common with indie UE games, though, is that it launches Steam VR when I run the executable. For some reason, UE4 has the SteamVR plugin enabled by default - if you can disable that in your project, it'll make the lives of folks like me a little easier!
Love the look of the game. This is one of those games that will make me seriously consider getting a windows laptop/computer because I only have a macbook right now.
Edit, some things have been added. Will add more as I think of them.
As of 1.0.4:
Hey. Just wanted to give some feedback on the demo. I will put them in bullet points because that's how I give feedback best.
- I enjoyed the demo. A bit short but still good. - Galaxy Guardian Boss was an amazing fight. The music was superb and the visuals were amazing. - I wish for there to be some way to see your character out of combat, as I have to go into combat to see their name and skills. - There should be a way to obtain more consumables when you finish the demo. It would make the re-fights and bonus battles a bit easier for anyone who used all their items already. - Would it be possible to either have the first enemy of each type you encounter attempt to use all of its attack patterns or have the possible attack patterns listed when you inspect it? There were multiple times that I felt I was unfairly hit because I had not seen the rare pattern before. However, I also understand that laying all your cards out on the table right away could ruin the experience. Even as I am writing this, I keep going back and forth on whether the rare attack patterns should be warned about or not. Just something to consider, I guess. - Using the Esc key to access your inventory is quite the stretch. With all the other action buttons in a row (shift, Z, X, and C), it is weird to have to move my hand all the way up to the top of my keyboard to look at my items. Not a big thing at all, but just something that I wanted to point out.
A few bugs I found:
- The first two times I entered the moving platforms room, the platforms were out of sync and would never form in a way that would let me across. Only on my third entrance was it synced correctly. - If you spam the exit key upon leaving the item menu, it will try to close itself multiple times. - While Zee is your active party member, if you press Shift and Z at the same time, Zee will follow Bat while still flat. - While Bat is your active party member and you are near a pink swing object, if you press Shift and Z at the same time, Bat will do one of two things depending on which frame you pressed Shift. Either Bat will have a pink particle and when swapped back to, nothing will happen and the particle will go away, or Bat will have the pink hand on them still and when switched back to, they will slowly be pulled towards the pink swing object, even if you walked a distance away. - If, while interacting with a pink block as Bat, you switch to Zee, Bat will still have the pink tether connected to them and will teleport horizontally when following you. If you interact with the pink block again, the tether will snap from its previous glitched location and looks pretty funny.
I can get video of most of these bugs, as most are easily replicable, but I haven't because I don't know how I would send them.
now this is some quality feedback, thank you very much :> i am already onto fixing most of these... side note, character viewing outside of combat is a great idea, i've got to get around to designing the menu for that at some point...
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Finally got around to playing the whole demo, I really enjoyed it!
Bugs & Issues:
First, getting these out of the way... (there probably aren't as many written here as it may seem, i go into a fair amount of detail)
- In most apps that hide your mouse pointer, you can see your mouse if you navigate it out of the window in windowed mode; however, when trying the demo in windowed mode, I had to alt+tab to a different window to get my mouse pointer back.
- A notification popped up when I was playing an earlier build a while back (1.0.4 I think), and the game broke. Not sure if this issue happens in the current build, as I didn't bother figuring out how to cause a notification pop up, but it's worth looking into. (I'm talking about the Windows notification popups that appear in the bottom right corner.)
- Not sure if any of this is a bug or if it's all just a consequence of features not yet being implemented, but there are multiple issues related to erasing save data. First of all, Zee remains in the party after a save reset if you already have them (leading to a funny awakening cutscene, if Zee is at the front of the party at least), and items in the world don't respawn, except for items in presents (assuming that hasn't been changed since 1.0.4 or so). Also, unless this has been changed since I saw it happen a patch or two ago, the player's inventory isn't cleared on save erasure. I managed to do a full reset by deleting the Zephyr Star user folder, AppData\Local\ZephyrStar. Again, I know all this might just be features not yet implemented, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
- When loading a save, the player's camera can be rotated what is presumably the wrong way. For example, loading from the first save cat puts the camera on the opposite side of the player, compared to where it would normally be in that area. Moving around some brings the camera back to normal.
- Once or twice, the little description at the start of the battle went away too fast to read. Can't remember if this happened consistently with specific encounters, or if it happened randomly. Very small issue, but thought it was maybe worth mentioning?
- When I fell into water near the first Llewellyn grapple jelly, I got respawned in the same spot Bat spawns at the beginning of the game, leading to a bit of an inconvenient trek back.
- The Verevi fruit present at the box puzzle was empty when I found it.
- The depth of field blurring messed with me, I'm not used to seeing such strong blur in a 3d game. Some of this might not be noticeable with a small monitor, but the characters are a little blurry with normal camera angles, and the blur issue becomes more clear when the camera pulls back for the box puzzle. At the very least, it'd be nice to see a setting to adjust the blur; I felt like the blur messed with my eyes more than the bright and flashy colors. Perhaps it'd work better if it only applied in the far distance?
- After playing the demo yesterday, I continued the game today, and... all my consumable items seemed to be gone...? Llewellyn left the inventory, too, though the Llewellyn rope still works. Notably, all my materials are still here. Not sure when this bug happened, or if the items will return.
Other Stuff
Those issues aside, I really liked the demo! I hope that bugs & issues list didn't suggest otherwise.
The rhythm-based combat was great and left me wanting to fight new enemies just to see what their patterns are like. I've struggled a lot on Galaxy Guardian (I gave it several attempts but haven't gotten past its set of giant TPK lasers; I still plan to beat it eventually), but I enjoyed all the enemies I managed to beat. I also loved the dialogue and descriptions, it's the kind of witty stuff I've come to expect from Earthbound-inspired RPGs. The characters' overworld abilities were fun, and I liked their different attacks, be it their default attacks, Bat's special, or the Fizzy Bomb. I appreciate the inclusion of the battle area at the end; it was a cool way to try out extra battles that weren't found elsewhere in the demo. The swing rhythm battle is hard!
(An update on Galaxy Guardian: I did a lot better today and managed to get past its TPK lasers; furthest I've gotten is the octahedrons. I probably could have beat it if I still had items; perhaps I'll still manage to beat it regardless, though that'd be quite a feat. It's a fun battle, if not a rather difficult one for me!)
Thanks for putting out this demo, I'm glad I got to play it. I'm excited to see where this game goes!
Fantastic demo! I love the characters (totally not biased in favor of bats or anything) and the combat is a lot of fun - great take on rhythm gaming. It's a joy to look at, and I really enjoy the weird combat backgrounds. I'm super excited to see more of this game!
One minor frustration, which is very common with indie UE games, though, is that it launches Steam VR when I run the executable. For some reason, UE4 has the SteamVR plugin enabled by default - if you can disable that in your project, it'll make the lives of folks like me a little easier!
ah i had forgotten about that-- thanks, i will surely remember to do that whenever i put out the next version! 🙇♀️
Love the look of the game. This is one of those games that will make me seriously consider getting a windows laptop/computer because I only have a macbook right now.
Edit, some things have been added. Will add more as I think of them.
As of 1.0.4:
Hey. Just wanted to give some feedback on the demo. I will put them in bullet points because that's how I give feedback best.
- I enjoyed the demo. A bit short but still good.
- Galaxy Guardian Boss was an amazing fight. The music was superb and the visuals were amazing.
- I wish for there to be some way to see your character out of combat, as I have to go into combat to see their name and skills.
- There should be a way to obtain more consumables when you finish the demo. It would make the re-fights and bonus battles a bit easier for anyone who used all their items already.
- Would it be possible to either have the first enemy of each type you encounter attempt to use all of its attack patterns or have the possible attack patterns listed when you inspect it? There were multiple times that I felt I was unfairly hit because I had not seen the rare pattern before. However, I also understand that laying all your cards out on the table right away could ruin the experience. Even as I am writing this, I keep going back and forth on whether the rare attack patterns should be warned about or not. Just something to consider, I guess.
- Using the Esc key to access your inventory is quite the stretch. With all the other action buttons in a row (shift, Z, X, and C), it is weird to have to move my hand all the way up to the top of my keyboard to look at my items. Not a big thing at all, but just something that I wanted to point out.
A few bugs I found:
- The first two times I entered the moving platforms room, the platforms were out of sync and would never form in a way that would let me across. Only on my third entrance was it synced correctly.
- If you spam the exit key upon leaving the item menu, it will try to close itself multiple times.
- While Zee is your active party member, if you press Shift and Z at the same time, Zee will follow Bat while still flat.
- While Bat is your active party member and you are near a pink swing object, if you press Shift and Z at the same time, Bat will do one of two things depending on which frame you pressed Shift. Either Bat will have a pink particle and when swapped back to, nothing will happen and the particle will go away, or Bat will have the pink hand on them still and when switched back to, they will slowly be pulled towards the pink swing object, even if you walked a distance away.
- If, while interacting with a pink block as Bat, you switch to Zee, Bat will still have the pink tether connected to them and will teleport horizontally when following you. If you interact with the pink block again, the tether will snap from its previous glitched location and looks pretty funny.
I can get video of most of these bugs, as most are easily replicable, but I haven't because I don't know how I would send them.
now this is some quality feedback, thank you very much :> i am already onto fixing most of these... side note, character viewing outside of combat is a great idea, i've got to get around to designing the menu for that at some point...
linux version is up cannot guarantee that it works though 🙇♀️
gah! more bug fixes:
WOO !!
This is awesome!!
Small update! mostly just some quick fixes:
quick update, it appears that you can see zee's hair still i will need to fix that later
congrats to the pink snake :3
there are a few bugs i know about now... i will fix them soon but for now i think i need a break
man, i need to catch up on the blog. looks great!
YIPPEE!!!
:3 very excited
super excited :D
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
exited!