Hello! Developer here, first I want to thank you for taking your time to make this review! You make some fair comparisons and honestly it's this kind of feedback that we want as part of our Early Access process. A lot of our game is inspired by the classics not only in sprite work and world design but also in story telling, but of course it's not perfect. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Breath of Fire are all our primary sources of inspiration on the classic side, but obviously we draw inspiration from games that came later as well. The reason why you don't get a lot of lore out of the gate is because we didn't want to bog the player down with a bunch of lore thick dialog or story telling, instead we decided to allow the player to figure out some of the lore on their own. Some people absolutely love this, others would rather have it more forward. A big part of that is encouraging the player to "study" for the test, a large portion of the lore of the game is available in the library of the school on the 2nd floor. Clearly we still have some work to do on directing the player where to go and when. We've seen some people love our approach and others have a similar stance as you. There are things that I agree with you on this video that my development partner may not, and that's what makes us a unique paring. Where I am someone who enjoys many features beyond the SNES era, Mottzy has a more thoughtful approach towards tying to maintain a classic feel while balancing the new stuff. So, as you can imagine we have compromises each one of us has to make in the process while also considering player feedback. Totally agree we need to lean into our hook and pitch it more clearly to players. We're learning a lot in this process of what people like and don't like about the game and honestly there isn't a lot here that we don't already know about at this point and are currently making plans to adjust. Either way, we appreciate your honest feedback and concerns here.
Hi Jacob! I appreciate the detailed reply. I had a hunch some sort of debate regarding SNES/PS1 took place when I found mentions of the PS1 in your older AS materials, which wasn't in the new stuff. That's why I openly wondered if it was marketing or a stricter design boundary - Either way, making an "SNES+" game can still have many parallels with the earliest PS1 RPGs, which is why I brought up Wild Arms (and Breath of Fire 3 & 4, which I cut from the script). Lore is definitely tricky since I wouldn't want a lot upfront either, but there still needs to be a minimum for the critical path if a player ignored everything. I wouldn't be discouraged at how you might need some more adjustments there. Openings are tough. In any case, I hope Early Access works out for you. I'm a developer as well so I tried to target my feedback, but feel free to let me know if you're looking for more. (I'm not going to spend another 5 days editing another video, though.)
![1 Orc vs 7 Computers [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7BWNchvzG1Y/mqdefault.jpg)
Hello! Developer here, first I want to thank you for taking your time to make this review! You make some fair comparisons and honestly it's this kind of feedback that we want as part of our Early Access process.
A lot of our game is inspired by the classics not only in sprite work and world design but also in story telling, but of course it's not perfect. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Breath of Fire are all our primary sources of inspiration on the classic side, but obviously we draw inspiration from games that came later as well.
The reason why you don't get a lot of lore out of the gate is because we didn't want to bog the player down with a bunch of lore thick dialog or story telling, instead we decided to allow the player to figure out some of the lore on their own. Some people absolutely love this, others would rather have it more forward. A big part of that is encouraging the player to "study" for the test, a large portion of the lore of the game is available in the library of the school on the 2nd floor. Clearly we still have some work to do on directing the player where to go and when.
We've seen some people love our approach and others have a similar stance as you. There are things that I agree with you on this video that my development partner may not, and that's what makes us a unique paring. Where I am someone who enjoys many features beyond the SNES era, Mottzy has a more thoughtful approach towards tying to maintain a classic feel while balancing the new stuff. So, as you can imagine we have compromises each one of us has to make in the process while also considering player feedback.
Totally agree we need to lean into our hook and pitch it more clearly to players.
We're learning a lot in this process of what people like and don't like about the game and honestly there isn't a lot here that we don't already know about at this point and are currently making plans to adjust.
Either way, we appreciate your honest feedback and concerns here.
Hi Jacob! I appreciate the detailed reply. I had a hunch some sort of debate regarding SNES/PS1 took place when I found mentions of the PS1 in your older AS materials, which wasn't in the new stuff. That's why I openly wondered if it was marketing or a stricter design boundary - Either way, making an "SNES+" game can still have many parallels with the earliest PS1 RPGs, which is why I brought up Wild Arms (and Breath of Fire 3 & 4, which I cut from the script).
Lore is definitely tricky since I wouldn't want a lot upfront either, but there still needs to be a minimum for the critical path if a player ignored everything. I wouldn't be discouraged at how you might need some more adjustments there. Openings are tough.
In any case, I hope Early Access works out for you. I'm a developer as well so I tried to target my feedback, but feel free to let me know if you're looking for more. (I'm not going to spend another 5 days editing another video, though.)