Played the 0.3 Demo and generally enjoyed it. Great job!
The art style is nice, and the dedication to story is great.
I did think there was a lag in the pacing of the conversation with the soldiers. It didn't feel meaty enough in the information received to justify the time spent at it. Maybe if they are intended to be more major in the future. I also found the tone of the soldiers to be a little flippant or perhaps too casual when discussing the dangers of the road. That's surely a personal preference, though. Perhaps it was the density of all the references during the info dumps that made it seem so.
I found the typing minigame to be less interesting. It's obvious there must be a secret door there but randomly trying in keywords to find the right pattern was not too fun. It also seems to reset when you type in a wrong word, so I repeated the same keywords many times to get back to where I left off.
I'm sure more graphics will come with time, but would love to see some of the soldiers, the gryphons, etc.
I look forward to the process and improvements, thanks for putting the demo out there!
Thank you, Mochnant, for your feedback! I have some ideas how I could make the game progress faster, I just need to have a larger part of the game finished to be able to measure all the pros and cons. I really appreciate that you've decided to let me know what you think - I take every piece of criticism very seriously, especially when it clearly comes from one's kindness and willingness to help.
I'm also glad that you've like my devlog. It took me a lot of time to put it together. ^^
Thought I'd follow this one up and say I have played through the initial solider conversation in the release version and it is fantastic now. Even having played it before, I was convinced they were going to murder me.
It was interesting, well paced, and tense! Well done!
Hi. I just checked the demo. First of all, the music is amazing! Is it available on soundcloud? It really fits the mood of the game and does not distract form the process. Second, the dialogs are nice - I really felt the personalities of soldiers there. But at the same time I wanted more action (got bored at some point reading and reading, but maybe I'm just not from the target audience of the game :-) ). I'd like the game had more management aspect as in "the dark room". And, of course, seeing NPCs and gryphons illustrations would be really nice. I also really like the colour palette and pixel art - it really adds to the aesthetics here. i feel the game has quite a lot of potential, keep it up!
BTW does the demo end after the road is cleared from gryphons(I used the pedant)?, because the game was reset and I was returned to the home screen instantly after that (though I see from the devlog screenshot there is some more content in the demo). Anyways, I am lazy to start from the beginning to check if that was a bug or it really ended there (yup, I had no saves available because I could not same my progress, send you the error details via email).
Thank you, Alex! I think you've encountered a bug, and I'm glad you let me know about it. The demo should have had about 2 more "scenes" after the griffon encounter, and I think there may be a problem with the Mac version after all - specifically with saving. I'm going to work on that.
I really appreciate your feedback, and you can find more information about the soundtrack here. There's a chance that the tracks used in the demo won't be used in the final version of the game, but I still hope it won't turn this way. : )
Though I wish the demo was a little longer, it gives a good impression on what more is to come. I'm definitely looking forward to playing the full game.
Very nice feel to it and the music sets a perfect mood for a game like this! I really liked how you could choose whether to act friendly or with less emotions towards other characters you meet, makes it even more immersive.
How long did it take for you to create a multiple option game? :)
I don't know if you've heard of Game Development World Championship before (gdwc2019) but it's a competition for indie games and it's free to apply! It's great if you want some more visibility for the game and it only takes a couple of minutes to join.
Thank you! I believe I've been thinking about the design for about a year now, made the first concept art in January and what you could see in the demo is the result of about 3-4 months of development.
I'm definitely going to take a closer at GDWC later today, thank you for the invitation!
Ran fine, Nothing conflicted with my rig. The visual novel itself was very well done. Multiple options seems like story ends up based on your selections. I have a AMD-A8 5600k CPU with GTX 970 GPU
Hi there! There's a good chance I'll have the new version of the demo ready on Friday, but I'm going to look for someone willing to test the Mac version since I can create a game's build for it (and I know it worked before), but I can't test it myself. Would you be interested? ; )
The demo was shorter than I expected, but I enjoyed what I saw from my characters' adventures. Love being able to use different attitudes when approaching situations; it helps in making separate playthroughs feel more unique. My only quibble is with the writing sounding a bit "modern" for the setting, but it's really not that big of a deal.
Thank you, Adi, I appreciate that you decided to share you thoughts! Would you like to say a bit more about the "modern" writing that you've mentioned? Is it that the idioms that I'm using are too modern, or maybe some words feel like they don't belong?
It's very minor, but some of the words used by the soldiers sound somewhat contemporary. I feel stuff like "crazy shit" or "boyfriend" would sound a bit out of place if someone were to say them 100~200 years ago (at least, outside of America).
I see, thank you! I assumed it's clear that these characters don't really use English, but rather that the game translates the dialogue from a non-existent language to one that we can understand. Maybe I should do a better job with expressing it.
I investigated the Stone Chapel right after the first crossroad before heading to the tavern. After a few inputs and further investigation, i got to this message: "...one picture is very clear for you. A long arrow pointing down". Now no matter what i type the MC wont investigate what the arrow is pointing at! I mean its clear that the MC has an interest in this arrow (at least i would) but when i type (for example) "arrow" it says: "You havent found it"... Is this a bug maybe? If not: How the heck should i investigate this? Since the game has a time-mechanic, backtracking isnt much of an option to me either... Or is this chapel a WiP? I really want to give feedback but after spending about 20 minutes of reading the prologue and deciding wether or not to go to the tavern first, im stuck in this hut :/
Hi! Yes, you can go below! There's a separate quest related to the dolmen, but it's not currently a part of the demo. During this quest you'll get to know that you should look for a "trapdoor". If you'd pick a scholar, your could also read the inscription to find a direct clue.
The arrow that you can currently see is, well, vague, since you can't read. If you'd like to go deeper, you should look for a "hatch" or "trapdoor". Nevertheless, you're almost at the very end of the current stage of the demo version.
I clicked on the "achievement" when shown in the first crossroads (mine was fighter's axe) and I got this error:
'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code: File "game/areas/prologue.rpy", line 2617, in script menu: TypeError: list indices must be integers, not Null
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback: File "game/areas/prologue.rpy", line 2617, in script menu: File "D:\Games\roadwarden\Roadwarden-0.25-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 1608, in execute next_node(self.items[choice][2][0]) TypeError: list indices must be integers, not Null
Windows-8-6.2.9200 Ren'Py 7.2.1.457 Roadwarden 0.25 Fri May 24 14:19:19 2019
this looks really cool! definitely a project I'll follow, the atmosphere and setting are interesting and evocative, and the premise offers a lot of opportunities for exploring and adventure.
Very good game and interesting idea :D The colors are simple but fit the atmosphere very well. I hope there will be more information for the MC (I dont know if I missed it or not, but there is no gender for the MC ?).
Thanks you for creating such a beautiful game :) Im looking forward to your future updates :)
Thank you as well for your kind comment, Punnn! I Hope to create a game in which the MC is a character that you build by your own choices and actions. I currently avoid describing their gender exactly because I want to give the player a complete freedom of choice, and in this setting genders are not as important as in feudal or post-feudal societies of medieval Europe. For the sake of the player's own imagination, I also don't want to provide a specific character portrait. Nevertheless, this design approach still may be changed in the future.
Really want to try this but sadly my BitDefender is blocking the exe as it detects (correctly or incorrectly) malware in the exe. Sigh. Will try again with a later version. Game looks like it will be my cup of tea, so good luck with it! I will continue to follow developments - saw it on RockPaperShotgun btw
I'm sorry, I can only give you my word that so far nobody experienced any sort of malware-like issues and the game doesn't try to steal your data or anything - it's working completely offline.
However, I did find posts reaching as far back as 2013 which are also related to BitDefender - it even considered the Ren'Py itself (not the games, just the engine!) a false-positive. So I think it may be an issue that will never be fixed. : (
Thanks for that, though as Ingix says below I've had no issue with other Ren'Py games (I do a lot of python development myself). I'll try the next version you release. Happy to buy this game btw - looks very cool!
I also use Bitdefender, and don't remember any problems with the demo. Also I run Ren'Py games semi-regularly, and I don't think there is a general problem with it any more with Bitdefender.
This was a lovely little game! I presume later versions will have some kind of proper intro to ease the player into it, but for now that soothing guitar does the job.
I really like the simplicity of the colours, the art style, the music. The writing has me interested and wanting to start a new save to experience some of the other options, which is exactly as it should be.
My only criticisms would be first that you are clearly not a native English speaker and at times this comes across, either with odd punctuation or phrasing or with spelling mistakes. For a game like this the writing is the most important factor so this would need to be rectified.
Secondly, as neat as the colour palette is, it is quite difficult to quickly distinguish between the text and the choices, and the emotion options in the bottom right corner need to be more prominent. Perhaps the best way to make the choices stand out more would be some kind of ornate paragraph marker coming after the text, i.e.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (but nicer looking)
With the emotion options it would be more convenient if they were integrated into the choices themselves, as I found myself forgetting to select an emotion.
Overall though, I enjoyed this. If I didn't I wouldn't be spending my time writing this to hopefully improve the game. Looking forward to more!
Thank you so much! All of the things that you pointed out are important to me - even if some of them won't directly impact my approach to the game, gathering this kind of feedback helps me think about potential issues from a different point of view.
However, I can promise that I'll do my best to give the dialogues a decent proofreader. : )
I appreciate that you decided to reach out to me, thank you so much for it.
Nice demo. I really like the music, the guitar fits well and the art work is simple but effective and adds to the game. I wonder if there will be other guitar tracks for other areas of the game such as when entering darker or more dangerous areas? and another track when encountering unknown characters or situations.
The Archive is a nice feature, it would be cool if there is a search bar which can handle two keywords and search the whole archive, reordering it to the search and highlighting keywords. So you might enter a region name + second keyword. That could be a fun way to delve into what you already have learned rather than the game track of this for you, where it might say when you arrive at a location 'here is the ruined hunters cabin the tinker said you will find something written on the inside wall..' etc. Typing hunters cabin would jump to that part in the archive of conversations.
Also you could perhaps add the ability to highlight a sentence or paragraph and right click to save it as a personal archive, another option in the side menu. Which kind of acts as a note book, adding what we might consider important info to quickly re-read later.
Anyway keep up the good work and i look forward to playing the game when its finished.
There are still many things unknown about the soundtrack, there's a chance that it will be even significantly replaced. Nevertheless, music is very important for me and I hope to use it to give various areas unique mood and personality.
I'll think about the search feature and the other ideas that you mentioned (I'm not sure if I'm capable of adding them), but I hope that the "journal" is going to play a similar goal that you have in mind.
Once again, thank you for your time and the encouragement. : )
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Played the 0.3 Demo and generally enjoyed it. Great job!
The art style is nice, and the dedication to story is great.
I did think there was a lag in the pacing of the conversation with the soldiers. It didn't feel meaty enough in the information received to justify the time spent at it. Maybe if they are intended to be more major in the future. I also found the tone of the soldiers to be a little flippant or perhaps too casual when discussing the dangers of the road. That's surely a personal preference, though. Perhaps it was the density of all the references during the info dumps that made it seem so.
I found the typing minigame to be less interesting. It's obvious there must be a secret door there but randomly trying in keywords to find the right pattern was not too fun. It also seems to reset when you type in a wrong word, so I repeated the same keywords many times to get back to where I left off.
I'm sure more graphics will come with time, but would love to see some of the soldiers, the gryphons, etc.
I look forward to the process and improvements, thanks for putting the demo out there!
Thank you, Mochnant, for your feedback! I have some ideas how I could make the game progress faster, I just need to have a larger part of the game finished to be able to measure all the pros and cons. I really appreciate that you've decided to let me know what you think - I take every piece of criticism very seriously, especially when it clearly comes from one's kindness and willingness to help.
I'm also glad that you've like my devlog. It took me a lot of time to put it together. ^^
The devlog was great! I know it is very time consuming but it is nice to see the inner workings of the process.
Thought I'd follow this one up and say I have played through the initial solider conversation in the release version and it is fantastic now. Even having played it before, I was convinced they were going to murder me.
It was interesting, well paced, and tense! Well done!
<3 Welcome back!
Hi. I just checked the demo. First of all, the music is amazing! Is it available on soundcloud? It really fits the mood of the game and does not distract form the process. Second, the dialogs are nice - I really felt the personalities of soldiers there. But at the same time I wanted more action (got bored at some point reading and reading, but maybe I'm just not from the target audience of the game :-) ). I'd like the game had more management aspect as in "the dark room". And, of course, seeing NPCs and gryphons illustrations would be really nice. I also really like the colour palette and pixel art - it really adds to the aesthetics here. i feel the game has quite a lot of potential, keep it up!
BTW does the demo end after the road is cleared from gryphons(I used the pedant)?, because the game was reset and I was returned to the home screen instantly after that (though I see from the devlog screenshot there is some more content in the demo). Anyways, I am lazy to start from the beginning to check if that was a bug or it really ended there (yup, I had no saves available because I could not same my progress, send you the error details via email).
Thank you, Alex! I think you've encountered a bug, and I'm glad you let me know about it. The demo should have had about 2 more "scenes" after the griffon encounter, and I think there may be a problem with the Mac version after all - specifically with saving. I'm going to work on that.
I really appreciate your feedback, and you can find more information about the soundtrack here. There's a chance that the tracks used in the demo won't be used in the final version of the game, but I still hope it won't turn this way. : )
Though I wish the demo was a little longer, it gives a good impression on what more is to come. I'm definitely looking forward to playing the full game.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I hope the full game will have a Very rewarding "length," though I can't share anything specific just yet. : )
Very nice feel to it and the music sets a perfect mood for a game like this! I really liked how you could choose whether to act friendly or with less emotions towards other characters you meet, makes it even more immersive.
How long did it take for you to create a multiple option game? :)
I don't know if you've heard of Game Development World Championship before (gdwc2019) but it's a competition for indie games and it's free to apply! It's great if you want some more visibility for the game and it only takes a couple of minutes to join.
Thank you! I believe I've been thinking about the design for about a year now, made the first concept art in January and what you could see in the demo is the result of about 3-4 months of development.
I'm definitely going to take a closer at GDWC later today, thank you for the invitation!
That's amazing! :)
Ran fine, Nothing conflicted with my rig. The visual novel itself was very well done. Multiple options seems like story ends up based on your selections. I have a AMD-A8 5600k CPU with GTX 970 GPU
This version works fine! BitDefender had no issues this time. Am playing it now :)
I'm glad it works for you, GunnarRoxen!
any chance for mac release?
Hi there! I've just uploaded the new version of the demo, and it has a Mac release as well. : )
Awesome, will be waiting for release. Thanks
Would like to play it on mac or in the browser. Screenshots and header image look very nice.
Hi there! There's a good chance I'll have the new version of the demo ready on Friday, but I'm going to look for someone willing to test the Mac version since I can create a game's build for it (and I know it worked before), but I can't test it myself. Would you be interested? ; )
sure)
Went smoother than I expected! I've sent you an e-mail. : )
hi, I received it, thanks. Opened with no problem :) Will play it when have some free time :)
btw I develop my own game (already spent about 13 hours on it ) https://alexedev.itch.io/hanna - I did all assets and coding by myself
Thank you! I'll take a look on Hanna later on! I'm having a really crazy day. ; )
sure :)
The demo was shorter than I expected, but I enjoyed what I saw from my characters' adventures. Love being able to use different attitudes when approaching situations; it helps in making separate playthroughs feel more unique. My only quibble is with the writing sounding a bit "modern" for the setting, but it's really not that big of a deal.
Can't wait to see the rest of the story unfold.
Thank you, Adi, I appreciate that you decided to share you thoughts! Would you like to say a bit more about the "modern" writing that you've mentioned? Is it that the idioms that I'm using are too modern, or maybe some words feel like they don't belong?
It's very minor, but some of the words used by the soldiers sound somewhat contemporary. I feel stuff like "crazy shit" or "boyfriend" would sound a bit out of place if someone were to say them 100~200 years ago (at least, outside of America).
I see, thank you! I assumed it's clear that these characters don't really use English, but rather that the game translates the dialogue from a non-existent language to one that we can understand. Maybe I should do a better job with expressing it.
Following contains minor spoilers:
I investigated the Stone Chapel right after the first crossroad before heading to the tavern. After a few inputs and further investigation, i got to this message: "...one picture is very clear for you. A long arrow pointing down". Now no matter what i type the MC wont investigate what the arrow is pointing at! I mean its clear that the MC has an interest in this arrow (at least i would) but when i type (for example) "arrow" it says: "You havent found it"... Is this a bug maybe? If not: How the heck should i investigate this? Since the game has a time-mechanic, backtracking isnt much of an option to me either... Or is this chapel a WiP? I really want to give feedback but after spending about 20 minutes of reading the prologue and deciding wether or not to go to the tavern first, im stuck in this hut :/
Spoilers as well! ; )
Hi! Yes, you can go below! There's a separate quest related to the dolmen, but it's not currently a part of the demo. During this quest you'll get to know that you should look for a "trapdoor". If you'd pick a scholar, your could also read the inscription to find a direct clue.The arrow that you can currently see is, well, vague, since you can't read. If you'd like to go deeper, you should look for a "hatch" or "trapdoor". Nevertheless, you're almost at the very end of the current stage of the demo version.I clicked on the "achievement" when shown in the first crossroads (mine was fighter's axe) and I got this error:
'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.
While running game code:
File "game/areas/prologue.rpy", line 2617, in script
menu:
TypeError: list indices must be integers, not Null
-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------
Full traceback:
File "game/areas/prologue.rpy", line 2617, in script
menu:
File "D:\Games\roadwarden\Roadwarden-0.25-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 1608, in execute
next_node(self.items[choice][2][0])
TypeError: list indices must be integers, not Null
Windows-8-6.2.9200
Ren'Py 7.2.1.457
Roadwarden 0.25
Fri May 24 14:19:19 2019
I'm sorry and thank you! It really helps.
Wonderful choice of music, I don't get tired of hearing it.
Writing is detailed and evocative. Just a few typos here and there ("an" instead of "and")
Interface is clear and usable, just had a bit of hesitation using the emotions system, I didn't know which lines were influenced by it or not.
Love the colour palette ^^
<3
Thank you so much!
this looks really cool! definitely a project I'll follow, the atmosphere and setting are interesting and evocative, and the premise offers a lot of opportunities for exploring and adventure.
Thank you so much! We all need a bit of exploration sometimes. : )
Very good game and interesting idea :D The colors are simple but fit the atmosphere very well. I hope there will be more information for the MC (I dont know if I missed it or not, but there is no gender for the MC ?).
Thanks you for creating such a beautiful game :) Im looking forward to your future updates :)
Thank you as well for your kind comment, Punnn! I Hope to create a game in which the MC is a character that you build by your own choices and actions. I currently avoid describing their gender exactly because I want to give the player a complete freedom of choice, and in this setting genders are not as important as in feudal or post-feudal societies of medieval Europe. For the sake of the player's own imagination, I also don't want to provide a specific character portrait. Nevertheless, this design approach still may be changed in the future.
Really want to try this but sadly my BitDefender is blocking the exe as it detects (correctly or incorrectly) malware in the exe. Sigh. Will try again with a later version. Game looks like it will be my cup of tea, so good luck with it! I will continue to follow developments - saw it on RockPaperShotgun btw
I'm sorry, I can only give you my word that so far nobody experienced any sort of malware-like issues and the game doesn't try to steal your data or anything - it's working completely offline.
However, I did find posts reaching as far back as 2013 which are also related to BitDefender - it even considered the Ren'Py itself (not the games, just the engine!) a false-positive. So I think it may be an issue that will never be fixed. : (
Thanks for that, though as Ingix says below I've had no issue with other Ren'Py games (I do a lot of python development myself). I'll try the next version you release. Happy to buy this game btw - looks very cool!
Thank you and have a great day! : )
I also use Bitdefender, and don't remember any problems with the demo. Also I run Ren'Py games semi-regularly, and I don't think there is a general problem with it any more with Bitdefender.
This was a lovely little game! I presume later versions will have some kind of proper intro to ease the player into it, but for now that soothing guitar does the job.
I really like the simplicity of the colours, the art style, the music. The writing has me interested and wanting to start a new save to experience some of the other options, which is exactly as it should be.
My only criticisms would be first that you are clearly not a native English speaker and at times this comes across, either with odd punctuation or phrasing or with spelling mistakes. For a game like this the writing is the most important factor so this would need to be rectified.
Secondly, as neat as the colour palette is, it is quite difficult to quickly distinguish between the text and the choices, and the emotion options in the bottom right corner need to be more prominent. Perhaps the best way to make the choices stand out more would be some kind of ornate paragraph marker coming after the text, i.e.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (but nicer looking)
With the emotion options it would be more convenient if they were integrated into the choices themselves, as I found myself forgetting to select an emotion.
Overall though, I enjoyed this. If I didn't I wouldn't be spending my time writing this to hopefully improve the game. Looking forward to more!
Thank you so much! All of the things that you pointed out are important to me - even if some of them won't directly impact my approach to the game, gathering this kind of feedback helps me think about potential issues from a different point of view.
However, I can promise that I'll do my best to give the dialogues a decent proofreader. : )
I appreciate that you decided to reach out to me, thank you so much for it.
Nice demo. I really like the music, the guitar fits well and the art work is simple but effective and adds to the game. I wonder if there will be other guitar tracks for other areas of the game such as when entering darker or more dangerous areas? and another track when encountering unknown characters or situations.
The Archive is a nice feature, it would be cool if there is a search bar which can handle two keywords and search the whole archive, reordering it to the search and highlighting keywords. So you might enter a region name + second keyword. That could be a fun way to delve into what you already have learned rather than the game track of this for you, where it might say when you arrive at a location 'here is the ruined hunters cabin the tinker said you will find something written on the inside wall..' etc. Typing hunters cabin would jump to that part in the archive of conversations.
Also you could perhaps add the ability to highlight a sentence or paragraph and right click to save it as a personal archive, another option in the side menu. Which kind of acts as a note book, adding what we might consider important info to quickly re-read later.
Anyway keep up the good work and i look forward to playing the game when its finished.
Greetings, Daza, thank you for your feedback!
There are still many things unknown about the soundtrack, there's a chance that it will be even significantly replaced. Nevertheless, music is very important for me and I hope to use it to give various areas unique mood and personality.
I'll think about the search feature and the other ideas that you mentioned (I'm not sure if I'm capable of adding them), but I hope that the "journal" is going to play a similar goal that you have in mind.
Once again, thank you for your time and the encouragement. : )
What a wonderful experience, please make this a full game!
Thank you, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! <3
I'm really, really in love with this game and it's design, it's amazing. Kudos, dude.
Thank you, it means a lot to me!
Impressed with what I've seen so far. Plenty of interesting choices and I really enjoy the color palate and style.
Thank you, Puzzlebox! I hope to keep the momentum going! : D
Very cool game, slow pace and an interesting setting! Will wait for more.
Thank you! It's very kind of you to share your encouragement.