Reviews for The Company of Copperhill

[sharpnova]

It just didn't grab me. The art was great. The sound seemed fine. The music was good.

Combat was nice and simple, a nice change from the tedious combat of other games in this genre.

But I'm just not attracted to clicking through lots of exposition.

The best stories are told implicitly. I think using lots of dialog is lazy and breaks immersion.

People don't understand that theme is far more important than story.

I think obectively I can give this a 4, despite what to me were shortcomings, the quality of the game was higher than my experience.

Hyptosis responds:

Thanks!

[1d4caltrop]

Pros: Interesting characters. Easy battle system.

Cons (such as they are): A little light on the backstory and plot. Leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

Overall: I like it. You've got a strong storytelling ability, so play to that strength as you continue with your Kickstarter project. While I would have liked for the game to delve even further into the characters' stories and the story of the world you've created, this is obviously more of a playable teaser trailer for your project, so it's going to be small. I just hope that project doesn't neglect these characters because they deserve to be fleshed out. You've left me wanting to know more, which is a good thing.

Gameplay Tips: You can probably beat the game with any combination of character classes. I went with Cinnacat as a Wizard, Dawncaller as a Guardian, Lorena as a Sorceress, Trickfoot as a Thief, and Warren as a Hunter. These largely line up with the character descriptions in the class selection screens. Trickfoot is the exception. The game explicitly states that he's a Healer, but make him a Thief. Being able to Steal food and gold is a huge help throughout the game.

Speaking of food, it is your way of getting free healing and energy restoration for the entire party, so it is essential to make sure you have some on you at all times. Get as much food as you can. Aside from defeating enemies, Stealing is the only way, which is why the skill is so important to have. You use your food when the party rests. While resting, you are first given the option to level up your characters by spending gold, which is the other reason why Steal is such a valuable skill. Once you exit the level up screen, you will be presented with a screen on which you have two options: Search and Rest. If you Search, you have a random chance of all party members being fully healed. If you Rest, you have a random chance of all party members recovering all their energy (the game says that you also have a random chance of being ambushed, but I never encountered an ambush, so the chance must be very low). Make sure to do both whenever you rest.

You'll be given the option to rest after each fight. Because you can recover all your Health and Energy between fights, don't hesitate to go all-out with your attacks. If you followed my recommendations and made Cinnacat a Wizard and Lorena a Sorceress, then you will have 2 Bomb attacks every round. These attacks are very handy in the late game. They consume a lot of energy but do more damage than any other attack in the game, which is great against the late-game's high hitpoint foes.

Finally, don't forget to level up.

Hyptosis responds:

Thanks for all the helpful advice! It means a lot. ^_^

[dreamsfan]

Well, good effort for four days. That being said, this one I feel needs more time to cook. This isn't what I'd call a rogue-like game. It feels like a on-the-rails RPG. I agree with meltdowner in nearly all regards. Your games have fleshed out backstories, and many tries (and succeeds) to create some camaraderie in party situations. I don't think this is a fun game, however. I wondered if it would have worked better with less party members and more time to focus making the party feel better. The party felt well, weak (mostly due to energy restrictions), and thanks to low hp overall- unimportant in what their class was. Leveling up with gold made no sense to me. What are they buying? Also gaining energy is a royal pain, since its just 'oh its too noisy, sorry' most of the time.
This actually didn't influence my review, but I experienced a game-crashing bug during combat, allies and enemy flashing red rapidly, and no icons on the bottom screen. I can send you details if you haven't had others mention in your bug testing.

Hyptosis responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

[CheesecakeOverlord]

While the dialogue and character interaction was nice, gameplay was really buggy and kinda boring.
Dawncaller (I think?) I set as guardian, and for some reason magic kept increasing throughout the game without me lvling them up, meaning I used them for all the healing and making my dedicated healer useless.
Also, when a party member is knocked out, whoever goes before them in the party seems to get an additional turn, which seems wrong since I basically didn't level 2 members since if they died it just gave more attacks to the better higher lvled party members.
Spamming steal meant there was never any danger of running out of rations, think I finished with about 400 spare?
At some point all members apart from Warren died for no apparent reason. Not sure what caused that one, one minute they were there, the next they weren't.
The timer for moves is pointless since you can just refresh it by hovering over a different skill. imho it should either force you to act fast or not be there at all.
Enemies were bland since they only attack and just increase in stats with no change in tactics required. Also I seemed to kill the fiendish man twice? Kinda broke the immersion a bit.
I did enjoy the game overall and like the setting. I think it's nice that it's interconnected with the wider universe and characters and like I said dialogue was good. Artwork and music were great as ever.

Hyptosis responds:

Thanks for the detailed and considerate feedback.

[meltdowner]

Always liked your games especially the point and click ones. Enjoyed your story writing, characters, unique art, and game soundtracks. Another thing I love is that the fact you actually connect most, if not all, characters, creatures, places, and lores from your work. Somehow I appreciate that more compared to those who keeps on making separate, unconnected universes for their work. It shows dedication, deep love for one's creations and gives out this sense of continuity and tying ends, I suppose (if that makes sense at all lol).

However, your RPGs are weaker imo. You have this tendency to rely on random numbers, imbalanced mechanics, weak playable characters, and provide limited information. It really frustrate players and makes strategic plays useless. Can be understandable on roguelike, not good for others, seriously. Like on this one, the damage and accuracy are random, classes and stats are very unclear, and the characters somehow feel so weak that I feel like I'm playing as the creeps.

Regardless, I still like your games. Good luck with your kickstarter.

Hyptosis responds:

Thanks for the attentive feedback.