Nice game, really nice art style and interesting story so far
Reviews for "Scrap Arms Demo [OLD 2019]"
BigBossErndog responds:
Thanks! I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the game :D
This is a really fun demo that makes me want to see the final game in its full entirety. I've been a long time fan of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games(specifically Explorers of Darkness, but I digress) and this game really brought back memories of exploration, attack management, and of course getting curb-stomped into oblivion by how unfair the game can be. As much as I love Mystery Dungeon and this demo, I have quite a few complaints about it, and I'm just gonna explain them a bit because I am here and you can't make me shut my mouth(also I want to see the game improve and hopefully you don't get offended).
So first things first, I wanna get a few positive feedback outta the way: I love the dialogue. The way the two best friends shit talk each other as they contemplate about life is very realistic and enjoying to read. Again, they remind me of the main and partner Pokemon from Mystery Dungeon, but you did it better by presenting a more realistic bestie situation.
I found the battle mechanics quite interesting. It gives players another level of resource management and degree of random chance. I see how you sort of improvised on the "recruit" mechanic by giving the player the weapons the enemy uses after defeating them. It's a common mechanic today, but I haven't seen it done much in a top-down roguelike RPG.
The presentation is lovely. While I feel the character sprites need to stand out more from the background since everything looked a tad too smooth, the art isn't much to complain about. It's very clean and the textbox is super sleek and fast(sorta reminds me of Mother 4... coincidence?). The music ain't too shabby either. The atmosphere probably should be a little more dour and sour in the caverns, but it was perfect during the little light things.
And now to the complaints!:
First of all, it's hard. I know I said I liked Mystery Dungeon and that's hard, but there's a difference between curb-stomping into oblivion and jackhammer-gorilla banishing me into Hades' urinal. Some people complained that there was no saving area before a boss, but I'm okay with that. The big problem is that because of the item reliance mechanic, the player doesn't have a good foothold or backup plan like MD do with Pokemon moves and what not. There's nothing that can reliably deal with the enemies that can be efficient or resourceful, so you're forced to take damage, which does not automatically regenerate after plot points, save points, or any amount of turns. The lack of any special "moves" leads into the final(at least for me) fight with the shadow bois. I know that in MD that you often fight battles larger than that, but at least you can use a move like earthquake or discharge to take care of a whole group of enemies, or you can use an orb to inflict status ailments on all the enemies to thin out the crowd. But in this battle, each shadow boi takes two hits, and there are just so many of them that you can't avoid taking damage. Maybe I'm just salty, maybe I missed something, maybe I was supposed to hold out for a couple of turns, but I feel like pitting me against a literal church-ful of enemies isn't fair when I don't have a lot to defend my sorry butt with.
Another problem is the speed, and it's not a lag problem. In fact, the game runs very smoothly and I gotta give you credit for that. I'm talking like Pokemon DPPt kind of slow. It's annoying how after you use up anything, even food, that you have to keep the broken remains of the object in your pocket and you have to manually discard them. That's already annoying enough, but there is a window of time when discarding where the black parts of the screen kinda do a squinting thing like a cutscene is happening before it officially asks you whether to discard it. It probably don't seem like a lot, but it's just those little things that frustrates you. Also, the maps are usually somewhat big, and there is no way for the characters to sprint or speed up walking time. I usually like to explore the floor in its entirety before leaving, and it's just taking up more time to walk back to the stairs at the speed of leisure. Also, after losing to bosses a handful of times, the cutscenes become drawnout and tedious. Maybe add a skip button or something?
Sorry if I sound like an asshole and sorry for a huge list. There's a lot more I'd like to say about how good it looks but I've already written several paragraphs and I'm not the best at writing essays. I'm super interested in the development of this game and look forward to the full game's release.
BigBossErndog responds:
No, seriously, thank you!! This is really good feedback, and I'll be sure to jump to reworking the game in consideration of all these points very soon! I really like many of the points to be made here. I would like to contact you to discuss some of these points, so please pm me on Newgrounds if you're down. Also, I noticed you joined the Discord, discussing these on Discord would be perfect too.
I and my testers played this game a lot, perhaps we ended up becoming too good at it, feeling it too easy. We ended up neglecting the perspective of a new player. The game is definitely possible, but it's going to take patience. I will be introducing more balancing, or perhaps player choice, such as difficulty options.
Edit: Should be much faster to discard items now. Difficulty options are available when you start a new game. You heal when you save. More changes to come :D
I love the game! The controls are nice, the story is nice, the environment is cool, and the combat is pretty simple and intuitive. My one concern is that I've been running into a bug where I set up my inventory, and if I save or pick up new items in the area with the appetites some items disappear from my inventory or are otherwise replaced by my previous hotkey lineup. This is rather frustrating because I end up with less items before the final fight. But other than that issue I love this demo/prologue!
BigBossErndog responds:
Thank you :)
I'll look into that bug more, if it happens consistently you could try the offline version (at www.ernestplacido.com/scraparms) and hopefully the bug doesn't happen.
That ending was quite brutal... Didn't expect it.
The gameplay was simple yet entertaining.
Liked the item system seems creative and silly.
The ambient looks mysterious.
Very cool! I really got dragged into the world and loved the characters. I wasn't able to beat it yet since the bishop fight destroyed me (I thought I was supposed to lose! lol), and without a closer checkpoint to work from, it feels too punishing to continue. I understand it's a roguelike and it's supposed to be tough, but this is more like a story RPG and it can really lose pacing and momentum when you can die and have to start over from sooooo long ago, hearing people say the same stuff, but with less impact now. The mechanics were solid though and the world is mysterious and intriguing.
Edit: (Doh, I guess I missed an altar to save in! That helps a bit if that's the case.)
BigBossErndog responds:
Hi, did you perhaps miss Karin's house, which has an altar you can save in? Or do you think Karin's house is still too far from the boss?