Support NeoGAF

[Rad-]

Semi-serious question: How many of these games are good? I've played Costume Quest and it didn't really grab me (maybe I'll give it another try, since I didn't hate it and Halloween is coming), Breath of Death VII was god awful and Cthulhu Saves the World seemed like more of the same so I didn't bother to play for more than a few minutes, and I've heard a lot of bad things about Sonic Chronicles.

It kind of seems like that type of RPG is the kind of game that Western developers have a hard time "getting", like fighting games.

Anachronox was very good, and unique.

 

[Diablos]

Looks very nice. Indie devs are really making a strong impression lately.

It looks interesting. One thing that really bothered me, though, is how the text reflows when it wraps to a new line. It's very distracting.

Huh? It doesn't bother me at all.

 

[DarkPanda]

Looks really good. I can't find where they say what platform it's for, so I'm guessing PC?

 

[Bendik Stang]

@Alextended: Thanks for opening this thread back in october last year. It has been great reading through all the comments.
I apologise for not replying sooner - I was just approved on this forum.

Concern Harvesting could become annoying: We intend to make this part of the strategic gameplay. Like in Heroes of Might and Magic, you build and upgrade your battle abilities through your castle. In many ways this is similar but the theme and visualisation is that of a farm with weird and magical plants and land barnacles and fungi.


@chickdigger802: Our composer is a FF fan, and draws a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy. She plays some 30 instruments, but first composes the music digitally and then plays in each needed analog instrument for the final touch.

Concern Slow Combat: Yes, we totally agree the combat was really slow in the first preview video. We had just barely gotten the combat up at that point. In the later video, you can see that we have speeded things up, and it is still just a prototype.

@Pyrrhus: Sorry for flipping the image. Our concept artists do this all the time while working, but since none here actually reads Japanese we were unaware of the problem. We have changed this now.

@CrunchyFrog: No there won't be random encounters. The enemy will be there and for the most part visible if not hidden behind a plant or rock...

@Raging Spaniard: Yes, it's a RPG.

@muu: Font use. We have switched fonts now and probably will again before it is done. No Comic Sans I promise!

@SatelliteOfLove: Temp dialog Sucks. Yes, we used the first dialogue as tutorial text for the presentation we did back then. But the day after we all were really embarrassed by the dialogue that I for the most part had jotted down. We now have someone with actual writing skills that will take care of the text going forward.
I humbly apologise for any permanent damage the poor dialogue may have caused you.

@DSix: Unity3D?
Yes, Festival of Magic is made in Unity3D. The alpha runs on PC/Mac and iPad3. Hopefully in a few days we will have it running on our new OUYA.

@Robert at Zeboyd Games: Too small team.
Valid concern. We outsource quite a bit of the work. E.g. We use Massive Black (Chris Hatala) for animation. As for time - it all depends on funding. (It's tough, but we think we are getting there soon.)

@DarkPanda: What Platforms?
PC,Mac,iOS(iPad3+) and Android (OUYA)
We would like to make it for Wii U, but that is up to Nintendo Online.

And to all the other positive comments - Thank you! It really boosts the morale to hear that someone likes what we are doing.

Going forward, we will try to at least post one update a week on our dev blog over at IndieDB. Feel free to ask me anything about the game or point out if there are things we seem to be doing wrong.

 

[Boerseun]

This look GREAT! It's also coming to OUYA, which is where I'll buy my copy.

 

[Sentenza]

Feel free to ask me anything about the game or point out if there are things we seem to be doing wrong.

Any hope this will be light on the grinding side that so often characterizes the genre?
And just to be clear: I don't mean that I want the game to be easy, short or devoid of content. I'm specifically asking if you are putting any effort in trying to avoid (too much) forced repetition.

Anyway, already added to my (frankly already huge) library of bookmarked projects on ModDB/IndieDB.

 

[Bendik Stang]

Any hope this will be light on the grinding side that so often characterizes the genre?
And just to be clear: I don't mean that I want the game to be easy, short or devoid of content. I'm specifically asking if you are putting any effort in trying to avoid (too much) forced repetition.

Anyway, already added to my (frankly already huge) library of bookmarked projects on ModDB/IndieDB.

We will try to make the gameplay as varied as possible, but at the same time we must try to get as much gameplay out of our budgets as possible. Those two things are hard to do at the same time.

I would like to add that we would rather make 4-5 hours of really high quality quest gameplay instead of 40-50 hours of poor, repetitive quest gameplay.

Please also note that the RPG quests will be released in episodes (DLC). The harvesting/crafting island will allow for continued (repetitive) gameplay with several side quests and options for coop crafting/harvesting...and monster care. (like in Animal crossing)

For those that enjoy the harvesting gameplay, there will be a spud-gun tournament arena to combat monsters and weekly/biweekly events called the Festival of Magic.

So the answer is really yes and no.