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Mohagged194 days ago(+1)

Niceu desu.

Haven't played Sekiro ever or any game of that kind a long time, but it felt very easy to get into.
However, the tutorial was too text heavy for my taste. Also, I wouldn't always lock on to the dummy? Not sure if I missed something (would've to check the vid), but I expected the slide tackle to hit the dummy (it later worked when trying it on Jin).

Fighting Jin was fun and intense, as I expected him to be "dead" when down the first time (I didn't pay any attention to the bars - what's the orange bar for?). I also thought I could down attack him somehow?

Learning to parry projectiles while fighting him was interesting. However, reading the info text while fighting is sucky. It took me out of the fight. Just took a glimpse of "projectile, parry, RB", only later trying to read the whole text to make sure I didn't miss any information while dodging his attacks. At the very least I'd highlight the keywords red (if not shorten the text altogether).

The combat severly lacks feedback over the amount of damage I took or how much HP I have left. During my first fight I thought I had him in the back easily, but was surprised how low my HP was. The healthbar isn't really eyecatching enough for me. I'd prefer to have some sort of indicator, where I don't have to look away from the fight.

During the fight I didn't like to heal. Somehow felt wrong. Winning the fight without healing was much more satisfying.

Mid fight, I tried to kick, but forgot I had to switch to that ability. Somehow thought that kicking was a base ability. Or maybe I misremember.

Tried to dodge his grabs, don't think I ever got it.

Jumping onto the lantern was neat.

During the fight I thought I was very much in control of what I'm doing, even though I can't say that I knew what I was doing.

Played with gamepad, but no option to rebind? And obviously needs more gamepad-UI integration.

Also, just noticed looking back at the video, there's an orange bar, too, for myself... Also, didn't see the "Healing" info text at all.

Game kinda crashed after the fight. The next scene would load eventually, but then crashed completely.

That's my first impression. Any specific feedback or critizism you're looking for?


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kemomic194 days ago

Thanks for playing!

Yeah, the tutorial's pretty wordy, but it's kind of between that and doing more of those pop-ups (which I personally find to be annoying), so it's a tough balance to do. I think parrying could be separated into it's own tutorial stage, but I'm also unsure if new players can handle being forced to parry to continue.  As for the target lock, it gets removed during death, it can be manually toggled, but I think I forgot to write it into the tutorials so it's not really clear. 

Orange bar was explained in the tutorials, so I'm not sure how you missed it. As for the side text during the fight, it was something I did to avoid having to rely too much on the pop-ups, but I guess anything more than just button prompts is too complex to convey with just that. On the other hand, it's definitely too late to respond if you were to read a popup tutorial when the attack that triggers it starts, so most likely I'll just need to fit it into the first tutorial level. 

I've never seen a crash happen there, so I'd appreciate if you could send me the logs for the game. By "crash completely", do you mean that the game refused to load the next level, or did the program actually close itself? Does this happen consistently, or just this once?

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Mohagged194 days ago(+1)

How "big" will be the intro to the final game? Do you want the player to jump right into the action? With this type of game I could see a tutorial like Metal Gear:Solid's VR Training work well, set in a hidden village or whatever. So, rather than funneling the player through a tutorial, you give them the choice to "level up" their skills by fighting/practicing with teachers. Basically what you have now, just more focused on individual lessons.
"All abilities are unlocked from the start, and it's up to you to master how to use them." can be tough to get most players into the game. Personally I like it, but I find it difficult to design well.

With the orange bar, there's a lot going on at once for a newb.

Not sure if there was an actual error message, but after the second enemy appeard (girl sitting in field) it just blacked out and nothing. Where are the error logs located? I'll see if it happens again.

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Mohagged194 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Ok, this time had the crash when transitioning from the tutorial level. But on second try it worked and could fight Saber Louise. But damn, I hardly deal any damage :o Girl's too thicc

Update: finally beat it. Took me more than 50 minutes. 20 Minutes to reach the Fox. Trying to parry seemed like a death sentence as so many attacks would hail down on me, eventually I'd get hit. Stayed mid range, as this would work well against her attacks.

In the first few attempts, getting her down to the sequence she would lose her jacket. In later tries she kept the jacket?

Didn't manage to parry a single projectile the entire time :(

What's a normal time to beat those bosses? I feel I'm doing something extremely wrong.

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kemomic193 days ago

Thanks for the follow-up. The logs should be in "AppData\LocalLow\kemomic\Illusive Domain" that you can get to from running %APPDATA%. 

Ideally, I'd like the player to be able to just jump straight into the action, similarly to how Furi starts off with a boss. In practice, there's too many mechanics that trying to cram it into a tutorial boss in previous builds just made for a boring boss and a bad tutorial, so the current tutorial is an attempt at shortening it as much as possible. 

The jacket is removed during the cutscene, and it should be reset if the fight restarts. 

I think ~1h is a pretty good time, especially if you haven't played similar games. I'm at around 6-7min myself, but my other friends took 30min and 1h respectively to clear it. 

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Mohagged193 days ago

Player-prev.log https://pastebin.com/ejbKMe2F
Player.log https://pastebin.com/asNxT5xm


This is really an interesting design issue. Reminds me of Bushido Blade, getting thrown in right away. What about some sort of branching prologue?

> You throw the player into a boss fight right away

>> If the player gets stomped, the player goes into a tutorial section

>>> After the tutorial section, the player has to either redo the first boss, or go on with the second boss (with the first boss reappearing later)

>> If the player already has the skills, the tutorial section is skipped (optional)


Or maybe unlocking pratice sessions. After a loss, the player unlocks an optional training session. Maybe based on the performance, like: never parried => how to parry.

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