I freakin loved this game! The art style is great & the gameplay loop is fun & well thought out, I cannot wait to see what the final product will be like & wish you all of the success with it👍
This might be the best game I've ever found on itch, from aesthetic to gameplay to lore it knocks them all out of the park. I haven't unlocked all the lore but after a few runs I'm astounded by the story and character connections built off simple text and the dialogue introduced during the second act.
This game is AWESOME. I played it for hours on end last night (stayed up late rofl) and it has such cool art and aesthetics. Took me about six attempts to win for the first time and it was crazy fun. I could always make it to the end reliably, even on my first attempt, but then I'd die to the final boss or the one before it. I only won with an item that I got from the lunar shard upgrades.
Even havning won once, there's still so much going on that I feel like I've only scratched the surface of. There's so much that you can do in this game, so many secrets to uncover, and it's' great.
My favorite part is figuring out who drops what, which lets you strategize about who to fight and when. At the start it's all "what do these rooms mean, who do I fight" and then later you start developing strategies for what to do in what order. The lack of RNG when it comes to what enemies will do is great for learning how things work. If there was a wiki for this game it would go really hard.
That's not even getting into the weird backstories for all the characters and the puzzle of figuring out what's going on. A part of me wonders if it's all just metaphor for Noire being an apparently terrible person (based on the enemy dialogue). Noire and Mary bullied Ester, and maybe something bad happened to her. But the Moon/Goddess and False God stuff make me wonder if there's more to it and there really is an evil cult out there. If there is, how would Mary, Rugs, and the others play into that? The prologue makes it seem like they're all normal people who have some personal drama going on, but nothing too major. In short I have no clue what's going on, but it's amazing.
If I had one criticism it would be to make item management easier somehow, maybe through a way of sorting items or a way to divide the inventory into sections and jump to different sections when you have a lot of items, because it can get tiring paging through everything when you have a lot of stuff. That's just me though.
Thank you for your feedback! Yeah, the inventory becomes quite awkward when you have many items. It's possible to scroll quickly by holding up/down but it still feels a bit awkward. I don't like the idea of having items sorted/stacked because there are mechanics that rely on the order of items in the inventory. I'll try to come up with something
This game is surprisingly good. At first glance, the game seems rather simple; the controls are easy to understand, and the mechanics are self explanatory enough that the first time you're dropped on the "overworld" (a.k.a. where you select where to go next) you intuitively know what is going on. What that simplicity hides, however, is an immense amount of depth, both in its content and its mechanics, all tied together by a wonderful aesthetic and soundtrack. And by that I mean that the game really doesn't show you much unless you dig deeper. When I first played I thought I had a pretty good idea of how much content the game would have, but the game just kept expanding right before my eyes at every turn, again and again, and that feeling of finding things like new playable characters, the end of the world, the negative layers, HER, is simply incredible to experience, and it reached a point where I don't know how much there still is to see. Like, sure, I have three characters, but who's to say there's not a fourth somewhere? That uncertainty is something I absolutely adore. It's comparable to the feeling of just finding new layers and paths in The Binding of Isaac. Mechanically too, in the sense that your success is entirely dependent on your strategy. Knowing which event is which is vital to survival, but not only that, as you play the game you start noticing some patterns emerging, things like noticing that the same enemy always drops the same things, until eventually picking your battles carefully based on the enemies' moves and rewards becomes a part of your strategy. There is always a risk to everything you do, and sure, there is randomness involved, but it's just enough rng to scratch the itch in both my gambling loving brain and my strategy loving brain. (Besides, what RPG *doesn't* have rng?) The simple aesthetics makes this much more approachable than most strategy games, like I mentioned before you can usually tell what to do without a tutorial. This simplicity, however, is also a double edged sword, and this is where I'll have to be a little bit more negative in this review, but the early game doesn't have enough of a hook to really make people want to stick around. I mentioned before that at first I thought I had an idea of how much content this game had, and that's not good, because after I've beaten the no-skin man once it took me two days to pick up the game again, and the sole reason I did is because I was bored. I'm glad I did, as I love this game, but if I had something to do I probably wouldn't have. The point I'm trying to make is, as much as I love how the game hides so much for you to discover, I don't think there is enough of an incentive for you to look for them, if that makes sense. What *really* got me into it was finding root for the first time and triggering the end of the world, which made me realize that maybe this game isn't as linear as I thought. I also really don't like the unexpected events. Like, at all. Sure, it's fun the first two times but after that it just becomes annoying, if there were a lunar upgrade to remove those that would be great. There are a few things that are noticeably placeholder too, like Trish's memory on the recollection screen, but that's more of a beta thing that I'm expecting to not be in the final release, it's quite jarring going from the genuinely pretty damn good puzzle battles of mary and rugs to "girl why you crying" "DREAMS :sob:". You got me really interested in these suicidal clowns and I wanna learn more about them. Overall, tho, this game is worth playing, I'll give it a 7/10 on the right track to being a 10/10, keep up the good work!
Thank you for your review! The diary pages after Rugs are just placeholders ofc. I hope that the final version will fix the issues you pointed out, as I’m already working on things like the lack of interesting elements in the first run and the unexpected events
I've played about 6 hours for the new beta (.6). Continuing to enjoy it. However, I'm not sure if there's a bug for Root's mutation ability, since post Zone 1 I've repeatedly not been able to activate it even when killing the enemies correctly in the same way as Zone 1. In the previous version, Root's ability worked throughout the entire run.
The ability to gain mutations is tied to Root's gun, if you switch ranged weapon the ability is lost. If this isn't the case let me know and I'll check for any bugs
Characters always say the same thing during the same battle because they have different dialogue when you encounter them later. I really like the idea that characters provide new information the next time you meet them, and that it's not possible to read all the dialogue in the first encounter. In addition, there are special situations that can trigger different dialogues. However, thank you for your feedback! I hope to create as many dialogues as possible for the individual enemies
Congratulations to the developers, very very nice roguelike!! You can happily spend different hours!!! The Italian language is the real surprise much appreciated! Find the Gameplay on my channel, Attention to spoilers!!!
I had completed the whole game on the 0.4 version. And when I downloaded the newest version (0.6) none of my data was saved. Is there any way that I can have the same stuff that I had in older versions?
Previous saves are intentionally not compatible with version 0.6, as it has a different progression that would be "spoiled" by having completed save files. If you really want to use your old saves in 0.6, you can copy the contents of the "NO_SKIN_ver04" folder(located in C:/Users/<User Name>/AppData/Local/) into the "NO_SKIN_ver06" folder(in the same location)
Just played the game and I found a funny glitch. If you have floss between the teeth and die when the enemy is at 1hp, the enemy dies from the grenade and you win the battle. You can still play the game and trade with merchants, but you will die as soon as you get into another battle (it kills you before you take action). It doesn't hinder the experience of the game, but I found it funny.
Played your game and I have to say it's quite interesting and enjoyable I love the aspect of it and how it was made its genuinely really enjoyable good job and cant wait to see what else you create!
Root's damage mutation still shows -2 max hp despite it being -3 now... Heart glasses say that they "reduce the next 9 damage you would take" when the actual effect is "reduce the next damage you would take by 9"... Also applies to cult's robe... The new dream diary page for Rugs is missing a few apostrophes in the text... Sunset: "I think its your fault", "You really dont know how to pace yourself"... Midnight: "You cant understand me anymore"...
Healer does not have unique dialogue for when you already have a healer recruited and a second robe... (Mentioning it because fossil does have dialogue for the equivalent scenario...)
The bishop's stab dialogue clearly refers to him being shot with pirate's gun and not stabbed with dagger 48... The bleeding mirror's dialogue can also be updated to fit the gun more but it does make sense in its current state...
A somewhat more major bug: it seems that reviving while poisoned makes the poison damage take away a second revive... (Enemy has to kill you before the poison ticks...)
This is really fun - A very fun psychological horror visual novel turn-based teen drama!
I love the silly little easter eggs, and I always have a soft spot for odd pixelart. Easy to get into, sweet, well implemented replay value. And I have developed an emotional attachement to the Frogs. They deserve a raise.
We've been playing for a while now, trying to figure out the little details, and I love how the little snippets of story are presented. I'd love to know more - Like why are only Nadine and Mary having Rooms? What is with the red room and the doorman? (If anything, I would like more possible conversations with characters, and more variety)
There is potentially a bug when fighting the Deer Man? - Despite Dying, he died at the same turn due to the holy handgranade, and we proceeded on to the third area (guaranteed death still).
While I prefer finished experiences, I think this game has great opportunity for community content, occasional updates, spin-offs and the like. But maybe moreso for a jumping board for another game from the creator~ I'll definitely follow and be curious as to what else they'll make! Thank you so much, we had lots of fun playing!
I made sure to reference and link this game on several reedits on game mechanics and rpg design...
In my post i compared how modern horror games with advanced graphics all reach a point where they start looking like each other (The more realistic the graphics the less variety you can put in, after all, its designed to look REAL)
This was the horror game i referenced when stating that while big budget games can sometimes only hold interest if somebody actually paid a 50$ pricetag and quieting would lose that investment.
However games like this, virtually free, with no advertising or sunk cost, and under 200mb, I will gladly spend 2 - 3 straight days playing...
im kinda worried when i download this everything is ok but then when i try to launch it it say that this software might change something in your computer (I think it said that im kinda bad translator :^* ) so if someone could say me something about this then i would be happy because i could like play this cuz this looks GOOOD :D
I didn't play the game, but if it has a save maybe that's the reason. To save the game, the game has to create a file, that's why it says it would change something in the computer
Playing this was such a fun experience. I loved the well crafted atmosphere and art style, and now I'm definitely looking forward to the next update and full release!
amazing game. An incredible game. There's so much too it, and even though it have got to 100% (and died) there is still is much left to discover. I feel like I know nothing, and I love it
Fantastic game, unsettling and perfect level of difficulty. I started playing with the newer art style and LOVED it, maybe if you could add a toggle for the art styles that'd be cool!!
Thank you for your kind words! I can't spoil too much but that style was originally intended for something different, so it will be in the game in one way or another
Honestly an awesome idea would be if you kept your distance unlocks with Luna so you could talk to act 1 enemies before the first boss and get unique lore and interactions! I tried it and was disappointed to see my memory had reverted ;(
Can't spoil anything, but the acquired actions will probably work like this in the future: once unlocked, they won't be forgotten if you return to a previous area
I saw it at the beginning of the year looking for horror games and I was fascinated by everything, the atmosphere, the designs, how it breaks the fourth wall and the mysteries that await. I excitedly open each email that notifies me when the game is updated, I can't wait to see how it progresses!!
After unlocking Root and Luna and reaching the two 100% progress final bosses, I can say that I enjoyed the different tactics of later bosses which made them distinct from each other.
Here are some ideas:
Pray To The Goddess: It's OP with Rosary since you can spam it every turn if not Cursed and only take 1 dmg from every attack. Only Poison, Bleed, and multi-hit counter it.
So maybe on higher difficulties, you can only Pray 3 times per battle and have to pay 10 Lunar Fragments for every subsequent Pray?
Challenge character:
Starts with 6 temporary hearts.
Starts with Knife
Starts with Gun.
Starts with Second-hand Smoke boon.
All max hp gains/healing items/rest events grant temporary hearts instead (cap of 6 gained from percentage healing).
Two deals with Living Guts basically allow you to easily kill final bosses. Maybe reduce its effect to 1/4?
Doomed/Despair status effect: Increased by 1 by certain enemy attacks, such as charged attacks, and lowered via Pray/defeating a boss/certain events/items. If the counter hits 13 (carries over between battles), explodes and take damage equal to 1/3 max hp.
All bosses so far spend a turn to heal but what if later on, they had a life drain attack (dmg-based healing)?
A boss whose Charged attack immediately resolves all your poison stacks dmg at once, punishing you for ignoring and not curing it.
It's little tricks like this that are hard to set up with randomized encounters that make a run thankfully easier and make up for runs that are stacked against you from the start.
Once in a while it's refreshing to kick ass.
I dont think the game needs to be any harder per see.
It's already pretty close in terms of learning curve to fear and hunger.
Don't know if this is the right place to say, but I think the concept of switching weapons every time you get a new one is really irritating and unfun. Sure, it makes the game slightly more strategic, but mainly it just takes the enjoyment out of getting stronger and progressing. I really wish they were upgrades instead of complete weapon changes or you could switch weapons in the item bag
As you said, I believe this mechanic offers more strategic depth:
-the bonuses (attack and accuracy) you get for weapons are permanent and stay even if you change weapons
-having to switch weapons creates a perfect risk/reward situation: is it worth getting a new effect or higher attack in exchange for losing some accuracy or maybe an interesting effect?
That said, I find the idea of weapon switching interesting, and I'm sorry you found it frustrating. Thank you for your feedback!
Sorry, I havent used itch in like a month so I didnt know you responded! My main problem with it is that it can completely take away the weapon of the character that makes them special, and that just sucks.
I got this game on Steam! :) Saw Markiplier play but wasn't too enthused about the gameplay (I did watch the entire video), then got the demo for myself and it's much more fun playing it on my own. I have lost sleep over this game 😅so it definitely has lots of replayability and intrigue to make me go back for more.
The biggest complaint I have is the moon showing you the list of options every single run, even if you've already bought everything and are lunar shard capped. I am not sure if there will be more items added soon; regardless, I think I would prefer the moon store to be less intrusive (if that's the right word) by putting it as a separate option in the title menu, like the dream diary is (after the first or couple times the moon shows itself to you). Or, as something you can choose to select while you're choosing characters (so like a small icon you can arrow key move to or have a note that says "press m" to spend lunar shards or something.
The reason for this suggestion is that the dialogue repetition gets stale and there are a lot of screens to tap z for, which takes time. The frequency of screen changes in this game doesn't affect my visual sensitivity bad enough, but minimizing them when unnecessary would be very helpful.
Other than that I like that the game forces you to manage your resources efficiently because of the random outcomes. I'm familiar with roguelites enough to know that poor outcomes are not solely because of rng, even if a series of nothing events can get frustrating 😅I am curious and eager to learn more about the lore (rhyme!); definitely lots of open mysteries surrounding... well, everything, but especially Noire.
Thank you for your feedback! Right now, the moon shows the upgrades even after they've all been purchased to remind the player of the additions they've unlocked. I thought it would be strange to never show the list again. Additionally, an option to enable/disable upgrades will likely be added. I understand that right now it’s a bit annoying to go through that screen at the start of every new run
I played through both V0.4 and now V0.5. I really enjoyed am excited play though each new major update to be released. I've wishlisted the game on Steam and am looking forward to what all comes next! With that said, I want to leave some feedback that may or may not be helpful with development.
- This is a little dated at this point, given the change you made a few days ago, but I agree that the previous art style is probably better, though still like the other sprites as well.
-Root was my favorite character to play as in V0.4, as her unique playstyle felt really engaging to me. In V0.5, she was more frustrating to play as than anything. Even in 0 faith mode, my fight against Melody was still down to the wire, and I had even saved up a crucifix and two medkits for it! Maybe that's a skill issue, as I didn't have the grenade or either revival from the frog shop, which would have made things easier, but it was still pretty frustrating I couldn't get a good-enough run with normal difficulty settings. I usually had at least two mutations in each weapon category (accuracy, damage, ammo) and plenty more health, so I really don't know what I could have done differently. Unlike with Luna, Root's effective three-in-a-row boss fights after 60 percent felt hard to stretch my items through.
-My experience with Luna, contrary to my experience with Root, was really easy. Like. Really easy. My strategy was to get damage upgrades to melee damage (red room translator, goddess blessing anvil, etc.) whenever possible, accuracy be damned, and just get the first area's frog shop item where a missed melee attack is followed by another at 80 accuracy. Even without that, though, Luna was pretty hard to lose with for me, especially because I never had to worry about fleeing or ammo and could plan my item collection accordingly (no need for cigarettes or ammo). I don't really understand the razor blade from a gameplay perspective, though, as I never felt like I was moving too fast through a run, so I felt no need to kill myself to go back; If anything, it felt like it didn't move on from at least the first area fast enough.
-Noire felt pretty balanced, with the only regular challenge I had being damage output in the late game, but even that was easy enough to overcome with a little luck.
-The shops felt pretty balanced, and I actually found myself going to the long-gilled fish's shop a few times in V0.5, unlike in V0.4.
-The woman with snake eyes was an annoying fight, especially when it was one of my first few encounters of a game. I like the randomness of it, as with Noire from another timeline, but for the woman with snake eyes, snake scales aren't a very useful item, you can't get a mutation off killing her as Root, and I always seemed to come out of the fight with more hearts lost than with most other encounters.
-Some playstyles and strategies were really unique and fun, like going for second-hand smoke blessings and getting a ton of cigarettes, and I wish I could make those sorts of things even more viable.
-I'm not sure how to feel about the golden bullet change in V0.5. It definitely feels different than it did inV0.4, but it didn't seem to help me with my Root runs, nor was it a game-changer with Noire or Luna.
-I found it very awkward and difficult to get item-specific encounter interactions to occur, like the hunter's knife with the hanged man or dagger 48 with the red mirror. I even did runs specifically to get them, but I couldn't get it after a fair few tries. They're definitely possible, but I never encountered any of them, let alone in my actual runs, and I wish I had.
-I also never figured out what the predator and prey blessing did. Maybe I just got unlucky, but I never encountered their effects after choosing that blessing in any of my playthroughs.
-I bought all the lunar fragment purchasables and then maxed out my lunar fragment counter pretty quickly -- way before I beat the game. I'm not sure what a sustainable way to spend them would look like, but at least it would keep me from having 99 of them forever.
-The game window was a bit buggy at times, turning into a borderless window when I got a notification to my desktop in fullscreen mode more than once.
Really enjoying the game so far! Best of luck with development!
Thank you for your detailed feedback. Here are some answers:
Luna is meant to be op. As for Root, I don't want to buff her too much because she already seems too op for some players. Her route is intended to be a very challenging experience
Snake Scales is a much stronger item than it might seem, you just need to know how to use it. However, I understand that the unique mechanic of Snake Eyes can be frustrating the first time you encounter her
The interactions that require items (like the hunter knife and dagger48) are something I've been working on for a while, but it requires much more time than this small update
The way lunar fragments are spent will be managed differently in the final game ofc
Personally I think Root is too powerful... My two cents on the subject: To me it sounds like you aren't putting enough into damage and accuracy mutations... Ammo is not at all helpful unless you feel like you're strong enough already or you use the translator (you can get plenty of ammo refills from Trish, the fish, and the reload upgrade)... And you do need a lot of health upgrades (mutation or not)... But it's mainly important as a thing to spend on damage/accuracy... You don't need to have a high max health (more than 6) if you're beating every enemy by the second turn at most (first boss should take three turns)... Golden bullets are great when you're dealing 7+ base damage (and then add gunpowder into the mix for good measure)... Getting a lot of combats is important... But you can't exactly force that... So instead you can be mindful of which enemies you can beat on the first turn and focus on them... And also enemies you can beat on the second turn because those are a good backup... Though early on you want to visit Trish a couple of times for ammo... Meadow's gimmick is technically meant to counter Root's damage output... But she (like every boss) gets countered easily by her if you have an obscene damage output and just win on the first turn with a few golden bullets (she really should start the combat with mosquitos)... Alternatively you want to get things that allow you to attack more than once per turn... Like floss/fossil/second hand smoke... Cult's robe effectively allows you to skip Deer headed man (or the previous boss but there are other ways to skip that one like cigarettes or snake scales)... And Crucifix is a great way to recover between the many bosses... Obviously not everything I said is strictly required for victory... I'm just throwing all the ideas I could think of...
TL;DR: Ammo mutation bad... Pump a ton into the other mutations... Stash some ammo early... Try to keep track of enemy max health... And get things that allow you to attack more than once per turn... (And get strong items/upgrades in between as you normally would...)
Side note: Root's gun does work with snake eyes... You can reduce her health to 0... It doesn't matter that she heals after you've already done that...
That all makes sense. I think I was trying to be too balanced by going for health upgrades too many times and got burned by not saving up enough ammo a few times which I overcorrected into getting an ammo mutation or two every run. I'd probably be better off just embracing the glass cannon playstyle and going for one-shots more. Basically, skill issue on my part.
I'm still not sure how snake scales work, but I guess I'll figure it out for myself in the next demo version!
I played the 0.5 and the visual changes are okay. But I personally prefer the old one. Also, it would be better if new damage indicator (hearts blinking) can be turned off in settings. Its amazing to see the creator actually hearing players suggestions. This game is one of my favourites all-time.
You see this one typing detailed answers with bullet points, like it's their job to keep us happy or something, when we have already received something cool for free.
This is the true wonder of sites like ITch with free distribution.
I feel like the majority of people do not review, or even rate, titles, but it's always important to leave a "Hey, this is cool , and this worked out well" sortof a message.
Surely we can all understand how somebody getting only " suggestions", however well meaning, can be a bit draining. Ironically, this can be doubly true when the suggestions have a true and valid point.
I feel no soft shows remarkable grace, as the commentators show equal restraint (or vice versa?), in hearing out these "suggest-icisms", without bending their creative vision.
On the flip side, no other game or studio has creators actively listening and responding to fans.
When i made a comment about the lighter mechanic and got a response that was the first time I felt my input was directly heard on a project.
That was a founding moment for me in regards to this site, as somebody who stays away from all social media, memes, and podcasts....
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I freakin loved this game! The art style is great & the gameplay loop is fun & well thought out, I cannot wait to see what the final product will be like & wish you all of the success with it👍
This might be the best game I've ever found on itch, from aesthetic to gameplay to lore it knocks them all out of the park. I haven't unlocked all the lore but after a few runs I'm astounded by the story and character connections built off simple text and the dialogue introduced during the second act.
This game is AWESOME. I played it for hours on end last night (stayed up late rofl) and it has such cool art and aesthetics. Took me about six attempts to win for the first time and it was crazy fun. I could always make it to the end reliably, even on my first attempt, but then I'd die to the final boss or the one before it. I only won with an item that I got from the lunar shard upgrades.
Even havning won once, there's still so much going on that I feel like I've only scratched the surface of. There's so much that you can do in this game, so many secrets to uncover, and it's' great.
My favorite part is figuring out who drops what, which lets you strategize about who to fight and when. At the start it's all "what do these rooms mean, who do I fight" and then later you start developing strategies for what to do in what order. The lack of RNG when it comes to what enemies will do is great for learning how things work. If there was a wiki for this game it would go really hard.
That's not even getting into the weird backstories for all the characters and the puzzle of figuring out what's going on. A part of me wonders if it's all just metaphor for Noire being an apparently terrible person (based on the enemy dialogue). Noire and Mary bullied Ester, and maybe something bad happened to her. But the Moon/Goddess and False God stuff make me wonder if there's more to it and there really is an evil cult out there. If there is, how would Mary, Rugs, and the others play into that? The prologue makes it seem like they're all normal people who have some personal drama going on, but nothing too major. In short I have no clue what's going on, but it's amazing.
If I had one criticism it would be to make item management easier somehow, maybe through a way of sorting items or a way to divide the inventory into sections and jump to different sections when you have a lot of items, because it can get tiring paging through everything when you have a lot of stuff. That's just me though.
Thank you for your feedback! Yeah, the inventory becomes quite awkward when you have many items. It's possible to scroll quickly by holding up/down but it still feels a bit awkward. I don't like the idea of having items sorted/stacked because there are mechanics that rely on the order of items in the inventory. I'll try to come up with something
This game is surprisingly good.
At first glance, the game seems rather simple; the controls are easy to understand, and the mechanics are self explanatory enough that the first time you're dropped on the "overworld" (a.k.a. where you select where to go next) you intuitively know what is going on. What that simplicity hides, however, is an immense amount of depth, both in its content and its mechanics, all tied together by a wonderful aesthetic and soundtrack.
And by that I mean that the game really doesn't show you much unless you dig deeper. When I first played I thought I had a pretty good idea of how much content the game would have, but the game just kept expanding right before my eyes at every turn, again and again, and that feeling of finding things like new playable characters, the end of the world, the negative layers, HER, is simply incredible to experience, and it reached a point where I don't know how much there still is to see. Like, sure, I have three characters, but who's to say there's not a fourth somewhere? That uncertainty is something I absolutely adore. It's comparable to the feeling of just finding new layers and paths in The Binding of Isaac.
Mechanically too, in the sense that your success is entirely dependent on your strategy. Knowing which event is which is vital to survival, but not only that, as you play the game you start noticing some patterns emerging, things like noticing that the same enemy always drops the same things, until eventually picking your battles carefully based on the enemies' moves and rewards becomes a part of your strategy. There is always a risk to everything you do, and sure, there is randomness involved, but it's just enough rng to scratch the itch in both my gambling loving brain and my strategy loving brain. (Besides, what RPG *doesn't* have rng?)
The simple aesthetics makes this much more approachable than most strategy games, like I mentioned before you can usually tell what to do without a tutorial. This simplicity, however, is also a double edged sword, and this is where I'll have to be a little bit more negative in this review, but the early game doesn't have enough of a hook to really make people want to stick around. I mentioned before that at first I thought I had an idea of how much content this game had, and that's not good, because after I've beaten the no-skin man once it took me two days to pick up the game again, and the sole reason I did is because I was bored. I'm glad I did, as I love this game, but if I had something to do I probably wouldn't have.
The point I'm trying to make is, as much as I love how the game hides so much for you to discover, I don't think there is enough of an incentive for you to look for them, if that makes sense. What *really* got me into it was finding root for the first time and triggering the end of the world, which made me realize that maybe this game isn't as linear as I thought. I also really don't like the unexpected events. Like, at all. Sure, it's fun the first two times but after that it just becomes annoying, if there were a lunar upgrade to remove those that would be great.
There are a few things that are noticeably placeholder too, like Trish's memory on the recollection screen, but that's more of a beta thing that I'm expecting to not be in the final release, it's quite jarring going from the genuinely pretty damn good puzzle battles of mary and rugs to "girl why you crying" "DREAMS :sob:". You got me really interested in these suicidal clowns and I wanna learn more about them.
Overall, tho, this game is worth playing, I'll give it a 7/10 on the right track to being a 10/10, keep up the good work!
Thank you for your review! The diary pages after Rugs are just placeholders ofc. I hope that the final version will fix the issues you pointed out, as I’m already working on things like the lack of interesting elements in the first run and the unexpected events
I've played about 6 hours for the new beta (.6). Continuing to enjoy it.
However, I'm not sure if there's a bug for Root's mutation ability, since post Zone 1 I've repeatedly not been able to activate it even when killing the enemies correctly in the same way as Zone 1. In the previous version, Root's ability worked throughout the entire run.
Maybe if you are buying the gun and torch from the frogs? If you buy a new gun you no longer have its ability
The ability to gain mutations is tied to Root's gun, if you switch ranged weapon the ability is lost. If this isn't the case let me know and I'll check for any bugs
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining guys.
Nice game! 5*
i wish characters didnt say the same things and talked more in each battle
Characters always say the same thing during the same battle because they have different dialogue when you encounter them later. I really like the idea that characters provide new information the next time you meet them, and that it's not possible to read all the dialogue in the first encounter. In addition, there are special situations that can trigger different dialogues. However, thank you for your feedback! I hope to create as many dialogues as possible for the individual enemies
Amazing update,but how long is the path to find the skin if its not finished
wonderful, I liked it
truly, an enigmatic encounter if i say so myself.
mac support?
I had completed the whole game on the 0.4 version. And when I downloaded the newest version (0.6) none of my data was saved. Is there any way that I can have the same stuff that I had in older versions?
Previous saves are intentionally not compatible with version 0.6, as it has a different progression that would be "spoiled" by having completed save files. If you really want to use your old saves in 0.6, you can copy the contents of the "NO_SKIN_ver04" folder(located in C:/Users/<User Name>/AppData/Local/) into the "NO_SKIN_ver06" folder(in the same location)
Alright, thank you!
I really love itttttt, the horror, the moral depravity, the fight with teeth and nails to survive it's very cool!!!
I want to know more, I want to unveil more of the mystery and face the darkness~
Adoring the rougelike mechanics~
Just played the game and I found a funny glitch. If you have floss between the teeth and die when the enemy is at 1hp, the enemy dies from the grenade and you win the battle. You can still play the game and trade with merchants, but you will die as soon as you get into another battle (it kills you before you take action). It doesn't hinder the experience of the game, but I found it funny.
Watched Markiplier play, wish this was available on mac!!
i cannot wait for the full game because i had a blast with this. the gameplay, design, music. koved it all. played it on my channel if u wanna watch.
i love this game
thanks for the experience
Root's damage mutation still shows -2 max hp despite it being -3 now...
Heart glasses say that they "reduce the next 9 damage you would take" when the actual effect is "reduce the next damage you would take by 9"... Also applies to cult's robe...
The new dream diary page for Rugs is missing a few apostrophes in the text... Sunset: "I think its your fault", "You really dont know how to pace yourself"... Midnight: "You cant understand me anymore"...
Thank you for your report! I'm working on a hotfix to release asap
Healer does not have unique dialogue for when you already have a healer recruited and a second robe... (Mentioning it because fossil does have dialogue for the equivalent scenario...)
The bishop's stab dialogue clearly refers to him being shot with pirate's gun and not stabbed with dagger 48... The bleeding mirror's dialogue can also be updated to fit the gun more but it does make sense in its current state...
A somewhat more major bug: it seems that reviving while poisoned makes the poison damage take away a second revive... (Enemy has to kill you before the poison ticks...)
I tested the scenario you described and this is what happens:
-The enemy hits you, reducing your hp to zero
-The poison deals damage (but your hp are already at zero)
-At this point, you come back to life using a resurrection (only one)
Everything seems to be working correctly, but I'll do more tests in the future
This is really fun - A very fun psychological horror visual novel turn-based teen drama!
I love the silly little easter eggs, and I always have a soft spot for odd pixelart. Easy to get into, sweet, well implemented replay value. And I have developed an emotional attachement to the Frogs. They deserve a raise.
We've been playing for a while now, trying to figure out the little details, and I love how the little snippets of story are presented. I'd love to know more - Like why are only Nadine and Mary having Rooms? What is with the red room and the doorman? (If anything, I would like more possible conversations with characters, and more variety)
There is potentially a bug when fighting the Deer Man? - Despite Dying, he died at the same turn due to the holy handgranade, and we proceeded on to the third area (guaranteed death still).
While I prefer finished experiences, I think this game has great opportunity for community content, occasional updates, spin-offs and the like. But maybe moreso for a jumping board for another game from the creator~ I'll definitely follow and be curious as to what else they'll make! Thank you so much, we had lots of fun playing!
I made sure to reference and link this game on several reedits on game mechanics and rpg design...
In my post i compared how modern horror games with advanced graphics all reach a point where they start looking like each other (The more realistic the graphics the less variety you can put in, after all, its designed to look REAL)
This was the horror game i referenced when stating that while big budget games can sometimes only hold interest if somebody actually paid a 50$ pricetag and quieting would lose that investment.
However games like this, virtually free, with no advertising or sunk cost, and under 200mb, I will gladly spend 2 - 3 straight days playing...
Even when in early, or alpha release...
Ill do my part to spread the word.
Again, Thank you.
Thank you for your support <3
im kinda worried when i download this everything is ok but then when i try to launch it it say that this software might change something in your computer (I think it said that im kinda bad translator :^* ) so if someone could say me something about this then i would be happy because i could like play this cuz this looks GOOOD :D
I didn't play the game, but if it has a save maybe that's the reason. To save the game, the game has to create a file, that's why it says it would change something in the computer
that makes sense thx
continuation? hmm? maybe? when? lol i cant wait
Playing this was such a fun experience. I loved the well crafted atmosphere and art style, and now I'm definitely looking forward to the next update and full release!
amazing game. An incredible game. There's so much too it, and even though it have got to 100% (and died) there is still is much left to discover. I feel like I know nothing, and I love it
Thank you for your feedback <3
Fantastic game, unsettling and perfect level of difficulty. I started playing with the newer art style and LOVED it, maybe if you could add a toggle for the art styles that'd be cool!!
Thank you for your kind words! I can't spoil too much but that style was originally intended for something different, so it will be in the game in one way or another
01110000 01100101 01110010 01100011 011 = perc(?)
Honestly an awesome idea would be if you kept your distance unlocks with Luna so you could talk to act 1 enemies before the first boss and get unique lore and interactions! I tried it and was disappointed to see my memory had reverted ;(
Can't spoil anything, but the acquired actions will probably work like this in the future: once unlocked, they won't be forgotten if you return to a previous area
I saw it at the beginning of the year looking for horror games and I was fascinated by everything, the atmosphere, the designs, how it breaks the fourth wall and the mysteries that await. I excitedly open each email that notifies me when the game is updated, I can't wait to see how it progresses!!
After unlocking Root and Luna and reaching the two 100% progress final bosses, I can say that I enjoyed the different tactics of later bosses which made them distinct from each other.
Here are some ideas:
Pray To The Goddess: It's OP with Rosary since you can spam it every turn if not Cursed and only take 1 dmg from every attack. Only Poison, Bleed, and multi-hit counter it.
So maybe on higher difficulties, you can only Pray 3 times per battle and have to pay 10 Lunar Fragments for every subsequent Pray?
Challenge character:
Two deals with Living Guts basically allow you to easily kill final bosses. Maybe reduce its effect to 1/4?
Doomed/Despair status effect: Increased by 1 by certain enemy attacks, such as charged attacks, and lowered via Pray/defeating a boss/certain events/items. If the counter hits 13 (carries over between battles), explodes and take damage equal to 1/3 max hp.
All bosses so far spend a turn to heal but what if later on, they had a life drain attack (dmg-based healing)?
A boss whose Charged attack immediately resolves all your poison stacks dmg at once, punishing you for ignoring and not curing it.
Thank you for your feedback and all your suggestions!
It's little tricks like this that are hard to set up with randomized encounters that make a run thankfully easier and make up for runs that are stacked against you from the start.
Once in a while it's refreshing to kick ass.
I dont think the game needs to be any harder per see.
It's already pretty close in terms of learning curve to fear and hunger.
Don't know if this is the right place to say, but I think the concept of switching weapons every time you get a new one is really irritating and unfun. Sure, it makes the game slightly more strategic, but mainly it just takes the enjoyment out of getting stronger and progressing. I really wish they were upgrades instead of complete weapon changes or you could switch weapons in the item bag
As you said, I believe this mechanic offers more strategic depth:
-the bonuses (attack and accuracy) you get for weapons are permanent and stay even if you change weapons
-having to switch weapons creates a perfect risk/reward situation: is it worth getting a new effect or higher attack in exchange for losing some accuracy or maybe an interesting effect?
That said, I find the idea of weapon switching interesting, and I'm sorry you found it frustrating. Thank you for your feedback!
Sorry, I havent used itch in like a month so I didnt know you responded!
My main problem with it is that it can completely take away the weapon of the character that makes them special, and that just sucks.
i got 4 random events in a row i just wanted ammo
HAHAHAHAHA
I got this game on Steam! :) Saw Markiplier play but wasn't too enthused about the gameplay (I did watch the entire video), then got the demo for myself and it's much more fun playing it on my own. I have lost sleep over this game 😅so it definitely has lots of replayability and intrigue to make me go back for more.
The biggest complaint I have is the moon showing you the list of options every single run, even if you've already bought everything and are lunar shard capped. I am not sure if there will be more items added soon; regardless, I think I would prefer the moon store to be less intrusive (if that's the right word) by putting it as a separate option in the title menu, like the dream diary is (after the first or couple times the moon shows itself to you). Or, as something you can choose to select while you're choosing characters (so like a small icon you can arrow key move to or have a note that says "press m" to spend lunar shards or something.
The reason for this suggestion is that the dialogue repetition gets stale and there are a lot of screens to tap z for, which takes time. The frequency of screen changes in this game doesn't affect my visual sensitivity bad enough, but minimizing them when unnecessary would be very helpful.
Other than that I like that the game forces you to manage your resources efficiently because of the random outcomes. I'm familiar with roguelites enough to know that poor outcomes are not solely because of rng, even if a series of nothing events can get frustrating 😅I am curious and eager to learn more about the lore (rhyme!); definitely lots of open mysteries surrounding... well, everything, but especially Noire.
Hope you've been giving yourself enough rest!
Thank you for your feedback! Right now, the moon shows the upgrades even after they've all been purchased to remind the player of the additions they've unlocked. I thought it would be strange to never show the list again. Additionally, an option to enable/disable upgrades will likely be added. I understand that right now it’s a bit annoying to go through that screen at the start of every new run
when is the next update like a rough estimate
I played through both V0.4 and now V0.5. I really enjoyed am excited play though each new major update to be released. I've wishlisted the game on Steam and am looking forward to what all comes next! With that said, I want to leave some feedback that may or may not be helpful with development.
- This is a little dated at this point, given the change you made a few days ago, but I agree that the previous art style is probably better, though still like the other sprites as well.
-Root was my favorite character to play as in V0.4, as her unique playstyle felt really engaging to me. In V0.5, she was more frustrating to play as than anything. Even in 0 faith mode, my fight against Melody was still down to the wire, and I had even saved up a crucifix and two medkits for it! Maybe that's a skill issue, as I didn't have the grenade or either revival from the frog shop, which would have made things easier, but it was still pretty frustrating I couldn't get a good-enough run with normal difficulty settings. I usually had at least two mutations in each weapon category (accuracy, damage, ammo) and plenty more health, so I really don't know what I could have done differently. Unlike with Luna, Root's effective three-in-a-row boss fights after 60 percent felt hard to stretch my items through.
-My experience with Luna, contrary to my experience with Root, was really easy. Like. Really easy. My strategy was to get damage upgrades to melee damage (red room translator, goddess blessing anvil, etc.) whenever possible, accuracy be damned, and just get the first area's frog shop item where a missed melee attack is followed by another at 80 accuracy. Even without that, though, Luna was pretty hard to lose with for me, especially because I never had to worry about fleeing or ammo and could plan my item collection accordingly (no need for cigarettes or ammo). I don't really understand the razor blade from a gameplay perspective, though, as I never felt like I was moving too fast through a run, so I felt no need to kill myself to go back; If anything, it felt like it didn't move on from at least the first area fast enough.
-Noire felt pretty balanced, with the only regular challenge I had being damage output in the late game, but even that was easy enough to overcome with a little luck.
-The shops felt pretty balanced, and I actually found myself going to the long-gilled fish's shop a few times in V0.5, unlike in V0.4.
-The woman with snake eyes was an annoying fight, especially when it was one of my first few encounters of a game. I like the randomness of it, as with Noire from another timeline, but for the woman with snake eyes, snake scales aren't a very useful item, you can't get a mutation off killing her as Root, and I always seemed to come out of the fight with more hearts lost than with most other encounters.
-Some playstyles and strategies were really unique and fun, like going for second-hand smoke blessings and getting a ton of cigarettes, and I wish I could make those sorts of things even more viable.
-I'm not sure how to feel about the golden bullet change in V0.5. It definitely feels different than it did inV0.4, but it didn't seem to help me with my Root runs, nor was it a game-changer with Noire or Luna.
-I found it very awkward and difficult to get item-specific encounter interactions to occur, like the hunter's knife with the hanged man or dagger 48 with the red mirror. I even did runs specifically to get them, but I couldn't get it after a fair few tries. They're definitely possible, but I never encountered any of them, let alone in my actual runs, and I wish I had.
-I also never figured out what the predator and prey blessing did. Maybe I just got unlucky, but I never encountered their effects after choosing that blessing in any of my playthroughs.
-I bought all the lunar fragment purchasables and then maxed out my lunar fragment counter pretty quickly -- way before I beat the game. I'm not sure what a sustainable way to spend them would look like, but at least it would keep me from having 99 of them forever.
-The game window was a bit buggy at times, turning into a borderless window when I got a notification to my desktop in fullscreen mode more than once.
Really enjoying the game so far! Best of luck with development!
Thank you for your detailed feedback. Here are some answers:
Personally I think Root is too powerful... My two cents on the subject: To me it sounds like you aren't putting enough into damage and accuracy mutations... Ammo is not at all helpful unless you feel like you're strong enough already or you use the translator (you can get plenty of ammo refills from Trish, the fish, and the reload upgrade)... And you do need a lot of health upgrades (mutation or not)... But it's mainly important as a thing to spend on damage/accuracy... You don't need to have a high max health (more than 6) if you're beating every enemy by the second turn at most (first boss should take three turns)... Golden bullets are great when you're dealing 7+ base damage (and then add gunpowder into the mix for good measure)...
Getting a lot of combats is important... But you can't exactly force that... So instead you can be mindful of which enemies you can beat on the first turn and focus on them... And also enemies you can beat on the second turn because those are a good backup... Though early on you want to visit Trish a couple of times for ammo...
Meadow's gimmick is technically meant to counter Root's damage output... But she (like every boss) gets countered easily by her if you have an obscene damage output and just win on the first turn with a few golden bullets (she really should start the combat with mosquitos)... Alternatively you want to get things that allow you to attack more than once per turn... Like floss/fossil/second hand smoke... Cult's robe effectively allows you to skip Deer headed man (or the previous boss but there are other ways to skip that one like cigarettes or snake scales)... And Crucifix is a great way to recover between the many bosses...
Obviously not everything I said is strictly required for victory... I'm just throwing all the ideas I could think of...
TL;DR: Ammo mutation bad... Pump a ton into the other mutations... Stash some ammo early... Try to keep track of enemy max health... And get things that allow you to attack more than once per turn... (And get strong items/upgrades in between as you normally would...)
Side note: Root's gun does work with snake eyes... You can reduce her health to 0... It doesn't matter that she heals after you've already done that...
That all makes sense. I think I was trying to be too balanced by going for health upgrades too many times and got burned by not saving up enough ammo a few times which I overcorrected into getting an ammo mutation or two every run. I'd probably be better off just embracing the glass cannon playstyle and going for one-shots more. Basically, skill issue on my part.
I'm still not sure how snake scales work, but I guess I'll figure it out for myself in the next demo version!
maybe just have the mouths instead of both mouth and eyes? can add more emotion to the sprites without taking away from the surrealism
I played the 0.5 and the visual changes are okay. But I personally prefer the old one. Also, it would be better if new damage indicator (hearts blinking) can be turned off in settings. Its amazing to see the creator actually hearing players suggestions. This game is one of my favourites all-time.
The graphics were reverted to the previous style. I think adding an option to turn off damage indicator is a good idea, thank you
That is true.
You see this one typing detailed answers with bullet points, like it's their job to keep us happy or something, when we have already received something cool for free.
This is the true wonder of sites like ITch with free distribution.
I feel like the majority of people do not review, or even rate, titles, but it's always important to leave a "Hey, this is cool , and this worked out well" sortof a message.
Surely we can all understand how somebody getting only " suggestions", however well meaning, can be a bit draining. Ironically, this can be doubly true when the suggestions have a true and valid point.
I feel no soft shows remarkable grace, as the commentators show equal restraint (or vice versa?), in hearing out these "suggest-icisms", without bending their creative vision.
On the flip side, no other game or studio has creators actively listening and responding to fans.
When i made a comment about the lighter mechanic and got a response that was the first time I felt my input was directly heard on a project.
That was a founding moment for me in regards to this site, as somebody who stays away from all social media, memes, and podcasts....
I have to be honest I played this demo so much ! Its just the demo but it has so much to do ! Such an amazing game !