I played through the demo this morning. It’s 3 possible battles, correct? I don’t think I missed anything. Again I think it’s quite good. The people responsible for the audiovisuals did an A+ job imo. I think with some of the PS1-esque sorts of indie games, the visuals are a little slack, meaning that it’s more of a vague aesthetic and not deployed all that effectively beyond a vibe. The art in this game is done a lot more thoughtfully, and it’s detailed and sharp while retaining the sense of I guess grain and texture on the polygonal side, and the sprite art and animation emphasizes fluidity. Some of the character battle animation remind me of the GBA fire emblem games. Great sense of “gesture” as a life drawing 101 instructor would say
Exodus had expressed some concern about people clicking with the combat and the possibility of it getting stale over the long haul. About the former: the key realization for me was that it’s ok to try stuff and if things go wacky, that’s fine. I had a turn during one of the battles with one of those jumper guys and a couple of those blow up guys + the scorpion dude had Faye chained down, so I thought I was a goner bc the encounter was too complex for a new player, however, I was able to knock some enemies into others, dodge the jumper guy, which caused a chain reaction of enemies jumping on eachother, blowing each other up, etc, which turned the whole encounter around. That was great and not something that tends to happen in tactics RPGs I think, which are often more measured and reward unbroken chains of sound decisionmaking rather than permit discrete creative moves or turns to drastically alter the outcome. I’m sure the game Silent Storm wasn’t on anyone’s mind during development, but that’s the only other tactics game I can think of that’s similarly cool with kinetically wild stuff leading to positive results.
About the latter: I don’t think the combat will get old (unless the game is like 300 hours long), because:
- animations are brief
- the tactile elements feel good and responsive (menu selections, analogue stick movement, etc)
- the flow of deliberate planning phase -> sit back and watch action phase makes it feel like the player’s “work” has a beginning and end, and the length is under player control
- no “enemy turn” slowing things down
- The way battles are readable as tactics rpg encounter and puzzle game puzzle at the same time is key I think, because it makes the pace feel more brisk and engages the “I’m playing a puzzle game” part of my brain. I’m not sure what the right word is to describe this, bc I don’t want to say “disposable,” but the battles have the if-you-fuck-up,-no-big-deal, -just-try-again quality a puzzle game has.
Hopefully it makes everyone a lot of money without being a weirdly large amount. In any case you all made a cool thing in the world