Like a couple other people I learned about this game via John Wolfe's channel. Just wanted to say in the time that I have played it it's run perfectly and I have been having a blast (and dying a lot). If I could add just one suggestion it would be a save function when you exit the game. I read below that you don't want to add save scumming, but a way you could get around this is by having the save file deleted upon death. Anyway, just wanted to say I really like the game so far and can't wait to see what you have in store for the future.
Hey, the dev has said it before once or twice that he did not want to add saving upon exiting because then it would be too convient for saving. Te main tone of the game is to make it feel kinda hard and unforgiving.
Coin toss and too high miss chance really ruined this game. I understand gameplay meant to be hard and unforgiving but pure luck being such a big factor is not the right way to achieve it. Please don't ruin your hard work with this bullshit mechanic. It will discourage people from playing, no one want to lose hour of progress just because rng decided so. Look for example at Darkest Dungeon - this game is challenging but within reasonable limits.
Hey Wili. There are some community members who have been dissatisfied with the balance, and want more time spent on reworking it. I also worry that going to a Steam release before correcting this could be hurt the game's future.
We put together a community patch, a rebalance mod that attempts to make everything more reasonable. If you're interested, please have a look at it, and let us know if we can change it to be better. We might want to reduce dodge chance and increase accuracy, even further. And, if it is good... I hope Orange looks at it, and considers using it as a template. https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
Hello! I just downloaded this game today but it's lagging on my computer for some reason. Do you think this is an issue with my computer? Or can I do something to fix this? I really wanted to buy it because I watched a YouTube play it and it looked amazing. I really don't want to return it!
Hello, another John Wolfe fan here. I watched him play the game and I found it very interesting and worthwhile. I just downloaded the demo and it's running incredibly slow. It might be my computer, as I've had this problem with other games, but I've read that some other people have had similar problems, so I just thought I'd comment. My computer isn't super high-tech, but it does run games more graphically intense than this. In the starting area the game runs pretty slow, but playable, and in the menu the game runs fine, but as soon as I enter the dungeon it's just instantly unplayable. My guess is that it's all the sprites moving around at the same time that causes it. I'd really like to get this game and I might at a later date, but I'm not sure yet. I'll keep an eye on it for now. Thank you.
Also, as for the coin toss, I do like it, and I think it's fine where it occurs in the game. However, the RNG does seem unbalanced, and I don't like how instant deaths are a frequent result of it. However, I do know you're planning on changing that and I like the change you are making. Thanks again.
Hey! There has been many changes to the game since that demo was made and for many who experienced slow downs with the demo, it was not an issue with the full version anymore. That was the case with myself too. And then people who suffer now with the slow down often didn't have the problem with the demo. This suggests that it's a new and different reason that causes lag in the full version.
In any case, you can buy the game if you want and if the problem still remains with the full version, I can always refund it.
Otherwise I will continue looking into the problem and hopefully find some solution to all this.
Some members of the community have been concerned about the RNG and some of the balance. We put together a community mod, Fear and Hunger Rebalanced, which improves some of the balance issues. If you would like to, please try out the mod, and let us know how we can can improve it. https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
Just bought the game after John Wolfe did a video on it. Really unique and terrifying. The game has a few problems structurally (saving system is kinda ridiculous), but other than a few small issues the game is great! It's worth the 8$.
Hey Crow. If you find you're having too much trouble with the saving system, there is a mod that allows you to save anywhere. It's part of a Rebalance mod made by the discord community, but I believe you can install the save book without changing the balance much: https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
Hey! I recently watched John Wolfe play this and thought it looked super fun and downloaded it. I really like the game but I'm having an issue where whenever I go to the settings (as I just started the game and wanted to check the menus out) and try to back out, I get an unknown error and the game freezes and I have to restart. Love the game, just wanted to mention a little bug I've encountered so far (:
This reworks elements of combat and survival in the game, making it so DEF reduces incoming damage, and that Hunger penalties work properly, along with a slew of other minor tweaks. It's a prototype, only tweaking the starting areas monsters, and is not suitable for a full play through at this time.
We really ought to have a Community enabled for the game, so that Mods can be posted in a forum instead of in a comments section.
Kill Switch was very kind, and set up a mods section. Right now there's only one mod there, but sub categories will definitely happen when more mods are added.
Thank you for the invitation on the subreddit! I'll make sure to post a link there :)
the game is very interesting and I decided to support you anyway. But will there be plans for any kind of config to adjust the difficulty? I hesitate to call it 'difficulty' because some of the design choices do not make the game challenging, they just add frustration. Maybe you can add a slider to adjust some RNG elements or like some have said, remove some bad RNG from the normal mode and include them in a 'hard mode'.
I know devs all have a vision of their work in mind, and sometimes it can be hard to compromise on that. But I believe I'm speaking for many others when I say that more forgiving RNG will only increase the quality of gameplay
Heck, just knowing where in the game files I can tweak some numbers would make this 100% better. Maybe I will find something if I check all the json files.
Hey Voduyan. It is possible to mod the game, we're working on a Rebalance mod in the Discord server. Trying to reduce artificial difficulty and RNG in the game. You can edit the json files and change most of the game. If you're interested in the mod, you should check out the official F&H Discord. Not sure how to set up mods on itch.io. If you have any questions about modding yourself, let me know.
Hey voduyan! Thanks for the support! There is a clear uproar about the RNG stuff so I will do some adjustments accordingly. You are right that I have stuck to my vision pretty tightly, but I came up with a pretty good compromise that will remove most of the one-hit kills from the game and give players more tools to survive. The coin-toss will remain, but instead of the one-hit kill, the enemy will dish out a devastating attack to a random party member. This will not necessarily kill the character depending on the equipment and such.
There is no simple way to modify the RNG in the json files, but I will do balance tweaks in the future too if the next update will bring new problems.
I don't quite understanding how upgrading skills work. I find that I could click on some nodes but not others, even though I have a skill (starting skill) adjacent to it. Is it a bug or do I lack some condition?
Along the left side, you can only get the skills that come with your character. When you start out in the intro, it tells you "you were born with the soul of the endless" or something like that. Faintly along the outer left edge of the hexen scree is those names. You can only add the skills that match your god. You should most likely have at least one dot for yours, and you should be able to get the rest without any tasks. You cannot get any of the other skills on the left without special circumstances.
For the skills on the right, the ones that have concentric circles, you can only access those skills when you gain affinity with the related god. The top one is Gro-goroth, the second down is sylvian, and so on. The circles depict how much affinity with the god you need to get the skill. When you have affinity, there is a pale white light around the circles that are available; you can only get the skills within the white light.
I feel this game has so much going for it, the atmosphere is amazing, the characters are all unique and the designs are great for the enemies, though there are some fixes needed with saving and combat glitches this game is really great, you have a really amazing game here and i cant wait for it to be finished, the mac version 1.0.3 doesn't save which you'd think would make me not play this game till its fixed but the whole feel of this game brings me back and pushes me to go further. Looking forward to further updates.
Hey thanks for the feedback! I will definitely look into bugs and such and there will be an update coming later this month actually with fixes and new content.
You said the mac version doesn't save at all? Do you mean the save points don't work?
When choosing a file to save your game to, the mac version does not let you select any and will repeatedly make the box for file 1 flash until you either press x or z where it just exits without saving, with going to settings in game making the game crash.
Thanks for letting me know. I wonder if you got the mouse cursor over the screen when doing this? The mouse can create conflict against keyboard commands some times. I might have to delete the settings from menu until I find what causes the crashes.
Hmmm.. I've heard similar problems before too. I'm still looking into it. Someone said that the RPG Maker RTP could potentially fix this, but I have yet to confirm this.
I dont believe the developer ever intended this feeling, if your insinuating that he would like to savagely "rape" people then you are wrong, it is just to get the tone across and he had trouble even making this part of the game. The guarding works, i tried it myself before. Could be a insta-ill bug with the torso part. And the intro part, i really got no comment on that one cause I couldn't care less about it.
Hey akidfrompa. It sounds like you encountered a lot of bugs. One thing to watch out for is the mouse-bug, where you can't effectively select targets with the mouse. You need to keep the mouse right in the bottom right corner, and use the arrow keys to select the target.
Don't know about the guarding bug, sorry. It work for me, that it prevents coin-tosses.
With the intro, here's a tip: You can hold down Z to skip quickly through the text. So long as you hold it down, you won't accidentally select options, either.
Hey akidfrompa! I can always give you a refund if you want that of course. I don't want to leave such a bad taste in your mouth.
With the ogre scene/player experience comparison - That's actually partly what I wanted the experience to feel like at first :P
BUT I also wanted to give players tools to climb from that pit and conquer the shit that the game throws at you. There are still many bugs around and I'm fixing them the best I can. Also the coin-toss RNG is clearly something people don't like so I am doing some adjustment to that too. Basically the coin-toss will stay, but instead of the one-hit kill, the enemy only dishes out a devastating attack to a random party member (if the character got full health or good equipment this will not kill them). This will be in the next update that will come later this month.
But yeah, I'm sorry you feel the way you do and if you want the refund still, you'll get it. :-)
I have to agree with everyone else on the coin toss portion of the game. It takes away from the enjoyment factor. You can't even guarantee that you will get to save. I could understand this being implemented in hard mode but it is pretty unimpressive in normal. Don't take it away just tone it down. It seems the average play time from "lets payers" is about an hour and then they state they probably won't be playing again. I really enjoy the atmosphere, the art style and music. This game is to punishing for me with the odds of a coin toss showing up.
I agree that the coin-toss is really rough. There are a couple of ways to deal with it.
One is to Guard, before the Coin-toss comes up, this should disable it. I'm not super keen on this method of dealing with the coin-toss, as I think it's a very easy way of removing all the danger involved.
The second way is to avoid the coin-toss by destroying the part of the enemy that causes it. With the guard's, you destroy their left hand (the empty one, not holding a cleaver).
If you feel the game is unbalanced, we are trying to fix it up with a community mod, on the Discord server.
It is NOT just a matter of the combat coin flips. Most of them are completely unnecessary and it seems far too often that you fail them to be RNG. Much less doing a coin flip to save is just ridiculous and I've saved ONE time out of about 25 and I had already been mauled to have no legs in that one so... yeah.
Add in the mercenary's nonsense of the intro where you need RNG to not screw your game in order to get an ability? If I get the coin flip wrong there I just close the game and reopen because it's garbage that you get screwed for your class abilities.
Yeah, the coin tosses at character generation are unreasonable. The Outlander can get a fear of everything, if he fails one of his coin tosses.
I'm sorry you've been having difficulties with the saving system, it is the hardest until you get good at the game, then have a really good run, in which case you do get some saves to fall back on in future. The mod I mentioned does include a debugging tool, which less you save freely. At the very least, you could use that to save the game right after creating a Merc, so you can skip the character gen process.
Hey Undeadly! The coin-tosses are clearly something that bother people so I'm actually doing just what you said - tone it down. Many of the one-hit kills will be replaced with strong attacks that are bearable with good health and armor. Hopefully this will balance it out and make it seem less rough.
Hey! Yeah I've heard that some people have this issue even if they got relatively powerful computers. I'm still looking into it. Does the game run poorly in all the sections of the game?
It's mostly just the foggy area at the beginning, but it does it inside as well. I couldn't play further cause if a game lags badly it gives me a headache. :/
Hey! I wanted to get this game off steam, but there appears to be no purchase button, just "Release: January 2019" Edit: I live in Poland, if that helps.
I hear you. It's a tricky situation though, because I live in Finland which is like one of the most expensive places in Europe. This game equals pretty much two full years of my life and thousands of hours of dev time so I figured it's not that expensive if you think it like that. The price will of course drop eventually ;)
Honestly you are probably undercharging for this, independent of the cost of living where you are. You put two years of your life into this, don't apologize that it costs money. Eight dollars is nothing for this, and people who would complain about the price would complain about any price it deserved.
You did good with this game, and it's got style. I hope it does well.
Thanks OdicHastings, but with good conscience I couldn't charge more than 8 dollars, because the game is a bit rough at places still. There are many bugs around that need fixing. But I still think there's plenty of things to like in the game and I've poured everything I got into all the areas in the game.
If that's how you feel, that's fair. It's very well made, and it really shows how much effort you've put into it.
(you may have already seen reports on this btw, but I've encountered a couple of bugs myself. One is sometimes I can't change what body part I'm targeting, and the other is I've sometimes been able to do a "double backstab" with the mercenary by fleeing from the encounter I backstabbed into. I think when I flee the fight the mercenary may still be in his stab animation for another frame? So the game gives me another free ambush. It's useful for bringing down guards quickly, but probably unintended xD)
Thanks for letting me know of the bugs. One quick fix for not being able to target limbs in battle would be to move the cursor of the mouse off the screen. The cursor often overlaps with the keyboard commands.
Ah! I'm sorry to hear that really D: The coin tosses can actually be evaded in combat really easily. Just guard when you know they are coming. Loot coin tosses are there to stay though...
I think during save points having that coin toss is ehhh.... Everything else like for loot is fine honestly - and in combat its a 50/50 for me but doesn't bother me as much as when the game allows you to save at certain points and you lose it all because you wanted to save if you know what I mean lol. Otherwise I saw John Wolfe play it and got it myself - and hoh boyo I was in for a surprise. Its really neat - haven't gotten to far into it, but that's the only thing I would say just feelsbad
Hopefully you like it Kitsu289. There are actually save points later on that don't require the coin-toss. It's just the first half that the game is at it's most ruthless. There are also some save items that don't require coins either, and you can get those pretty early on..
That's not a problem then in my eye then, I thought for a moment it would be like that for all of them- and yeah lol... I'm not backing down with my character yet (legit lost two of their legs and died twice but somehow lived twice) but I might do another character from scratch. Its really well done.
Dont get mewrong I love the idea, I like the game, but even darkest dungeon toned down on the RNG, after the community outcry, that the RNG was too much. i hope you put less RNG in it through patches and I will surely give it a try.
Hey Chris. The community actually has put together a mod/fanpatch, that tries to reduce RNG and rebalance some aspects of the mod. you can find it on the official Discord server. The coin tosses are still in the mod, so it may still have too much RNG for your taste.
Video of the bug. When I tried making love to Enki, at first, I was surprised and happy that he was ready to do so, but then nothing happened and the characters turned invisible. (I hope the video link works). In the video, I tried preparing for it: I cleared my equipment, lighted the candles, prayed to Sylvian, hoping to prevent the bug from happening again, but it happened again unfortunately. Am I doing something wrong on my part maybe?
Thank for the video! (It's nice that you put on the candles for the mood ;D )
It is actually a bug that has appeared with the full release. It's weird because it used to work just fine, but now I've heard similar reports from other people too. I'll definitely look into it. The next update is coming later this January. Hopefully I'll get it fixed by then.
This game is fantastic - you should be very proud! The 50/50 coin flips and rare saves can be frustrating, but that just makes all of the little victories even more rewarding!
I have noticed what I think happens to be a very minor bug - in my most recent run, I obtained a stick, a pinecone, and the "Pinecone Pig Instructions" but no additional item appeared in my crafting menu and I was unable to make a Pinecone Pig. However, I could very well be missing something - is there a crafting table in game? Or perhaps a third item necessary? I am playing as the Dark Mage, if his restrictions have anything to do with it.
*UPDATE: No bug! It was a silly mistake on my part - I only looked in Craft Items when it was under Craft Armor! Sorry about that!
I have yet to finish the game - I'm keeping away from most walkthroughs and wiki pages to keep things engaging and fresh for me. Which is really both a blessing and a curse because my progress seems to be SO SLOW - but it's worth it,
I would really love to hear more about what inspired this game - I am just fascinated by the lore and monster/creature designs!
Anyway - thanks so much for making this game, you can tell a lot of love and labor went into this project and it's just absolutely fantastic!
Hey great you figured that out. It's not so obvious. Easy thing to miss for sure. I'm also glad you like the game and playing blind is really the best way to go about it! :-)
There are tons of things that inspired the game so it's really hard to just mention few. For the monster designs, the biggest inspirations have to be Silent Hill, Junji Ito's works, renaissance paintings by various artists, Hellraiser and Berserk.
I just bought the full version, its a nice rpgmaker game, something rare enough to say. You got all the right ideas in, however the saving system is really crippling the fun. One bed on level 2 with 50% chance to die that's far too rough. You cant even leave the game and autosave. The books of enlightment are far too rare to save too and worse it sometime crash when using them. I also got crashes when trying to bash a door, or just walking in the dungeon...Its impossible to enjoy the game this way although at its core its really good.
I'm sorry to hear about such broken experience! D: I have not heard before that bashing the doors or using the book of enlightenment would cause crashes. That sounds really alarming actually! Could you specify which doors caused this if it's not too much to ask? The game is buggy, that much is obvious, but I was under the impression that most of the game breaking bugs were starting to get weeded out.
As for the saving system. The first half of the game is really just roguelike survival, which is the reason saving is also very limited. I also kinda wanted to encourage starting the game over and over and trying different things, instead of trying force through the game with a single playthrough. After the first half, the game starts to give you more chances to save in both books and free save beds. Of course I can understand that the game crashing really takes away from the experience and I'm working on fixing things the best I can.
If i remember well the crash happen when bashing a prison door near the exit leading to the big hall with that brass knight. But it will be extremely hard to replicate this bug, i think it happened when those flying monsters were too close, maybe the game triggered two encounters at same time; one crash also happened when avoiding some guard patrol, saw him turning then crash. As for the book crash it only happened once so far but then again in all my playthroughs i only found three. I never reached the other parts of the game its far too unforgiving . One missed first attack for exemple and you end up hacked and bleeding, with no means to heal yourself .
I see... The save bug and the bug with the door sound very rare, but also very deep rooted bugs. Both calling the save screen and initiating the combat sequence are RPG Maker's own engine commands. I am constantly ironing out the bugs but those sound pretty difficult ones because I haven't messed around with the core engine that much..
The difficulty of the game can seem harsh but there are ways around everything that seems unfair at first. Discord channel and the wiki offer good tips on the game.
Oh i did read the wikis, it still over the top...Btw found another bug, you dont trigger trotor anymore if you try to, open the door after doing a "marriage", nor the scared nobleman anymore. And found another glitch in endless tower , the last house in darkness allow you do go off screen with plenty of glitches. I am afraid i wont be able to see much more party already crippled with infections and lack of food.
Semi related. There is a mod on the Discord server that is a rebalancing mod for the game. The reason I mention it, is it includes a debugging tool, a book of unlimited saving, when you start the game. It's possible to just install the saving book, if you like the game's current balance. Hope this helps!
I really suck at games like these *cough*bloodbourne*cough*darksouls*cough* and i keep dying but oh my god it's so intriguing and beautiful in a dark kinda way. I love it. I hope we'll be seeing more from you and (as soon as i have money to spare) you guys have my full support!
Hey thanks a lot! Although I recommend checking out bloodborne and dark souls too because they are pretty big influences of the game. And yeah of course I will continue working on more Fear & Hunger!
I love this game so far, but I think until all the bugs can be ironed out there should be a save function. I got very far without saving (way into the later game) but now when I warp back into the real world I'm stuck in the dark.
Kill_Switch already explained the save systems, but Misanthropologis you got a fair point. The bugs definitely need ironing out and I'm working every day to get things into better shape. All of a sudden the game got a lot more players and that's why more and more never-before-heard bugs keep appearing too. I don't like the idea of constant save function though, because it would mess up the tension of the game.
To Ironoverload and Misanthropologist. There is a mod that gives you an unlimited save book, on the Discord server. It's also a rebalance patch, but you can install only the save-book part of it.
Hey! I saw this game on YouTube and had to buy it (even created account on itchi.io just to do it). But I have one question for the author: do you plan linux support?
(Unrelated to Linux) Do you plan on unbanning me (Gentle Chad) at any point or should I expect otherwise? I don't mind too much but given it was a lighthearted joke...
RPG Maker MV does support Linux actually and I could make a Linux port, but I barely have any knowledge of the operating system and if some bugs were to appear, I would be in trouble trying to make sense of it all. But I'll consider the port for sure.
When using bed to sleep/coin flip is a win I'm unable to save ( like actually select from the slots to save) and then in the menu I will get this error shortly after. :-(
Great game, good fun with interesting possibilities and story. Even if I got banned from the Discord for an innocent joke, I still love this game and it's fine community. :)
Ah that's too bad D: I must have missed that one. No hard feelings! And thanks for the praise. I can ask around how long the ban lasts. I think some community guidelines are good, because the game has attracted all kinds of people in the past, but joke is a joke, so yeah.
I was just teasing Kill Switch for disabling Hurting and said he was cheating ahah, but no hard feelings between anyone! Keep up the great work on the game and I hope to see you success with future content, etc. :D
Congrats on the release of Fear and Hunger. Wanted to give a quick bug report forr V1.0.3. After beating a particular enemy in the room (image) shown below, then attempting to enter the escape menu, the following "Failed to load: img/pictures/_1.png" error appears. Clicking retry will show a loading bar, which promptly returns you to this screen, making this a soft-lock. I've been able to replicate it a few times, so am confident in saying it is consistent between play-throughs. EDIT: on further investigation, it only occurs when the blood golem was summoned mid-fight; is it not being removed from the party at the end of the fight?
On a side-note, am loving the game, but found it very frustrating to complete the task needed to fight the particular enemy that appears in this room (being coy to avoid spoilers). As it is based on having certain party members with you, and I had a party of four prior to entering the area, I found myself having to clear out a party member to make room. This took over three hours purely because I had killed all but two very weak enemies (including the hydra), and had no circles for sacrificing another party member at that point. If possible could I suggest adding another way to remove a character from the party for cases where there's literally nothing left to cull them off with? Perhaps an item like a sacrificial knife, or even just something added to the above area/s, maybe pushing them into the center of this room? It would certainly fit with the area's theme after all!
Hoping to see the updates continue to roll out - really enjoying the narratives so far!
Hey yeah, I saw this on the RiskRim's channel. Really big thanks for finding the source of the bug. This crash has been popping up since the game testing, but I could never pinpoint the cause, because I couldn't replicate the bug myself. Also blood golem probably doesn't sound like the logical cause for this, so I understand that the testers didn't realize this connection. But it's painfully obvious now that you mentioned it. It indeed is the cause.
Hello :) Just downloaded the latest update and I wanted to know if there is some way to convert/transfer my gameplay/save file from a previous update to the latest one. btw I love the game so far. (I am CookieChan10 on twitter btw)
Just in case you were still needing an answer - if you had into the game files directory, inside the "www" folder you will see a "saves" folder. Just copy that and paste into the newer version's www folder. Be warned though, depending on what changed in the update you may find bugs occurring (e.g. saves from 1.0.2 played in 1.0.3 will cause the crow mauler to stop spawning outside of trying to save despite the "terrifying presence" messages appearing - although some people may actually prefer that!).
If you're having odd occurrences or crashes, you may want to consider starting a new game and/or deleting those saves. If you decide to report them, please remember to specify that you're using an older save file - this is considered a courtesy to game developers as it saves them from "chasing their own tail" trying to fix the problem ;) .
Question... I understand why you made actual saves that you can return to be rare and hard to find, but is there any reason you couldn't make some kind of facility for a save and leave, so you can stop the game and come back to it (just not over and over like a real save)? Real life does beckon...
Also, could I please proofread your text for you? It's just little things that should be really easy to fix... :)
Well basically I just wanted to prevent save-scumming in the game. That's why saving is so difficult in the game. With an auto-save system people could just quit the game the second they think things take a wrong turn and then continue with the auto-save. Games like Dark Souls give you a penalty if you quit the game suddenly without going through the menu, but frankly I don't know how to make a proper system like that :P
Another big reason was to encourage starting the game over rather than trying to get everything in one run. And finally, save books are heaven's gift now in the game. Everybody wants them and I think it's a nice rush when you see yourself getting one.
I tried to make the game so that you can still play it through in bite-sized portions if you know what you are doing. Still I understand the frustration, because I play games in short intervals too because of real life stuff.
And yeah, proofreading sounds good! I already got some testers notifying me on typos, but if you find any please let me know! English is not my native language so there are surely a lot of mistakes here and there. If you use Discord, I think that would be the best place for that.
Not sure how to indicate which exact location some of the typos appear in - but a couple of little typos I see repeated already - "muckus" should be "mucus", if what you are trying to describe is something like snot; and the word "ominous" (which is the correct spelling) appears as "omnious" (incorrect) in several places. Your english is much better than many games I've seen, especially with the large amount of text you have included!
If you could figure out a way to make a "close and save" which only worked one time and dropped you exactly where you left, that would be helpful, without giving any advantage. Or even a reliable "pause" function. :)
I keep getting severely injured, then having amazing luck - which is so funny. Like being near death and just taking one swing at the shakespeare and killing it in one! but then I have to go back to the last save anyway to get my companion back... lol
If you ever make a game where you decided to incorporate voice actors, I make audio dramas for my podcast and know many actors who would jump on a chance, just for the fun of it (for free). ;)
Hey Julie, sorry for the late answer! Things have been hectic lately. I just moved to a new apartment.
I'll try to fix those typos in upcoming updates for sure! I really thought Muckus and Omnious were the correct way to write those words :D It's good that this comes up now!
Those near death situations are always really epic! I love hearing stories like that, because those are exactly the kind of situations I tried to build in in the game.
And I'll definitely keep you in mind if I need voice actors! Sounds pretty promising that you guys already have experience in something like that. I'm actually brainstorming and slowly starting a new project that has something to do with Fear & Hunger. This new project could possibly use voice acting if I wanted to step up the game.
Oh, and i got another friend hooked on your game - she also loved that your mythology, while falling into certain familiar lines, was very original and intriguing, as well as that some ends could be very nasty, which is more realistic than many games.
I can't get the game to run? It shows I downloaded it, and installed it, and when I click launch it show the painting logo, then the start screen.
I click on new game (can't continue. haven't played yet), and it shows the characters, and .... nothing.
Nothing I can click on, can't select (the mercenary has the box round it, but can't click on that character either), just nothing.
Is this unusual? Should I be waiting for it to do something? I was watching RiskRim play and it looked really twisted, and I think he mentioned problems with older versions, but it seemed to run ok for him.
This sounds pretty bad if it really is the case! :O The mouse support of the game is really limited and clicking things doesn't get you far. The game is meant to be played on either keyboard or a controller. Did you try the keyboard at all? Diagonal keys are used to navigate menus and the character, ENTER key is used to choose things and investigate, ESC brings up the menu and works as a cancel key and SHIFT is used for additional things like running, shooting with bow and arrow and backstab skill. Sorry that there isn't proper instructions in the game.
If the keyboard keys don't work either, then it's definitely a bug of sorts which I haven't heard about before.
Ok, now I'm having a ton of fun, once that got sorted. Spent ages crawling around with a broken back, but somehow still fighting and avoiding things. LOL
This game is truly one of a kind. I even harassed a friend into buying it because it felt wrong keeping all of the agony this game has to offer to myself.
I've currently only got Ending E (the last/worst ending?) but I have 2 in progress saves running where I've slowly picked up on more and more. Hope that there will still be more from you!
Hey thanks for all the praise and harassing your friends too! The ending E really is the easiest ending to achieve and sounds like you got plenty to explore still.
And yeah I'm already making additional content to the game that will come available in future updates along with bug fixes. Also there might be something else coming too further down the line...
Hey! Just stumbled blindly into an ending (Ending D ) and I am... Confused, but I also wanted to say how much Im enjoying the game. I'm glad it's still super brutal and I'll have to do a new fan art too. = v =b
I encountered a little bug in the temple place that leads to Francois -- if you use the cube to change the time after you go through the door the nameless fellow is blocking, you're warped outside the map for some reason.
Also I can't figure out what to do with the scrolls, I've tried writing the "O LORD" things on them but nothing seems to happen, am I on the wrong track?
Hey thanks for the feedback! Great you're liking the game and I'll definitely look forward to fan art! :D If you got Ending D, it sounds like you still have new areas to find. Endings A and B require you to delve even deeper......
That bug is really weird, because it came up during the bug testing too, but I was never able to replicate the bug and that's why I never really understood what causes it. Does this happen no matter where you are on that map, or just in some specific spot?
Scrolls can be kinda tricky. You are definitely on the right tracks. The first line is always "O LORD", but second and third line make things happen. Maybe you've seen some books mentioning such passages in the game?
Currently Steam is reviewing the game build and checking out whether the content meets Steam-standards. I'm hoping that I don't need to censor anything. Graphic stuff in the game is mostly simple 2D after all, so hopefully it won't be THAT judged.... After the reviewing is done, it will take from 2 weeks to 1 month if I understand the process correctly. Sadly there's no way around this, but good news is that I'm working on more content during this down-time and the game will be that much more content rich by the Steam release.
Hey! So there is no "free save function" in this game! You actually need to find or make an item that allows you to save! Come join the discord if you have any questions!
That does definitely sound like a bug. I'll look into it. Do you have any experience with other RPG Maker games by any chance? Sounds like an in-engine bug....
I just tried out the save station at the bed on Level 3-Basement, but it didn't allow me to save on any files. Is this supposed to happen? Still using version 5.1 Mac.
Hey! So the that has a special function, it gives you a coin flip as a chance to save, if your sucessful you save your progress, if not.....well an unpleasant surprise shows up.
The game seems very taxing on memory even though it seems simple? Are you using a lot of parallel processes? What kind are they and why are they always running? Anyway, I do really enjoy this very dark setting. Sorry about all the questions I'm just very curious.
Hi! Yeah there are tons of parallel processes running in the game. Biggest processes are most likely the ones that check the character status all the time, like if the character loses a limb, changes weapons or puts on a disguise. Those processes change character graphics accordingly. Then there are of course the fear and hunger systems that keep track how hungry and fearful each character is and how those stats increase/decrease over time with all the status ailments that come with them. Then there are bow and arrow check and bear trap check that calculate X and Y coordinates of both the player character and enemies...
That's just to name few, there are plenty more smaller processes running for whatever purposes. Currently there are like 200 common events in the game and every battle has 20 pages worth of events going on. There most likely would have been a more optimized way to implement many of the systems, but to be honest, I'm not a coder at all :D This is actually my first real game ever that I'm making here and I'm learning things as I go.
I did notice that the hallucination system seemed taxing to my laptop and by removing them, the game started running more smoothly. Hopefully it's the same for other people too with the next upcoming version.
Thank you for taking the time to tell me what's going on.
Maybe a lot of these could run inside the SAME parallel process instead of separate ones but you've probably already done that whenever possible. I wonder if the rogue-like aspects do constant checks too because if so, maybe stuff like that could be randomly generated BEFORE even starting the game unless it does that already. I know whatever I say is going to sound like unsolicited advice because I can't really see it all in front of me.
I'm surprised combat has so much going on because it doesn't SEEM that complicated, not to undervalue the tons of work that went into it and everything else. Wish I could see it more in depth what's going on but from what you've said it seems like that depth would take hours to dig through.
Reason I even comment is because I really enjoy this game and setting a lot which I said already. It's been rare to find the very darker themes and I'm surprised not more people are inspired by it.
Yeah I've tried combining some parallel processes, but some of them are so huge that the engine itself becomes laggy when making the game :D Most of the rogue-like aspects are set at the beginning of the game or on the spot when you get some randomized items for example. There aren't really any parallel processes that handle that stuff.
In combat, 8 pages already go to character graphics and status checkings. Because the game has to react to dismemberments and such. Those pages also check every turn if you are able to hold onto your weapons with less arms among other things. They are also pretty lengthy. I might be able to combine them, but then the pages would become like REALLY long. Part of the problem no doubt is, that everything is based on RPG Maker commands. There's very little actual coding. Also the game systems are a bit of a mess in certain places, because when I first started making the game, I wasn't quite aware of how much the game would actually expand in the future. The game is pretty simple at face value, but there's tons of detail and some odd skills here and there that affect the big picture, resulting kinda complex game imo. At least as far as typical RPG maker games are concerned.
But thanks! It's always nice to hear people appreciate the game!
What do you mean? Is the file accidentally an exe-file? If so, I'll fix it for sure, in the meantime you can download the game from Gamejolt or something.
I still wouldn't challenge the beheaded wizard myself, but there will be some conclusion to that fight too later on for sure.
It's been awhile since I played the game. Would like to know if certain enemies are actually killable now. Like that wizard that summons a huge monster. Great job on such an awesome game.
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Like a couple other people I learned about this game via John Wolfe's channel. Just wanted to say in the time that I have played it it's run perfectly and I have been having a blast (and dying a lot). If I could add just one suggestion it would be a save function when you exit the game. I read below that you don't want to add save scumming, but a way you could get around this is by having the save file deleted upon death. Anyway, just wanted to say I really like the game so far and can't wait to see what you have in store for the future.
Hey, the dev has said it before once or twice that he did not want to add saving upon exiting because then it would be too convient for saving. Te main tone of the game is to make it feel kinda hard and unforgiving.
Coin toss and too high miss chance really ruined this game. I understand gameplay meant to be hard and unforgiving but pure luck being such a big factor is not the right way to achieve it. Please don't ruin your hard work with this bullshit mechanic. It will discourage people from playing, no one want to lose hour of progress just because rng decided so. Look for example at Darkest Dungeon - this game is challenging but within reasonable limits.
Hey Wili. There are some community members who have been dissatisfied with the balance, and want more time spent on reworking it. I also worry that going to a Steam release before correcting this could be hurt the game's future.
We put together a community patch, a rebalance mod that attempts to make everything more reasonable. If you're interested, please have a look at it, and let us know if we can change it to be better. We might want to reduce dodge chance and increase accuracy, even further. And, if it is good... I hope Orange looks at it, and considers using it as a template.
https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
Wow, definitely gonna check it out. Thanks.
Hello! I just downloaded this game today but it's lagging on my computer for some reason. Do you think this is an issue with my computer? Or can I do something to fix this? I really wanted to buy it because I watched a YouTube play it and it looked amazing. I really don't want to return it!
Hey noirbinch! I will try to streamline some functions in the game that could hopefully help with the slow downs.
Hello, another John Wolfe fan here. I watched him play the game and I found it very interesting and worthwhile. I just downloaded the demo and it's running incredibly slow. It might be my computer, as I've had this problem with other games, but I've read that some other people have had similar problems, so I just thought I'd comment. My computer isn't super high-tech, but it does run games more graphically intense than this. In the starting area the game runs pretty slow, but playable, and in the menu the game runs fine, but as soon as I enter the dungeon it's just instantly unplayable. My guess is that it's all the sprites moving around at the same time that causes it. I'd really like to get this game and I might at a later date, but I'm not sure yet. I'll keep an eye on it for now. Thank you.
Also, as for the coin toss, I do like it, and I think it's fine where it occurs in the game. However, the RNG does seem unbalanced, and I don't like how instant deaths are a frequent result of it. However, I do know you're planning on changing that and I like the change you are making. Thanks again.
Hey! There has been many changes to the game since that demo was made and for many who experienced slow downs with the demo, it was not an issue with the full version anymore. That was the case with myself too. And then people who suffer now with the slow down often didn't have the problem with the demo. This suggests that it's a new and different reason that causes lag in the full version.
In any case, you can buy the game if you want and if the problem still remains with the full version, I can always refund it.
Otherwise I will continue looking into the problem and hopefully find some solution to all this.
Alright, cool. I'll probably get the game as soon as I'm not poor anymore. I'll let you know if I find anything else off.
Some members of the community have been concerned about the RNG and some of the balance. We put together a community mod, Fear and Hunger Rebalanced, which improves some of the balance issues. If you would like to, please try out the mod, and let us know how we can can improve it.
https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
Just bought the game after John Wolfe did a video on it. Really unique and terrifying. The game has a few problems structurally (saving system is kinda ridiculous), but other than a few small issues the game is great! It's worth the 8$.
Hey Crow. If you find you're having too much trouble with the saving system, there is a mod that allows you to save anywhere. It's part of a Rebalance mod made by the discord community, but I believe you can install the save book without changing the balance much: https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
Hey! I recently watched John Wolfe play this and thought it looked super fun and downloaded it. I really like the game but I'm having an issue where whenever I go to the settings (as I just started the game and wanted to check the menus out) and try to back out, I get an unknown error and the game freezes and I have to restart. Love the game, just wanted to mention a little bug I've encountered so far (:
just wanted to stop by to say this game is phenomenal so far, as well as give a shout out to John Wolfe for getting me to notice it.
Same here! Thanks to him I found a cool game that I probably would have never noticed on my own.
John Wolfe really brought a lot of people here. That's great! I'm glad you are liking the game!
Here is a link to the first mod for Fear & Hunger since it's release, a Rebalance mod: https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
This reworks elements of combat and survival in the game, making it so DEF reduces incoming damage, and that Hunger penalties work properly, along with a slew of other minor tweaks. It's a prototype, only tweaking the starting areas monsters, and is not suitable for a full play through at this time.
We really ought to have a Community enabled for the game, so that Mods can be posted in a forum instead of in a comments section.
Maybe the Discord admin for the game could set up a channel in there for mods with a sub category for individual mods?
e: Just made a subreddit if you'd like to throw it up there https://old.reddit.com/r/FearAndHunger/
Kill Switch was very kind, and set up a mods section. Right now there's only one mod there, but sub categories will definitely happen when more mods are added.
Thank you for the invitation on the subreddit! I'll make sure to post a link there :)
thanks so much for this lol.
the game is very interesting and I decided to support you anyway. But will there be plans for any kind of config to adjust the difficulty? I hesitate to call it 'difficulty' because some of the design choices do not make the game challenging, they just add frustration. Maybe you can add a slider to adjust some RNG elements or like some have said, remove some bad RNG from the normal mode and include them in a 'hard mode'.
I know devs all have a vision of their work in mind, and sometimes it can be hard to compromise on that. But I believe I'm speaking for many others when I say that more forgiving RNG will only increase the quality of gameplay
Heck, just knowing where in the game files I can tweak some numbers would make this 100% better. Maybe I will find something if I check all the json files.
Hey Voduyan. It is possible to mod the game, we're working on a Rebalance mod in the Discord server. Trying to reduce artificial difficulty and RNG in the game. You can edit the json files and change most of the game. If you're interested in the mod, you should check out the official F&H Discord. Not sure how to set up mods on itch.io.
If you have any questions about modding yourself, let me know.
Hey voduyan! Thanks for the support! There is a clear uproar about the RNG stuff so I will do some adjustments accordingly. You are right that I have stuck to my vision pretty tightly, but I came up with a pretty good compromise that will remove most of the one-hit kills from the game and give players more tools to survive. The coin-toss will remain, but instead of the one-hit kill, the enemy will dish out a devastating attack to a random party member. This will not necessarily kill the character depending on the equipment and such.
There is no simple way to modify the RNG in the json files, but I will do balance tweaks in the future too if the next update will bring new problems.
I don't quite understanding how upgrading skills work. I find that I could click on some nodes but not others, even though I have a skill (starting skill) adjacent to it. Is it a bug or do I lack some condition?
Along the left side, you can only get the skills that come with your character. When you start out in the intro, it tells you "you were born with the soul of the endless" or something like that. Faintly along the outer left edge of the hexen scree is those names. You can only add the skills that match your god. You should most likely have at least one dot for yours, and you should be able to get the rest without any tasks. You cannot get any of the other skills on the left without special circumstances.
For the skills on the right, the ones that have concentric circles, you can only access those skills when you gain affinity with the related god. The top one is Gro-goroth, the second down is sylvian, and so on. The circles depict how much affinity with the god you need to get the skill. When you have affinity, there is a pale white light around the circles that are available; you can only get the skills within the white light.
I hope that answers your question!
I feel this game has so much going for it, the atmosphere is amazing, the characters are all unique and the designs are great for the enemies, though there are some fixes needed with saving and combat glitches this game is really great, you have a really amazing game here and i cant wait for it to be finished, the mac version 1.0.3 doesn't save which you'd think would make me not play this game till its fixed but the whole feel of this game brings me back and pushes me to go further. Looking forward to further updates.
Hey thanks for the feedback! I will definitely look into bugs and such and there will be an update coming later this month actually with fixes and new content.
You said the mac version doesn't save at all? Do you mean the save points don't work?
When choosing a file to save your game to, the mac version does not let you select any and will repeatedly make the box for file 1 flash until you either press x or z where it just exits without saving, with going to settings in game making the game crash.
Thanks for letting me know. I wonder if you got the mouse cursor over the screen when doing this? The mouse can create conflict against keyboard commands some times. I might have to delete the settings from menu until I find what causes the crashes.
The mouse is present during the entire game so i could be that.
Game runs really slow most of the time and is unplayable, even though my computer probably has the specs necessary to play this.
Hmmm.. I've heard similar problems before too. I'm still looking into it. Someone said that the RPG Maker RTP could potentially fix this, but I have yet to confirm this.
Oh, ok, hope you can find a fix. I really want to play your game, seems really interesting
I dont believe the developer ever intended this feeling, if your insinuating that he would like to savagely "rape" people then you are wrong, it is just to get the tone across and he had trouble even making this part of the game. The guarding works, i tried it myself before. Could be a insta-ill bug with the torso part. And the intro part, i really got no comment on that one cause I couldn't care less about it.
Hey akidfrompa. It sounds like you encountered a lot of bugs. One thing to watch out for is the mouse-bug, where you can't effectively select targets with the mouse. You need to keep the mouse right in the bottom right corner, and use the arrow keys to select the target.
Don't know about the guarding bug, sorry. It work for me, that it prevents coin-tosses.
With the intro, here's a tip: You can hold down Z to skip quickly through the text. So long as you hold it down, you won't accidentally select options, either.
Hey akidfrompa! I can always give you a refund if you want that of course. I don't want to leave such a bad taste in your mouth.
With the ogre scene/player experience comparison - That's actually partly what I wanted the experience to feel like at first :P
BUT I also wanted to give players tools to climb from that pit and conquer the shit that the game throws at you. There are still many bugs around and I'm fixing them the best I can. Also the coin-toss RNG is clearly something people don't like so I am doing some adjustment to that too. Basically the coin-toss will stay, but instead of the one-hit kill, the enemy only dishes out a devastating attack to a random party member (if the character got full health or good equipment this will not kill them). This will be in the next update that will come later this month.
But yeah, I'm sorry you feel the way you do and if you want the refund still, you'll get it. :-)
Thanks for the feedback!
You might want to make it an aspect of a Casual difficulty mode? The coin toss is rather emblematic, and it can lead to interesting death scenes.
You might want to have it that, if the main character is defeated by this coin toss attack, the scene plays out in the usual fashion.
I have to agree with everyone else on the coin toss portion of the game. It takes away from the enjoyment factor. You can't even guarantee that you will get to save. I could understand this being implemented in hard mode but it is pretty unimpressive in normal. Don't take it away just tone it down. It seems the average play time from "lets payers" is about an hour and then they state they probably won't be playing again. I really enjoy the atmosphere, the art style and music. This game is to punishing for me with the odds of a coin toss showing up.
I agree that the coin-toss is really rough. There are a couple of ways to deal with it.
One is to Guard, before the Coin-toss comes up, this should disable it. I'm not super keen on this method of dealing with the coin-toss, as I think it's a very easy way of removing all the danger involved.
The second way is to avoid the coin-toss by destroying the part of the enemy that causes it. With the guard's, you destroy their left hand (the empty one, not holding a cleaver).
If you feel the game is unbalanced, we are trying to fix it up with a community mod, on the Discord server.
Hope this helps!
It is NOT just a matter of the combat coin flips. Most of them are completely unnecessary and it seems far too often that you fail them to be RNG. Much less doing a coin flip to save is just ridiculous and I've saved ONE time out of about 25 and I had already been mauled to have no legs in that one so... yeah.
Add in the mercenary's nonsense of the intro where you need RNG to not screw your game in order to get an ability? If I get the coin flip wrong there I just close the game and reopen because it's garbage that you get screwed for your class abilities.
Yeah, the coin tosses at character generation are unreasonable. The Outlander can get a fear of everything, if he fails one of his coin tosses.
I'm sorry you've been having difficulties with the saving system, it is the hardest until you get good at the game, then have a really good run, in which case you do get some saves to fall back on in future. The mod I mentioned does include a debugging tool, which less you save freely. At the very least, you could use that to save the game right after creating a Merc, so you can skip the character gen process.
Hey Undeadly! The coin-tosses are clearly something that bother people so I'm actually doing just what you said - tone it down. Many of the one-hit kills will be replaced with strong attacks that are bearable with good health and armor. Hopefully this will balance it out and make it seem less rough.
Heya! I don't know why but my game runs really poorly. :/ It runs slime rancher and other games just fine so I don't know why it runs this badly.
Hey! Yeah I've heard that some people have this issue even if they got relatively powerful computers. I'm still looking into it. Does the game run poorly in all the sections of the game?
It's mostly just the foggy area at the beginning, but it does it inside as well. I couldn't play further cause if a game lags badly it gives me a headache. :/
Hey! I wanted to get this game off steam, but there appears to be no purchase button, just "Release: January 2019" Edit: I live in Poland, if that helps.
The Steam release is set to 21st of January.
I hear you. It's a tricky situation though, because I live in Finland which is like one of the most expensive places in Europe. This game equals pretty much two full years of my life and thousands of hours of dev time so I figured it's not that expensive if you think it like that. The price will of course drop eventually ;)
Hey it is going on steam soon.
Honestly you are probably undercharging for this, independent of the cost of living where you are. You put two years of your life into this, don't apologize that it costs money. Eight dollars is nothing for this, and people who would complain about the price would complain about any price it deserved.
You did good with this game, and it's got style. I hope it does well.
Thanks OdicHastings, but with good conscience I couldn't charge more than 8 dollars, because the game is a bit rough at places still. There are many bugs around that need fixing. But I still think there's plenty of things to like in the game and I've poured everything I got into all the areas in the game.
If that's how you feel, that's fair. It's very well made, and it really shows how much effort you've put into it.
(you may have already seen reports on this btw, but I've encountered a couple of bugs myself. One is sometimes I can't change what body part I'm targeting, and the other is I've sometimes been able to do a "double backstab" with the mercenary by fleeing from the encounter I backstabbed into. I think when I flee the fight the mercenary may still be in his stab animation for another frame? So the game gives me another free ambush. It's useful for bringing down guards quickly, but probably unintended xD)
Thanks for letting me know of the bugs. One quick fix for not being able to target limbs in battle would be to move the cursor of the mouse off the screen. The cursor often overlaps with the keyboard commands.
I am NEVER going to buy your game just because of your RNG cointosses... This is such crap
Ah! I'm sorry to hear that really D: The coin tosses can actually be evaded in combat really easily. Just guard when you know they are coming. Loot coin tosses are there to stay though...
I think during save points having that coin toss is ehhh.... Everything else like for loot is fine honestly - and in combat its a 50/50 for me but doesn't bother me as much as when the game allows you to save at certain points and you lose it all because you wanted to save if you know what I mean lol. Otherwise I saw John Wolfe play it and got it myself - and hoh boyo I was in for a surprise. Its really neat - haven't gotten to far into it, but that's the only thing I would say just feelsbad
Hopefully you like it Kitsu289. There are actually save points later on that don't require the coin-toss. It's just the first half that the game is at it's most ruthless. There are also some save items that don't require coins either, and you can get those pretty early on..
That's not a problem then in my eye then, I thought for a moment it would be like that for all of them- and yeah lol... I'm not backing down with my character yet (legit lost two of their legs and died twice but somehow lived twice) but I might do another character from scratch. Its really well done.
Dont get mewrong I love the idea, I like the game, but even darkest dungeon toned down on the RNG, after the community outcry, that the RNG was too much. i hope you put less RNG in it through patches and I will surely give it a try.
Hey Chris. The community actually has put together a mod/fanpatch, that tries to reduce RNG and rebalance some aspects of the mod. you can find it on the official Discord server. The coin tosses are still in the mod, so it may still have too much RNG for your taste.
Hm.. I could try it out less RNG would translate into more fun for me.
An itch.io page was put up for it: https://mask.itch.io/fear-hunger-rebalance
If there is still too much RNG for you, please let us know. There's been talking about reducing enemy dodge chance and upping accuracy even further.
They actually are not RNG tho, they are always at specific areas
Video of the bug. When I tried making love to Enki, at first, I was surprised and happy that he was ready to do so, but then nothing happened and the characters turned invisible. (I hope the video link works). In the video, I tried preparing for it: I cleared my equipment, lighted the candles, prayed to Sylvian, hoping to prevent the bug from happening again, but it happened again unfortunately. Am I doing something wrong on my part maybe?
Thank for the video! (It's nice that you put on the candles for the mood ;D )
It is actually a bug that has appeared with the full release. It's weird because it used to work just fine, but now I've heard similar reports from other people too. I'll definitely look into it. The next update is coming later this January. Hopefully I'll get it fixed by then.
okay I understand! thank you for the respond <3
This game is fantastic - you should be very proud! The 50/50 coin flips and rare saves can be frustrating, but that just makes all of the little victories even more rewarding!
I have noticed what I think happens to be a very minor bug - in my most recent run, I obtained a stick, a pinecone, and the "Pinecone Pig Instructions" but no additional item appeared in my crafting menu and I was unable to make a Pinecone Pig. However, I could very well be missing something - is there a crafting table in game? Or perhaps a third item necessary? I am playing as the Dark Mage, if his restrictions have anything to do with it.*UPDATE: No bug! It was a silly mistake on my part - I only looked in Craft Items when it was under Craft Armor! Sorry about that!
I have yet to finish the game - I'm keeping away from most walkthroughs and wiki pages to keep things engaging and fresh for me. Which is really both a blessing and a curse because my progress seems to be SO SLOW - but it's worth it,
I would really love to hear more about what inspired this game - I am just fascinated by the lore and monster/creature designs!
Anyway - thanks so much for making this game, you can tell a lot of love and labor went into this project and it's just absolutely fantastic!
Hey great you figured that out. It's not so obvious. Easy thing to miss for sure. I'm also glad you like the game and playing blind is really the best way to go about it! :-)
There are tons of things that inspired the game so it's really hard to just mention few. For the monster designs, the biggest inspirations have to be Silent Hill, Junji Ito's works, renaissance paintings by various artists, Hellraiser and Berserk.
I keep getting my rear end packed in but the story and lore of this game is so good, I keep going back in.
I just bought the full version, its a nice rpgmaker game, something rare enough to say. You got all the right ideas in, however the saving system is really crippling the fun. One bed on level 2 with 50% chance to die that's far too rough. You cant even leave the game and autosave. The books of enlightment are far too rare to save too and worse it sometime crash when using them. I also got crashes when trying to bash a door, or just walking in the dungeon...Its impossible to enjoy the game this way although at its core its really good.
I'm sorry to hear about such broken experience! D: I have not heard before that bashing the doors or using the book of enlightenment would cause crashes. That sounds really alarming actually! Could you specify which doors caused this if it's not too much to ask? The game is buggy, that much is obvious, but I was under the impression that most of the game breaking bugs were starting to get weeded out.
As for the saving system. The first half of the game is really just roguelike survival, which is the reason saving is also very limited. I also kinda wanted to encourage starting the game over and over and trying different things, instead of trying force through the game with a single playthrough. After the first half, the game starts to give you more chances to save in both books and free save beds. Of course I can understand that the game crashing really takes away from the experience and I'm working on fixing things the best I can.
If i remember well the crash happen when bashing a prison door near the exit leading to the big hall with that brass knight. But it will be extremely hard to replicate this bug, i think it happened when those flying monsters were too close, maybe the game triggered two encounters at same time; one crash also happened when avoiding some guard patrol, saw him turning then crash. As for the book crash it only happened once so far but then again in all my playthroughs i only found three. I never reached the other parts of the game its far too unforgiving . One missed first attack for exemple and you end up hacked and bleeding, with no means to heal yourself .
I see... The save bug and the bug with the door sound very rare, but also very deep rooted bugs. Both calling the save screen and initiating the combat sequence are RPG Maker's own engine commands. I am constantly ironing out the bugs but those sound pretty difficult ones because I haven't messed around with the core engine that much..
The difficulty of the game can seem harsh but there are ways around everything that seems unfair at first. Discord channel and the wiki offer good tips on the game.
Oh i did read the wikis, it still over the top...Btw found another bug, you dont trigger trotor anymore if you try to, open the door after doing a "marriage", nor the scared nobleman anymore. And found another glitch in endless tower , the last house in darkness allow you do go off screen with plenty of glitches. I am afraid i wont be able to see much more party already crippled with infections and lack of food.
Semi related. There is a mod on the Discord server that is a rebalancing mod for the game. The reason I mention it, is it includes a debugging tool, a book of unlimited saving, when you start the game. It's possible to just install the saving book, if you like the game's current balance.
Hope this helps!
Thanks , that's certainly something i will check.
I really suck at games like these *cough*bloodbourne*cough*darksouls*cough* and i keep dying but oh my god it's so intriguing and beautiful in a dark kinda way. I love it. I hope we'll be seeing more from you and (as soon as i have money to spare) you guys have my full support!
Hey thanks a lot! Although I recommend checking out bloodborne and dark souls too because they are pretty big influences of the game. And yeah of course I will continue working on more Fear & Hunger!
I love this game so far, but I think until all the bugs can be ironed out there should be a save function. I got very far without saving (way into the later game) but now when I warp back into the real world I'm stuck in the dark.
there is a save function! Its in a form of a book, the book can be obtainable randomly throughout the game or in set places.
Kill_Switch already explained the save systems, but Misanthropologis you got a fair point. The bugs definitely need ironing out and I'm working every day to get things into better shape. All of a sudden the game got a lot more players and that's why more and more never-before-heard bugs keep appearing too. I don't like the idea of constant save function though, because it would mess up the tension of the game.
Have you considered creating an "easy" or "casual" mode that allows easier saves? I'm super interested in this, but I suck at stuff like this.
Also, do you have a steam release date, yet?
To Ironoverload and Misanthropologist. There is a mod that gives you an unlimited save book, on the Discord server. It's also a rebalance patch, but you can install only the save-book part of it.
Hey! I saw this game on YouTube and had to buy it (even created account on itchi.io just to do it). But I have one question for the author: do you plan linux support?
unfortunately i do not believe the developer is planning linux support but maybe in the future!
(Unrelated to Linux) Do you plan on unbanning me (Gentle Chad) at any point or should I expect otherwise? I don't mind too much but given it was a lighthearted joke...
hhahahaahha of course
No worries, I managed to run it on linux :)
RPG Maker MV does support Linux actually and I could make a Linux port, but I barely have any knowledge of the operating system and if some bugs were to appear, I would be in trouble trying to make sense of it all. But I'll consider the port for sure.
Looks like game is trying to create a save and it doesn't have a writing permissions ("read-only").
Are you playing on mac?
The solution is pretty simple find in google. This thread might help you - https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/error-read-only-game-crash.7049...
Oh thanks a lot for answering to this question DudeBrawGaming! It's been hectic few days and I didn't get a chance to reply here yet!
Thank you ! 0: ~)
Did this fix the problem?
Great game, good fun with interesting possibilities and story. Even if I got banned from the Discord for an innocent joke, I still love this game and it's fine community. :)
Ah that's too bad D: I must have missed that one. No hard feelings! And thanks for the praise. I can ask around how long the ban lasts. I think some community guidelines are good, because the game has attracted all kinds of people in the past, but joke is a joke, so yeah.
I was just teasing Kill Switch for disabling Hurting and said he was cheating ahah, but no hard feelings between anyone! Keep up the great work on the game and I hope to see you success with future content, etc. :D
Hi orange,
Congrats on the release of Fear and Hunger. Wanted to give a quick bug report forr V1.0.3. After beating a particular enemy in the room (image) shown below, then attempting to enter the escape menu, the following "Failed to load: img/pictures/_1.png" error appears. Clicking retry will show a loading bar, which promptly returns you to this screen, making this a soft-lock. I've been able to replicate it a few times, so am confident in saying it is consistent between play-throughs. EDIT: on further investigation, it only occurs when the blood golem was summoned mid-fight; is it not being removed from the party at the end of the fight?
On a side-note, am loving the game, but found it very frustrating to complete the task needed to fight the particular enemy that appears in this room (being coy to avoid spoilers). As it is based on having certain party members with you, and I had a party of four prior to entering the area, I found myself having to clear out a party member to make room. This took over three hours purely because I had killed all but two very weak enemies (including the hydra), and had no circles for sacrificing another party member at that point. If possible could I suggest adding another way to remove a character from the party for cases where there's literally nothing left to cull them off with? Perhaps an item like a sacrificial knife, or even just something added to the above area/s, maybe pushing them into the center of this room? It would certainly fit with the area's theme after all!
Hoping to see the updates continue to roll out - really enjoying the narratives so far!
Hey yeah, I saw this on the RiskRim's channel. Really big thanks for finding the source of the bug. This crash has been popping up since the game testing, but I could never pinpoint the cause, because I couldn't replicate the bug myself. Also blood golem probably doesn't sound like the logical cause for this, so I understand that the testers didn't realize this connection. But it's painfully obvious now that you mentioned it. It indeed is the cause.
Hello :) Just downloaded the latest update and I wanted to know if there is some way to convert/transfer my gameplay/save file from a previous update to the latest one. btw I love the game so far. (I am CookieChan10 on twitter btw)
Just in case you were still needing an answer - if you had into the game files directory, inside the "www" folder you will see a "saves" folder. Just copy that and paste into the newer version's www folder. Be warned though, depending on what changed in the update you may find bugs occurring (e.g. saves from 1.0.2 played in 1.0.3 will cause the crow mauler to stop spawning outside of trying to save despite the "terrifying presence" messages appearing - although some people may actually prefer that!).
If you're having odd occurrences or crashes, you may want to consider starting a new game and/or deleting those saves. If you decide to report them, please remember to specify that you're using an older save file - this is considered a courtesy to game developers as it saves them from "chasing their own tail" trying to fix the problem ;) .
Anyone recommend a quick guide on the combat system? I find that I am unable to target specific body parts a lot of the time.
If you have a mouse cursor over the screen, it can interrupt the keyboard commands some times.
Thanks for the reply. Really love the game! Cheers!
Question...
I understand why you made actual saves that you can return to be rare and hard to find, but is there any reason you couldn't make some kind of facility for a save and leave, so you can stop the game and come back to it (just not over and over like a real save)?
Real life does beckon...
Also, could I please proofread your text for you? It's just little things that should be really easy to fix... :)
Well basically I just wanted to prevent save-scumming in the game. That's why saving is so difficult in the game. With an auto-save system people could just quit the game the second they think things take a wrong turn and then continue with the auto-save. Games like Dark Souls give you a penalty if you quit the game suddenly without going through the menu, but frankly I don't know how to make a proper system like that :P
Another big reason was to encourage starting the game over rather than trying to get everything in one run. And finally, save books are heaven's gift now in the game. Everybody wants them and I think it's a nice rush when you see yourself getting one.
I tried to make the game so that you can still play it through in bite-sized portions if you know what you are doing. Still I understand the frustration, because I play games in short intervals too because of real life stuff.
And yeah, proofreading sounds good! I already got some testers notifying me on typos, but if you find any please let me know! English is not my native language so there are surely a lot of mistakes here and there. If you use Discord, I think that would be the best place for that.
Not sure how to indicate which exact location some of the typos appear in - but a couple of little typos I see repeated already - "muckus" should be "mucus", if what you are trying to describe is something like snot; and the word "ominous" (which is the correct spelling) appears as "omnious" (incorrect) in several places. Your english is much better than many games I've seen, especially with the large amount of text you have included!
If you could figure out a way to make a "close and save" which only worked one time and dropped you exactly where you left, that would be helpful, without giving any advantage. Or even a reliable "pause" function. :)
I keep getting severely injured, then having amazing luck - which is so funny. Like being near death and just taking one swing at the shakespeare and killing it in one! but then I have to go back to the last save anyway to get my companion back... lol
If you ever make a game where you decided to incorporate voice actors, I make audio dramas for my podcast and know many actors who would jump on a chance, just for the fun of it (for free). ;)
Hey Julie, sorry for the late answer! Things have been hectic lately. I just moved to a new apartment.
I'll try to fix those typos in upcoming updates for sure! I really thought Muckus and Omnious were the correct way to write those words :D It's good that this comes up now!
Those near death situations are always really epic! I love hearing stories like that, because those are exactly the kind of situations I tried to build in in the game.
And I'll definitely keep you in mind if I need voice actors! Sounds pretty promising that you guys already have experience in something like that. I'm actually brainstorming and slowly starting a new project that has something to do with Fear & Hunger. This new project could possibly use voice acting if I wanted to step up the game.
had a crazy weeek myself. If you need voices, reach me through my audio drama series 19 Nocturne Boulevard. We would love to work with you!
Oh, and i got another friend hooked on your game - she also loved that your mythology, while falling into certain familiar lines, was very original and intriguing, as well as that some ends could be very nasty, which is more realistic than many games.
I can't get the game to run? It shows I downloaded it, and installed it, and when I click launch it show the painting logo, then the start screen.
I click on new game (can't continue. haven't played yet), and it shows the characters, and .... nothing.
Nothing I can click on, can't select (the mercenary has the box round it, but can't click on that character either), just nothing.
Is this unusual? Should I be waiting for it to do something? I was watching RiskRim play and it looked really twisted, and I think he mentioned problems with older versions, but it seemed to run ok for him.
Help? Thanks!
--Julie
Hi Julie!
This sounds pretty bad if it really is the case! :O The mouse support of the game is really limited and clicking things doesn't get you far. The game is meant to be played on either keyboard or a controller. Did you try the keyboard at all? Diagonal keys are used to navigate menus and the character, ENTER key is used to choose things and investigate, ESC brings up the menu and works as a cancel key and SHIFT is used for additional things like running, shooting with bow and arrow and backstab skill. Sorry that there isn't proper instructions in the game.
If the keyboard keys don't work either, then it's definitely a bug of sorts which I haven't heard about before.
I am such a newb, I didn't see anything on the screen saying keyboard, and wouldn't necessarily know to check.
How silly of me!
I think it's because the mouse got me from the opening screen to the second one, I assumed it should continue to work. Sorry about that.
Haha, yeah I can understand that and it does make sense. Well I'm just glad it wasn't huge game breaking bug after all :D
Ok, now I'm having a ton of fun, once that got sorted. Spent ages crawling around with a broken back, but somehow still fighting and avoiding things. LOL
This game is truly one of a kind. I even harassed a friend into buying it because it felt wrong keeping all of the agony this game has to offer to myself.
I've currently only got Ending E (the last/worst ending?) but I have 2 in progress saves running where I've slowly picked up on more and more. Hope that there will still be more from you!
Hey thanks for all the praise and harassing your friends too! The ending E really is the easiest ending to achieve and sounds like you got plenty to explore still.
And yeah I'm already making additional content to the game that will come available in future updates along with bug fixes. Also there might be something else coming too further down the line...
Hey! Just stumbled blindly into an ending (Ending D ) and I am... Confused, but I also wanted to say how much Im enjoying the game. I'm glad it's still super brutal and I'll have to do a new fan art too. = v =b
I encountered a little bug in the temple place that leads to Francois -- if you use the cube to change the time after you go through the door the nameless fellow is blocking, you're warped outside the map for some reason.
Also I can't figure out what to do with the scrolls, I've tried writing the "O LORD" things on them but nothing seems to happen, am I on the wrong track?
Lovely game 5 chopped cocks out of 5.
Hey thanks for the feedback! Great you're liking the game and I'll definitely look forward to fan art! :D If you got Ending D, it sounds like you still have new areas to find. Endings A and B require you to delve even deeper......
That bug is really weird, because it came up during the bug testing too, but I was never able to replicate the bug and that's why I never really understood what causes it. Does this happen no matter where you are on that map, or just in some specific spot?
Scrolls can be kinda tricky. You are definitely on the right tracks. The first line is always "O LORD", but second and third line make things happen. Maybe you've seen some books mentioning such passages in the game?
Great game, do you plan to release it on steam some day?
Yeah I got plans to release it there too! The process just is quite a lot more complicated than I expected :O
Is there an estamated time we can expect it on Steam? And might it be censored if so?
Currently Steam is reviewing the game build and checking out whether the content meets Steam-standards. I'm hoping that I don't need to censor anything. Graphic stuff in the game is mostly simple 2D after all, so hopefully it won't be THAT judged.... After the reviewing is done, it will take from 2 weeks to 1 month if I understand the process correctly. Sadly there's no way around this, but good news is that I'm working on more content during this down-time and the game will be that much more content rich by the Steam release.
Became a literal fuck nugget at the first 5 minutes.
10/10
It happens...
deal with it
I'm using version 5.1 on my Mac, and I'm unable to save my process in this game.
Hey! So there is no "free save function" in this game! You actually need to find or make an item that allows you to save! Come join the discord if you have any questions!
Thank you!
That does definitely sound like a bug. I'll look into it. Do you have any experience with other RPG Maker games by any chance? Sounds like an in-engine bug....
Yeah as kill_switch said, the save spots are pretty scarce... Or did you have trouble saving even with the save spots?
Thanks! I'm new to this game.
I just tried out the save station at the bed on Level 3-Basement, but it didn't allow me to save on any files. Is this supposed to happen? Still using version 5.1 Mac.
Hey! So the that has a special function, it gives you a coin flip as a chance to save, if your sucessful you save your progress, if not.....well an unpleasant surprise shows up.
I got the correct face of the coin when doing the coin flip, which led me to the save screen. I wasn't able to save on any of those files.
Could be a bug! I usually press space to save but I avoid the basement bed. So there could be a potential bug there.
The game seems very taxing on memory even though it seems simple? Are you using a lot of parallel processes? What kind are they and why are they always running? Anyway, I do really enjoy this very dark setting. Sorry about all the questions I'm just very curious.
Hi! Yeah there are tons of parallel processes running in the game. Biggest processes are most likely the ones that check the character status all the time, like if the character loses a limb, changes weapons or puts on a disguise. Those processes change character graphics accordingly. Then there are of course the fear and hunger systems that keep track how hungry and fearful each character is and how those stats increase/decrease over time with all the status ailments that come with them. Then there are bow and arrow check and bear trap check that calculate X and Y coordinates of both the player character and enemies...
That's just to name few, there are plenty more smaller processes running for whatever purposes. Currently there are like 200 common events in the game and every battle has 20 pages worth of events going on. There most likely would have been a more optimized way to implement many of the systems, but to be honest, I'm not a coder at all :D This is actually my first real game ever that I'm making here and I'm learning things as I go.
I did notice that the hallucination system seemed taxing to my laptop and by removing them, the game started running more smoothly. Hopefully it's the same for other people too with the next upcoming version.
Thank you for taking the time to tell me what's going on.
Maybe a lot of these could run inside the SAME parallel process instead of separate ones but you've probably already done that whenever possible. I wonder if the rogue-like aspects do constant checks too because if so, maybe stuff like that could be randomly generated BEFORE even starting the game unless it does that already. I know whatever I say is going to sound like unsolicited advice because I can't really see it all in front of me.
I'm surprised combat has so much going on because it doesn't SEEM that complicated, not to undervalue the tons of work that went into it and everything else. Wish I could see it more in depth what's going on but from what you've said it seems like that depth would take hours to dig through.
Reason I even comment is because I really enjoy this game and setting a lot which I said already. It's been rare to find the very darker themes and I'm surprised not more people are inspired by it.
Yeah I've tried combining some parallel processes, but some of them are so huge that the engine itself becomes laggy when making the game :D Most of the rogue-like aspects are set at the beginning of the game or on the spot when you get some randomized items for example. There aren't really any parallel processes that handle that stuff.
In combat, 8 pages already go to character graphics and status checkings. Because the game has to react to dismemberments and such. Those pages also check every turn if you are able to hold onto your weapons with less arms among other things. They are also pretty lengthy. I might be able to combine them, but then the pages would become like REALLY long. Part of the problem no doubt is, that everything is based on RPG Maker commands. There's very little actual coding. Also the game systems are a bit of a mess in certain places, because when I first started making the game, I wasn't quite aware of how much the game would actually expand in the future. The game is pretty simple at face value, but there's tons of detail and some odd skills here and there that affect the big picture, resulting kinda complex game imo. At least as far as typical RPG maker games are concerned.
But thanks! It's always nice to hear people appreciate the game!
I can't seem to play your recent build on my Mac, says nothing on my computer can support the exe
What do you mean? Is the file accidentally an exe-file? If so, I'll fix it for sure, in the meantime you can download the game from Gamejolt or something.
I still wouldn't challenge the beheaded wizard myself, but there will be some conclusion to that fight too later on for sure.
It's been awhile since I played the game. Would like to know if certain enemies are actually killable now. Like that wizard that summons a huge monster. Great job on such an awesome game.
No that one particular enemy is intended to be impossible to kill, the only way to survive is run. keep running until the end.