Ok, finally got my hands on the new version. Still having a blast as I was half a year ago. Well, can't say anything new here - after all, the aspects of the game i've mentioned in the comment below are all still there (although, apparently, my excitement towards the resemblance of most dead bodies towards the main character hold true no more due to the introduction of new starting classes), so I'm gonna list some events I've encountered.
1. The Mercenary's sprite becomes invisible after he reemerges from the gore pile. Sometimes. Sometimes the animation of emerging plays as usual and the game goes on as intended, but sometimes, no animation is played and the character appears invisible. The game still functions normally, though. The same didn't happen with other characters for me.
2. The corner tiles on the 3rd level (prisons) are passable - as far as my experience with RPG maker goes, you have forgotten to set these tilemaps to untraversable.
3. Cavegnomes on level 3 can pass through prison bars. Due to the nature of the "pass through tiles" event property, I'd suggest the replacement of the Cavegnomes AI: make them spawn and roam above the black void with the event on, but as soon as they see a player, they, after a 1 second delay, rush to the tile coordinate that the player was spotted on with a speed of 6 (sorry, RPGMXP user here, don't know about other versions). Just as they reach that tile, switch "pass through tiles" off and let them chase you the same way they do now.
4. Ok, so I was recently playing with my Mercenary and decided to sacrifice the girl at the altar. I was given the "Summon blood golem" spell, which i used in the battle against lone dark priest. After winning the battle, i've tried to re-summon the golem again, this time in the encounter with 2 other dark priests. However, after i used the skill the game consumed my HP but refised to summon the blood golem, telling me that "He was already in the party", although he definitely wasn't.
That's it for now, i guess. I'll continue playing and tell if i encounter something else worth mentioning.
Awesome! Thank for the feedback! I'll do something about the bugs mentioned here. I must say your original theory about the resemblance of the corpses was so good that I considered it myself. But multiple characters was my initial concept of the game, so I decided to roll with it.
I'm glad you caught the reference! You're the first one to mention it :D Silent Hill is a big influence on this project.
V4 Seems to be a bit, super fast, if not 2x or 3x faster than what I'd expect - text, movement and top-screen dialogue move at alarming speeds and I'm unaware of how I can slow it down since there's no options menu to increase/decrease it - is this a bug? Seems too fast than what I'm used to from the last version.
Also, bugs found: Defeating a Skeletal monk that has 2 of them fight you, the 2nd Skeletal monk dies when you win the 1st fight? Intentional? Both NPC units died but 1 was left standing upright, but upon using an action key on the enemy, it was a dead body, yet stood.
- Alchemillia Vol1 and 2 are the same and are both Vol1
Hi!! It's definitely not intended to go any faster. It's a bug that was already present in the previous version. The framerate is tied to your monitor's screen refresh rate I belive. Or so I was told. I'm guessing your monitor has 144hz refresh rate?
I just recently discovered this and I have yet to get a solution.
EDIT: I uploaded a version with a tweak. I'm not sure if it fixes the issue though, because I don't have any extra monitors :P I'll have to ask around and confirm this. Sorry for the trouble man! D:
EDIT2: the new download should be okay. At least the animator of the game said his game is running at correct speed now (he had the same problem)
Huh, it seems plowing through miriad of copycats and lazy-ass creators CAN lead to something interesting...
There i was, sitting my day off, looking for a game to bash on in the comment section of the Neco's channel, decided to take a peek at the first part of that game's let's play and... got myself unusually enthralled by this wonderfull game.
This is the part where many might say: "Oh, come on! It's just a small, buggy RPG maker horror demo. Yeah, it looks preety, but it lives on the carcass of trial and error gameplay, try playing THAT for more than a couple of hours!" And, indeed, they will be right. This beast really is hard to handle for the hands of normal gamers for the reason of it's savage nature towards player - win'or'lose coin flips that can potentially decimate the otherwise lucky run, enemy attacks and no-escape-trap-rooms that can do the same, constant reliance on luck in terms of getting restorative items and overall chaotic structure of the gameworld rules are to blame.
The thing is... It all works in the end, at least for me. Yeah, these gamedesign decisions are usually pointed as flaws, but here, they are actually really good supplements to the main source of fun in this game, all thanks to these aspects of narrative:
1. Subtlety is strong in this one - the amount of death-screens one will face is reflected onto the game's world - notice, how almost every corpse you find has a strong resemblance to your own sprite, how every ghoul enemy pleads for death if intimidated all while wearing your distorted face, how, after failing "the save throw", you, completely decimated, can end up in the dungeon full of what looks like copies of yourself. Also, every book you read is dictated to you bo some sort of narrator, who actually tries to convince you that it is what YOU think, without any way to confirm the information yourself... As if the Mercenary (the hero of the game) is nothing but a fragile shell, manipulated into doing what the unknown entity wants.
2. The overall mocking attitude of the game towards the player. So, you want to jump down the hole into the fecal pit? Sure, go ahead. Ooops, you can't get out now. Oh, you've won the coin flip? Here take this book that you already have. My my, you grew confindent enough to engage every enemy on the level? Oh, you've missed once and now you're dead, what a pity! Yeah, this game tries to pull out the rug under your feet, but does so to a certain extend. Breezing through the demo without major loses is very much possible, and is actually satisfying - being able to counter every bullshit the game throws at you makes you switch sides - you become the one mocking the game.
3. Interesting approaches to decision-making. Although few due to the game's shortness, there were some moments that made me really satisfied from the sheer ambiguosity they present. The most notable example is this - at some point, you will be given the option to trade your party-member for some sort of probable benefit. You can get a weapon, and it is really powerfull... in theory. In the end, you are left without a reliable way to dispose of Guard enemies by trading an additional life-saving attack, as said weapon won't kill them outright, and, despite it's much bigger damage, you will still have to rely on dismemberment in order to not die in 1 hit. And you soon find out that your standart sword is as efficient at dismembement as that overkill weapon. Plus, you get it at the end of the demo. Haw, haw!
These three points alone are enough to hook me up on this game and to stay hopefull for it's eventuall full release. This may very well turn out to be the new Witch's house, Mogeko Castle, Middens or Ib and become the first one with the most complex gameplay so far. My hopes are high for this game, and i really wish for it to become more than a demo.
Anyone curiously stumbling on this page should definitely give this game a go - It's punishing like Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon and has deep lore and difficult but addicting combat - If you like dark indie horror RPG's? You owe it to yourself to play this - I of course can't wait for more content :P I was able to painfully learn the ways of the game that was at first, very punishing, then learning the ropes until I could simply destroy all the Teaser-version enemies - (Can't say I'll be as confident with New enemies that have abilities and deadly attacks that I won't be aware of) - Every new enemy and situation is a new danger that can lead to an untimely death.
-My friend. This game is far too explicit. I understand how the game is for a mature audience only, but the things in this game just takes things too far. Aside from the 'satanic' pentagram (which despite the setting still seems like it was thrown in from out of nowhere) you have to remember that in today's day and age, people are extremely squimish with content that depicts any form of rape (even if attempted or implied) sexual gore, and heavy violence.
People might not really be willing to pay to experience something that is too heavy and explicit for them to take part in. For example: feces or visuals depicting this is something that might have players shut the game off and ask for refunds, not neccessarily say 'cool this is fun' Also semen is something that is kinda gross, no? I take it this was not ment to be an errotica game? Then since its not the right place at all for it, many are going to be severely grossed out by this. With the #MeToo movement, you have to know that people in this day and age are stand offish towards anything that involve mistreatment and cruelty such as this.
With that being said, it is very hard to advertise your game because of all this heavy content within it, I had to search to discover this very telling review after coming across F&H from a John Wolfe video showcase. You must include all of this disclaimer on the page (as in actually tell users all the explicit content that could be found in the game, besides just simply 'violent sexual conent' because that could mean anything) which in this case would mean chopped genitals and mass orgies.
I think if the content was massively cleaned up to remove any form of 'rape' or 'gross orgies' feces, and then at least include a save game system, in where a save can be done, this will help at least make it something that players can enjoy playing. With that there are multiple classes that kinda are too similar, such as the mercenaries. I see the outlander and the knight are basically warrior classes, so it really doesn't seem like there's a diffference.
-The thief should be more stealthy and faster, and use a dagger; has less damage, but the enemy misses them often. -The warrior should be stronger (doing more damage) and might be a tad slower. -The archer should use a bow, and perhaps be versitile, using both a sword short and the arrows (give them like the perk to find more perjectiles then the other races, that gives them value and makes the player feel like they are playing the archer role) And of course, make it so that the player can choice different looks and sex (play male or female) change eye color, skin tone. This makes me feel like I'm more in the game.
Also I do apologize for this HUGE writing, I just do like the game. With that being said, I do think that the game is too linier, and would make a better open-world game, then a dungeon crawler (you could still incorporate both into the game) then you can add much, much more content to the game, and give it a whole world that the player can explore. Make it so that outfits can be changed; when the player changes gear it can be seeen in their avatar.
I think having a 'legal' (it's gotta be consensual, come on now bud! :/ ) relationship system is something that would be awesome! Like if the player meets a party member, they have an afinity system. Then THAT way, if you want to include a sex scene that the player can physically see, it would make much more sense and they would feel more attachment to their team members.
That way the survival element becomes much more important, then the screw it i'm gonna just die here anyway, now the main chracter is gunna try to survive much more since they care about the people in their party.
I really do hope that you take all these things into consideration, it would really be an epic thing to see. :)
I completely disagree. The game is exactly explicit enough. Telling Fear and Hunger to be less explicit is like telling a slasher flick to have less boobs and teenager death. The whole point of this game is that it depicts a world that's neck deep in blood sh*t and other horrible bodily fluids -humans and less than humans at their most animalistic and depraved. Terrible things will happen. The Gods are uncaring and will not save you from excruciating suffering. Heck they'll probably add to it. That is the point of this game.
-Pentagrams are not 'thrown in out of nowhere' -the dungeon is full of lunatic cult members that will gut you and draw rituals on the floor with your blood. It's perfectly at home there. -People of "today's day and age" who are offended by disturbing themes and sexual violence should not play a game that heavily markets itself as being full of disturbing themes and sexual violence. If you hate apples do not buy an apple pie and then complain about apples being in it.
Also the #MeToo movement has nothing to do with this game, any less than the gun control movement should affect games like Fortnite. Sexual assault of any woman or man is wrong and should be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. Telling a game developer that they shouldn't depict fictional crimes or violence is lunacy. If you are equating the rape of a pixeled video game character to the sexual abuse of real life women then the problem is not with the developer, but you.
This game was made for people who want to play a difficult filthy medieval rogue-like full of gore and brutality, not for people who think 'feces is too gross' and "let's keep it consensual, bud". By changing it or removing these harsh elements they are moving away from their target audience in favor of trying to appeal to people who would not like the core themes of the game anyway no matter how watered down it got. If this game were to be "cleaned up" as you say then most of the lore, environments, monsters, and story of the game would end up changed or just gone and it would end with it looking like literally any other dungeon rogue-like, too afraid to be shocking in case someone didn't like what they saw. And there are many people out there who will take issue with nearly everything. This game did what it set out to do, and it stands out from many other games right now because of that. I cannot imagine this game being able to keep the developer's vision had this been done by a AAA game publisher or even an Indie Studio.
Any way, the game is rough, bug-ridden, and makes me stressed -but I'm glad I found it (thank you NecoSergal for bringing it to my attention) and am enjoying figuring it out slowly and excruciatingly. Thank you to the developers and people that assisted in the creation of this breath of fresh(rotten?) air to rpgs and rogue-likes.
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Ok, finally got my hands on the new version. Still having a blast as I was half a year ago. Well, can't say anything new here - after all, the aspects of the game i've mentioned in the comment below are all still there (although, apparently, my excitement towards the resemblance of most dead bodies towards the main character hold true no more due to the introduction of new starting classes), so I'm gonna list some events I've encountered.
1. The Mercenary's sprite becomes invisible after he reemerges from the gore pile. Sometimes. Sometimes the animation of emerging plays as usual and the game goes on as intended, but sometimes, no animation is played and the character appears invisible. The game still functions normally, though. The same didn't happen with other characters for me.
2. The corner tiles on the 3rd level (prisons) are passable - as far as my experience with RPG maker goes, you have forgotten to set these tilemaps to untraversable.
3. Cavegnomes on level 3 can pass through prison bars. Due to the nature of the "pass through tiles" event property, I'd suggest the replacement of the Cavegnomes AI: make them spawn and roam above the black void with the event on, but as soon as they see a player, they, after a 1 second delay, rush to the tile coordinate that the player was spotted on with a speed of 6 (sorry, RPGMXP user here, don't know about other versions). Just as they reach that tile, switch "pass through tiles" off and let them chase you the same way they do now.
4. Ok, so I was recently playing with my Mercenary and decided to sacrifice the girl at the altar. I was given the "Summon blood golem" spell, which i used in the battle against lone dark priest. After winning the battle, i've tried to re-summon the golem again, this time in the encounter with 2 other dark priests. However, after i used the skill the game consumed my HP but refised to summon the blood golem, telling me that "He was already in the party", although he definitely wasn't.
That's it for now, i guess. I'll continue playing and tell if i encounter something else worth mentioning.
P.S. Love that Silent Hill 2 reference)
Awesome! Thank for the feedback! I'll do something about the bugs mentioned here. I must say your original theory about the resemblance of the corpses was so good that I considered it myself. But multiple characters was my initial concept of the game, so I decided to roll with it.
I'm glad you caught the reference! You're the first one to mention it :D Silent Hill is a big influence on this project.
V4 Seems to be a bit, super fast, if not 2x or 3x faster than what I'd expect - text, movement and top-screen dialogue move at alarming speeds and I'm unaware of how I can slow it down since there's no options menu to increase/decrease it - is this a bug? Seems too fast than what I'm used to from the last version.
Also, bugs found: Defeating a Skeletal monk that has 2 of them fight you, the 2nd Skeletal monk dies when you win the 1st fight? Intentional? Both NPC units died but 1 was left standing upright, but upon using an action key on the enemy, it was a dead body, yet stood.
- Alchemillia Vol1 and 2 are the same and are both Vol1
More to come.
Hi!! It's definitely not intended to go any faster. It's a bug that was already present in the previous version. The framerate is tied to your monitor's screen refresh rate I belive. Or so I was told. I'm guessing your monitor has 144hz refresh rate?
I just recently discovered this and I have yet to get a solution.
EDIT: I uploaded a version with a tweak. I'm not sure if it fixes the issue though, because I don't have any extra monitors :P I'll have to ask around and confirm this. Sorry for the trouble man! D:
EDIT2: the new download should be okay. At least the animator of the game said his game is running at correct speed now (he had the same problem)
Wait, so it was a bug all along that I simply adapted to in the past version? xDDD and yeah, 144hz. I'll give the new tweak a try, thanks!
Huh, it seems plowing through miriad of copycats and lazy-ass creators CAN lead to something interesting...
There i was, sitting my day off, looking for a game to bash on in the comment section of the Neco's channel, decided to take a peek at the first part of that game's let's play and... got myself unusually enthralled by this wonderfull game.
This is the part where many might say: "Oh, come on! It's just a small, buggy RPG maker horror demo. Yeah, it looks preety, but it lives on the carcass of trial and error gameplay, try playing THAT for more than a couple of hours!" And, indeed, they will be right. This beast really is hard to handle for the hands of normal gamers for the reason of it's savage nature towards player - win'or'lose coin flips that can potentially decimate the otherwise lucky run, enemy attacks and no-escape-trap-rooms that can do the same, constant reliance on luck in terms of getting restorative items and overall chaotic structure of the gameworld rules are to blame.
The thing is... It all works in the end, at least for me. Yeah, these gamedesign decisions are usually pointed as flaws, but here, they are actually really good supplements to the main source of fun in this game, all thanks to these aspects of narrative:
1. Subtlety is strong in this one - the amount of death-screens one will face is reflected onto the game's world - notice, how almost every corpse you find has a strong resemblance to your own sprite, how every ghoul enemy pleads for death if intimidated all while wearing your distorted face, how, after failing "the save throw", you, completely decimated, can end up in the dungeon full of what looks like copies of yourself. Also, every book you read is dictated to you bo some sort of narrator, who actually tries to convince you that it is what YOU think, without any way to confirm the information yourself... As if the Mercenary (the hero of the game) is nothing but a fragile shell, manipulated into doing what the unknown entity wants.
2. The overall mocking attitude of the game towards the player. So, you want to jump down the hole into the fecal pit? Sure, go ahead. Ooops, you can't get out now. Oh, you've won the coin flip? Here take this book that you already have. My my, you grew confindent enough to engage every enemy on the level? Oh, you've missed once and now you're dead, what a pity! Yeah, this game tries to pull out the rug under your feet, but does so to a certain extend. Breezing through the demo without major loses is very much possible, and is actually satisfying - being able to counter every bullshit the game throws at you makes you switch sides - you become the one mocking the game.
3. Interesting approaches to decision-making. Although few due to the game's shortness, there were some moments that made me really satisfied from the sheer ambiguosity they present. The most notable example is this - at some point, you will be given the option to trade your party-member for some sort of probable benefit. You can get a weapon, and it is really powerfull... in theory. In the end, you are left without a reliable way to dispose of Guard enemies by trading an additional life-saving attack, as said weapon won't kill them outright, and, despite it's much bigger damage, you will still have to rely on dismemberment in order to not die in 1 hit. And you soon find out that your standart sword is as efficient at dismembement as that overkill weapon. Plus, you get it at the end of the demo. Haw, haw!
These three points alone are enough to hook me up on this game and to stay hopefull for it's eventuall full release. This may very well turn out to be the new Witch's house, Mogeko Castle, Middens or Ib and become the first one with the most complex gameplay so far. My hopes are high for this game, and i really wish for it to become more than a demo.
Anyone curiously stumbling on this page should definitely give this game a go - It's punishing like Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon and has deep lore and difficult but addicting combat - If you like dark indie horror RPG's? You owe it to yourself to play this - I of course can't wait for more content :P I was able to painfully learn the ways of the game that was at first, very punishing, then learning the ropes until I could simply destroy all the Teaser-version enemies - (Can't say I'll be as confident with New enemies that have abilities and deadly attacks that I won't be aware of) - Every new enemy and situation is a new danger that can lead to an untimely death.
-My friend. This game is far too explicit.
I understand how the game is for a mature audience only, but the things in this game just takes things too far. Aside from the 'satanic' pentagram (which despite the setting still seems like it was thrown in from out of nowhere)
you have to remember that in today's day and age, people are extremely squimish with content that depicts any form of rape (even if attempted or implied) sexual gore, and heavy violence.
People might not really be willing to pay to experience something that is too heavy and explicit for them to take part in. For example: feces or visuals depicting this is something that might have players shut the game off and ask for refunds, not neccessarily say 'cool this is fun'
Also semen is something that is kinda gross, no? I take it this was not ment to be an errotica game? Then since its not the right place at all for it, many are going to be severely grossed out by this. With the #MeToo movement, you have to know that people in this day and age are stand offish towards anything that involve mistreatment and cruelty such as this.
With that being said, it is very hard to advertise your game because of all this heavy content within it, I had to search to discover this very telling review after coming across F&H from a John Wolfe video showcase. You must include all of this disclaimer on the page (as in actually tell users all the explicit content that could be found in the game, besides just simply 'violent sexual conent' because that could mean anything) which in this case would mean chopped genitals and mass orgies.
I think if the content was massively cleaned up to remove any form of 'rape' or 'gross orgies' feces, and then at least include a save game system, in where a save can be done, this will help at least make it something that players can enjoy playing. With that there are multiple classes that kinda are too similar, such as the mercenaries. I see the outlander and the knight are basically warrior classes, so it really doesn't seem like there's a diffference.
-The thief should be more stealthy and faster, and use a dagger; has less damage, but the enemy misses them often.
-The warrior should be stronger (doing more damage) and might be a tad slower.
-The archer should use a bow, and perhaps be versitile, using both a sword short and the arrows (give them like the perk to find more perjectiles then the other races, that gives them value and makes the player feel like they are playing the archer role)
And of course, make it so that the player can choice different looks and sex (play male or female) change eye color, skin tone. This makes me feel like I'm more in the game.
Also I do apologize for this HUGE writing, I just do like the game.
With that being said, I do think that the game is too linier, and would make a better open-world game, then a dungeon crawler (you could still incorporate both into the game) then you can add much, much more content to the game, and give it a whole world that the player can explore. Make it so that outfits can be
changed; when the player changes gear it can be seeen in their avatar.
I think having a 'legal' (it's gotta be consensual, come on now bud! :/ ) relationship system is something that would be awesome!
Like if the player meets a party member, they have an afinity system.
Then THAT way, if you want to include a sex scene that the player can physically see, it would make much more sense and they would feel more attachment to their team members.
That way the survival element becomes much more important, then the screw it i'm gonna just die here anyway, now the main chracter is gunna try to survive much more since they care about the people in their party.
I really do hope that you take all these things into consideration, it would really be an epic thing to see. :)
wut
I completely disagree. The game is exactly explicit enough.
Telling Fear and Hunger to be less explicit is like telling a slasher flick to have less boobs and teenager death. The whole point of this game is that it depicts a world that's neck deep in blood sh*t and other horrible bodily fluids -humans and less than humans at their most animalistic and depraved. Terrible things will happen. The Gods are uncaring and will not save you from excruciating suffering. Heck they'll probably add to it. That is the point of this game.
-Pentagrams are not 'thrown in out of nowhere' -the dungeon is full of lunatic cult members that will gut you and draw rituals on the floor with your blood. It's perfectly at home there.
-People of "today's day and age" who are offended by disturbing themes and sexual violence should not play a game that heavily markets itself as being full of disturbing themes and sexual violence. If you hate apples do not buy an apple pie and then complain about apples being in it.
Also the #MeToo movement has nothing to do with this game, any less than the gun control movement should affect games like Fortnite. Sexual assault of any woman or man is wrong and should be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. Telling a game developer that they shouldn't depict fictional crimes or violence is lunacy. If you are equating the rape of a pixeled video game character to the sexual abuse of real life women then the problem is not with the developer, but you.
This game was made for people who want to play a difficult filthy medieval rogue-like full of gore and brutality, not for people who think 'feces is too gross' and "let's keep it consensual, bud". By changing it or removing these harsh elements they are moving away from their target audience in favor of trying to appeal to people who would not like the core themes of the game anyway no matter how watered down it got.
If this game were to be "cleaned up" as you say then most of the lore, environments, monsters, and story of the game would end up changed or just gone and it would end with it looking like literally any other dungeon rogue-like, too afraid to be shocking in case someone didn't like what they saw. And there are many people out there who will take issue with nearly everything.
This game did what it set out to do, and it stands out from many other games right now because of that. I cannot imagine this game being able to keep the developer's vision had this been done by a AAA game publisher or even an Indie Studio.
Any way, the game is rough, bug-ridden, and makes me stressed -but I'm glad I found it (thank you NecoSergal for bringing it to my attention) and am enjoying figuring it out slowly and excruciatingly. Thank you to the developers and people that assisted in the creation of this breath of fresh(rotten?) air to rpgs and rogue-likes.