A couple of suggestions. (Mainly camera, robot, and control related.)

With the Last Guardian on infinite hold, I was looking for something to fill the lack of team TRICO in my life, and was hoping this game would be it.

As such, attached are a list of things that I personally would like to see, in no particular order.  Some of these things may be already intended to be implemented, but I have not found a "Upcoming Features" list anywhere, so here I go.


・Camera Rotation Buttons and free-view mode.

Since the game uses a following camera instead of static camera per room approach, I would like being able to designate two buttons to rotate the camera left, and rotate the camera right.  A zoom in/out would be nice too, if it doesn't interfere with the vision you had for this game.

I would also appreciate a free-view mode where you can look around from the viewpoint of the girl, or the robot.  I did like the windows that were accessible that had nothing to do with the puzzle that you could look out of.  A free-view mode would have been amazing to have at that point to view the scenery outside those windows.  Gamers have always loved to look at the world outside of the immediate game area, and that would be a great tool to use to further the depth of the game world.


・Robot combat.

Unless the difficulty is going to scale as you advance through the rooms, I felt that with the robot's ability to 4 shot (5 if the target blocks) with his bow, made combat borderline trivial.

After realizing I had a bow, I decided to shoot the first robot I saw from a distance.  With practically no reload time, the enemy was reduced into a pile of scrap within a few seconds.

Even when I was assaulted by multiple robots, I just turned around and ran back, they slowly followed me, and were also reduced to scrap.

I really like the decision to not allow the robot to move when shooting.  It did add an element of risk management.  If there are more types of robots, like fast moving ones, or a horde, they would close the distance and mob you if you decided to be a sniper.  And I am also under the assumption that there would be at least one puzzle where you have to protect the girl from getting killed, which would not be an optimal time to be standing still and sniping.

I personally would like side step and backstep options with a double tab to liven up the sword fighting.  They could be tied into the robot's shield stamina bar thing to ensure that they would not be abused, and allow the user a choice to try to dodge the swipe or take it with the shield.

In terms of actual sword fighting, if possible, I would like to see a sword swipe intended for attacking your enemy, and a wide swipe that would hit multiple enemies in your front arc, but do less damage.  Of course, that would increase the number of buttons required for combat, which seemed like the opposite of your goals.


・Controls

I would like for keybindings setup to be accessible ingame.  And building on that, the current version (0.005) does not detect the direction-pad of my USB controller, and also will not let me set any of my mouse buttons as a keybind.

The one thing that threw me off slightly was the way you had to move the character when using a keyboard/mouse setup.  I personally would have appreciated limited strafe left/right buttons that I can swap my A and D keys to for when I play this game with keyboard and mouse.  I assumed that this would be a non-issue for people who used controllers with the thumb sticks, but have yet to unpack my xbox controller to test that out.


・World, art, all that fancy stuff.

Immediately, I was drawn in to the world and the art of the game.  I am always a sucker for the in medias res style of storytelling where we get to find out about the character, often alongside the character.  Until we see more of the story unfold, I can't really offer much in this regards.  I hope you can find a good pace to serve us the information throughout the game.

The art itself is really cute and heart-warming.  The modelling could use a little more work, but is in the ballpark of the balance I like between realistic and fantasy, fitting for this type of game.


Conclusion:

I enjoyed the teaser immensely, although I would like the ability to bind the shield block to a mouse key, right now I have to figure out what key I want to bind the shield to.

It is my firm belief that you guys have a solid foundation to build a wonderful game upon.  Thank you for following through with the kickstarter, and I hope we can see more of this game soon!

Yeah, I was thinking the robot combat could stand to be a little more challenging too, and different kinds of enemy robots would definitely spice it up. I was hoping that there would be an enemy archer robot. That would instantly upgrade the difficulty level, forcing you to sneak around and use stealth. The girl would probably be better at that, even though she is probably the main target.

If you watch the teaser video, there appears to be another robot with a shield.  It can also be seen in one of their artwork pieces.  I would assume there to be others as well eventually.

Yes, that reminds me. If the queen's color theme is purple, why were there red shields and banners on the walls as well as purple ones, since red is obviously the girl/robot's color theme. Also, if the red pendent was in the castle to begin with, why didn't the queen just take it and control all the robots, including Gold?

Great suggestions, thank you! We will definitely look into some of those things (particularly the combat).

At the same time, the combat element shouldn't overshadow the puzzle element. I think that a good balance of the two is what is going to help make this game great. And of course, not just puzzles for their own sake, but ones that make sense in the context of their environment. If combat could be mixed with puzzles, like getting one of the blackguard robots to chase you and step on a button, that would make the game even more interesting. Puzzles with timers drive me crazy, but they also give you a rush of adrenaline, which makes the game that much more exciting.

gwolffe wrote:And of course, not just puzzles for their own sake, but ones that make sense in the context of their environment.

I couldn't say that better myself.  There are tons of games where I solve a really tough puzzle and am left with the notion that it was just some obstacle a dev through in to make the game harder.  Good puzzles don't leave you wondering why they exist, but instead convey the feeling that they have a purpose, such as preventing you from reaching an object.  And the very best puzzles are the optional ones that provide you with great advantages.  For instance, you could fight through a horde of robots... or you could unlock a door leading to a control room that disables some of them.  Doing this can reward the player with a sense of accomplishment, because they were able to develop their own "solution" to a problem.  However, people who hate complicated puzzles can bypass the door and fight the horde instead.  This strategy also helps to cater to a wider group of gamers; puzzle solvers and combat-oriented people.

At least they have a premise that helps with the suspension of disbelief of having hard puzzles in the castle.

But to build on what Ericius said, it would be amazing if the game can be tailored so that challenges can overlap in a way that people who don't like puzzles as much can brute-force their way through some of it with the robot, and people who don't like combat can evade combat by either bypassing the area or preemptively destroying robots using the girl.

Of course, the selling point of this game is being the Girl and the Robot, so I would say being able to skew the ratio of playtime between characters from 5:5 to like 4:6, based on which style the player likes more.

Also, for some reason the cooperative mode of a certain game came to mind, which made me think it would be cool if a cooperative mode could be unlocked after beating the game, where two players can play each of the characters at the same time to do things like speedruns and various achievement style things, in altered rooms of the castle made to support such a mode.

hanabichan wrote:Also, for some reason the cooperative mode of a certain game came to mind, which made me think it would be cool if a cooperative mode could be unlocked after beating the game, where two players can play each of the characters at the same time to do things like speedruns and various achievement style things, in altered rooms of the castle made to support such a mode.

Not to derail a perfectly good thread or anything, but a cooperative mode would be quite fun, especially for the Wii U. The console is almost designed for such a game play.

hanabichan wrote:At least they have a premise that helps with the suspension of disbelief of having hard puzzles in the castle.

But to build on what Ericius said, it would be amazing if the game can be tailored so that challenges can overlap in a way that people who don't like puzzles as much can brute-force their way through some of it with the robot, and people who don't like combat can evade combat by either bypassing the area or preemptively destroying robots using the girl.

Of course, the selling point of this game is being the Girl and the Robot, so I would say being able to skew the ratio of playtime between characters from 5:5 to like 4:6, based on which style the player likes more.

Also, for some reason the cooperative mode of a certain game came to mind, which made me think it would be cool if a cooperative mode could be unlocked after beating the game, where two players can play each of the characters at the same time to do things like speedruns and various achievement style things, in altered rooms of the castle made to support such a mode.

That's a cool idea! And maybe there could be alternate endings depending on which strategy the player prefers, affecting the characters' personality development; cerebral/peaceful vs. thoughtless combat.

Of course, in the end, it is Salim's story to weave. And I don't want to make more work for him. The premise of the game is already stellar the way it is.