Ember Sky: Demo Release

[A Forgotten Legend]

---Late comment:

Skimpy...?  Like short?  or just like...  not enough information in them?

...nevermind.

[Phayre]

As in Christophe running around in a string bikini. What do you think? *smack*
No, they just seems really short and lacking in substance.

[A Forgotten Legend]

lol.  ...that somehow wouldn't surprise me if it was Caolan...

[Phayre]

Oh, that's scarring. I never thought of Caolan as the "I could see him happily crossdressing" type.... o.o Maybe Arin, though.
AHEM! CHANGING THE TOPIC...
Ember Sky still needs some NPCs; there are plenty of spaces left. the castle is about 90% done, so GET ON IT! Ha, just kidding. As always, still need suggestions, comments, and no, old poorly done screenshots and "witty commentary" don't count. *eyeroll*

[coasterkrazy]

Ok, so I'm a bit late, but I just downloaded the demo, which I'll play at some point. I just wanted to mention that I LOVE the music that you're using for the title screen. I taught myself how to play it on the piano a while back. :p

[Phayre]

Yes, that is why I love AFL here. *glomps*
Wait... you did write that, right? *stuffs head in project folder* Hmm. Why can't I remember this stuff?

[A Forgotten Legend]

...read the complete resource description better.  


Anyway...

[coasterkrazy]

Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable demo. Sure there were some problems and such throughout (mostly with mapping and sometimes with events), but there was nothing  too major that hindered the gameplay. What I liked about it was that it kept moving. I didn't have to sit and wait forever for anything. The dialog was to the point and the battles were quick and easy. However, this did end up making it pretty short, so I'm hoping you plan on having the full version be around 100 times as long as that demo.

I'm assuming the battles were so easy because it was the beginning of the game. I was glad about that because I don't think anything should really be challenging in the very beginning. The boss, though it was rather simple and practical, worked because you somehow made it one of those things that you can just win but not by much, so it keeps you interested, so good job with that.

Now that I'm done with all those things that I liked, here are some non-mapping-related little things that bothered me a bit. First of all, he acts as though being in debt 500 Argent is a big deal, when you can go into the forest and get that from battling for about 5 minutes. I tried going back to the pub to see if you threw in something where you could pay back, but as I expected, you couldn't. I suggest having the beginning monsters (or any monsters maybe) not give you any money to avoid this. Another thing that irked me a bit was how Caolin could focus outside of battle. This made it extremely easy to deal with magic loss, and though it worked well for this demo, I don't think it would work for the whole game. One last problem was your eventing (I know this could be considered slightly mapping-related, but I don't really think so). It seemed rather thrown together. For instance, when you walk through a door, you arrive on the other side facing the same direction no matter what, even when you should be facing a different direction. To avoid this, I suggest always setting the direction for teleporting, except when it is absolutely necessary to face the same direction. Some other event-related things could be touched up too, such as using more animations and not just having things appear (doors should open and close and Caolin could appear with some effect, whether it be a screenfade or simply walking out of Christophe Final Fantasy style).

Mapping is a whole different issue. I won't go into detail because there are so many things you could work on, like making things more rounded and using all tiles correctly. I suggest you look up some mapping tutorials or stuff. The maps weren't bad really, they just too often had obvious errors.

Other than that, I have no complaints. I don't think I know enough about the story to judge it, and I'm interested in knowing what happens so that's good; the music was all fine and every MIDI fit in well; and the sprites were nice. Overall, I'll say 7/10 for this demo, which I hope you don't consider a bad score. Fixing all of those little annoying things will go a long way. It could easily raise the demo score to a 8.5 or higher IMO. I wouldn't bother rereleasing this demo though (you probably wouldn't anyway). Just fix those things up for next time. Good luck and keep it up!

[Phayre]

Ah yes! My first real review!
Most of the problems, I'm glad to say, are already fixed. And the real demo is a good deal longer. So.... play this demo, and the new one will be out fairly soon. Maybe with a new style of battlechars, definitely rehauled maps (less Mac and Blue, I promise), and more gameplay, including more of ES's storyline. PM me if you're interested in helping out, beta testing, whatever.