Lemma Soft Forums

xD Japanese aside, it seems that Death Rule has seen quite a lot of progress lately!! :3 I'm going to DL the demo and hopefully I'll get to playing and reviewing it soon!

_________________
tumblr | twitter | I believe in you!

Its summer, of course there will be plenty of progress
And Ill be keeping my eye out for it :3

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Updated the first post with stuff I should have added a while back. Oh, and before I forget: there's a poll I'm running ATM. The winner of the poll will actually get a special scene that can be viewed at the end of the game. Maybe it will be their own happy ending, or perhaps them getting a wish granted? Who knows?

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Why am I the only one who voted for Morgan? XD

Anyway, very nice. The censored sketch is intriguing though.
AND GOD JAPANESE I CAN'T UNDERSTAND *attempts to Google Translate*

_________________

Soul and Heart |Twin Faces [NaNoRenO] | my deviantART account | Lion Box Studio's update and development blog

Because people have little hope in her abilities? Iono ._.
And you might find that sketch interesting Considering it has something to do with one of the confirmed ships of this game...
And the japanese I used was simply a reference to another game

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Did this on a whim, but still, promotion:

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

OOOHHH!! Nice promo material!! *jealous of Hijiri's skills* ;______;

Now on to that demo review I've been meaning to write!!

First Impression/Menus:
-- Your attention/disclaimer message in the beginning (after the studio splash screen) seems to be a bit too high up. Try adding more of a margin at the top so the exclamation point's circle isn't bumping up against the top edge of the window.
-- I'm going to guess that this is not the final version of the main menu layout. I love the buttons/system ready graphics, but just the image of a forest does not leave a very exciting impression of the game for me. I would suggest putting some shadowy figures in, but that probably wouldn't look good. Hopefully I'll think of something better to suggest later OTL
-- In the "Assistance" section, the glowing white text is a bit hard to read over the white hexagons. Consider darkening the background?
-- I think there was an earlier suggestion to move the "Display Game," "After Choice," etc, setting headers to the left side of their respective boxes. I actually think that that would be helpful now that the GUI is in action. It took me a second too long to notice that the headers were aligned on the right side, which is a minor inconvenience to the player but could be mitigated. It might be a little tedious to edit (esp. if you merge your layers), but if you think it's worth the effort you may want to consider revising this positioning.
-- The grey/red background clashes in a odd way with the green boxes in the settings/load/save screens. Try adding more contrast to the bg so there's more variation in saturation? (In that particular edit, I just changed the contrast to 18 using the Brightness/Contrast tool in gimp, avoiding all the boxes)

Death Rule:
-- I LOVE YOUR IN GAME GUI (esp. the textbox) ;______; At first I thought the way it faded at the edges was a little weird but in the end it looks really good with the overall game and serves it's purpose well.
-- It would definitely be helpful if there was some way for us to check the rules of the Game as well as everyone's Death Rules. Since there isn't a lot of stress on who has what number in the story (like the characters don't call each other by their numbers so far), then it's really hard to remember who is supposed to be killing who, etc. Though, I do like the format you presented all the information in!!
--
-- When Abraham says
-- Is Hector's scene where he's alone in the beginning really necessary?
-- I loved the Dwight/Tinasa/Tanya/Abraham scene xD OH DWIGHT. His face was great.
-- Love the final count thing going on after the day is over.


False Execution:
-- Sorry, after I read the first 2 sentences I couldn't read anymore ;_______;

General Comments:
-- Please make a button to return to the main menu somewhere in the settings or load/save screens ;______; This would be helpful if you wanted to leave your game without saving and without quitting (closing the game window). I wanted badly to leave False Execution without saving or closing the window but there seemed to be no way to just navigate back to the main menu. At the very least, make some kind of back to the main menu navigation at the chapter selection screen.
-- On your main menu, you use the term "Preferences," but once you actually navigate to other menus, it magically transforms into "Settings." People will get the message, but from a player's perspective it looks inconsistent and makes me feel like you just forgot what term you used previously. I realize that "Preferences" is a longer word and looks nicer on the main menu could have been a consideration. This is just a nitpick of mine, so take it with a grain of salt.

Overall, I'm super excited for the final release now!! Great work so far and I'm looking forward to seeing more updates! *U*

_________________
tumblr | twitter | I believe in you!

Thanks for that!
-Yeah, it's getting corrected, that part. Currently I have it like this
-No, the BG for the menu is currently temporary until I find something else.
-I'll fix it up ina bit.
-I was thinking about revising the GUI for the billionth time but considering the complaints about this, I guess it would be adviseable to do it.
-The navigation was originally supposed to be accesable from the game itself without entering the screens, but I got to it ^^;



-Thanks ^^
-I can probably create a menu showing the Death Rules and Objectives, but I would have to omit the names of the Players since it's a key point to the plot that you don't know who's
-I used that scene to showcase an ability as well as go into details about them, so it does have a point. And the reason I did that was because
-The time they meet is during the Combat Prohibition Stage, which, as the name suggests, forbids fighting of any kind. They may or may not trust each other, but considering that they can't attack each other for the moment, they see no reason to not be so up front.

-IKR, Katon makes amazing facial expressions
- It helps to keep track of things and to remind myself who I killed off.


It is hinted at by what killed them a few lines later as well as later in the story, but not detailed. Besides


-Considering what I plan to do next, this should be fixed, as well as giving more save slots.
-*See above*
-Thanks, I'll be sure not to dissapoint

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Considering how often it has been requested, I went ahead and finally did the Player Screen:

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

I had this demo on my hard drive for a short while, and managed to find some time I didn't mind spending on it yesterday.

The "Survival Game" genre is something we could easily afford to see more of, as it's barely been touched in the EVN realm as far as I remember. I definitely have a strong want for something action-y or faster paced. There just isn't enough stuff in this hobby that actually gets blood pumping through you furiously. There's little excitement, which is why I was drawn to try this out.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get engaged with the demo here. I'm appreciative of the attempt to keep the pace fast, but really, it's wayyy too fast and leaves the reader behind. Rather than keeping the action constantly going, it feels more like a frame skip and we keep jumping ahead:


- Everyone seems to adapt way too quickly to their current predicament. You might have types that are quick, but you are also gonna have types that need time to transition into it. And if anything, you help the reader get immersed through that transition. There are some rather annoying expositional tropes with survival games, but you can't go in assuming everyone (characters and readers both) is super genre-savvy. And since some of the cast seems to have been abducted, some pretty severe disorientation is pretty much expected.

- The rules are mentioned in passing and never expanded or explored. The four main rules are just dumped upon us through a girl who is way too confused to process it, but then they aren't run through more capable hands later. We don't know of all the ramifications and/or nuances of the rules because they aren't explored at all. It's also hard to commit them to memory, because there is no discussion on them. I can't even remember what the four main rules are now, only how many of them there were.

- We know nothing about the context or the scope of the killing game. In fact, what few details are given paint an even blurrier picture than our first impressions compose. We start with an abductee who knows nothing and shift perspectives into a man who has intel to die for, and we're given no ranges in between. Just how well known are the games? Is it a nationally renown event like in the Hunger Games, where everyone knows what awaits them? Is it a completely black, super secret event that no one has ever heard of? Is it somewhere in the middle, like part of an underworldian society where you have to be in on it --- like the human horse-racing rings in Kaiji or the Holy Grail War in Fate/Stay Night? They all seem to have different amounts of exposure, and we're not given a base line for what would be the most common level of said exposure. This becomes really important because it'll also determine how you introduce the mechanics of the game to the player. If there are people completely in the dark, you can have the reader discover the game with them. If it is a widely-known event, you can have easy open discussions between the cast.


As it stands right now, though, it just moves too fast. It charges through every detail like the story is in a huge hurry to be finished. Without expansion and exposition, it makes the piece hard to follow and *impossible* to absorb. Just a single night later, I can barely remember a single thing that happened in it, let alone any of the sub-surface details. Slow it down, stretch it out a little, teach us about this world. And then teach us again one more time so it sticks. For good measure. I'm at least glad you didn't go the other way with this, repeating details over and over that we readers well know by now (looking at you, Phoenix Wright), but this isn't a leaps-and-bounds improvement either. If I can't keep up, I can't keep reading.

_________________
http://www.twitter.com/drakeynv
The Compendium of Drake :
Starlit Sky ~ Songs of Araiah ~ Mirai Imouto ~ Temple Glen ~ Fuyu no Tabi

Y'Know, I'm gonna take this time to say thank you. Thank you for actually tearing down the game and seeing it as it is, and especially how I can change things. This is the kind of feedback I crave, and I'm grateful for it.

-I hoped to explain this away with the 3rd rule (No fighting for 12 hours) but I guess it didn't work much. And I guess I'll have to add a more detailed look at them, because at the moment, there are 3 people who have a basic understanding of the Game.

-By keeping things under wraps, I hoped to give a feel that this was something that was out of the ordinary, almost fictional for the characters. However, I do explain later on just what the magnitude of the game really is through one of the characters who truly knows what is going on, but only when things start going to hell. And I think you just gave me a clue as to where I should give readers a better understanding...

One of the things I was worried about sounding like I was just making things strech on, which is very noticeable in games/stories like this, thus the lack of expantion, but considering how I've been told to expand on the setting numerous times, I really should do that. Fortunately for me, I'm not neck deep into a section that would be rendered useless if I expand on the earlier sections, so it won't be hard to do.
Again, thank you.

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Simple lint check.

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

When I try to play, I get an error.

"I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
IOError: Couldn't find file '_theme_amie2/button.png'."

_________________

Get the file I attach to this post and put it in your "common" folder.

_________________

MESI Games/Personal Twitter/Death Rule: lost code Demo

Thank you; it works now and I played both episodes. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them and can't wait to see more.

_________________