Heikou

[mikey]

Certainly there's one aspect mikey won't be too fond of.

Right, I finally get what you meant. ^_^ Despite this, I hope you can read through some comments of mine.

I won't make a big secret out of it - it's really true, just about my least favorite game genre is a fantasy RPG (which has a positive effect that many potentially time-consuming JRPG titles just pass me by ^_^) so I'm not really a person to judge Heikou in this aspect. But I must say it's not unfriendly to a non-fantasy person.

Fans of the genre will have more competence in this, but I think for a fantasy RPG-ish title Heikou sets solid standards, there's several different types of opponents and a stats system even I can understand. A nice feature is that the characters battle are in realtime, and that adds a sense of urgency. I also appreciated that the game isn't anything hardcore, I won all the battles and most of the time running away allowed me to play Heikou more like a VN than an RPG. But I suppose there is logic behind the attacks, some may work better on some opponents and so on.

I also have to compliment the sheer number of endings - either the story is that epic or that diverse - it seems to have more than just one storyline though and there's several hints at a backtory, although I must say there was practically no ren'ai in my path.

Now for a really a great feature of your games Grey, they have fantastic gameplay and it was the only aspect I was going to compare with Kasuka. Many choices, and the fact that I could choose answers like "whatever" (to magic) and even hide from battles (so what, I don't like killing living things! - especially not spiders) made it appealing to me, because you can play it YOUR way. I was happy to be able to show Yarrow how little I was interested, and the ending with me getting back home ASAP made me happy for her as well.

Some nice effects like the floating imp and redouts, spider net perspective, plus there's the obligatory maze (dungeon you call it) and I noticed that after a certain time the imp comes to help you out of the labyrinth. Is that triggered after a certain time or only at a certain spot? I'd guess it's the former, which yet again is an intelligent gameplay feature (but maybe it's a standard in these games, I really don't know that much).

It's needless to say I have not become an RPG or fantasy fan and of course Heikou isn't suddenly going to be my cup of tea (I'm don't even think it was dark, hmmm), but a fantasy title had to come one day and I think the many fans can be happy that it has gameplay as high in quality as Heikou.

[Kikered]

To add on to the first bug reported:

It happened to me again while still in the forest (bet path), prior to the marsh. I've noticed that in both cases, it loops through blank text boxes until a group of monsters are encountered. Then the game proceeds afterwards. Perhaps this is a bug from forcing a non-boss encounter onto the players?

[Grey]

Kilkred - Do you think you can recreate the bug and send me a save file? Or PM me the approximate choices you made? I'll check again, but I didn't find anything like this on any of the bet paths in testing.

Mikey: Yeah, thats the bit I meant. Thanks for the review, I'm glad that you can still find it playable despite that.

Yeah there are a lot of endings (it suprised me when I counted up), but

They're more catering for different outcomes. There are indeed several storylines, some are more renai than others.

Some paths, like the disinterested one don't really result in any renai.

I'd call it a maze rather than a dungeon. Yeah Imp turns up periodically. It isn't standard, but then Heikou isn't really an RPG. And forcing the player to wander around the placefor hours is not the way to make people happy with your game o_o;

So thanks for that. It's nice to hear a favourable perspective on it from someone who isn't so much into RPG sorts of games, or fantasy settings

[Cazel]

Alright, played through 6 times, got two 1s, two 3s, and two 6s. I like this game. Very entertaining.

I did hit an apparent bug though. While on route to ending 6d, at the beginning of the second morning it appeared that I got a deju vu moment, a few lines in it started to repeat itself, though thankfully this only happened once.

All in all, great game. So much more I can tell I need to try out. Ah well, I'll have to keep trying later, see what new things I can find.

[gekiganwing]

Good aspect #1: out of three Flash based games I've tried, this is easily the best. With a few typo corrections, it would blow the first two Forkheads games out of the water.

Good aspect #2: it worked very well on Virtual PC.

Good aspect #3: after seeing it mentioned in the credits, I started seeing the similarity to Radical Dreamers. Very nice inspiration for a hybrid game.

Good aspect #4: my first ending was 1e, which wasn't bad at all. And if the others match it...

Good aspect #5: the combat is at least as good as Lemma's game.

Downside #1: no ability to save.

Downside #2: I still don't like 3d mazes. Phantasy Star 1 is the scariest game I know...

[mikey]

Good aspect #1: out of three Flash based games I've tried, this is easily the best. With a few typo corrections, it would blow the first two Forkheads games out of the water.

I think it would do so even when it was all typos. You can't really compare those.

[Grey]

Thanks cazel and gekiganwing

Gekiganwing:

1. Typos? I thought I eliminated most of them. *sigh* Note though that some (colour etc) may be the British english spellings of words. If anyone spots possible typos then PM them to me please.

2. I'm quite suprised actually o_o;

6. Didn't the save/load function work on Virtual PC then?


Also I've released version 1.0.2, which fixes the bug Kikered mentioned, which could theoretically do the same thing in other parts of the game in which the same circumstances arise. It isn't critical that you re-download it though, since you seem to be able to recover from the error when it comes up.

[ChaoticAtomBomb]

i just cannot get this game to workk...downloaded he macromedia, and still no go... help?

[Grey]

Did you get the standalone player from this site?

What OS are you using, and what spec machine are you running it on?

Also what happend when you run the exe file?

[ChaoticAtomBomb]

win XP, yes from that site, and was the game supposed to come w/ an .exe file? all I found was an .rar file...and when i installed the flashplayer, it just installed...


n/m just downloaded a beta of WinRAR, and it worked to extract...all goood

[chronoluminaire]

Wow, cool game. Have been away on holiday for a couple of days, but am very chuffed to have played it. I've only played through twice so far, getting first 1b (very characteristic of me) then stupidly dying in the final combat <_< (I thought I could take one more hit before I needed to take a potion...) Am very intrigued by the variety promised by the other comments here and the number of endings: I'm looking forward to playing it some more! Great stuff!

[Cazel]

Alright, in playing it sporadically I've now managed to unlock the omake section. In the character section, when I choose Yarrow or Aliki, I see their character art and... nothing else happens. Is this intentional, do I need to do more to get some actual text, or is this a bug? Otherwise, I continue to enjoy the game. Most of the endings have been interesting, and some, like ending 7, are just too much fun.

Any chance of a sequel?

[Guest]

I think I've found another bug...

In the variation where Yarrow eventually uses magic to bind you after you ask too many questions about the power (oops, haha ^_^), after everything's completed, the screen fades away and then... does nothing. No ending, continuation, credits, just... blank.

Great game by the way.

[Grey]

Cazel
I did the omake section pretty quickly, and asking about Yarrow and Aliki varies as to how many endings you've got. I know their text works when you've got them all, but there could easily be a problem with the lesser numbre of endings.

Guest
Just checked this and that ending works fine on mine...at which point do things just go blank (after what text etc?)

Can you see if you can replicate it for me, and make a savegame before the point?

[Guest]

How strange... I saved it and went on, and it didn't work, but after I loaded the save, it went on... wierd, and there was a lot more than I thought. Well, I'll say where it went blank then. Let's see... it goes blank when

Right after Yarrow forces you in the center and stabs you, and the screen blacks out. The last words said are from the main character, saying "...the pain!" Nothing about 'reviving' or 'gaining power' was shown.

...Okay, it seems that whenever I go from start to finish without saving in between, the screen freezes at the above spot. But if I load a savestate, then the game continues and finishes normally. I do have a savestate now, but it works fine, haha.