Cute Knight Kingdom (sim/RPG, Win/Mac/Linux, commercial)

[papillon]

Who's got missing glasses? The only character I remember with glasses is Armand at the cultural center, and he has them in his face picture as well... It's possible I forgot somebody, though.

[musical74]

Looks like it just APPEARS that a few might have glasses but don't - it kind of looks like Sehk does, but he doesn't...

One things I've noticed is that there's a LOT of different things that can happen - like other characters visiting the main character because she were there, or little pieces of info that happen...also found out that

she can definitely hold her liquor!

and the way you learn charms is both interesting and challenging! GOOD stuff! I also like how certain roles are reversed, not sure if that was inentional or not, but I do like that the hunter is female and that guards are all female! Maybe it makes the game feel more *friendly*?

Do have one question...is it even possible to enter the royal court except during the festival? Seems either A) you have to get your XP past the third level or B) some other thing I haven't seen yet...

[papillon]

is it even possible to enter the royal court except during the festival?

At the moment, no. Really early in development I thought there might be, but I couldn't think of enough to do with the idea and dropped it. The most logical way IMO to get into the court would be to meet and befriend a noble, but then I'd need to think of what you could achieve after managing to get in.

I intend to do a free update sometime next year adding a few new endings and one that's been suggested is

an ending with both the prince and the princess

which might involve needing to enter the court and speak to the king and queen, but I don't know.

For the side characters, when I first started plotting I knew what roles needed to be filled in each area and tried to assign them to get a good balance of gender, age, ethnicity, and so on. Some characters I had a strong mental image of (Lottie was one - I wanted a short plump teenage girl guard) and others got traits at random to start with and developed from there. I can't entirely remember which parts were random by now though.

[neowired]

I want to comment on this one.
First and foremost, because this is not only a multi-person project, but also a commercial game, and clearly very similar to Princess Maker, I’m going to be very picky with my analysis.
Think of my comment as a commercial review. I’ll be trying to help you making this better, obviously you can disregard all the points I make if you want to, because it’s all a very personal opinion of someone who can be very picky indeed. But still, maybe my review will show you something you missed and what you agree on.

Introduction is too much like a bad princes maker 2 clone, it made me cringe
Sprites look really bad
Fonts are too big, and also make me cringe
You should at least get a smaller main chara sprite for traveling the world map, otherwise it looks really bad
The concentration/exertion system seems a bit flawed, i exhausted my mana too much once while working and it drained both my hp and mp permanently by almost 1/3, if you don't see how this is flawed then forget I said it
If you compare this to princess maker, this game just goes on, without much visible purpose, it's slow and not much happens. It enables you to go wherever you want from the very beginning but at the same time doesn't really point you anywhere, because of which you have no really idea what you are supposed to do. Basically, it lacks some story, or the story isn't visible enough. Original Princess Maker had a feeling or urgency and running time, and every now and then there were special events, and things like a fortune teller coming which pushed some goal on you.

Something about the whole interface art made me cringe, it's seemingly good but something feels wrong about it (i think it's the overall positioning of elements, the blandness, lack of descriptions, lines to break the different elements apart in some way, many things really)
The various graphic elements clash
There is an error within spells screen (the skill "description" doesn't change back when your mouse leaves the skill button, instead it turns back when you hover over the "return" button)
You don't normally place the game settings on the same page of interface as the save/load/new game button, game settings in most if not all games have their own "screen"

The characters "face" art is nice, though the style is a bit unusual
Overall the character art is nice though the style is a bit unusual

The music is very nice and adds to the mood, but i think it may get tiring after a while
The background art is nice and gives an interesting mood

Keep in mind I only played this game for a while, and I didn't get very deeply into it.

[papillon]

I have no desire to argue about anyone's opinions, so I just want to clarify one thing:

There is an error within spells screen (the skill "description" doesn't change back when your mouse leaves the skill button, instead it turns back when you hover over the "return" button)

All buttons that can be highlighted with the mouse will remain that way until something else is highlighted or the mouse is clicked somewhere else. The reason this happens is because some customers have trouble with computer mice: to increase compatibility, almost everything in the game can be controlled by the keyboard, which means selected buttons stay selected regardless of the mouse position.

(I agree that this occasionally looks slightly odd, but it should not surprise you to know that I care more about people being able to play the game than absolute prettiness.)

For those who are interested, game sales are a big success so far.

[jack_norton]

For those who are interested, game sales are a big success so far.

no surprise since I think is your best game so far

[JinzouTamashii]

Is this game freesoft or commercial?

[Midnighticequeen]

For those who are interested, game sales are a big success so far.

I'm glad for you, you worked hard on that game.

[azureXtwilight]

Is this game freesoft or commercial?

Ehm, the title says it commercial...

I'm gonna bug my mom some more to buy this one...
Because after I've played the demo it intrigues me so.
How many endings are there actually?

[papillon]

It depends on how you define an ending. There are 36 ending pictures in the gallery, but a couple get used for more than one ending "title" and most of the endings have multiple versions, for things like how good you are at making a living in your chosen profession, how your marriage turns out (if you have one), and so on.

[musical74]

I noticed an odd error while playing this...The sign for Deborah's beach getaway says she is open from Planting to Gods months...but she shows up in Grass, a month early. Not REALLY complaining, mind you, just the *board* doesn't seem to match when she's there.

Also, noticed that you seemed to sneak in a homage to Tales of Lemma in one of the endings...not sure if that was intentional or not, but was cute =)

Is there more than 5 recipe cards to be found? And, is Cal meant to be a secret marriage possibility? The main character sure seems to like him...=) But after 4 encounters, I haven't been able to find him again...did I miss a step (entirely possible) or is he just there to balance out Gordy, who seems to be a real jerk?

[Showsni]

A question: can you pay by transferring money from an online bank account, without a credit card/debit card or anything?

[papillon]

I'm honestly not sure, I'm absent-minded and I write a lot. What ToL reference?

There are 6 recipe cards. One is easily missed because of not having enough relationship with the character in question.

As for Cal:

He came about as the result of a 'character cameo' contest I ran on my forum a while back trying to get people to do fangame stuff. After hearing about the characters already present in the village, the winner requested a nice boy to balance out Gordy.

He is not marriageable at the moment. He's taken! He may be added as a bonus ending later, but considering what you'd have to do to steal him from his girlfriend, it may not be a very nice ending!

A question: can you pay by transferring money from an online bank account, without a credit card/debit card or anything?

BMT Micro handles the payments, and they do a lot of methods, even (supposedly) checks in the mail. They've got more info here:
http://www.bmtmicro-info.com/faq/1045664347.html

If none of their methods work out for you, there's always the possibility of sending me presents. No one's ever gone to the trouble of trying that yet though!

[musical74]

The ToL refernce was when the MC goes after evil mushrooms...but that may not have been intentional!

Weird how you go for one ending and another pops up well beforehand! Still searching for that last recipe card! Thought it was one, but not so sure now....either that or I needed more than I had, and I got the Partners ending before finding out!

Seems that if you get Criteria for Dressmaker but have criteria for others too, dressmaker wins out...at least, 4 times I've tried shooting for a different ending (had criteria for others) but dressmaker wins anyway...I had 1300 gold, thinking *this should change things*...and got dressmaker anyway! Outside of Candlemaker, if you have the criteria for dressmaker and criteria for something else....am I missing something, or is dressmaker the next default ending after candlemaker?

[papillon]

Everything is by how MANY points towards an ending you have, except the special cases - but Candlemaker starts with points in it automatically so if you don't have enough points in anything else that will win. If you keep getting dressmaker then you must have more points towards that outcome than you do towards the other ones.

OTOH Dressmaker is one of the endings that doesn't require high Dream, so if your Dream gets too low for the endings you were aiming for you might end up with that instead.

You can get some idea of your scores for different endings by peeking at the results.t file that gets output. It won't tell you everything, but it can give you clues. If you see lots of 0s, you probably missed a minimum requirement.

Dressmaker gets points from your charm, your crafting, your artistry, and the number of times you've done the weaving job. If you did that job a lot it might be overpowering your other attempts.