Haven’t really used the forum to post but I thought I’d give it a try.
I’m looking for ideas and feedback on this simple rpg I’m working on.
It’s one of the first games I’ve actually been (pretty much) fully scripting myself.
There isn’t too much right now but any general feedback would be good!
I was aiming for a simplistic rpg kinda like the old ones but a little upgraded. So in saying that I’m not looking to add any crazy features like parrying and stun blocking, but any advice would be good.
I really like the classic aesthetic of this game. Perhaps you could use it to influence the gameplay or lore, since at the moment the gameplay feels kind of bland (it’s very similar to existing RPGs with not a lot to set it apart).
Here are a few issues I found while playtesting:
You can drop the healing potion with backspace.
You might want to add some more rigid barriers to keep players from getting into zones before they’re allowed. I was able to bypass the farm gate by getting a guard to attack me and jumping on his head, and I later jumped on a scarecrow’s head to get right into the orc cave.
From ~15-20 minutes of playtime from both a technical and player standpoint:
The backpack is kind of bugged and a bit confusing when it comes to armor. It’s not until I received the Bandit Armor that the armor is actually equipped like how the weapons do. Clicking on an icon will also overlap the Equip and the Item text. The UI sounds for hovering and clicking on the items also does not fit with the 8-bit/RPG sounds and feels more sci-fi, but the others fit the 8-bit/RPG theme very well.
I would rather talk to some of the standing NPCs with a user input, not by proximity. I didn’t notice until I got to town that talking was just walking up to NPCs and not clicking on them (yes, I did accidentally hit the guard because of it). It’s also very weird running by an NPC and seeing a dialogue box flash.
You should be able to interact with an NPC below 75% health - it feels arbitrary for the sake of being different. The tutorial section expects you to take some damage for the bandit quest, so it’s just awkwardly standing in front of the NPC to regenerate health until I realized there was a healing zone behind me, which is not intuitive and not always the case for every NPC.
Notifications are too fast. It wasn’t until I got my second pair of Bandit Armor that I actually received something. It’s a bit lackluster on contrast as well, so it’s fairly easy to miss. Adding a notification number to the backpack icon can be a good UX QoL.
Settings and backpack buttons are dark and flat and blends with the greys too well. It’s hard to notice they were there when I was in the tutorial cave section.
The tutorial key should be cheaper in price, having just enough money to purchase after finishing the 2 quests instead of having half of the required money, forcing you to kill more just to get enough money. It’s the tutorial, you want players out of there as fast as possible to keep retention.
As someone pointed above, potions should not be droppable with backspace. Although it doesn’t seem like it actually duplicates items, it sure does duplicate parts on the floor.
Enemy pathfinding is broken in 2 scenarios: you are close enough to the enemy where it jumps on your head and stays there until you move far enough and when it tries to move back to what I assume is their original location where it starts moving between 2 points and infinitely jumping. There are also times where the guard would just fall over.
There seems to be another bug that I cant pinpoint the source of. When you heal from the tutorial NPC, you seem to have 10 health more than what it actually is supposed to be. You can “fix” this by clicking equip on your armor again.
You should be able to get multiple of the same item. The Bandit Armor notification keeps popping up so I expected to get a duplicate, only to realize I still only have one and it doesn’t seem like you can sell (yet).
I’m a big fan of old RPGs, and the bar aesthetics seems to be inspired by the old RPG kits back then. The main feature that is missing are attributes, which existed in almost every old RPGs. As of now, the impact of levels seems lacking, only raising health as far as I’m aware.
Overall, I think it’s a high quality game, something I’d play and continue to play if it kept getting updates. The sound work is great and the build style is cool and consistent. Combat is pretty straight forward, reminiscent of those old styled RPG games. The UI could use a bit more love, but good nonetheless.
there’s lots of goodies here for me to look into. i’ll definitely go through some of these soon and try fix them, thank you! technically you can stack multiple items but i haven’t implemented them visually yet so at some point i’ll set that up.
but thanks for the feedback and everyone else too. this should give me some good direction to work on
So I played through. Here’s some likes & dislikes, take what you want as suggestions:
Likes
Loved the ambience, OST & overall style. Reminds me of old roblox games that were published for the roblox experience not to farm robux from children.
Small quality of life details like “healing pond” and “mr moneybags” and the hidden health potion on the first level is something I think will gather a loyal fanbase, don’t discard those.
Super simple inventory and progression system, nice work.
Dislikes
There should be an option to say “no” to Mr Moneybags and you “go on your own journey” or something along those lines.
Definitely need to make the hitboxes slightly bigger on the left and right – while unrealistic, this is something bigger games have that just cause less frustration long term.
Game was quite laggy for me. I do have a crappy computer and had roblox studio open on the side, but I would advise looking into removing some faces/doing some modelling or world compartmentalisation if you haven’t already. Maybe even less particles or an option to turn it off.
I personally did not like the GUI style. Might just be preference, but it got in my face and the colours are a little distracting. Especially the XP bar.
Need to put a variety of attacks, even with my meagre wooden stick I would like a “bong” attack where I jump up and smack down for example. Makes it feel less clicky.
Not sure if it was intentional but there’s a floating red block with a paper decal on it on first level, might want to delete that.
if you move side to side with A & D really fast with shift lock, you can dodge all hits / become immune - definitely worth fixing I think.
thanks for checking it out, the lag is something i didn’t really consider so that’s especially good to hear about! i also agree with the attacking but i’ll probably keep it simple for now as i’ll likely remake this game at a later date. thanks for all the feedback
