One bit of feedback I have about the card battle combat is that the three “colors” should have distinct strategies associated with them.
As it is now, the three “colors” are mathematically identical; if one card lets you increase its points or deplete the points of another color, the others will have cards with symmetric effects. This turns the deckbuilding into an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors, which is mathematically equivalent to flipping a coin. Compare this to Magic: the Gathering where the colors are able to do some things better and are unable to do other things.
I would make one color better at drawing cards, one better at dealing direct damage to the Opponent’s “premises”, and one focused on shielding/accumulating Premises. Perhaps introduce a strategy where it is beneficial to “stockpile” premises beyond what is required for the Argument card for long-term benefits exclusive to one color. This would encourage the player to “choose” a playstyle and stick with it; adapting their deck to different strategies.
Early on, there's a high level of symmetry partly because the mechanical complexity hasn't been sufficiently introduced yet to compensate for deficits in capability of "fundamental" tools, i.e. critique and shields/reflectors-- or, simply put, to make the new player experience somewhat deck-composition-agnostic. This may become less the case as the player progresses and certain distinguishing characteristics between the modes become more apparent.
Currently, there are some generalities of distinction for each of the modes which, depending on player progress, may not yet be obvious:
Most negative status cards (e.g. Slow Burn, +Damage) require Ethos (either wholly or as a component).
Logos has a wider variety of critique cards-- it's the only mode that has criticisms which "specialize" in all three modes (Contradiction -> Logos, False Authority -> Ethos, Misleading Affect -> Pathos).
Pathos is the only mode that can pitch the Enthymeme toward any of the three modes, and it's also (subtly) the easiest to summon a lot of premises for (due to cards like Epizeuxis and the converter cards).
... In addition to the subtler variance in capabilities provided by "unique" rhetoric cards (e.g. Ipse Dixit, which wipes out fresh premises) and resonance effects (e.g. Probatio Diabolica, which zeroes-out all fielded premises, ignoring shields and reflectors).
Still, I'm sympathetic to the idea that these differences could stand to be exaggerated.
Here's one possible approach: Shields and critiques progress in stages (I -> II -> III), with higher-stages having stronger effects (1, 3, and 5 HP for shields, or 2, 4, and 6 damage for criticism). To make the three modes more distinct, it's possible that the third stage of this progression could only be obtainable for one of the three modes-- let's say that only Pathos gets Level III shields, and only Logos gets Level III critiques. This would effectively turn Logos into a criticism specialist, and Pathos into a defense specialist-- the other modes can still do these things to a certain extent, but to get the best tools in these categories would require changing your deck's color composition.
Is that a particularly good way of going about this? I don't know yet-- I came up with this idea in like 15 minutes, after all-- but, subjective quality aside, it's definitely a solution!
Finally got to play the entirety of the art update! Absolutely in love with all the new sprites, everyone looks so amazing! Plus the script updates were a great addition, so much of the new dialogue made me cackle out loud.
Unfortunately there was a pretty big glitch(?) I assume it was one anyway, in the Second Layer final boss fight. The cutscene starts normally but once it reaches the fight proper, the camera pans in through the shelves and turns everything besides the cards blurry for the entire fight. I tried it a second time to see if it was a one time thing but it happened the same way. Not sure where that came from but wanted to let you know! It saddened me a bit since I was looking forward to seeing the boss's sprites in battle. This was the only negative thing I ran into besides a couple typos.
Amazing update! Cannot wait for the Third Layer though I know it will probably be a while before anything comes out of that. Good luck and I look forward to the next update!
Sounds bad! You may be able to get it to work normally if you disable some of the shader effects (focal blur, bloom) in the options menu or try a lower resolution— this could be performance-related.
Fortunately, I’m already investigating a fix for a similar issue with what sounds like a common cause, so with any luck this will be addressed in the next patch.
Ah man. I really wanted to like this, but It's just not working out for me here. I really didn't have a very good time playing this at all.
The artstyle is great, don't get me wrong. It looks fantastic and the controls are perfectly fine. But good artstyle alone does not carry a game.
When I got into the game and got going, It took awhile to get to combat. "sure" I figured. Slow burn, gets into combat later, sounds cool. Just like Persona 4. Buuut, that just wasn't the case. This feels overall, like a visual novel with a *sprinkling* of combat. 2 hours in and I've only had 3 fights- that's pretty lacking. I mean, the debate system and deckbuilding is one of your biggest assets here, and alongside the lack of combat, even the deckbuilding feels severely limited. Not much to really work with, you feel me? And even then, the options aren't all too stellar when all I have to pick from are a bushel of "delete two, gain one if option fufilled" and maybe a couple of barriers and buffs. There's just not enough in here yet to build a satisfying deck. Not to mention It's hard to understand what I'd want to choose for my next target when I can't see what I've accumluated for reach color during picking a choice. That- and why does my accumluated rhetoric just go poof when I pick a new arguement? That just kinda stinks and serves to extend what's already minimal combat. Not to mention that it seems like shielding is generally excrutiatingly high cost. Popping up a shield usually means I get smacked twice for doing so.
And I need to impress this- the music just isn't doing it. It's flat, bland and doesn't have any oomph. I'm just not feeling any of it, especially the regular combat theme. There's no energy to what I would expect to feel like intense combat, and the bass feels irregularily flat. A rework of that would be pleasant. Then, with most other themes, they feel like they don't have enough length into them before they loop, leaving the player with just not enough out of them.
And then with the visual novel parts- I'm sad to see so many screens left black to convey a transition. It just feels like missed real estate half the time. And when that's not an issue, I'm regularily faced with dialogue that seems clunky, narrow, and spaced. like. this. all. the. time. Not only am I sitting down for hours having to read "huh" and "what" being thrown out half the time, but it also feels like there's just way, way too many moments of "..." added in as well when I'm internally yelling "please speak".
The protagonist comes off as a bit of a clueless ditz and then when invocating, becomes serious. What's with the sudden hot and cold? Is she smart? Is she a klutz? I don't get where the character is going with it all over the place here. For a game where mystery is key, it feels like everybody else is putting two and two together and I'm just along for the ride. For example, my character background picked was a receptionist at a pharmacy. So why is it that we utterly bumble around when speaking to a receptionist at an office like that? Shouldn't we have some tact with the situation due to prior experience? The protagonist feels incredibly weak most of the time- yet she's lived a decent portion of life having a background that never ever seems to come into play. Hapless, witless and really lacking identity most of the time, is how the writing comes off to implicate her. Even when using evidence during a cutscene, it felt like there was no bonus to picking a correct answer, to having tact and wit to point out what was wrong or right. You would think that it would have an effect, especially in a battle to have strong evidence rattle someone.
I'm also very disappointed about how money was perhaps seemingly going to play a rather important role with equipment, and then I find only one equipment slot. That's okay I figured, restrictive at first maybe. I think I gained 1 piece of bare bones minimal equipment at best and then for the rest of it, nada. That whole section feels like an afterthought.
And why, dear god why, are the free-roam sections so badly wasted? You have all this majestic, beautiful looking archetecture to work with, all these gorgeous sprites and we HARDLY ever get to see much of them. I'd love to explore more of these buildings, but it's almost overswept entirely by the visual novel portions. And inspection of things seems to only be good for gaining evidence or having some dialogue to enrich the world- which, I like that- but I'd also really love it if you could find cards this way.
Overall I feel like this game has an identity issue. It feels like it wants to be a Visual novel but then got a little lost along the way and decided it wanted to be a card battler but also a mystery puzzle.
Regrettably, this game requires a lot of refinement before it can shine. It has a lot of potential, but it feels like it needs more polishing before it's good to go. So I'm glad that this is just in-dev right now. I would very much like to see this improved upon and made to shine.
I apologize in advance if this all seems harsh, but I really wanted this to be something great and it fell pretty hard from my expectations.
Three fights? Keep going, you've barely even started! Here are some tips:
After four (or five, depending on how many optional ones you do) debates you get a booster pack that expands your options considerably.
Technically you can find cards during freeroam. Some of them are from spending time with important characters (anyone marked with the heart icon), some of them are behind continuing optional investigation objectives (for instance, the receptionist scene in the public affairs office, which you mentioned above), and very occasionally from inspection in the overworld. The latter category is currently the rarest, but that's something I'm seeking to address in future updates.
There certainly are bonuses to picking correct evidence in the middle of a debate, but sometimes your evidence isn't good enough to get the bonus. Depending on how you investigated, you may have entered a debate without the evidence that creates a tangible advantage for yourself. (I'm assuming you're talking about the Lucia debate? This is one example. There's an optional investigation objective you have a narrow window to pursue beforehand that gives you evidence strong enough to end the debate early.)
I'd say you should go until at least the beginning of the Second Layer before making a call on whether the rest of the game has legs. It's certainly a slow-starter (as you mentioned, not unlike Persona 4!) but many of the things you're describing here are not actually absent features!
(As an aside, I should point out that the extent to which you fumble the interaction at the Public Affairs Office is partly dependent on which dialog options you end up choosing. I do like the suggestion of making the player handle it better if the receptionist background has been chosen, though!)
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, I appreciate that- however, I should clarify that the "three fights" were merely how far I needed to get in to notice that fighting wasn't going as smoothly or as well as I had hoped. Don't get me wrong- I needed to ensure my findings were correct to ensure what I was saying was wholly on point. Bumping up against Kask in such a lengthy manner was one of those clunkier moments, for sure.
In any case, I look forward to seeing how this game develops. Thanks again!
uhh i tried saving before going through the window at the end of the first layer and this popped up and it crashed fortunately i save frequently so i didnt lose much progress but i thought id report the bug anyways
I will investigate! EDIT: As a note for other readers, the game does autosave very closely prior to when this crash was encountered, so it's unlikely to interrupt progress if you also happen to encounter it.
Pretty sure I fixed it. Fortunately, it seems to be a pretty isolated issue. I was able to replicate the crash and apply sensible remediation measures. Look forward to those when v0.4 releases! Thank you very much for the report.
(The current build will crash consistently if you try to manually save toward the *end* of the last scene of the First Layer due to an effect instance not cleaning itself up properly. As stated previously, the game autosaves very shortly before you can trigger this crash, and as far as I can tell it only happens in these specific circumstances, so it should be minimally-disruptive to player experience. Still, a fix is coming!)
Slow Burn subtracts from fresh premises first (or at least, it should!), so you can still accumulate accepted premises even while it's active, provided you're summoning more than one premise to the field at a time.
... Of course, it's undeniable that it's a little overpowered at the moment. Still trying to figure out the right balance, there.
That sure is great then. And sorry for that it might be a little abrupt but, I have sent an email about translation request to your mailbox, could you check it at your leisure?
Beat the demo so far, but only with 2 days to spare (cause I wanna talk with Isaiah, and I grabbed all the evidence since I wasn't sure if it was optional). I really like the art direction and premise, though I found some of the decisions very frustrating. Particularly, while in the first layer I thought our protagonist mostly seemed to have the option of being intelligent and competent but naive, uninformed, and out of her depth, the second layer I felt she got stuck with the idiot ball a bit much and I didn't like that.
Characters from my favorite to least favorite, though I have been avoiding side stories except Isaiah's in the hopes of building up enough time before execution to do something dramatic later, so I'm sure many characters will have been missed which is no fault of theirs:
Most Liked: - Gardener
- Lucia Trattoria
- Niemi
- Prof. Naysmith
- Ms. Sable (protagonist)
- Marciferous
- Kieran
- Overly helpful tutorial guard
Neutral:
- Walraven Kask
- Irene
- Avery
- Alma
- Isaiah
- Aunt and Uncle
- The general populace of the city, onscreen
- Grandfather
- Trial Judge
- Quayle
Least Disliked:
- Mr. Lutwidge
- Guards at the bridge to the Faith district
- Guards drinking on the job who then also assault you in 2nd layer Bad End.
- The general populace of the city, offscreen
- Myrra
I quite liked Trattoria's devotion to actual justice and good civic governance, despite her position as an antagonist. I really don't like how unintelligent, incompetent, and arrogant Fen Myrra is, and how unwilling to reject her idiocy the main character frequently is. An example is the conversation after the 3rd blood harvest-- it's pretty clear that Marciferous two days ago wouldn't do that, and if it was any of the options suggested certainly wouldn't have chosen Quayle. She also recently drastically changed her behavior after being taking into a private 1-on-1 space by the obvious villain who's promoting racism. And, like, we should be keeping an eye out for someone with mind control powers, obviously, after last time and the introductory exposition about what we're doing wrt the corruption.
Anyhow, the game is good fun regardless and I look forward to chapter 3. I just hope that this doesn't end up suddenly ruining all the characters and subplots and turning terrible like Medieval Cop :(
I finally got an opportunity to place the second layer! I'm not normally one to read a lot of game conversations with focus, but with every encounter with a person potentially giving evidence and information to aid in a fight it felt like it was really important to be invested in the dialogue. It only got a little laggy during the end fight with some of the attacks, but also I'm playing on Steam Deck and so whatever translations my OS is doing to run the EXE may be contributing to the slow down.
I had a passing thought about an alternate game mode for RLZ where it's focused entirely on the battles, like how Inscryption has Kaycee's mod. I would love to just play with deck combos with less perceived threat behind them. Love your work, as usual.
I may be inclined to admit that I have actually paper-prototyped a "pure gameplay" mode not entirely dissimilar to what you're envisioning here. The day may come when I undertake the effort to implement that mode... But for now, I'm focusing primarily on finishing the main story!
It's all sort of intertwined with itself, though-- I'm still getting tons of actionable feedback about ways the core debate mode can be refined and expanded, so if this theoretical mode eventually does come to exist, I expect it'll be built on a more solid foundation than what exists currently.
Slowdown on Steam Deck is interesting-- I would expect it to have no problems. If it was just in the last debate, that could suggest I may need to simplify the geometry of the background, or perhaps the lighting configuration of just that scene. I'll look into it-- thanks for the tip!
Potentially. The exp awarded by a debate is distributed evenly across all participating arguments. If failing to present evidence causes you to use more cards in the debate, more cards will get exp. However, the total amount of exp awarded remains the same. It depends entirely on if you want to distribute that exp to more arguments or not.
How do I change my argument just before fighting? I seem only to be able to change my rhetoric.
And about the countdown system. Will it reset to 5 days or just increase the day count by 1? If that the case should I just reset game for better card and time management?
And there's no way to get more money?
Is there anything I can do with the bonus exp thing? I can't seem to be able to do anything.
Once you're in the predebate menu, your arguments are "locked-in". You gotta change 'em prior to invocation.
The days remaining are partially replenished at the beginning of each part, although not necessarily by a fixed amount. You have my guarantee that you'll be given enough time to complete said part, even if you run the clock down to almost zero in the prior one.
There are ways to get more money. One, you'll encounter without doing anything particularly fancy, so just keep playing and you'll find out.
Should be pretty easy, in fact. All of the in-game text is stored externally in JSON and tsv files and read-in at runtime. You should be able to find them in the zip file in the "Languages" subdirectory, if you want to have a look at what's in there.
As for the actual process of making a new language package (and subsequently testing to make sure it works), that's probably a bit too complicated to explain in an Itch comment, so shoot me an email at developer@realitylayerzero.com if you're still interested and I'll walk you through how to do it.
Finally played Second Layer… man I was interested before but now I’m a big fan and I’m really sad I have to wait for more, it’s such a big upgrade from first layer, the writing is also really nice (maybe a bit too leading even tho it tries to be vague?). My only sadness is having found adventure kid too late to actually do its story (since I used a book and ran out of slots). The other bit of annoyance is that it’s hard to know what reward each story gets so with a red starter deck I started getting a lot of blue rethorics without arguments to use them on, I got it eventually but now I feel I’m in a weird place full of mixed cards. I guess I could make a new save and try different stuff though, so it’s not too bad!
After making a better deck, I was able to beat the second layer boss? rather easily (and a whole lot faster,) but something strange that I've been having issues with is while the whole rest of the game is doing perfectly fine, at some point, debate actions, such as selecting cards and playing my arguments feels unresponsive at the beginning of my turn. After a few moments, it works just fine, but it gets really annoying after awhile as I spam click on my cards for a solid 5 seconds or something, and it happens every turn, slowing down gameplay, for absolutely no reason.
Another question/concern I have is how do I bring my progress to new versions of the game? Since the version I have currently doesn't have the next few sections of the game.
The first thing you mentioned sounds like it might be a bug. I'll need to investigate that. Sorry about the annoyance, there!
Continuing into the third part, whenever it releases, will work much the same as continuing into the second part from the first did. Each new version will read from the same save data location as the current version (%localappdata%), so all of your old saves will still be visible-- assuming they weren't deleted, and that you're using the same device, that is. Just hang onto your cleared saves and let the magic of mildly clever programming take care of the rest!
( debate actions, such as selecting cards and playing my arguments feels unresponsive at the beginning of my turn. After a few moments, it works just fine, but it gets really annoying after awhile as I spam click on my cards for a solid 5 seconds or something, and it happens every turn, slowing down gameplay, for absolutely no reason.)
yea i got that too i thought my computer was just slow but it seems its not just me. also u dont have to spam click just hover your mouse over the cards whille switching cards youre hovering over and when the cards come up then u can play
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
One bit of feedback I have about the card battle combat is that the three “colors” should have distinct strategies associated with them. As it is now, the three “colors” are mathematically identical; if one card lets you increase its points or deplete the points of another color, the others will have cards with symmetric effects. This turns the deckbuilding into an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors, which is mathematically equivalent to flipping a coin. Compare this to Magic: the Gathering where the colors are able to do some things better and are unable to do other things.
I would make one color better at drawing cards, one better at dealing direct damage to the Opponent’s “premises”, and one focused on shielding/accumulating Premises. Perhaps introduce a strategy where it is beneficial to “stockpile” premises beyond what is required for the Argument card for long-term benefits exclusive to one color. This would encourage the player to “choose” a playstyle and stick with it; adapting their deck to different strategies.
A very cogent suggestion.
Early on, there's a high level of symmetry partly because the mechanical complexity hasn't been sufficiently introduced yet to compensate for deficits in capability of "fundamental" tools, i.e. critique and shields/reflectors-- or, simply put, to make the new player experience somewhat deck-composition-agnostic. This may become less the case as the player progresses and certain distinguishing characteristics between the modes become more apparent.
Currently, there are some generalities of distinction for each of the modes which, depending on player progress, may not yet be obvious:
... In addition to the subtler variance in capabilities provided by "unique" rhetoric cards (e.g. Ipse Dixit, which wipes out fresh premises) and resonance effects (e.g. Probatio Diabolica, which zeroes-out all fielded premises, ignoring shields and reflectors).
Still, I'm sympathetic to the idea that these differences could stand to be exaggerated.
Here's one possible approach: Shields and critiques progress in stages (I -> II -> III), with higher-stages having stronger effects (1, 3, and 5 HP for shields, or 2, 4, and 6 damage for criticism). To make the three modes more distinct, it's possible that the third stage of this progression could only be obtainable for one of the three modes-- let's say that only Pathos gets Level III shields, and only Logos gets Level III critiques. This would effectively turn Logos into a criticism specialist, and Pathos into a defense specialist-- the other modes can still do these things to a certain extent, but to get the best tools in these categories would require changing your deck's color composition.
Is that a particularly good way of going about this? I don't know yet-- I came up with this idea in like 15 minutes, after all-- but, subjective quality aside, it's definitely a solution!
We would only know if it’s a good idea or not with playtesting. So, its worth a shot!
Finally got to play the entirety of the art update! Absolutely in love with all the new sprites, everyone looks so amazing! Plus the script updates were a great addition, so much of the new dialogue made me cackle out loud.
Unfortunately there was a pretty big glitch(?) I assume it was one anyway, in the Second Layer final boss fight. The cutscene starts normally but once it reaches the fight proper, the camera pans in through the shelves and turns everything besides the cards blurry for the entire fight. I tried it a second time to see if it was a one time thing but it happened the same way. Not sure where that came from but wanted to let you know! It saddened me a bit since I was looking forward to seeing the boss's sprites in battle. This was the only negative thing I ran into besides a couple typos.
Amazing update! Cannot wait for the Third Layer though I know it will probably be a while before anything comes out of that. Good luck and I look forward to the next update!
Sounds bad! You may be able to get it to work normally if you disable some of the shader effects (focal blur, bloom) in the options menu or try a lower resolution— this could be performance-related.
Fortunately, I’m already investigating a fix for a similar issue with what sounds like a common cause, so with any luck this will be addressed in the next patch.
Thanks for the report!
I like it, but it gets difficult
Ah man. I really wanted to like this, but It's just not working out for me here. I really didn't have a very good time playing this at all.
The artstyle is great, don't get me wrong. It looks fantastic and the controls are perfectly fine. But good artstyle alone does not carry a game.
When I got into the game and got going, It took awhile to get to combat. "sure" I figured. Slow burn, gets into combat later, sounds cool. Just like Persona 4. Buuut, that just wasn't the case. This feels overall, like a visual novel with a *sprinkling* of combat. 2 hours in and I've only had 3 fights- that's pretty lacking. I mean, the debate system and deckbuilding is one of your biggest assets here, and alongside the lack of combat, even the deckbuilding feels severely limited. Not much to really work with, you feel me? And even then, the options aren't all too stellar when all I have to pick from are a bushel of "delete two, gain one if option fufilled" and maybe a couple of barriers and buffs. There's just not enough in here yet to build a satisfying deck. Not to mention It's hard to understand what I'd want to choose for my next target when I can't see what I've accumluated for reach color during picking a choice. That- and why does my accumluated rhetoric just go poof when I pick a new arguement? That just kinda stinks and serves to extend what's already minimal combat. Not to mention that it seems like shielding is generally excrutiatingly high cost. Popping up a shield usually means I get smacked twice for doing so.
And I need to impress this- the music just isn't doing it. It's flat, bland and doesn't have any oomph. I'm just not feeling any of it, especially the regular combat theme. There's no energy to what I would expect to feel like intense combat, and the bass feels irregularily flat. A rework of that would be pleasant. Then, with most other themes, they feel like they don't have enough length into them before they loop, leaving the player with just not enough out of them.
And then with the visual novel parts- I'm sad to see so many screens left black to convey a transition. It just feels like missed real estate half the time. And when that's not an issue, I'm regularily faced with dialogue that seems clunky, narrow, and spaced. like. this. all. the. time. Not only am I sitting down for hours having to read "huh" and "what" being thrown out half the time, but it also feels like there's just way, way too many moments of "..." added in as well when I'm internally yelling "please speak".
The protagonist comes off as a bit of a clueless ditz and then when invocating, becomes serious. What's with the sudden hot and cold? Is she smart? Is she a klutz? I don't get where the character is going with it all over the place here. For a game where mystery is key, it feels like everybody else is putting two and two together and I'm just along for the ride. For example, my character background picked was a receptionist at a pharmacy. So why is it that we utterly bumble around when speaking to a receptionist at an office like that? Shouldn't we have some tact with the situation due to prior experience? The protagonist feels incredibly weak most of the time- yet she's lived a decent portion of life having a background that never ever seems to come into play. Hapless, witless and really lacking identity most of the time, is how the writing comes off to implicate her. Even when using evidence during a cutscene, it felt like there was no bonus to picking a correct answer, to having tact and wit to point out what was wrong or right. You would think that it would have an effect, especially in a battle to have strong evidence rattle someone.
I'm also very disappointed about how money was perhaps seemingly going to play a rather important role with equipment, and then I find only one equipment slot. That's okay I figured, restrictive at first maybe. I think I gained 1 piece of bare bones minimal equipment at best and then for the rest of it, nada. That whole section feels like an afterthought.
And why, dear god why, are the free-roam sections so badly wasted? You have all this majestic, beautiful looking archetecture to work with, all these gorgeous sprites and we HARDLY ever get to see much of them. I'd love to explore more of these buildings, but it's almost overswept entirely by the visual novel portions. And inspection of things seems to only be good for gaining evidence or having some dialogue to enrich the world- which, I like that- but I'd also really love it if you could find cards this way.
Overall I feel like this game has an identity issue. It feels like it wants to be a Visual novel but then got a little lost along the way and decided it wanted to be a card battler but also a mystery puzzle.
Regrettably, this game requires a lot of refinement before it can shine. It has a lot of potential, but it feels like it needs more polishing before it's good to go. So I'm glad that this is just in-dev right now. I would very much like to see this improved upon and made to shine.
I apologize in advance if this all seems harsh, but I really wanted this to be something great and it fell pretty hard from my expectations.
Three fights? Keep going, you've barely even started! Here are some tips:
After four (or five, depending on how many optional ones you do) debates you get a booster pack that expands your options considerably.
Technically you can find cards during freeroam. Some of them are from spending time with important characters (anyone marked with the heart icon), some of them are behind continuing optional investigation objectives (for instance, the receptionist scene in the public affairs office, which you mentioned above), and very occasionally from inspection in the overworld. The latter category is currently the rarest, but that's something I'm seeking to address in future updates.
There certainly are bonuses to picking correct evidence in the middle of a debate, but sometimes your evidence isn't good enough to get the bonus. Depending on how you investigated, you may have entered a debate without the evidence that creates a tangible advantage for yourself. (I'm assuming you're talking about the Lucia debate? This is one example. There's an optional investigation objective you have a narrow window to pursue beforehand that gives you evidence strong enough to end the debate early.)
I'd say you should go until at least the beginning of the Second Layer before making a call on whether the rest of the game has legs. It's certainly a slow-starter (as you mentioned, not unlike Persona 4!) but many of the things you're describing here are not actually absent features!
(As an aside, I should point out that the extent to which you fumble the interaction at the Public Affairs Office is partly dependent on which dialog options you end up choosing. I do like the suggestion of making the player handle it better if the receptionist background has been chosen, though!)
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, I appreciate that- however, I should clarify that the "three fights" were merely how far I needed to get in to notice that fighting wasn't going as smoothly or as well as I had hoped. Don't get me wrong- I needed to ensure my findings were correct to ensure what I was saying was wholly on point. Bumping up against Kask in such a lengthy manner was one of those clunkier moments, for sure.
In any case, I look forward to seeing how this game develops. Thanks again!
I REALLY LOVED THIS DEMO I WANT TO SEE MORE <3333
uhh i tried saving before going through the window at the end of the first layer and this popped up and it crashed fortunately i save frequently so i didnt lose much progress but i thought id report the bug anyways
I will investigate! EDIT: As a note for other readers, the game does autosave very closely prior to when this crash was encountered, so it's unlikely to interrupt progress if you also happen to encounter it.
Pretty sure I fixed it. Fortunately, it seems to be a pretty isolated issue. I was able to replicate the crash and apply sensible remediation measures. Look forward to those when v0.4 releases! Thank you very much for the report.
(The current build will crash consistently if you try to manually save toward the *end* of the last scene of the First Layer due to an effect instance not cleaning itself up properly. As stated previously, the game autosaves very shortly before you can trigger this crash, and as far as I can tell it only happens in these specific circumstances, so it should be minimally-disruptive to player experience. Still, a fix is coming!)
Have you considered making a Discord Server for this game?
Also, are you interested in a publisher at this time? I scout for one and can put in a good word for you.
I emailed him before, but he said (paraphrasing) he didnt want attention and he wasnt opening a discord server
I drew some art 🩶
Fantastic!
Oh my god fanart finally exists for this game!!! It's beautiful! (alas I am not an artist;;)
Can someone transfer me their savefile for the end of the second layer. I lost mine and i dont feel like replaying the game entirely
i loved what i played so far, the debate system and story are both pretty good
/edit
Won’t the slow burn a bit too powerful？since all the argument needs at least one premises to use，and normally one turn only increase one premise，
as long as the slow burn enabled before they already has enough premises，there will be no chance that enemy can argument.
Moreover, by streamlining the card deck, we can ensure that the slow burn is almost uninterrupted，so to accumulate premises quickly.
Slow Burn subtracts from fresh premises first (or at least, it should!), so you can still accumulate accepted premises even while it's active, provided you're summoning more than one premise to the field at a time.
... Of course, it's undeniable that it's a little overpowered at the moment. Still trying to figure out the right balance, there.
That sure is great then. And sorry for that it might be a little abrupt but, I have sent an email about translation request to your mailbox, could you check it at your leisure?
Beat the demo so far, but only with 2 days to spare (cause I wanna talk with Isaiah, and I grabbed all the evidence since I wasn't sure if it was optional). I really like the art direction and premise, though I found some of the decisions very frustrating. Particularly, while in the first layer I thought our protagonist mostly seemed to have the option of being intelligent and competent but naive, uninformed, and out of her depth, the second layer I felt she got stuck with the idiot ball a bit much and I didn't like that.
Characters from my favorite to least favorite, though I have been avoiding side stories except Isaiah's in the hopes of building up enough time before execution to do something dramatic later, so I'm sure many characters will have been missed which is no fault of theirs:
Most Liked:
- Gardener
- Lucia Trattoria
- Niemi
- Prof. Naysmith
- Ms. Sable (protagonist)
- Marciferous
- Kieran
- Overly helpful tutorial guard
Neutral:
- Walraven Kask
- Irene
- Avery
- Alma
- Isaiah
- Aunt and Uncle
- The general populace of the city, onscreen
- Grandfather
- Trial Judge
- Quayle
Least Disliked:
- Mr. Lutwidge
- Guards at the bridge to the Faith district
- Guards drinking on the job who then also assault you in 2nd layer Bad End.
- The general populace of the city, offscreen
- Myrra
I quite liked Trattoria's devotion to actual justice and good civic governance, despite her position as an antagonist. I really don't like how unintelligent, incompetent, and arrogant Fen Myrra is, and how unwilling to reject her idiocy the main character frequently is. An example is the conversation after the 3rd blood harvest-- it's pretty clear that Marciferous two days ago wouldn't do that, and if it was any of the options suggested certainly wouldn't have chosen Quayle. She also recently drastically changed her behavior after being taking into a private 1-on-1 space by the obvious villain who's promoting racism. And, like, we should be keeping an eye out for someone with mind control powers, obviously, after last time and the introductory exposition about what we're doing wrt the corruption.
Anyhow, the game is good fun regardless and I look forward to chapter 3. I just hope that this doesn't end up suddenly ruining all the characters and subplots and turning terrible like Medieval Cop :(
I finally got an opportunity to place the second layer! I'm not normally one to read a lot of game conversations with focus, but with every encounter with a person potentially giving evidence and information to aid in a fight it felt like it was really important to be invested in the dialogue. It only got a little laggy during the end fight with some of the attacks, but also I'm playing on Steam Deck and so whatever translations my OS is doing to run the EXE may be contributing to the slow down.
I had a passing thought about an alternate game mode for RLZ where it's focused entirely on the battles, like how Inscryption has Kaycee's mod. I would love to just play with deck combos with less perceived threat behind them. Love your work, as usual.
I may be inclined to admit that I have actually paper-prototyped a "pure gameplay" mode not entirely dissimilar to what you're envisioning here. The day may come when I undertake the effort to implement that mode... But for now, I'm focusing primarily on finishing the main story!
It's all sort of intertwined with itself, though-- I'm still getting tons of actionable feedback about ways the core debate mode can be refined and expanded, so if this theoretical mode eventually does come to exist, I expect it'll be built on a more solid foundation than what exists currently.
Slowdown on Steam Deck is interesting-- I would expect it to have no problems. If it was just in the last debate, that could suggest I may need to simplify the geometry of the background, or perhaps the lighting configuration of just that scene. I'll look into it-- thanks for the tip!
Would it be better if I intentionally fell to present evidence just to get more exp on my arguments?
Potentially. The exp awarded by a debate is distributed evenly across all participating arguments. If failing to present evidence causes you to use more cards in the debate, more cards will get exp. However, the total amount of exp awarded remains the same. It depends entirely on if you want to distribute that exp to more arguments or not.
How do I change my argument just before fighting? I seem only to be able to change my rhetoric.
And about the countdown system. Will it reset to 5 days or just increase the day count by 1? If that the case should I just reset game for better card and time management?
And there's no way to get more money?
Is there anything I can do with the bonus exp thing? I can't seem to be able to do anything.
Once you're in the predebate menu, your arguments are "locked-in". You gotta change 'em prior to invocation.
The days remaining are partially replenished at the beginning of each part, although not necessarily by a fixed amount. You have my guarantee that you'll be given enough time to complete said part, even if you run the clock down to almost zero in the prior one.
There are ways to get more money. One, you'll encounter without doing anything particularly fancy, so just keep playing and you'll find out.
Thank you!
Another thing is I am very excited about your game and want to transalte it. Will that be possible?
Should be pretty easy, in fact. All of the in-game text is stored externally in JSON and tsv files and read-in at runtime. You should be able to find them in the zip file in the "Languages" subdirectory, if you want to have a look at what's in there.
As for the actual process of making a new language package (and subsequently testing to make sure it works), that's probably a bit too complicated to explain in an Itch comment, so shoot me an email at developer@realitylayerzero.com if you're still interested and I'll walk you through how to do it.
Finally played Second Layer… man I was interested before but now I’m a big fan and I’m really sad I have to wait for more, it’s such a big upgrade from first layer, the writing is also really nice (maybe a bit too leading even tho it tries to be vague?). My only sadness is having found adventure kid too late to actually do its story (since I used a book and ran out of slots). The other bit of annoyance is that it’s hard to know what reward each story gets so with a red starter deck I started getting a lot of blue rethorics without arguments to use them on, I got it eventually but now I feel I’m in a weird place full of mixed cards. I guess I could make a new save and try different stuff though, so it’s not too bad!
Keep it up!
After making a better deck, I was able to beat the second layer boss? rather easily (and a whole lot faster,) but something strange that I've been having issues with is while the whole rest of the game is doing perfectly fine, at some point, debate actions, such as selecting cards and playing my arguments feels unresponsive at the beginning of my turn. After a few moments, it works just fine, but it gets really annoying after awhile as I spam click on my cards for a solid 5 seconds or something, and it happens every turn, slowing down gameplay, for absolutely no reason.
Another question/concern I have is how do I bring my progress to new versions of the game? Since the version I have currently doesn't have the next few sections of the game.
The first thing you mentioned sounds like it might be a bug. I'll need to investigate that. Sorry about the annoyance, there!
Continuing into the third part, whenever it releases, will work much the same as continuing into the second part from the first did. Each new version will read from the same save data location as the current version (%localappdata%), so all of your old saves will still be visible-- assuming they weren't deleted, and that you're using the same device, that is. Just hang onto your cleared saves and let the magic of mildly clever programming take care of the rest!
alright, sounds good.
( debate actions, such as selecting cards and playing my arguments feels unresponsive at the beginning of my turn. After a few moments, it works just fine, but it gets really annoying after awhile as I spam click on my cards for a solid 5 seconds or something, and it happens every turn, slowing down gameplay, for absolutely no reason.)
yea i got that too i thought my computer was just slow but it seems its not just me. also u dont have to spam click just hover your mouse over the cards whille switching cards youre hovering over and when the cards come up then u can play