Rose of Starcross Kickstarter Demo

Hey. I've been a huge fan of you for a while, as your tutorials have been my guiding grace in pursuing my own passion project. They have helped me so much in areas where I would've otherwise struggled, and your videos helped me understand how to code efficiently and logically. So I feel like I'm already VERY indebted to you! 

However, I do want to leave some constructive criticisms regarding the game. Now, mind you, I've only played for a handful of minutes, and I chose the 'full version' so I haven't really gotten to the meat'n'potatoes of the actual gameplay. But as someone who's making a very story-driven game, I wanted to leave my thoughts on the first few minutes of the game anyway, specifically on its tone, the characters, and the world.

In short, I think the dialogue and NPCs are not so great. My main criticism is that, I think these characters seem to lack a real flair, a sauce, a spice, life, a real wackiness to them.. they don't feel real, they don't feel genuine, these 'jokes', or 'humorous little stories' they find themselves in aren't very funny.. and because of that, the world itself does not feel real.  It feels plastic and fake, like nothing is actually happening in it.

Mind you, I LOVE undertale. I think the npcs are great and the game is very funny. There's also a lot of funny meta jokes, like "warning: dog marriage!" "yes, you read that correctly"

But I'm not even telling you to be funny, my main criticism is that the characters themselves feel like they're lacking any soul. They feel fake.  

Some of the jokes don't even sound like you yourself believe in them as you tell them. It's boring!

I see Tonic, this little floating pumpkin guy, and I wonder.. why the heck should I care? What is Tonic even *about*? What is his *idea* of a character, anyway? He's this little guy who's got a tone of voice that's only slightly offset from the author's own that's carried by every single other NPC. Compare him to say, Sans from Undertale. When you think of Sans, you get a VERY clear idea of what he is from the first moment you meet him. He appears menacing, threatening at first.. makes you shake his hand, only to reveal he's just played a big prank. And in the first few lines of dialogue he ever has, and as we hear his character theme for the first time, we can just immediately tell who this guy is and what he's all about. The idea of sans is that he's a very laid back jokester who's too chill to use upper case letters.

You can tell from the get-go what he is, not because Toby was being deliberate, but because he had a clear soul and vision in mind for the character, and so that vision and soul pours through every line he says.

Even random NPC's are like this. A bit after you meet Sans, there's a shop-keep bunny lady in Snowdin. Her lines, too, carry a bit of soul with them, and she almost feels like a real person.

But even eccentric, wacky characters like Papyrus feel real in a sense too. He has motivations and insecurities that drive him. 

If you make characters that are eccentric without being 'fake', if you genuinely BELIEVE in them as you dream of them, then you'll likely easily stumble into the humor as you do so, like, the funny things that character might do.

Lastly, the Underground itself in Undertale was clearly imagined by Toby as a kind of real place with a lot of people actually living in it. There are many details that explain this.

So my solution would be: if you haven't already, start imagining your world as if it were a real, living, breathing place, and write the NPC's as people who are a part of it, rather than letting all of them just have one tone of voice.

But putting my personal opinion aside, even if I did enjoy the characters, my other complaint is that the game just drops you into this world and lets you interact with these NPC's without giving you any reason to care about this world or the story, which made me dislike the dialogue even more.

Although I can tell that the story kicks up pretty soon after. But that's just what my reaction was.

Also, I don't like the character portrait of the bar-lady. She scares me...

I do think if the NPC's were actually filled with life, then maybe the intrigue of the world itself would be all that's necessary.

With all that being said, thank you for reading all this! I hate to be a negative nancy, but the only reason why I don't talk about any positives in this review is because I haven't seriously given the game a chance yet. But I will say, the world itself is very pretty and some of the character designs are really cool. My favorite so far is the triangle vaporwave-thing that sits next to the movie theatre that says it only likes watching movies for the music.

Eventually, I'm going to boot it up again in demo mode, and still check out the gameplay which I'm still excited for, considering what I've seen looks really good, and considering what other reviewers have said.

please in the love of god, finish this game, i don't want to die without playing the full version of this game please, give us updates anything please i am following you on every platform just please inform us of what's new

amazing

The window size is either too big or too small :(

Hey, I just looked in the demo and I really enjoyed it so far. The looks, the gameplay, the humor and the sound. Everything's fitting so good together. Would love to play it on my switch some day.

Is this project still ongoing? Because as I understand, you mainly focus on Starcade at the moment?

PS: Thank you for your YT tutorials. They've been very helpful.

Nice to see someone else besides me had the idea of incorporating Punch-Out!! mechanics into an RPG, and you make it work great!

Really great game but it lags like crazy when the window size is anything larger than pixel-to-pixel resolution (1x window size). Please fix this!

I also want to play it but my PC is protecting it as if it were some sort of virus

can you make it for mac also your rad

I love this demo!! <33

I follow you on youtube since a few days already and watch your tutorials

: ) that's how i found this game, but sadly i can't play it because it's only for windows and not mac : (

This game lags very much on my pc..

Can someone help me? 

I wanna play this game because it looks so good!

I just finished your first tutorial on youtube and very pleased with it. Allthough you did a tiny timeskip there at the end code and that confused me a bit xD BUT very happy with your tutorials and I have 6 more to go! I did try to join the discord but maybe that doesnt exist anymore? 

Gostaria de saber se o jogo esta em portugues Brasil

I enjoyed my time with this game. I had mixed feelings at first but after some thought I am looking forward to the full release!

Wooooow!! This game is really incredible. 

I haven't played video games in awhile, so I sat and played this game for hours. The colors are so pretty, the artstyle is so beautiful and the story is super cute (but sad :((( ). But I really couldn't get used to the controls, I always kept pressing the wrong buttons. I also tried using my controller for the game (it's some generic control), but it didn't work with the game at all (I tried all the buttons lol). 

I haven't finished the game (I'm on the final boss, I suck at games like these so it's kinda hard even though I'm on easy, haha), but overall I really love it. Such a wonderful game!! 

Edit: just finished the game. I really love this!! I'm looking forward to the full game. This is so good. 

I'm only 35 minutes in and i'm in-love with this game! I think the pumpkin is an easy way to win me over! The first part of my let's play of this game is here! Keep up the good work this loos and feels amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56_Z5V_LAX0&feature=youtu.be

Hey pretty good one reminds me a little bit of undertale but honestly a little better than undertale good job! Unfortunately my youtube video isn't uploaded yet but I have my facebook one uploaded now.

https://www.facebook.com/ImagineSwagginz/videos/1113781565627545/

Really liked the game! Managed to back it 4h before the kickstarter ended, phew!

My experience was pretty smooth in general, however there’s a thing which confused me a lot: the fainting is way too abrupt. The first time it happened, I wasn’t even sure what was going on, and though the game broke! I only realised I had lost the battle when I woke up in the main room. Guess I was not paying much attention to my HP :P

Anyway, I assume you already plan to add a proper fainting animation for the final release.

Keep up the good work!

I played through the demo and it took me about 3 hours. I generally think of myself as someone who explored all the dialog options and different approaches to puzzles. I genuinely loved the quality and effort put into this. I see a lot of the references in this that you mentioned. I feel like this project has the same potential as something like Undertale.

Очень все классно сделано, жду релиза и надеюсь на русский язык :3