Interesting, back in the days of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, we had troubles beating the bosses at first, then after understanding the patterns, execution was not an issue anymore and so we could beat them at 100% and it sometimes felt a bit boring when replaying the game as we felt no sense of danger. The solution in later games was to make execution much harder and requires better dexterity and timing skills… but I had never thought about going the opposite way, turning a boss battle into a pure puzzle! This way it completely assumes its non-replayability and focuses on problem-solving itself.
I admit I thought there would be 2-3 bosses where you would have to reuse the same skills but they would have different effects, however I understand that it must be complicated to pull that off… In the end, the one-boss experience was still fun!
It’s a lot of trial-and-error and some exotic effects are not predictable, but I like that most of the combinations can be guessed. This way, after 2-3 attempts the solution appears clearly (at the end it was mostly counting the number of turns of delayed effects to get the right timing).
The delayed meteo reminded me of Golden Sun 2’s Dedalus’ missile attack.
One remark on game size though, I’m surprised it’s 1.5 GB unzipped. I thought it’d be because of HD artworks but considering the artifacts and the size of the native window, it shouldn’t be that big/hires… So it must be the number of animation frames then. The monster idle animation seems to move body parts but maybe it’s actually integrated with fullbody frames, making it bigger? I thought flat colors wouldn’t be that big though…
Anyway, congrats, I see you don’t have many games but they seem to be interesting puzzles! I’ll try the other one later!
P.S.: wow, mentioned just below CrossCode on itch recommends? I just saw it was released in 2018!
Wow, thank you Komehara for such a detailed review ! One of the reasons why I didn't do a sequel to this game is because it's taking so much time to animate for so little play time (yes, the size is due to traditional animation...). The second reason is that after you understand that the longest to execute actions are the first you should trigger, the mechanic is spoiled. Even by adding different bosses with different styles and different characters/actions, you would *just* go and defeat the bosses pretty straightforwardly. I didn't know how to renew the puzzle part and didn't want it to just be an animation with some button, so I went into another direction. I would be delighted to have your opinion on my next game Myrtilles if you try it out !
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Interesting, back in the days of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, we had troubles beating the bosses at first, then after understanding the patterns, execution was not an issue anymore and so we could beat them at 100% and it sometimes felt a bit boring when replaying the game as we felt no sense of danger. The solution in later games was to make execution much harder and requires better dexterity and timing skills… but I had never thought about going the opposite way, turning a boss battle into a pure puzzle! This way it completely assumes its non-replayability and focuses on problem-solving itself.
I admit I thought there would be 2-3 bosses where you would have to reuse the same skills but they would have different effects, however I understand that it must be complicated to pull that off… In the end, the one-boss experience was still fun!
It’s a lot of trial-and-error and some exotic effects are not predictable, but I like that most of the combinations can be guessed. This way, after 2-3 attempts the solution appears clearly (at the end it was mostly counting the number of turns of delayed effects to get the right timing).
The delayed meteo reminded me of Golden Sun 2’s Dedalus’ missile attack.
One remark on game size though, I’m surprised it’s 1.5 GB unzipped. I thought it’d be because of HD artworks but considering the artifacts and the size of the native window, it shouldn’t be that big/hires… So it must be the number of animation frames then. The monster idle animation seems to move body parts but maybe it’s actually integrated with fullbody frames, making it bigger? I thought flat colors wouldn’t be that big though…
Anyway, congrats, I see you don’t have many games but they seem to be interesting puzzles! I’ll try the other one later!
P.S.: wow, mentioned just below CrossCode on itch recommends? I just saw it was released in 2018!
Wow, thank you Komehara for such a detailed review ! One of the reasons why I didn't do a sequel to this game is because it's taking so much time to animate for so little play time (yes, the size is due to traditional animation...). The second reason is that after you understand that the longest to execute actions are the first you should trigger, the mechanic is spoiled. Even by adding different bosses with different styles and different characters/actions, you would *just* go and defeat the bosses pretty straightforwardly. I didn't know how to renew the puzzle part and didn't want it to just be an animation with some button, so I went into another direction. I would be delighted to have your opinion on my next game Myrtilles if you try it out !