Messages

I tried out the demo and really enjoyed myself. Thank you for releasing it even to non-backers. (I can't back, I live in Japan and PayPal is being retarded to me. I bought Al Emmo by paying someone else and having them burn and send it to me, and I imagine I'll have to do the same for Mage's Initiation.)

Here are my thoughts:

The quick and dirty - loved the classic adventure portion, tried to do everything I could possibly do in the demo it was so fun. Hated the combat.

The long version - I loved all the responses you prepared individually for looking, talking or trying to interact with each hotspot. I really enjoyed how many different hotspots you had in each room. I imagine in the full game we won't see any boring reactions like "A door." when you click on the door and that's just place holder stuff right now. I didn't notice the combination for the fountain hall was written in the note and figured it out by myself fairly quickly, which means to me, that you designed the adventure game logic of that extremely well. Kudos on that.

I do wonder if the final game will be more verbose than the demo. I thought you struck a nice balance between wordiness and detail here, but I wouldn't mind more detail in the final version. (I imagine there will be.) I think when you have so many possible hotspots and ways to interact with them, it can really bog down the pace of an adventure game for someone like me who likes to try it all and so a happy medium is an excellent choice. This isn't one of your remakes of an old game where I think many fans are happy to see you expand on games that were originally quite sparse in their storytelling, so I think the pace you have right now is close to ideal.

On the other hand, I do feel like adventure games do a great job of approximating the appeal of a good book, so tons of text is sometimes appreciated. One thing I always wonder in adventure games is, "If I don't interact with this now, will I miss the chance to enjoy all these interactions later?" So I think a good way to keep the pacing brisk and yet offer lots of incidental detail is to clearly signal to the player what is purely optional. In the demo clicking on the bookcases gets your standard description of them. Adventure fans like me know that we click again, we might get funny book titles or descriptions of different books, but how about first time players? Do they know that? How could you signal that to them in the text that clicking multiple might reward them with more flavor? This is my absolute favorite aspect of adventure games, being able to interact with them the environment in different ways and enjoy the text that bounces back. Himalaya and AGD always understand the importance of good writing in adventure games and it shows here. 

In Japan, our adventure games almost always have an impassive narrator response and characters who chime in for a conversation sometimes, on top of that narrator response. In Mage's Initiation, it seems you have chosen to have the main character be the narrator whenever you click on things, which is fine. Whenever I play a Japanese adventure game and a new character joins me for a while, I always go back to all the places I can and interact with them to get new dialogue scenes. If Mage's Initiation has any characters who are in the room or accompany you for a while, it would be nice if clicking on certain things started a dialogue scene after the initial description. So in the training hall for example. It might frustrate players who are trying to get information, but I feel Himalaya knows the right line to keep on that anyway. I'm not sure whether you have plans to do this, but its something I always anticipate in an adventure game and like if it is included.

On that line, sometimes I was very confused why I got the response I did with the mouth icon on some objects. It feels like sometimes the player character is trying to lick, spit or eat it and other times talk to it, and other times I'm not sure what he tried to do that would warrant that response. It was all enjoyable though, so I don't really care, but I thought I might mention it.

The other mages who would randomly appear in the meeting hall were a nice touch. The music in the fountain hall was gorgeous and my favorite piece in the demo.

I didn't think anything felt out of place or in-congruent with respect to the world you were creating and I really thought every part of it was amusing and exciting to explore. The atmosphere each room conveyed was impressive. I really felt like I was exploring a mystical world. There have been so many fantasy games released throughout the years, the magic can get lost for someone who has played a lot of them. It sucked me in from the first screen.

The interface, outside of combat, was impeccable and insanely well thought out for an alpha version. One example of that is how you can just choose to move to any room once you've found the code or click in the code each time. I don't have any issue with only running or only walking. I'm either not in a hurry or want to move around quickly, so two movement speeds are fine with me.

Solving the puzzles was a joy. There was just the right amount of feedback and hints without making me feel like I've been "Hey, Listen!"-ed (Ocarina of Time reference if you aren't into console games). When doing the multi-step puzzle, I especially liked how you described the reaction of each step, made it seem very magical and gave me a great sense of my actions making an actual impact in the game world, however small.

The parts I found the most memorable in the demo were:

- That big crystal shard thing in the ceiling of the fountain hall that seemed to be connected to some character or diety's moods or lifeforce

-That thingamajig that helped you level up. A talking crystal ball is a great idea.

-The implied antagonism between the way different types of mages seem to live and their varying outlooks on life.

-The Lord of the Keyrings, laughed out loud there.

-The Easter Egg-y fourth room in the mage's hall

-The idea that somebody likes pitting the suits of armor against each other

-Whoever Bert (I think that's the name, the guy who seems to manage the library) is, seems to be a character I'd want to meet

The combat, on the other hand, felt like it was for an entirely different game and a much less professionally made one at that. I didn't enjoy a single thing about it. I responded in more detail about in the Combat thread if you're interested in my verbose and useless feedback. 

I'm not able to provide very good feedback because I am not a native English speaker, but I figured it was the least I could do for not only giving me a free demo, but four excellent remakes I didn't pay for.

Aside from the combat, Mage's Initiation shows a confidence in style or tone, a beautiful imagination and an overall professional atmosphere that few small game developers can match and I hope your name becomes more well known for it.

Hello, first time poster, long time fan.

I played the demo and thought it was quite impressive. The graphics were charming, the interaction was fun and the little bits of character and setting suggested by the text were suggested and tinkered with to a delightful degree. I really enjoyed everything that didn't have to do with combat.

Even if you improve the controls, I'm skeptical that it will be fun and agree that a turn-based system would be a better match. You could try the Final Fantasy approach and have either some sort of turn-deciding system that flows in real time, or make it pausable to issue commands and slow down the pace like Baldur's Gate, but I really don't think an action system works well in your current engine. Action is best when the control of the character is communicated extremely smoothly and you can feel the benefits of the action system making everything more exciting. Things like the fire ball spell bouncing off of objects or the player character ducking and flipping out of the way would make a good case for action.

I think you can implement the ideas you have better by making it turn-based, with real time and positional elements. It seems like you want movement of the player character to make things more dynamic, but I think you can accomplish that with a system that gives more time to react.

If you insist on keeping the same system, I think it would be better if there was more feedback to the player. The reason I play adventure games is because I like book-like story progression, so lots of reactions and Easter Eggs like the rest of the game could possibly make it a lot more fun. As it is, it feels like it stops being an adventure game and becomes something like a dinky low level freeware game.

I do like the idea that you are restricting combat just to magic. There are more than enough games with sword or pugilist combat. Mage's Initiation doesn't really need to join in if you ask me.

As it is right now in the demo, it makes me wish that in the final game, there will be an option to skip all battle scenes and it reminds me of ambitious adventure games of the past that got ruined by trying to implement action in game engines that weren't made for it. 

Forgive me if you think I am being too critical, but your other ideas and games are so good, I really think it'd be a shame if this lowered the overall quality of the full game, especially because games like this with so much love put into them are so rare.