I first wanna say thanks for playing and I'm relieved that you enjoyed it. As of now the scenario in Potty Quest is canon but otherwise not directly featured in Bardsong.
Idk when it will be coming out but I'm still working on it. my mental health has been in rapid freefall for a long while and I no longer have the stability I once had in my life. I can't promise a release date as every deadline i've set for myself has come and gone.
That's very sweet of you. I'm too anxious to do discord DMs but iirc there should be a link to a mostly quiet server I run (and still check daily) in the readme that you're more than welcome to join. Everyone there's pretty friendly.
Needed the RPG Maker 2003 RTP - obvious to people who play RPG Maker games but could be worth putting in the FAQ :) - along with a specific link, as for some reason the first one I downloaded only half worked and I couldn't press any buttons
Quick play and scrambled mode - what great ideas!
The opening cutscene version - the opening with the harsh static is quite unpleasant, it could be worth having a longer loop and fading it in or something so it doesn't hurt as much.
You've put so much work in updating the supporters screen, it looks great and doesn't go on for ages!
Maybe I'm dumb but knowing you need to jump the desk may not be super obvious to new players.
Intro is good and fun, various things have had their timings improved, ghost miniquest is very clear, combat is much faster paced and more fun! Run speed seems good!
Omg though, echoing to try and learn a skill can be p a i n f u l sometimes, might be worth making the % chance higher or increase cumulatively. Getting Vibe the first time is a real luck of the draw, and I've not been able to learn Distortion at all despite 40+ attempts (if you can't learn it, maybe just add a box saying "Can't learn this skill" after you cast it, but I assume the chance is just really low).
In the room with the fire slimes I found the Save command for the menu, but I already had it?
The different rocks changing your abilities is a cool idea!
I really appreciate your thorough notes, definitely keeping them in mind when working on the full game.
I really did try to make this so you wouldn't need the RTP but it seems like I goofed on that.
Not sure what happened with the save command waitwaitwait as i'm typing this i did in fact figure out what happened, how tragic thanks for pointing it out!
I will say that the rng for learning distortion is deliberately not favorable to the player, and locked out of learning entirely if you know how to vibe.
Thank you for your response looking forward to playing saw some great stuff on social media and excited to experience it for myself. Keep up the great work
* If possible, make cutscenes able to be played faster
* Make it clear you can save at any time, like in the beginning write "make sure you save often (you can save at any time from the menu!)" just in case.
* The initial fights against the slimes on normal difficulty are not fun at all (not sure if that's intentional due to them being optional), but having enemies whose ability lets them restore enough hp to negate 2.5 attacks from you seems pretty unfun, and having to defeat three of these makes it a slog. Perhaps buff player's attack to make these go a little faster, or make it clear you should avoid them, especially as fights give no XP.
* Other fights similarly seem to be drawn out - the eyeball thing's main attack is Darkness, which lowers your accuracy, drawing the fight out longer. To try and learn this you have to Echo it twice, then Vibe (if you have it) twice to get the point back to continue, which feels tedious. Consider increasing the starting Focus to 15 or something.
* The red slimes oneshot me. There's no telegraphing they're that powerful besides them turning up in more "secret" areas.
* ...why is Regular Pat a cameo in your game?
* On my first playthrough the cutscene didn't work properly and never scrolled all the way down to reveal the gf and snow
* The door slamming sfx is a little loud and startling
* Boss music has an awkward pause at the end
* It's a little hard to tell what's interactable and what isn't in the game. I'm the kind of person who inspects everything so it wasn't too bad but for people unfamiliar with the game they may not know they can do this.
* Mention the other keys in the controls at the start, you mention arrow keys, shift and Esc but not how to interact etc (may be useful for completeness or in case there is more than one button, I know you have to press enter to go forward anyway but it'd be good to say).
* The game seems to get brighter on scene transition - check the "darken the map" flag doesn't need reapplying each time before the lights go on.
* Perhaps consider making the first time you Echo Vibe be a success, to ease players into the fact they can learn skills permenantly if they do it often enough - in my playthrough it took about 6 attempts and players may not realise they can keep the skills permenantly.
* Status effects do not show up in menus or on characters so it is hard to know if they are in effect. (except Silence, Sleep and Afraid on the player, enemies state them in plaintext but it's not consistent between the two sides)
* What is the point of the focus-restoring items in the vending machine if they are both strictly worse than the completely free Vibe ability, which can also be used in the menu for free? I understand this is a demo so is possibly for convenience but it makes them pointless. Same with the gf character and Focus/Cheer/Heal, you can heal for free.
* Consider adding a save sound effect so people are safe in the comfort of knowing they did indeed save.
* Is the focus restored when attacking in battle based on damage dealt? If so, if you ever get to 0 with gf, you can't get more due to their poor attack. Is this when you're supposed to use the incredibly expensive focus restoring items? If so that makes her even more unhelpful.
* Fire Rock is also called Hot Rock, make sure it's consistent!
* Not sure how you're supposed to get past the ghosts, one you can fight but chipping away at it with 3 damage per Darkness takes forever and I don't think I should do that.
* In the room with the blue slime there is a tile that cannot be crossed or interacted with for no reason.
Overall it has some promise but didn't feel too exciting just yet. I did like the copy mechanic, I thought that was neat! I played a couple times on both difficulties and found the earlygame was a little boring but when you get new abilities it picks up a little. If you find the gf character, they aren't super helpful as they cannot help outside of healing etc (which makes sense as a white mage, but in a pinch their melee attack often does 0, which seems a little cruel).
It was fine, just needs some improvements to be good!
(see my results screen, I didn't Echo fire from the red slimes because I was too worried about their damage/couldn't be bothered to go back after I got the Hot Rock, didn't want to fight Regular Pat for Rainbow and couldn't go past the ghosts).
Thought I'd come back to this! I'm still thinking about the game after a few days so I must've enjoyed it more than I had first thought. Sorry if anything I said sounded too mean, I realised that it's obviously a demo so a lot of things aren't in place yet so I'm sorry for writing a huge list of issues, that wasn't very nice. I hope it didn't annoy you or anything!
I just wanted to say in short: It was an interesting concept and I'm really excited to see where it goes from here, it had an interesting silly plot and theme, the characters were cool and cute-looking and I'm interested in seeing where it goes from here! Like I had said, the mechanics feel a little rough at the moment (and I know with RPG Maker games like these the actual RPG mechanics are actually more of a pain and a backseat to other stuff) and don't matter that much as long as the story, art, theming etc is good, but let me know if you think any of what I said may help :) it was a fun, quirky game and I want to see it be the best it can be! Good luck and keep it up, I'll be excited for when the next demo comes out!
And heck, the fact that I came back to write more means I've been thinking about the game for a few days, which means you definitely have some really cool ideas there :)
Keep up the good work! I don't know if you'll read these comments but I hope any of my input helps :)
Had a good time with the demo! Lookin forward to the full thing.
The character designs/art is a real standout for me, its super rad and cute!
Couldnt figure out what to do with the ghosts though, pushed the tv cart inbetween those boxes and then a tv cart showed up in the wall below the first cart, but I couldnt really do anything when i went over by the ghosts. I probably just missed something but in case this is a bug or somethin i wanted to mention it here.
Once again im def lookin forward to the full game!
Had issues launching game from itch. When browsing to the file it launched the installer, but failed to finish properly. Despite saying it'd failed and it couldn't find specified location, when I browse to the location all files appear to be present and playable, so FYI to anyone seeing the same error.
Love it so far! I'm having a little trouble with the ghost area, I seem to get stuck in combat with no way to escape or do damage, although I may be missing something
It's deliberate that you don't deal damage to the ghosts, the intent is to run away from them. You should be able to escape though, I'm sorry it's been giving you trouble. :(
Around 30-60 minutes on a first playthrough, depending on how much you want to explore. It's possible to speedrun the demo in a few minutes if you know where to go.
The installer/installation was pretty janky. Ended up having to manually move the game into my program files. Also how is this almost 1 gigabyte, it doesn't seem like it would take up that much space?
Sorry for the installer troubles- this is my first release and I'm still figuring things out.
The bulk of the filesize is from many unused tracks and sound effects that weren't trimmed out for the demo. Admittedly this is a pretty embarrassing oversight on my part.
Are you using WAV files for the tracks instead of midi files? I'm often told that WAV files take up a lot more space then midi ones, so earlier games would have their music in midi format to save lots of space. It's why in-game tracks are different from album release tracks.
Yeah, they're WAVs. And you're right, they do take up a lot of space. In the full release they're going to be mp3s to save on space. In hindsight the filesize was a bit of an oversight for this demo, one I'm going to be more mindful of moving forward-
I enjoyed it, the characters are cute and there seems to be a lot of little secrets and I even found one of the bonus characters.
My suggestion is to up the movement speed, I felt a lot of time was just waiting around while my character walked through walls at a snails pace, or I wanted to explore a lot more, but I moved so slow I started forgetting where I was going. Oh, also this goes for the text, I don't mind that the text goes slow, but the option to press a button to progress the test faster would be appreciated :)
I definitely would like to see more, though, and look forward to when you complete the full game, great job!
Egg on my face though for not outright telling the player. I think that was something I took for granted. And admittedly even running doesn't change the speed of the scripted bits atm, so I'll definitely keep that note in mind for the full release.
Thanks so much for your feedback, I really appreciate your taking the time to write. ^^
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when will Bardsong be released and will this be a part of the main storyline cause I love the theme of it so far
I first wanna say thanks for playing and I'm relieved that you enjoyed it. As of now the scenario in Potty Quest is canon but otherwise not directly featured in Bardsong.
Idk when it will be coming out but I'm still working on it. my mental health has been in rapid freefall for a long while and I no longer have the stability I once had in my life. I can't promise a release date as every deadline i've set for myself has come and gone.
thanks for the comment <3
Oh dear shy dog if you ever want to chat my discord is Kibume I might not be a therapist but I would at least be a friend to you
That's very sweet of you. I'm too anxious to do discord DMs but iirc there should be a link to a mostly quiet server I run (and still check daily) in the readme that you're more than welcome to join. Everyone there's pretty friendly.
v1.42:
(SPOILERS)
Oh my gosh this is a huge update! I love it :D
Needed the RPG Maker 2003 RTP - obvious to people who play RPG Maker games but could be worth putting in the FAQ :) - along with a specific link, as for some reason the first one I downloaded only half worked and I couldn't press any buttons
Quick play and scrambled mode - what great ideas!
The opening cutscene version - the opening with the harsh static is quite unpleasant, it could be worth having a longer loop and fading it in or something so it doesn't hurt as much.
You've put so much work in updating the supporters screen, it looks great and doesn't go on for ages!
Maybe I'm dumb but knowing you need to jump the desk may not be super obvious to new players.
Intro is good and fun, various things have had their timings improved, ghost miniquest is very clear, combat is much faster paced and more fun! Run speed seems good!
Omg though, echoing to try and learn a skill can be p a i n f u l sometimes, might be worth making the % chance higher or increase cumulatively. Getting Vibe the first time is a real luck of the draw, and I've not been able to learn Distortion at all despite 40+ attempts (if you can't learn it, maybe just add a box saying "Can't learn this skill" after you cast it, but I assume the chance is just really low).
In the room with the fire slimes I found the Save command for the menu, but I already had it?
The different rocks changing your abilities is a cool idea!
Good work :)
I really appreciate your thorough notes, definitely keeping them in mind when working on the full game.
I really did try to make this so you wouldn't need the RTP but it seems like I goofed on that.
Not sure what happened with the save command waitwaitwait as i'm typing this i did in fact figure out what happened, how tragicthanks for pointing it out!I will say that the rng for learning distortion is deliberately not favorable to the player, and locked out of learning entirely if you know how to vibe.
But yeah thanks for playing and commenting! :3
probably just blind where is the download link
Nono you're not blind. Sorry about that- I just briefly had the link down as I was finalizing the last update.
Thank you for your response looking forward to playing saw some great stuff on social media and excited to experience it for myself. Keep up the great work
Game gay in the best way and not just because yuki's in it
Game gay in the best way and not just because I'm in it
Finally got around to playing this, a few points:
* My antivirus kept flagging the game as malware.
* If possible, make cutscenes able to be played faster
* Make it clear you can save at any time, like in the beginning write "make sure you save often (you can save at any time from the menu!)" just in case.
* The initial fights against the slimes on normal difficulty are not fun at all (not sure if that's intentional due to them being optional), but having enemies whose ability lets them restore enough hp to negate 2.5 attacks from you seems pretty unfun, and having to defeat three of these makes it a slog. Perhaps buff player's attack to make these go a little faster, or make it clear you should avoid them, especially as fights give no XP.
* Other fights similarly seem to be drawn out - the eyeball thing's main attack is Darkness, which lowers your accuracy, drawing the fight out longer. To try and learn this you have to Echo it twice, then Vibe (if you have it) twice to get the point back to continue, which feels tedious. Consider increasing the starting Focus to 15 or something.
* The red slimes oneshot me. There's no telegraphing they're that powerful besides them turning up in more "secret" areas.
* ...why is Regular Pat a cameo in your game?
* On my first playthrough the cutscene didn't work properly and never scrolled all the way down to reveal the gf and snow
* The door slamming sfx is a little loud and startling
* Boss music has an awkward pause at the end
* It's a little hard to tell what's interactable and what isn't in the game. I'm the kind of person who inspects everything so it wasn't too bad but for people unfamiliar with the game they may not know they can do this.
* Mention the other keys in the controls at the start, you mention arrow keys, shift and Esc but not how to interact etc (may be useful for completeness or in case there is more than one button, I know you have to press enter to go forward anyway but it'd be good to say).
* The game seems to get brighter on scene transition - check the "darken the map" flag doesn't need reapplying each time before the lights go on.
* Perhaps consider making the first time you Echo Vibe be a success, to ease players into the fact they can learn skills permenantly if they do it often enough - in my playthrough it took about 6 attempts and players may not realise they can keep the skills permenantly.
* Status effects do not show up in menus or on characters so it is hard to know if they are in effect. (except Silence, Sleep and Afraid on the player, enemies state them in plaintext but it's not consistent between the two sides)
* What is the point of the focus-restoring items in the vending machine if they are both strictly worse than the completely free Vibe ability, which can also be used in the menu for free? I understand this is a demo so is possibly for convenience but it makes them pointless. Same with the gf character and Focus/Cheer/Heal, you can heal for free.
* Consider adding a save sound effect so people are safe in the comfort of knowing they did indeed save.
* Is the focus restored when attacking in battle based on damage dealt? If so, if you ever get to 0 with gf, you can't get more due to their poor attack. Is this when you're supposed to use the incredibly expensive focus restoring items? If so that makes her even more unhelpful.
* Fire Rock is also called Hot Rock, make sure it's consistent!
* Not sure how you're supposed to get past the ghosts, one you can fight but chipping away at it with 3 damage per Darkness takes forever and I don't think I should do that.
* In the room with the blue slime there is a tile that cannot be crossed or interacted with for no reason.
Overall it has some promise but didn't feel too exciting just yet. I did like the copy mechanic, I thought that was neat! I played a couple times on both difficulties and found the earlygame was a little boring but when you get new abilities it picks up a little. If you find the gf character, they aren't super helpful as they cannot help outside of healing etc (which makes sense as a white mage, but in a pinch their melee attack often does 0, which seems a little cruel).
It was fine, just needs some improvements to be good!
(see my results screen, I didn't Echo fire from the red slimes because I was too worried about their damage/couldn't be bothered to go back after I got the Hot Rock, didn't want to fight Regular Pat for Rainbow and couldn't go past the ghosts).
Thought I'd come back to this! I'm still thinking about the game after a few days so I must've enjoyed it more than I had first thought. Sorry if anything I said sounded too mean, I realised that it's obviously a demo so a lot of things aren't in place yet so I'm sorry for writing a huge list of issues, that wasn't very nice. I hope it didn't annoy you or anything!
I just wanted to say in short: It was an interesting concept and I'm really excited to see where it goes from here, it had an interesting silly plot and theme, the characters were cool and cute-looking and I'm interested in seeing where it goes from here! Like I had said, the mechanics feel a little rough at the moment (and I know with RPG Maker games like these the actual RPG mechanics are actually more of a pain and a backseat to other stuff) and don't matter that much as long as the story, art, theming etc is good, but let me know if you think any of what I said may help :) it was a fun, quirky game and I want to see it be the best it can be! Good luck and keep it up, I'll be excited for when the next demo comes out!
And heck, the fact that I came back to write more means I've been thinking about the game for a few days, which means you definitely have some really cool ideas there :)
Keep up the good work! I don't know if you'll read these comments but I hope any of my input helps :)
Thank you so much for playing!! :)
Outa curiosity is there a way to get the other two characters from the intro to join the team?
Not Snow but the one you get to name can join the party. She's bound to show up if you go exploring long enough. :)
Had a good time with the demo! Lookin forward to the full thing.
The character designs/art is a real standout for me, its super rad and cute!
Couldnt figure out what to do with the ghosts though, pushed the tv cart inbetween those boxes and then a tv cart showed up in the wall below the first cart, but I couldnt really do anything when i went over by the ghosts. I probably just missed something but in case this is a bug or somethin i wanted to mention it here.
Once again im def lookin forward to the full game!
(Context: Running Windows 11 & itch desktop app)
Had issues launching game from itch. When browsing to the file it launched the installer, but failed to finish properly. Despite saying it'd failed and it couldn't find specified location, when I browse to the location all files appear to be present and playable, so FYI to anyone seeing the same error.
Love it so far! I'm having a little trouble with the ghost area, I seem to get stuck in combat with no way to escape or do damage, although I may be missing something
It's deliberate that you don't deal damage to the ghosts, the intent is to run away from them. You should be able to escape though, I'm sorry it's been giving you trouble. :(
A very nice game, even if there is a d*g in it.
May I ask how long the game is pls?
Around 30-60 minutes on a first playthrough, depending on how much you want to explore. It's possible to speedrun the demo in a few minutes if you know where to go.
Okay thank you so much for letting me know😊
The installer/installation was pretty janky. Ended up having to manually move the game into my program files. Also how is this almost 1 gigabyte, it doesn't seem like it would take up that much space?
Sorry for the installer troubles- this is my first release and I'm still figuring things out.
The bulk of the filesize is from many unused tracks and sound effects that weren't trimmed out for the demo. Admittedly this is a pretty embarrassing oversight on my part.
Are you using WAV files for the tracks instead of midi files? I'm often told that WAV files take up a lot more space then midi ones, so earlier games would have their music in midi format to save lots of space. It's why in-game tracks are different from album release tracks.
Yeah, they're WAVs. And you're right, they do take up a lot of space. In the full release they're going to be mp3s to save on space. In hindsight the filesize was a bit of an oversight for this demo, one I'm going to be more mindful of moving forward-
I appreciate the feedback
You published it! Looking nice!
very cool game, I had lots of fun with it.
I enjoyed it, the characters are cute and there seems to be a lot of little secrets and I even found one of the bonus characters.
My suggestion is to up the movement speed, I felt a lot of time was just waiting around while my character walked through walls at a snails pace, or I wanted to explore a lot more, but I moved so slow I started forgetting where I was going. Oh, also this goes for the text, I don't mind that the text goes slow, but the option to press a button to progress the test faster would be appreciated :)
I definitely would like to see more, though, and look forward to when you complete the full game, great job!
You can run if you hold the shift key :)
Egg on my face though for not outright telling the player. I think that was something I took for granted. And admittedly even running doesn't change the speed of the scripted bits atm, so I'll definitely keep that note in mind for the full release.
Thanks so much for your feedback, I really appreciate your taking the time to write. ^^
Oh, I didn't realize, that is good to know :D
Yeah! You also get a preemptive strike if you run into the enemies :]
Cool game
Thanks! :D