Tako no Himitsu: Ocean of Secrets

Tako no Himitsu: Ocean of Secrets

Demo feedback
Hallo

I finished the demo, some comments:
- It was very easy. I suck at action games and it was still easy. I have tons of experiance with RPGs however and I played several action adventures (Zelda, Okami, Alundra)
- I got stuck for some time at a puzzle: When you come to the altar you get the "push object tutorial" with an image of a statue. There are two statues in this room and I pushed them around for some time, hoping this would open a passage. It was more of an accident that I pushed the altar (pushing the altar left/right is the trick, right?). suggestion: Show several pushable objects in the tutorial (including some who are not in this room) to make sure this is a general rule. The way it was shown made me think moving this specific statue is the trick in this room.
- Unlike written in the message, the statues do not reset when re entering the room (which made me think I was stuck and I re loaded the game). Entering the "save vortex" does reset items and enemies. it also heals you. This can be abused to farm stuff. (not needed in the demo at all, but maybe later)
- I needed a moment to solve the switch puzzle (hint "The wave goes in both directions).
I tried to use the switches randomly and once something opened I understood what the hint means.
- The human enemies need some work. They attack super slow and when I beat them the first time (you get a message about collecting blue shards) it was hard to tell that they were dead.
- The boss was a joke: stand in front of it, defend all the time and shoot when the eye opens and your spell is ready. A change of perspective would be nice. You do not see the upper part of the boss (and the eye) unless you stand right in front of it. At first I was at the bottom of the arena to dodge the bullits easier until I realized there is no need to dodge. The second phase (hands) was more in line with my expectations of a first boss. It was easy but at least you have to move.
- In the boss room are vases and when you break them you get blue shards. My char started to shine blue during the fight when collecting the shards. No idea what this does, so I just beat it normally while being blue.
- When breaking objects you can find gems (money). This money often lands in places where the character cannot reach it, like in a wall. When you break objects in an area where you can walk, items should show up in areas where you can walk, not move in random directions when breaking the object.

questions:
- There are 6 characters (according to kickstarter) and in the demo you can chose between 2 groups. Will all characters join your party or will you have to chose 3 out of 6 (like in Trails of Mana)?
- Will you have a map function similar to the zelda games?
- Do you need any knowledge from the first game?
never heared of it, I found this one on Kickstarter.


summary:
Right now I would say the demo is OK, but not great.
There is much room for improvement but it looks promising.
I will keep an eye on it.

wishlisted
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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
DeneosGames  [developer] 21 Jul @ 5:53pm 
Hello :)
Thank you for your feedback, it's very interesting and we are working on an update on the demo so we will definitly take it for consideration!

Reguarding your questions:
- in the final game, you won't choose a character in the begining, they will eventually all join the party at somepoint and you'll end up having the 6 of them. Sometimes the party will split (like in ff6) and you'll have to choose the order you play some chapters, but in the end is follow the main story in a linear way.
- for now we don't plan to add a map, but we are thinking about it.
- You don't have to play the first game to understand this one, but you'll see easter egg everywhere (as it's the same world which evolved a lot). All the important stuff linked to the first game will be explained.

Thanks for the wishlist!
DeneosGames  [developer] 6 Aug @ 11:26am 
hello, we just patched the demo, which might adress a few of your concern. If you like it, don't forget to leave a review on the demo page ^^
Thank you for the update

- The new version of the altar puzzle is better.
Pushing statues is intuitive.
I think one problem of the old version was that we learned before: blinking star means press button (e.g. to read a book or pick up item) while statue or pillar can be pushed. pushing blinking star makes no sense.
I think the key word is affordance: You look at an object and you have an idea what you can do with it.
- Thank you for the new boss.
- I think the bosses are good for testing if the players understand the basic concepts of the game (block projectiles and use magic in one case, switching characters during battle in the other). I think this is a good principle: Its easy when you know what you are doing, the hard part is to find out what you should do.
This demo is easy, but with more characters and more spells you can make some interesting puzzles.
-i started with Mylene but could not get any further than the basement with the three lamps or whatever, because i couldn't figure out how to get to the other section. i thought it involved jumping on the walls, but...
-saving should either be have separate columns for separate routes, or automatically go to the last save slot you used. i just was playing the other route and accidentally saved over the mylene which annoyed me and i quit.
-local area maps of some kind?
DeneosGames  [developer] 9 Aug @ 11:48pm 
in the final game, there will be only one main route, no chapter selection. But yes we'll definitly improve and have the current save slot highlighted to avoid those issues.
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