PyWeek - Team XKCD - feedback

controls were a little bit weird but ok once i got used to them. excellent RPG, hope to have time to play it all the way through.

A bit too many bugs and gameplay was slow, but I generally like these sorts of games, and the use of art was good as well.

its too much like work. could get to be fun with more work.

Very nice job in just a week!

A little more time, and it might have turned out wonderful.

Nice game and neat story. I'm not used to the battle interface, #2 in
your TODO post should definitely be implemented. Still about the interface, two suggestions, have an arrow key towards opponent attack him, and have alternative keys (or change them) for next character and next turn closer to each other (a bit annoying when playing keyboard with the mouse - it's impossible to play keyboard-only because you need the mouse to click on enemies, and mouse-only isn't quick enough either). Allowing ASDW to move (closer to spacebar and more common when playing keyboard + mouse) would be good, too. Anyway, interface aside, the turn based battle system looks good to me and it was fun to beat up a few monsters. I didn't have the patience, though, to go past the third level, and it seemed that early in the game you don't really need money (mostly bad items in the store) and xp leveling was a bit slow, so I didn't get to see how the skills evolved. Other than that, this game feels nice, I like the graphics and I enjoyed the story part, I just got a bit tired with the interface after a while. (Minor bug: when selecting a character, the screen doesn't center on it. Also, sometimes the attack animation is wrongly positioned, possibly due to the previous bug I mentioned.)

<p>The game pace is a bit slow, even if the idea is ok. Ambitious for a pyweek! some drawing glitches here and there

Your connection to "string" is somewhat tenuous, but the game wasn't bad for a tactical RPG...

Very good job! It gets slower and slower when you play for a while, but restarting the game gets you going again.
I'd like to see the game finished (polished, with less white background, fixing the little 1-pixel quirks from your sprites).

Nice dungeon crawl if a bit standard. Theme wasn't really integrated anywhere I could see but meh. Would be nicer to have a bigger difference between dead enemies and live ones, difficult to differentiate between the two.

immediately segfaulted.

Cute characters in the dungeons, but the party and shop screens look terribly bland by comparison.

Nice back story - ui needs work. but good job :)

Very well-fleshed-out RPG -- I'm impressed you were able to coordinate such a large team and chug out something so complete! The RMB system was a bit frustrating to use -- I think the things on your TODO list are good. The only thing I would add to that is adding keyboard shortcuts for things like selecting the next character, or if you already have such shortcuts in the game, making them more apparent. Also, keyboard movement would be nice, but that's not a requirement. The game is fun, and the storyline is drop-dead hilarious -- you did a fantastic job with that. :) Great job with the whole thing!

Unrelated to string in any meaningful way.

Oddly addictive.

Strange weapon and spell positioning bug during attacks.

Too difficult :(

I didn't get very far into the game... I couldn't get into it - just not my type of game I think, too
much hard work to kill all the monsters! However, it's very well made and I do like the "thread of
life" interpretation of the theme :D btw, I think I discovered pyweek through the topic on xkcd
so thanks for bringing it to my attention! it's been a great learning opportunity and I'll
definitely be taking part again next time :)

Er... ok... the string is... somewhere in there, I guess.

Combat was kind of slow, otherwise it's fun. A good start, with a little ui work it could be great.

Nice game and lovely intro! Gameplay is not really original (but fun). Production is kind of
mixed because the music fits well but there is no sound and while the characters look very cute,
the dungeon enviroment seems.. um.. boring. :/

Wow, I did not have any fun at all playing this game. Too many details to get into amidst judging so many other entries.

Not a bad game. It is clearly far from 'done', and it shows. It is a simple TRPG which is nice, and
the intro story was somewhat interesting and amusing too. The game can be irritating to play.
There is low performance loading the world map and dungeons, which can make adding equipment a
real chore. The game balance is pretty terrible. Early in the game it takes ages to kill
anything because you miss all the time and the enemies can't hit you either. Further along as
you get some experience and pour it all into your character's primary skills, then it is pretty
easy to waste enemies, though they do get a bit stronger along the way. Speaking of enemies,
there are only two types and they only do melee attacks, which doesn't make for much 'tactics'
in a TRPG. Maybe there are more, but I got through about four dungeons before the game crashed
upon trying to enter the 5th dungeon (posted an issue on your Google Code project with
traceback for this). The game sadly has tons of bugs. Most graphical glitches. Often attack
effects are missing, which is a real shame considering the game is so graphically bare. Inside
of the dungeons when you end your turn, it takes ages to be able to move again, probably due to a
whole slew of enemies running an intensive pathfinding algorithm. As you more of them, the
game speeds up! Overall, the game is ok. For the most part it is incredibly tedious to play
though. In the future, you need to get the game mechanics out of the way fast so you can polish,
polish, polish!

If the number in the lower left corner were the fps meter, which I assume it was, then it was a
pitiful sight to watch my computer try to run the program. As soon as I opened it in Python, a
flickering showed on the lower right corner of the game window, and the fps started
plummeting. I actually thought it was a countdown of some sort. I watched the story, and by the
end of it, I was at 3~4 fps. Moving my mouse caused my entire computer to lock up. Upon reboot, I
tried again. A full >40fps at the main menu screen showed me that it would be okay this time...
Alas, the computer froze when I moved the mouse to hit New Game. I did not dare try a third time for
fear of rebooting my computer again. I'm sorry guys, I totally meant to play it and enjoy it, but
I guess I just couldn't. Andrew Szeto, jabagawee Running Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 with PyGame
1.8.1 compiled from source and Python installed from the repositories on a Pentium T2060 and
1GB RAM desktop.

Diabloish!

Poor interface. RPG interfaces are hard.

Would have been more fun if the UI was better. It was difficult to see what was happening and how to control characters.

To be honest, the game confused me. The only thing that made sense was the movement.

The story was neat and the character graphics were nice, but it wasn't much fun to play and seemed to be very unfinished.

Overall a pretty nice package. I especially liked the story sequence describing the situation. The adventuring itself didn't feel really engaging, albeit the basic system was neatly done. Sometimes I didn't really know what was happening, was I hitting the monster for damage or did I miss?