Art so cute it'll melt your teeth - really loved it. However, I feel like the dialogue doesn't matter at all, I started the game over a few times and the dialogue trees didn't change at all regardless of what option i chose. Maybe it's intended (stuck in a loop and such), but it gave me the impression of shallowness which is a shame because the game just looks so incredibly polished. That aside (and seeing you also use Godot *brofist*) you should consider exporting to html5 - it's a giveaway using godot and more people will end up playing your game :)

I dig the cute art and quirky characters.

I'm not sure I understand the game, though, and it feels a bit shallow. As far as I can tell, battles with the monsters at the end of a round are simply determined by whether you managed to recruit all 4 characters, rather than the damage stats of your party or anything else... or at least I *thought* as much, until I fought a monster with a full party and lost. It feels kinda anticlimactic and frustrating to get a cool party together and encounter a spooky monster, only for the entire fight to be resolved in an instant, and not knowing how or why you won or lost. Even a really rudimentary battle system would really elevate this game a lot, I think, especially if it showcased the abilities and individual characteristics of all the characters in the parties you assemble.

Encountering the same characters again and again within a single play is fine and fits the "loop" theme, but it becomes somewhat annoying to have the same conversation with the same character for the 10th time after you lost your previous two runs without understanding why.

Overall, a fun entry. Good work.

@shanzhai - thank you so much for your feedback. I was actually trying to do that just now, but failed miserably, so I'm not sure what I did wrong. None of had even used godot until, well, Friday, so we're just happy we managed to get this thing together (don't ask to see the code, I hacked that crap so bad it's not even remotely prod tier.) Could it be because we're using json data files? (Also, sis-fist back for the Godot! FREAKING LOVED IT. Going to do all my personal projects in it.)

Oh, and @empty-set - thanks for the feedback! We are planning on implementing a simple battle system using these characters (likely in another game that is more robust.) It'll be a while since we're so busy with our full time jobs, but I'll upload it to our itch.io when it's ready to be seen!

Thanks for the feedback! Got it up in HTML5.

i am going to be coming back to play this when i have some free time but i just want to say that the art style is super cute and i love the idea of having conversations to recruit party members

also! godot gang!

Loving the Undertale vibes in this game! All the aesthetics work together well and there's a real mystery to what's going on. I feel like there's something more to what's going on with the loop than I currently understand, and I think that's a cool interpretation of the theme. Nicely done!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/762553836?t=01h55m43s

Nice art and lots of cute girls.
Gameplay idea is interesting but ultimately gets very frustrating when you realize you have to know exactly how many monsters can spawn in any given level in order to get any further, all while not being able to skip/mash through the text, and selecting the same choices over and over again for the characters you've already figured out.
I can't say for sure but I feel a lot of the humor is referential and is completely lost on me because I don't know about that stuff, and some dialogues just left me like ???.
The font kinda clashes with the artstyle of the characters, though it's understandable if it's emulating one of those really old first computer RPGs, but I think it could've been arranged better somehow to truly make it feel that way, right now it looks too much like a modern game with a weird font on top.

I really dig the art style for it. I have become a convert of button feedback order and think it would help this look even better if there were mouse over and click feedback on the buttons. It's possible you didn't have time for it but it's something I'm going to try to always get to in future jams.

The art and music for this game is amazing! The whole aesthetic is super put together. The screen's got a lovely composition, reminiscent of a visual novel with the character framing and the choice menus that are present. All the characters are super unique as well and have a lot of personality to them!

I did feel there was a bit of a lack of feedback to picking party members - I got a game over, but wasn't really sure if it was the party member combo, or sheer RNG that caused it, so more feedback in that area would really strengthen the game-play loop!

I understand the difficulties you experienced in making this game, and the short time you had. Please understand that what I'm about to say might hurt a bit, but I'm only saying it so you can improve and you can be sure of what exactly went wrong.

There's a ton of small things in this game that on their own would be minor annoyances, but all together make a horrible game experience.

-The "skipping" dialogue that you say is a problem with the json parser is the first thing that confuses the player. I doubt I was the only one that thought dialogue was skipping and I was missing what was going on due to it, leading me to be confused about whether my answers were even right or not

-The fact that characters don't reply to your dialogue options means that you have no way to know if you chose the right option (other than recruiting them). If you manage to recruit them with 4 choices you're disincentivized from finding a more optimal path, since you have no way to know which of the choices you made before were wrong, which of the new ones are right, so you have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

If you do fail at recruiting them, you have zero way to know which of the 4 choices you made were correct, so next time around you're still choosing completely at random, having learnt nothing. This isn't aproblem for the basic characters that show up often. However, for the characters that show up from lvl 3 and above this is incredibly aggravating. Knowing that you have already lost the game due to not knowing the answers to recruit the only character that can save you at this level, and that you're no closer to finding out, and that you're gonna have to replay all 4 previous levels again, and that even after replaying all that again I won't be any closer to knowing how to progress in the game, is enough to drive a man to madness.

Also, I might just be autistic, but it's pretty hard to get a read on some characters and figure out what answers they'd like.

-Unskippable dialogue means every new playthrough is an excercise in boredom. Clicking through dialogue that you've already read 60 times but being unable to skip it is infuriating, and gets exponentially worse every repeat playthrough. This leads to the next problem:

-The penalty for death is way too harsh, and getting back to your deathpoint takes entirely way too long. Dying kicking your ass back to the titlescreen is a practice that has gone out of fashion for a reason, but makes sense for a roguelike. I think the problem with this game is that it has roguelike mechanics (dying sending you back to the beginning, repeating friends and bosses, etc.) but nothing of what makes roguelikes good. There is no "skill" that you can hone with repeated playthroughs (perhaps remembering answers, but as mentioned before, this too harder than it needs to be), and there is no progress that is gained with each death. With many roguelites "Death is not the end", as said in the game's page, but this is a misnomer. Death is absolutely the end. There is no gain, no progress, no nothing. Dying is a complete clean slate, and this is incredibly disheartening to players. Couple this with the death penalty and it's no wonder most people didn't finish the game.

-Now, I know what you're thinking. Yes, I did keep a notebook, I did write down follower damage, boss damage, question answers and other data. I'm sure this is what you intended, but the problem with this is that the previous point makes data collection not only hard, but grating. The second time I gave up on the game was when I figured out that to know how many characters appeared before the boss in level 4 was to let them all pass and die against the boss, leading me to once again replay everything. I really see no reason to withhold this information from the player, as boss health, follower numbers and damage are all key data to making a choice on who to take and who to ignore.

I think the mechanic of doing math and keeping a log of information could've been an interesting mechanic, if only the penalty of death wasn't so high and getting back to where you were didn't take so long.

-The boredom, annoyance and bitterness of the previous points makes the player try to do things as quickly as possible, which leads to choosing the wrong options even when you knew the right ones, which leads to losing against the bosses, which leads to a never ending cycle of pain, misery and strife. Oh god somebody do something, I'm trapped and I can't leave. Please, this isn't a joke I can't leave the game I—

-No save mechanic isn't a problem for most of the game itself, but NG+ access is lost when the game is closed, and I ain't going through all that shit again, so I can't speak about NG+

-As with many LD games, the repetitive music becomes annoying quick, but muting the game solves it instantly so not really a big deal.

-Not very important, but the way both the UI and the gameplay itself is set up encourages players to not read dialogue/text. Once you learn the price of death, getting to where you were quickly becomes paramount, so enemy and follower names, descriptions, and any non important dialogue becomes dead weight.

So that was the bad, but I'm not done yet.

-The art is really good, and I love the 1 bit aesthetic. It all feels very soulful, and some characters are very cute.

-The writing and of the jokes (yes, even the puns) are good, and would've gotten some laughs out of me if I hadn't been incredibly tilted at the time. The ending was interesting, if a bit confusing, but I have zero interest in replaying the game 50000000 more times to get the true ending in NG+

-The gameplay basics are solid, and there is the shadow of a good-ass game beginning to form in the background.

-I liked the way characters were instantly recognizable, and were easily divided into the classic classes we all know (though I don't remember ever seeing "Shark" as a class in D&D. Maybe 4th edition?).

-The girls are cute.

All in all, good effort and good job. If you'd had more time I really do believe you could've fixed most if not all of the issues, but that is the price we pay for the Ludum Dare. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

I agree with some others around the lack of feedback around party selection, I once tried skipping a party member and ended up facing an opponent with only 3 members (and died), so I assume the part is pre-selected and you just have to answer correctly. However, I lost at level 2 with a full party, so now I'm not sure.

Gripes aside, it's quite a lovely game. The graphics are simple yet charming, the writing is comfy and the mechanics are otherwise simple and straightforward. Depth is a bit questionable as presented, but I think this may be more down to scope and time limitations than design, as I saw some signs of progression in dialogue, just not consistently.

Nice job!

I'd love to see a whole fantasy game like this! The music and art were great! And Peter B. Paladin makes me laugh! I get the obvious reference.

Too many people already commented a lot, so I'll be short.
Nice concept, took me some tries to understand how the game works. I feel that the dialogues from the same character are completely not connected, and I think it would be way better to have a dialogue tree, or even some variation because it gets repetitive quite fast. I know you had too many characters and it's a game jam, so you didn't have enough time xD
Art is extremely good. Really nice job!