RunieStory - Gameboy color / Analogue Pocket

On one hand it's a crime to make a Harvest Moon inspired game without fishing. On the other it's incredible that this game has better combat than the Rune Factory games. I loved this. The movement feels great so dodging around enemies and getting strikes in and quickly ducking away works really well. I love the town and it's vibe and the characters. I like all of the marriage candidates. I've been hoping to find a short Harvest Moon style game that I can just playthrough when I'm in that mood but don't want to commit loads of hours to and this really scratches that itch

I like it but I don’t like the fact that you can’t choose between being a boy or a girl. You have to be a boy.

Now this is an impressive RPG game for Gameboy Color standards!

If this game is done, props on a big game with lots of varied content!  If you're still polishing, I'd recommend focusing on collision.  I think combat would benefit from a little knockback when taking damage and a second or two of invulnerability.  There are a couple places where the player has to be really precise to walk through an area (like in shops in town) where it doesn't seem like it should be.  The goblin's shop for example has a narrow stairway that's easy to get stuck on.  

Overall though, great game! I bought Basketbrawl and am loving that.  I was surprised by how different this game was in mechanics and style.  Both are great games.  You've got a broad range!  Keep it up!

Hi.

 I just finished Runestory. I played it on Onion OS on a Miyoo Mini Plus for a true GB experience. Here’s my feedback for the game:

Art: Really liked the art style for both the tiles and characters. Pretty simple, but it gives off a warm vibe that I appreciated. I especially liked the forest tiles as well as the enemy sprites. Some use of the tiles looked a bit choppy at points but I didn’t mind it.

Story: Very basic story but that’s understandable for a game of this scale. In a fuller version ideally we’d get to explore more about who Lady Dime was and how you are completing her prophecy.

Characters: I liked all four marriage candidates. Ended up marrying Olive since she was easy to romance. I had a hard time figuring out what Raven or Penny liked. I found it funny how you could buy veggie sandwiches from Sonia and give them right back to her to raise affection. Dialogue was decent but I would have liked it to vary more based on the amount of affection you have with them.

Music: Nothing much to say about it. Just didn’t leave an impression. I apologize.

Gameplay: 

 - I liked the movement and attack speed of your character. When you take damage, there should be a couple frame interval where you are invulnerable. Either that or taking damage should throw you backwards a bit so you don’t continuously take damage through collision. 

- Bosses looked cool, but they deal massive damage without any balancing. I ended up beating the bosses by raising my hp to 48 and then enduring the hit while swinging like crazy. It would be a good chance to make use of armour, potions, abilities or special weapons. Maybe also give the bosses their own unique fight style and remove their minions.

- Pausing the game causes enemies, even bosses, to respawn instantly. This was annoying since I used food to heal during boss fights. I had some frame rate drops when fighting multiple enemies at once.

- The gardening and cooking mechanics were pretty solid. I would have liked there to be a bank mechanic so that I wouldn’t have to risk losing half my runies in combat.

-  Locked doors in dungeons would lock again sometimes after exiting the room. Would have liked it if losing caused you to respawn outside the dungeon instead of back in bed. There could have been healing points in more spots in the overworld.

Overall, I enjoyed playing but would like to see some of these idea implemented into future games. If you balanced the combat, added some quality of life features to adventuring and fleshed out the story and romancing I think you’d be making an incredible gameboy game that I’d definitely want in my collection. I hope you take the feedback in stride and I will be following you for future releases.

10/10 , would recommend. i wish snaps was a character you could marry, but thats a very niche and minor issue lol. i really love the game tho and it reminds me of stardew valley, which im not upset about lol

I try and open the game, it gives me an error. :(

Pretty awesome game. I would love to see the whole map zoomed out. Post a pic here if possible :)  

fun game, and it is also beautiful to watch

Just played it through in one big play session this morning. I really enjoyed the art and was surprised at just how much dialogue there was and it never felt boring. I mostly focused on talking to Raven but would often talk to the others along the way just to hear more.

For a good while in the beginning I was grinding in the magma area since I couldn't find anything to do in the forrest. After dying a lot and feeling like there must be something I'm missing, I talked to the parrot and learned about the order of the 4 areas and the bosses. The forrest temple had me confused because I went there multiple times and didn't realize that the tiles on either side of the statue were an entrance.

After getting the upgrade I felt like I had a chance at going through the whole game. I played the patched ROM so I don't know if things were different before, but I felt like grinding didn't bring me much benefit. The only thing that really made a difference was getting the power ups.

The only thing I found majorly frustrating was how enemies can still deal damage even as they are blowing up (and still moving around) post death. This even happened to me on the final boss where I won, got the victory text box, then died from the boss's explosion moving into me.

The amount of content for such a short dev time is crazy, it's clear you put a lot of work into this so kudos! I had quite a fun time playing :)

if anyone is having problems with the game with any error screens and such, an update is coming later today that will resolve all those issues as I spent a day fixing everything I found unfair or buggy including graphical bugs.

game looks hype, hope issues below can be fixed