At last, Another Star is playable from beginning to end. The completion time for the very first run of the game was 20:24:22. That’s twenty hours, by the way. A nice, solid total for an RPG, I think.
This means, ladies and gentlemen, that we are in beta.
In fact, you—yes, you—can be a beta tester! All you have to do is download the game from the link below, play it for as long as you want, and then either leave a reply here or send an email telling me what you thought about it. None of the dialog or text is finalized, so I don’t care about typos, but please do tell me about bugs. And do let me know what exciting things you found while exploring, and what strategies you came up with to deal with enemies and bosses.
(Save files from the previous version may or may not work. It’s best to start a new save.)
(No longer available. Sorry!)
Unlike the “leaked” version, I very much doubt this will be left up for more than a week or two, so grab it while you can, and enjoy!
Yay, now it runs with German regional settings too. 🙂
By the way it’s very easy to get lost on the title screen, because it’s not easy to figure out you need to press “D” without reading the readme and the game starts in fullscreen by default so you can’t read the readme anymore and you can’t even close the game by pressing ESC. =p
I have created the perfect trap, see? Once begun, my game has complete control of your system!
(These issues should be fixed in the final version. By the way, you can toggle fullscreen with F11.)
Okay played the game as far as I could, here my report:
– Bandit in one of the beginner caves says “AIEEE! I GIVE!” but you probably meant “I GIVE UP!”
– Descriptions of Escape Veil and Fireproof Coat are longer than the text box (might be intentional)
– Some item names are longer than fits in the status screen for example Small Caliber Pistol
– The point where the third character joins, he is too weak, he can’t survive a single battle and it’s annoying to level him up like that, the battle with the “evil” green slime is particularly annoying here, I suggest making the encounters near the prison slightly easier so the character can survive them even at level 1/2
– the chief says “there is nothing more than can be done” should be “that can be done”
– I think at the ferry but not sure it says “fare to to”, one “to” too much
– I got stuck in the game in the cave that leads to the north, there are enemies called “warrior” one time against 2 in an event and one time 3 when you want to continue in the story, both battles are too hard, I don’t seem to be able to win them, they can damage me for 60 HP per turn, so I can’t even survive two turns (I have around 100 max HP right now), so I decided to take a break for now
– “I give” means to concede defeat, using “give” as a regular noun instead of the phrasal verb “give up”.
– Item names and descriptions have not been finalized. There’s lots of things that don’t fit where they belong, but this will be corrected when I begin revising text to its final form.
– When you get your third character, you should be able to level up a bit in the first two or three rooms with little trouble, as advised by the game. You should be able to get the third character to level three in just a couple minutes, at which point you can venture out further. I haven’t played this section in a long time, so I’ll take a look at it when I go back to rebalance everything.
– The warriors’ stats got tweaked a lot later in development, which likely broke some earlier parts of the game. If you can’t get past them, email your save file to me and I’ll check it out. (Do you have the lightning spell, or some thunder scrolls? They’re weak against lightning, if that helps.)
In prison the monsters are too hard even next to the prison, there are basically three encounters, one against a single cockroach which is hard and only gives 1 exp, one against two monsters and a hard slime, the slimes hits for 7-9 to the third character so he can’t really survive the battle and a battle against 5 weaker monsters, which you can survive to some percentage but not always.
I used the Shock spell now and could win the battle against 2 warriors with the help of a fairy dust, but the one against 3 warriors is still too hard, I guess I’ll just grind. Where can I find the save files in Windows Vista?
Go to your documents folder, then look in My Games/Another Star. There will be a settings file and up to three save files (plus backups). I only need the save file for the save slot you’re using.
Okay, I slightly cheated but setting difficulty on easy for that one battle, it was a breeze like that. Now back on normal and no further difficulty problem in the game.
I found one more bug: You can fight the boss in the underworld unlimited times and each time you get the staff again… now I can’t get rid of it. X_X
Also currently I’m stuck. I’m looking for the lost bracelet in the mountains. That one NPC says I should go to the Dragonkin to the west but they don’t talk with me so my heroes assume they don’t have the Bracelet. What to do now?
You can get rid of the extra staffs by editing your save file. It’s in plain text, so it should be easy to figure out. (Just back up your save file first.)
Solved that puzzle, but now found a critical bug: In the ice region there is a hidden region with ice platforms – if you go east here you end up in some dungeon stuck into the wall, very strange!
From the overworld, or in the “ice dungeon”?
It’s from the overworld, I haven’t reached the ice dungeon yet. Also on that hidden map you can also leave the map from from other tiles and all lead into some non-ice dungeon stuck into a wall.
Oh, one of the hidden areas. Okay, I found where you’re talking about.
Fixed it for future versions so that you can’t access the sides. Thanks for the head’s up.
Can you tell me the item ID of the staff of the dead so I can remove the duplicate?
I have played up to the Mercenary now, but it seems impossible to beat him, any hints?
Bugs found:
– “the world is a shere” should be “sphere”
– on the map where you get the dragonkin voucher, if you go south on the east-most tile you end up on a wall, if you then go east from there you end up being stuck again and get to strange map
(these “stuck” issues are pretty serious, particularly because exiting the game will also save it, I always had to kill the process so I won’t get stuck forever)
Fixed. Thanks for catching it.
If you get stuck, press ALT+HOME to soft reset the game. (If it does save, you can also edit the Map and MapPosition variables in the save file.)
Should be index 238.
The mercenary completely heals himself six times (four on the lower difficulties) during the course of the battle. Every time you get him to about 40% of his HP, he’ll use another one of his heals. Make sure you’re adequately leveled and give Tachi all the best equipment before going into battle (unequip good stuff from the other two and give it to Tachi if you have to). You could give Tachi a shield or cape to boost his stats, but a Phial of Tincture or Phial of Elixir would probably be your best accessory. The big thing is to focus on staying alive rather than dealing damage. Unless you’re playing in Hard mode, the mercenary will eventually use up all of his own HP casting spells, at which point you can go for the kill.
Some comments about the balance:
The game is getting ridiculously hard now. The mercenary is already pretty much impossible to beat unless you just use healing items. After a while he casts Abyss which can pretty much one-hit kill Tachi. I had to set it to easy again to beat him.
Also is it normal that Tachi has significantly less HP than the other characters?
I don’t have much problems with normal battles, but even there the balance doesn’t really seem to fit. Often it’s so that many enemies only hit me by 1 HP but then a few can almost take 30% of my HP with one hit (which is pretty fatal if there are 2+ of them), but normal battles can still all be survived with the right tactic.
However, I’m at the point where you need to defend the village and it is impossible even on easy. On easy I get to the boss, however he has a spell “Plasmaball” that instant-kills my whole group.
Am I supposed to go somewhere else first? I already explored all the regions I could reach before reaching the northmost point.
Also is there a way to shortcut? All the backtracking can get tiresome. Maybe you should add an item that can bring you to an already visited chief?
And by the way, it would be good if there was some kind of info on whether I can receive a blessing or not. Visiting a chief is quite expensive and you need to pay even though you visited a thief already.
The balance is admittedly pretty bad in some parts. All the character growths and enemies are going to be redone, which is part of the point of testing game. The game was tweaked according to what my party was at when I reached that point, but there’s no way to know how other players approach the game until they’ve tried it out. (It’s also hard to know what is “too easy” or “too hard” when you made the game and know all its secrets.) The final version of the game should be a much smoother experience.
What level are you at this point, and how often do you accept battles?
As for Tachi, he has the lowest HP of the party as an offset to having the highest strength (and, eventually, the best offensive spell in the game).
This would probably be a good idea. I’ll try and find a way to implement it.
I’m level 35 and accepted almost every battle except in regions with instant death enemies, but never did grind except early game. I played on default difficulty all the time except for the two battles I mentioned earlier. So rates have always been default.
For balance testing I’ve also sent you an e-mail with the save state.
Just checked it out.
“We’ve faced tougher battles before,” Tachi declares before beginning the most horribly unbalanced battle yet.
(Also noticed that old notes aren’t getting erased for some reason. It still thinks you need to talk to the harbormaster or something. I’ll have to see what the deal is there. Also I snickered at the Commander’s glitched sprite with a leg growing out of their chin.)
I managed to beat the battle with the commander on moderate difficulty with some luck, and also gratuitous use of Glass Orbs. The only thing I can say about your party setup is that everyone is still wearing parkas. Once you leave the Northern areas they’re not particularly useful as you won’t be facing huge groups of ice-elemental enemies, so you can go ahead and switch to better armor. The rest of your setup seems fine and you have all the magic abilities available thus far (including Sacrifice which you acquired “out-of-order”, so I assume you’re doing a good job exploring).
I do remember pushing level 40 at this point in the game, but even with five extra levels the enemies in the battle are more difficult than they really need to be. The good news is you’re past the halfway point. Hope you’re enjoying this early build of the game, even with its problems.
By the way, if you choose to retreat from any of the battles in the siege, you can save your game and when you come back it’ll automatically jump to the most recent “wave” so you don’t have to redo the whole thing.
Oh, wait, I know why my level was higher. There’s an optional dungeon you can go through around this point, and I did that first. The game shouldn’t be balanced around assuming a person completed every single side quest, though.
Where can I find that optional dungeon, any pointers? You mean the one below the sage guy? That one is still too hard.
Oh and true those notes are messed up, forgot to mention that.
There isn’t much better armor than Parkas. In fact there have the highest Res of all equip that don’t reduce agility. The one armor that is better is in my inventory, but 9 more res still doesn’t really make a huge difference against hard monsters.
Also is it intentional that you lose a third of your loot when you run away? That seems quite a lot and makes running away pretty much useless. It shouldn’t be more than 10% if you ask me.
No. You can already loot that mini-dungeon, but only if you ignore battles and have enough Escape Vials on hand to get away from the forced encounters. Otherwise, it’s going to be awhile before you can manage it.
There’s another mini-dungeon you can reach at this point, though. If you’ve visited the “abandoned village” there’s a village in the north you can ask about it. This will give you access to new areas, including an optional mini-dungeon.
It’s up to you, of course, but for Tachi I wouldn’t worry too much about his agility. He’s a glass cannon, so I would prioritize defense. His natural agility is already pretty poor, and once you’re about five points lower in agility than an enemy your hit rate won’t take any additional penalty (although this formula may change in a future version; the current formula is somewhat obtuse and counterintuitive if you can’t peek inside the code).
The exact amount you drop is random; I forget what the range is. I might tweak it in the future (dropping less at lower difficulties and more at higher ones), but the general idea is to warp out with a magic mirror when you start amassing a huge chunk of loot and cash it in. Loot is vulnerable to being stolen by Tomtes or dropped, whereas gold can only be lost on defeat. (The price to retry a battle will likely drop considerably in the final version of the game.)
Ah I think I found that area now, however that dungeon also seems quite hard. You mean when taking the ship north-west, right? I leveled a bit in that area but the dungeon in the north-west corner is very hard.
Also if you go south from the map where the dungeon is there is a wallmap error. The 3 tile gap is one tile off.
Now I’m level 38, but still can’t win the defense battle. I actually don’t even reach the boss. The battle with the 5 generals is already near impossible (5×60 damage). I can’t run there either.
Good catch. Fixed it just now.
Most of these battles require using Eva’s Barrier ability (or its upgrades) to survive. The one against 5 veterens is especially luck-based; I think I finished them off using the bow over and over again. The whole thing is going to need a major overhaul.
Don’t feel bad if you have to lower the difficulty again to get past these battles. I was able to beat them on the “moderate” difficulty setting using the save you sent me, but only after multiple retries. Again, the difficulty in the final version should flow way better, in part thanks to your help tracking down these issues.
You can’t run, but if you die, select “Retreat” instead of “Retry” or “Give Up”. You’ll restart outside of the village and can save your game. If you start the siege again, it will pick up where you left off. That way you don’t have to keep fighting the battles you’ve already won.
I guess I’m generally underleveled. I managed to beat the battle on Beginner now, but the new continent is just as hard.
Current thoughts about balance:
Weaker monsters do too little damage while stronger monsters too much, I guess this is too due damage calculations being completely linear, rather than one monster damaging me by 1 and the other by 60, it would probably be better if it was something like 10/30, or at least the high-damaging monsters are easy to kill in one turn.
I also think spells have too high HP costs. Often you will not have enough HP left in a turn to cast them at all. Maybe they should scale the cost less. Instead of 10%/20%/30% maybe 10%/15%/20%. Even better would be if they didn’t scale fully with the max HP, so getting more HP actually has some kind of advantage. Also why not allow to cast spells even if not enough HP are left? HP gets set to 1 HP in that case. It’s risky enough to stay at 1 HP, why punish it further?
I think the roles of Tachi and Eva should be clearer. Tachi is too weak. He only has 2 STR/RES more than Eva and Eva has significantly more HP and AGI. I think Tachi’s STR growth could be alot higher. Also Eva’s Sacrifice skill is pretty much useless as she’s down to <50% HP in one turn too. The spell would make more sense if she took significantly less damage and it wouldn't cost as much HP. Why not give her a lot more RES? Also I think those two could use 1-2 HP more per level up.
Also to counter the game is getting harder too fast problem, you could consider increasing the character growth per level a bit on higher levels for all 3 characters. Tachi could sometimes get 3 STR and Eva could sometimes get 3 RES and Soel could sometimes get 3 AGI. And HP growth getting slowly higher too maybe.
Formulas and battle dynamics continued to change during development, so things that balanced out later battles often broke earlier ones. I currently only to the second continent in my replay so I’m not sure how bad it is, but the “desert continent” is likely the worst off of the bunch.
The way character growth is handled will be changed fairly dramatically when I begin revising things. Right now there’s an element of randomness to character growth, but it’s scaled too high. That’s likely why you Tachi and Eva are only 2 points apart from each other in STR. Both the character growths and enemies will be balanced so that there aren’t so many enemies that quickly degrade to doing just 1 point of damage per hit.
The cost of each ability varies. Some are 10/20/30% while others are 10/15/20% or 10/12.5/15%. I do agree that 30% is a probably high for the third tier abilities as things stand.
There’s an item that allows this; as I recall it’s hidden in the ice dungeon but that may have changed. I’m not sure I want this behavior by default, but it is something I’ve considered.
Sacrifice works differently from every other spell in the game. It’s purposefully useless to discourage the player from leveling it up and unlocking its full potential. However, doing so will reward the player with its second tier, which gives both allies full HP for only 25% of Eva’s max health. The third tier is even better. Not only are both allies brought to full health, they’re brought back to life as well; and for only 10% of Eva’s max health.
Hi there, just another report of what I found.
Bugs:
– when going down the desert on the west-most part there is a section where the desert is split by a 3 tile mountain range, here the mountain range when going north/south is 1 tile off
– on the hidden ice section in the east-most part of that continent, you can walk on the water (border of the map)
– “must have already move on” <– should be moved
– "beat us there" <– it's what is said about the novar after fighting that battle in the desert dungeon, not sure if that's what you really wanted to say?
Thoughts:
– only very few hidden places in this part of the game, the huge desert regions has hardly anything interesting, so that part of the game seems a bit more boring
– Tachi is still super weak compared to the other characters
– there hasn't been any treasure chest with "Mark of Will" forever, I think there should be one
I’ve logged the bugs and will get to them when I can.
As for the desert continent, some of the hidden areas here are harder to find (because they toy with the normal rules of the game’s logic), but there probably are fewer of them. A lot of space in-game was reserved to fill in “empty” areas, so the desert continent will probably get a lot of new things in the upcoming second beta version.
You’ve found the Marks of Will/Mastery useful? I wasn’t sure how players would use them. I’ll try to space them out a bit better so that they don’t suddenly dry up.
Well, I personally try to use them during boss battles, because I expect those to give most exp (though some disappointingly hardly gave any, that was frustrating!). It’s just that there seem to be 3 of them early on and then you never get any again and I’m running out of them now.