H:UFE Feedback

?Honey Rose: Underdog Fighter Extraordinaire? is a well-illustrated mashup of the Visual Novel and Fighting Game genres, staring a wannabe wrestler that is also attending an overbearing university. In all, I felt that your game was enjoyable and definitely a treat to look at, and the new mechanics you?ve introduced add depth to a genre that can sometimes fall a bit flat.

The combination of a story game and a fighting game means that there are natural stats that the player must keep track of, and I enjoyed your avatar in the header bar representing your skill levels ? I?ll admit I was never able to get above yellow, but I still had fun seeing what each option would do. At times, it was unclear what statistics each of my choices would affect, so in this build, I was operating fairly blind. I?d hope that in the full version, there is some explanation given to push the player in the correct direction.

The combat system felt a little clunky ? it seemed as though the controls were at times unresponsive, and the play felt less active and a bit more pre-determined that I would have liked; It seems that this is the moment that the player feels full control over the situation, and yet the ability for the player to win or lose appears to be largely predicated on a vague system of statistics. All of your graphical decisions in the fighting scenes are top-notch, though ? the comic panels that appear over the screen when the combat is ending really add a nice punch ( haha ) and the background character animations really add a lot of depth.

Speaking of characters, I feel that your current spread is great ? they each seem to be unique entities and the dialogue with each NPC felt believable and important. There were moments where either my or their responses didn?t make much sense, given what I knew of the story, but I understand that this demo takes place somewhere in the middle, so that makes sense. My only concern is that at times dialogue was reused, and that made some of my decisions feel more arbitrary ? I wasn?t sure if this was filler-text that would be swapped out, but I felt I should bring it up; this was especially prevalent with the parents.

Overall, ?Honey Rose: Underdog Fighter Extraordinaire? is a really fun and visually stunning game that bends some of the major game genre norms, presenting some new mechanics that freshen up the scene. Your illustrations are gorgeous, and your writing is solid ? keep up the great work!
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i have relatively limited experience with visual novels, but i found the visual novel portions of the game to be quite well put together. the writing seems decent if not stellar. i think that it very competently gets across what's happening in the story, and that characters' emotional lives are telegraphed quite clearly. perhaps everything is a bit too clear? i think there is more room here for style, for grey areas and texture beyond simply conveying what is happening.

i like the solutions you came up with for animation in the visual novel portions of the game. the simple idle loops and emotion animations add a lot to the conversations i had with other characters. the art in this portion of the game is very consistent and i found it to be quite well done.

as someone who's invested a fair amount of time in the fighting game genre, i unfortunately found the combat portions of the game lacking. the animation looks lovely in the visual novel portions, but in the ring it feels jerky and doesn't convey weight or gesture well. i know how hard it is to pull something like that off- that is quite a mountain to climb. i think it's clear that it would be difficult to make a full-featured fighting game in a hybrid game of this nature, and you'd probably be well served by placing some constraints. i think the best hope for this portion of the game would be to aim for something which has limited scope but which does everything it attempts very well. a limited number of very solidly executed moves is much better than an overly large moveset which isn't well executed. reaching too broadly here will, i think, work against the game. i hope this doesn't come across as too negative- my intent is to give you my honest opinion in the hope that it will be of some utility.

i wish you the best as you continue to work on this project!