RPGM Horingar: Darkside [Ch.10] [XforU]

4.30 star(s) 10 Votes
Discussion Reviews (10)
XforU

XforU

Of Horingar
Game Developer
Nov 2, 2017
642
783
178
PyoT said:
Balancing feels all over the place, with no good indication of what's strong, how good abilities are (and if they even work as they are supposed to...) or which enemies are tough.
Maps range from "looks pretty nice" to "it's basically empty space, enjoy walking for 5 minutes everywhere", including a ton of objects/effects/events that don't have their traversability properly set (whatever that's called in RPGMaker; you know, whether you can walk over something or not ^^); expect to constantly get blocked by some invisible stuff or insurmountable obstacles like, err, footprints.
Quests can be tedious with very little information or very obvious and almost just a simple click somewhere. Sometimes the game indicates something and you got no idea what that information even means ...
A lot of aspects that have established game design practices for a reason work very oddly in this game. For example fishing; as far as I can tell you can get a combination of (essentially) QTE events where your cursor thing simply doesn't move fast enough and you cannot under any circumstances succeed. Likewise, for example with puzzles; there's often no indication, visuals or otherwise, whether you are on the right track or not, and (for example) when getting the head of a certain somebody failing during the puzzling sets you right back to the very beginning of that section instead of splitting it into reasonable sections ... or even just stuff like collecting bait on the map, or resources from resource nodes being sooo clunky and tedious ...

... lastly, the story/writing. It's fundamentally okay, but it's SO incredibly rushed. "We need two bodies for that head. Go murder some girls." "Okay." Bam, done, nobody reacts in any way. Need the sorcerer you imprisoned to cooperate? "Gimme access the library." "Okay." Bam, done, he's doing the thing. ALL of it is like that. There's never any build up, never any aftermath. It's not a story arc, or a character arc, it's just fragments tagged onto each other with nothing between.
... effectively it desperately needs "smoothing out".

So yeah. Plenty of potential. But for me there's too long a list of awkward decisions the moment.
Click to expand...
If you've found invisible walls or something that you should be able to walk on but can't, please give us some more info about where that's happening. The footsteps I assume you're talking about are on the Royal road and are a clickable quest objective... Hence they're intentionally clickable and you can't walk on them.

The spell descriptions are fixed in later versions. They now have no flavor text, but instead feature damage calculations.

The longest walk in the game is less than 3 minutes. It's a porn game and we wanted to reduce the time between scenes, hence some stuff might seem rushed because it's happening off screen(won't feel better if you walk around for 5 minutes just to talk to Npc's with no sex stuff, right?) ... And it literally has reactions and consequences (relationship reductions, corruption and dialogue further down the line that mentions this decision).

Quests have tracking and the hand holding has been limited to add player agency. Descriptions get improved overtime. If you have a specific example, please let us know.

The fishing is intentionally shit with the basic fishing pole, it's a backwards progressing system (it gets easier when you progress)

We've been listening to player feedback and a lot of changes have been made.
If you have specific examples if issues that might be considered bugs please let us know.

Also you mentioned a "head"... I assume thats the stealth route in chapter 3. These routes are meant to be figured out by walking around the restricted area.
 
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PyoT

Member
Sep 3, 2020
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Invisible walls: there's just way too many places. For example, check out the Timberline Retreat's graveyard. There's multiple there alone. And then in contrast the gallows south of that have improperly set "walk behind" properties ...

Maps: Maps like the "Upper Crossroads" are nice and tight and do what they need to do. Maps like the Royal Road are unnecessarily large and empty. That's my point; of course the time is hyperbolic, but also keep in mind that the player won't always perfectly know where to go right away.

Quests: I mean, for example in the Timberline Retreat I ended up in the crypt, and then there was some sort of "Opportunity!" popup. And that meant ... what? Who knows. And sure, I get why the Megatits Quests or whatever doesn't just point you to the objective, but if the questlogs shows most stuff checked, and you aren't sure where else you can progress ... what then?
I also found for example the Crimson Acolyte quest and plot direction to be very obscure.

Fishing: I get it shouldn't be great, but making the bait gathering very clunky and then the minigame (sometimes) impossible is just not fun. What's the point of a mechanic that's intentionally shit? Get the player not to interact with? But there's quest that do demand you interacting with the system ...
... also, to be clear, it was meant as emblematic for some of the aspects of the game. Like the loot flying around on the map instead of being reliably auto-gathered. Like the bait hunting. Like crafting. Like the enemies not being frozen during dialogues. And "Escape" never being allowed. Like ...

"Stealth Route": No, the puzzle route when you get
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. You gotta figure out a route through some rooms. Okay, fair enough. Not sure it's a puzzle as much as a brute force problems, but you can get it done. Then afterwards you gotta hit the colors correctly. Okay, fair enough again, pay attention to the route you take. Buuuut ... resetting to the beginning of the entire thing when you get a color wrong is just awfully unfun ^^ Maybe spawn some enemies, have a "trap" trigger and reduce your health, whatever. But as is players will just safe/reload.

Reactions/Consequences: I got no complaints about the relationship stat thing, but I was talking about immediate narrative framing. And sure, it's a porn game. But it's still supposed to tell a story, surely? Otherwise might as well just make a porn scene gallery and bam, you are done. Get rid of all the tedious stuff. Why bother with gameplay that just delays gratification? ... surely a few lines of dialogue are less a delay than that. Sure, don't write a 800 pages novel. But a bit of build up and aftermath hardly requires that.
So yeah, suddenly being fine with murdering innocent people is waaaay weird as the most extreme example I've found so far. But again. All the game is like that. Just incredibly rushed throughout.
 
XforU

XforU

Of Horingar
Game Developer
Nov 2, 2017
642
783
178
PyoT said:
Invisible walls: there's just way too many places. For example, check out the Timberline Retreat's graveyard. There's multiple there alone. And then in contrast the gallows south of that have improperly set "walk behind" properties ...

Maps: Maps like the "Upper Crossroads" are nice and tight and do what they need to do. Maps like the Royal Road are unnecessarily large and empty. That's my point; of course the time is hyperbolic, but also keep in mind that the player won't always perfectly know where to go right away.

Quests: I mean, for example in the Timberline Retreat I ended up in the crypt, and then there was some sort of "Opportunity!" popup. And that meant ... what? Who knows. And sure, I get why the Megatits Quests or whatever doesn't just point you to the objective, but if the questlogs shows most stuff checked, and you aren't sure where else you can progress ... what then?
I also found for example the Crimson Acolyte quest and plot direction to be very obscure.

Fishing: I get it shouldn't be great, but making the bait gathering very clunky and then the minigame (sometimes) impossible is just not fun. What's the point of a mechanic that's intentionally shit? Get the player not to interact with? But there's quest that do demand you interacting with the system ...
... also, to be clear, it was meant as emblematic for some of the aspects of the game. Like the loot flying around on the map instead of being reliably auto-gathered. Like the bait hunting. Like crafting. Like the enemies not being frozen during dialogues. And "Escape" never being allowed. Like ...

"Stealth Route": No, the puzzle route when you get
You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.
. You gotta figure out a route through some rooms. Okay, fair enough. Not sure it's a puzzle as much as a brute force problems, but you can get it done. Then afterwards you gotta hit the colors correctly. Okay, fair enough again, pay attention to the route you take. Buuuut ... resetting to the beginning of the entire thing when you get a color wrong is just awfully unfun ^^ Maybe spawn some enemies, have a "trap" trigger and reduce your health, whatever. But as is players will just safe/reload.

Reactions/Consequences: I got no complaints about the relationship stat thing, but I was talking about immediate narrative framing. And sure, it's a porn game. But it's still supposed to tell a story, surely? Otherwise might as well just make a porn scene gallery and bam, you are done. Get rid of all the tedious stuff. Why bother with gameplay that just delays gratification? ... surely a few lines of dialogue are less a delay than that. Sure, don't write a 800 pages novel. But a bit of build up and aftermath hardly requires that.
So yeah, suddenly being fine with murdering innocent people is waaaay weird as the most extreme example I've found so far. But again. All the game is like that. Just incredibly rushed throughout.
Click to expand...

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mtuytj

Newbie
Mar 22, 2020
44
162
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XforU said:
No NTR, NTS and the corruption isn't actual corruption like in other games hence no tag.
Click to expand...
Might be worth making a future tags section or something and explicitly state this to avoid this question cropping up regularly.
 
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lokiexcalibur

New Member
Feb 15, 2018
7
4
154
What gift do you need to give belinda? I think this is a trackable ques but no green arrow is telling me where to go?
 
N

No19909

Newbie
Aug 6, 2018
31
95
216
PyoT said:
People on here always talk about "potential", and I find it a bit tiresome. Every game has potential if you put an unrealistic amount of time into it, no matter how bad it starts out, so it's a fairly meaningless statement to make. Nonetheless it's kinda how I feel about this ^^#

I find this one fairly okay, but it's got a lot of aspects that are just a nuisance.

The UI isn't great, esp. when trying to compare equipment, but generally feels like it often makes things more complicated than necessary.
Balancing feels all over the place, with no good indication of what's strong, how good abilities are (and if they even work as they are supposed to...) or which enemies are tough.
Maps range from "looks pretty nice" to "it's basically empty space, enjoy walking for 5 minutes everywhere", including a ton of objects/effects/events that don't have their traversability properly set (whatever that's called in RPGMaker; you know, whether you can walk over something or not ^^); expect to constantly get blocked by some invisible stuff or insurmountable obstacles like, err, footprints.
Quests can be tedious with very little information or very obvious and almost just a simple click somewhere. Sometimes the game indicates something and you got no idea what that information even means ...
A lot of aspects that have established game design practices for a reason work very oddly in this game. For example fishing; as far as I can tell you can get a combination of (essentially) QTE events where your cursor thing simply doesn't move fast enough and you cannot under any circumstances succeed. Likewise, for example with puzzles; there's often no indication, visuals or otherwise, whether you are on the right track or not, and (for example) when getting the head of a certain somebody failing during the puzzling sets you right back to the very beginning of that section instead of splitting it into reasonable sections ... or even just stuff like collecting bait on the map, or resources from resource nodes being sooo clunky and tedious ...

... lastly, the story/writing. It's fundamentally okay, but it's SO incredibly rushed. "We need two bodies for that head. Go murder some girls." "Okay." Bam, done, nobody reacts in any way. Need the sorcerer you imprisoned to cooperate? "Gimme access the library." "Okay." Bam, done, he's doing the thing. ALL of it is like that. There's never any build up, never any aftermath. It's not a story arc, or a character arc, it's just fragments tagged onto each other with nothing between.
... effectively it desperately needs "smoothing out".

So yeah. Plenty of potential. But for me there's too long a list of awkward decisions the moment.
Click to expand...
Honestly I agree, I downloaded for the art, uninstalled because of the gameplay. I did not get far to be invested so I don't really have a rating for the game itself, I just had enough of trying to progress.
 
AJAY.jdkum

AJAY.jdkum

Newbie
Feb 13, 2024
56
36
28
Allyxx said:
You can play Chapter 7 on itch or both on Patreon.
Click to expand...
I have many questions to ask because I was played fate of horingar in my past now i see horingar darkside new game and now i am confused that this game is continued story of fate of horingar or not. Does each chapter has own continued story or full game means does i need to start with chapter 1st or if I download the latest chapter then I will got all full story of the game. Please answer me I am confused.
 
XforU

XforU

Of Horingar
Game Developer
Nov 2, 2017
642
783
178
AJAY.jdkum said:
I have many questions to ask because I was played fate of horingar in my past now i see horingar darkside new game and now i am confused that this game is continued story of fate of horingar or not. Does each chapter has own continued story or full game means does i need to start with chapter 1st or if I download the latest chapter then I will got all full story of the game. Please answer me I am confused.
Click to expand...
Fate of Horingar isn't connected to Darkside.
Each chapter contains all previous chapters. So you can download chapter 6 to play all chapter from 1-6.
 
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4.30 star(s) 10 Votes