Completed Pokémon Containment

RedCellBestCell · Aug 11, 2021

Idk where I should report bug, but there is a bug with entering the room that have guards at the entrance. After the scientist tell me to go away, i stuck at the exit with the scientist keep repeating his msg, this is after the 1st mission.
Another bug is that when you choose the purple hair character, when you check the trainer card, it show the green hair character.

lichen · Aug 11, 2021

RedCellBestCell said:
Idk where I should report bug, but there is a bug with entering the room that have guards at the entrance. After the scientist tell me to go away, i stuck at the exit with the scientist keep repeating his msg, this is after the 1st mission.
Another bug is that when you choose the purple hair character, when you check the trainer card, it show the green hair character.

both bugs have been fixed! v1.01 bugfix upload ~~will be up in just a minute~~ are up now!

Glacora · Aug 11, 2021

In the very beginning, during the dr. Morello fight, I have tried switching out to beheeyem to get the toxic off right away. This for some reason causes porygon-z's health to drop to 1. I don't know if this is an ability or something, but it feels like a bug to me. I wanna experience this game really badly because I love SCP, so even though I am really struggling with this fight, i'm gonna keep trying. I just wanted to let you know in case this was a bug. Keep up the good work.

lichen · Aug 12, 2021

Glacora said:
In the very beginning, during the dr. Morello fight, I have tried switching out to beheeyem to get the toxic off right away. This for some reason causes porygon-z's health to drop to 1. I don't know if this is an ability or something, but it feels like a bug to me. I wanna experience this game really badly because I love SCP, so even though I am really struggling with this fight, i'm gonna keep trying. I just wanted to let you know in case this was a bug. Keep up the good work.

unfortunately i'm not able to reproduce this myself and i've double-checked the code, so either this is a problem with essentials or essentials GBC?? not entirely sure, sorry! :/

TechSkylander1518 · Aug 12, 2021

I'm actually getting that same bug! I think it has something to do with the message "That was close!" - it seems like it should be triggered if the Pokemon's HP is equal to 1, but it seems like the check only has one = instead of 2, so it's setting the Pokemon's HP to 1 instead. I'm not finding that anywhere in the default GSC kit, though- is there any chance that might be a message you added in yourself?

RedCellBestCell · Aug 12, 2021

hello again, i'm after the 8th mission now and i have a few questions and bug report

Question:
-After beating an Anomoly pokemon, is it intended to not let you to get the anomaly mon? cuz it still play the pokeball catching animation in the overworld.
-is the 6th anomaly supposed to be a normal eiscue with illegal moveset after ya catch it?
-is the hail in the 6th anomaly quest working properly? cuz my non-ice mon don't take any hail dmg?

Bug report:
-Lead mon sometime have hp go down to 1 after switch out?
-Ability Capsule and Ability Patch are unusable, the msg is "would you like to switch this mon ability to" then it stops there, and if you soft reset via F12 after this it crash the game
-if ya interact with 2nd Anomaly on the left,right and above, the mon sprite just gone.
-Ability activate box thingy after appearing the 1st time, start glitching out and go off screen.
-The short potted plant in the 4th Anomaly quest can be walk on, also the bottom wall have water effect? The top wall on the 2nd floor is also walk able.

Suggestion:
-re-arrange some stuff: Mission Detail stuff -> Get mon in PC and stuff -> start quest so that player can know what they gonna take for the mission.
-give Dr. Morello the ability to heal your mon when ya going on a quest.
-add more interactable? stuff in the 4th anomaly
-back sprites for anomaly mons

Also uhh... i think i am stuck after the 8th mission, i dunno what to do during the blackout...

lichen · Aug 12, 2021

Alright, long post of bug reports time!

TechSkylander1518 said:
I'm actually getting that same bug! I think it has something to do with the message "That was close!" - it seems like it should be triggered if the Pokemon's HP is equal to 1, but it seems like the check only has one = instead of 2, so it's setting the Pokemon's HP to 1 instead. I'm not finding that anywhere in the default GSC kit, though- is there any chance that might be a message you added in yourself?

aha, that's definitely it, thank you! i did change some of the messages just to give the game its own flair, and that must've passed by me. fixed!

RedCellBestCell said:
-After beating an Anomoly pokemon, is it intended to not let you to get the anomaly mon? cuz it still play the pokeball catching animation in the overworld.

nope! probably should've made it clear earlier on, though! will add a tidbit of dialogue next update (which should be tomorrow)

RedCellBestCell said:
-is the 6th anomaly supposed to be a normal eiscue with illegal moveset after ya catch it?

pretty much all the anomalies have illegal movesets, but they're not supposed to be catchable and added to your party, exactly. looks like i gotta intentionally disable that instead of making encounter rates 0, which i thought would do the trick. oh well!

RedCellBestCell said:
-Ability Capsule and Ability Patch are unusable, the msg is "would you like to switch this mon ability to" then it stops there, and if you soft reset via F12 after this it crash the game

will look into this! guessing it's a problem with essentials GSC, though, because i haven't touched that section of code, but i'll see if i can fix!

RedCellBestCell said:
-if ya interact with 2nd Anomaly on the left,right and above, the mon sprite just gone.
-The short potted plant in the 4th Anomaly quest can be walk on, also the bottom wall have water effect? The top wall on the 2nd floor is also walk able.

both easy fixes, will do!

RedCellBestCell said:
-Ability activate box thingy after appearing the 1st time, start glitching out and go off screen.

this is the one i have known about for quite a while...to tell you the truth I have zero idea why this is and have tried to fix it before :/

RedCellBestCell said:
Suggestion:
-re-arrange some stuff: Mission Detail stuff -> Get mon in PC and stuff -> start quest so that player can know what they gonna take for the mission.
-give Dr. Morello the ability to heal your mon when ya going on a quest.
-add more interactable? stuff in the 4th anomaly

all of these are solid suggestions that'll make gameplay better, so i'll definitely implement these in some form next update.

RedCellBestCell said:
Also uhh... i think i am stuck after the 8th mission, i dunno what to do during the blackout...

Explore as many places as you can! I'm sure you'll find there's something amiss... ;)

lichen · Aug 13, 2021

Bugfix Update v1.02 is out!

Destiny bond no longer crashes your game, but is still unusable on purpose ;P
Blackout mission is possible now....oopsy....
Switching out will no longer reduce a mon's HP
You can now enter/exit Hangar 18 whenever you like! Prepare your team after you get the mission info!
Your team is now auto-healed between each day.
You'll no longer be diving on land after losing during the diving segment.
Graphical/collision errors fixed
Made a couple gameplay mechanics more clearly explained via dialogue

Porygon2 · Aug 14, 2021

When you're in Hangar 18 just before the Milotic and doll game show host missions, Morello doesn't brief you in on them, instead she goes right to the dialogue for after you receive briefings, about taking time to prepare.

I read the descriptions in the containment rooms at the end so I did get a bit of info about the Milotic, but I'm really curious about the doll's lore, so could I ask about what Morello would have said?

lichen · Aug 14, 2021

Porygon2 said:
When you're in Hangar 18 just before the Milotic and doll game show host missions, Morello doesn't brief you in on them, instead she goes right to the dialogue for after you receive briefings, about taking time to prepare.

I read the descriptions in the containment rooms at the end so I did get a bit of info about the Milotic, but I'm really curious about the doll's lore, so could I ask about what Morello would have said?

I'll see if I can fix that next update, sorry!

The lore around the Host is kind of loose intentionally just to make it mysterious and give it an "analog horror" sort of feel to the wole thing. But I did sneak a little tidbit into the filenames: his battle theme is called "VS Otherworldly Trainer". Combine that with his usage of multiple beta pkmn, and make of that what you will ;)

lichen · Aug 14, 2021

Bugfix Update v1.03 is out!

Fixed event error that let you skip a boss entirely
Fixed a little anachronism...no more Wiis in 2002!
Fixed some reset locations for if you lose during certain bosses
More collision/text errors fixed

TechSkylander1518 · Aug 15, 2021

Finally completed all the missions! I really had a blast!

The premise is a super fun idea, and you put it to great use! Every Pokemon and SCP linked together smoothly- I wasn't familiar with the ones you pulled and honestly thought they were mostly original concepts at first- and the missions had such a great variety of locations to explore!

Every new visual asset in this game is a delight! All the character designs are great, especially their portraits, the anomaly designs are fun, and the overworld animations were really cool! (Eiscue and Shedinja are definitely my favorites on that front!) And the credits animations were really cute!

The whole aesthetic of the game was great, for that matter- I think you did really well with the Gen 2 style, and all the music fit really well! (I especially liked the Smeargle theme!)

The story's a lot of fun to follow along! It'd be easy to just use the bare bones of the SCP world, but having the overarching mystery and the characters to bond with was really nice!

"SAVING...DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU" is such a cute touch

I really appreciate having the nonbinary option and the ability to set pronouns independent of gender! And the first name/last name/formality stuff was a fun way to get to customize them further!

It's obviously so minor but I'm legally obligated to say "I appreciate having running shoes from the start!" in the hopes that all games will follow this trend

I think it'd be nice to let the player save before the battle against Morello- going through the intro speech and a trainer battle is a bit long before being able to save. (There's probably no reason to save right there now that the 1HP bug is fixed, but just in case lol)

I had this whole comment typed out about how I thought the wild encounters were a little unnecessary, you can't grind against them and you've already caught most of them... Until I realized that they're there to give you another party member without withdrawing from the PC. So I'm changing my comment to instead say that I think it'd be helpful to have a little bit of dialogue explaining what happens if you catch a Pokemon out in the field- I'm assuming it just goes in the PC and then falls under the usual rental rules, so maybe someone can just say something like "Don't get attached to any Pokemon you catch in the field! SCALD takes them for their rental system when you get back!"

I was also gonna mention being able to go back and switch your party after briefing, but you've already done that so I guess I'll just say "hey nice job there" lol.

Like RedCell, I was also confused about whether I should be able to personally catch the anomalies or not- I think I was especially confused by the Containment Ball, which I thought I was supposed to use against Smeargle, but then failed in battle. I ended up really confused when I somehow had another Containment Ball in the overworld!

You mentioned that you tried just setting their catch rate to 0- DerxwnaKapsyla has a tutorial on making wild Pokemon you can't catch! (it's a few years old, but I believe it still works with current versions of Essentials!) I think it'd be really helpful for communicating the situation for the player, because it gives a specific message about why they can't be caught, so there's no confusion like "Did the ball break or am I just not allowed to catch this thing?"

I think that most players will end up missing Marcie's sidequest- her office is out of the way from the usual path to start a mission (and in the direction of the cafeteria, which doesn't change at all over the game), and even for those that do talk to her, it seems like just a one-off joke- there's not really any clue that coming back later would change anything, especially since it's not until five captures that her "nobody else believed me" line changes. And that's a shame, because I think that part's really fun! Maybe you could give her a line telling the player to come back in a few days to see her proof? That could help make sure they know there's more!

Poltergeist fails if there's no held items on the field, so it might be better to switch that move for something else on the Shedinja fight. (Unless that's an intentional reward for players not using held items?)

I was hoping to get to see some flavor text in the Abandoned Library! I get why you decided not to, though, that's obviously a lot to put in.

I was having a hard time understanding what I was looking at in the Eiscue backroom? I think a bit of flavor text on the wall or something would help me understand that a bit.

I wasn't really sure what to do at that ending screen? It was a really pretty scene, I just wasn't sure if I was supposed to save or just end the game and go back to before the final boss. (Might want to let the player save there- I know it's helpful to staff to have an easy way to check for completion when players get their badges for beating a jam-winning game... )

A lot of what I would have labelled "critique" was "oh I think you should add x", which isn't really criticism so much as having ideas I wanted to see lol, so here's a separate section for those-

I think the OT for the rental Pokemon should be SCALD rather than the player's name, given that they're all rental.

I think it'd be useful if the player could flee an encounter with an anomaly to adjust their party after attempting a fight. Since the idea's just to come up with a strategy to approach a boss with, being able to exit a battle to toy around with TMs or held items seems like it'd be nice! (Especially in the case of Milotic, where the battle will really drag on if you didn't bring any way to deal indirect damage) Of course, there's some cases where that'd probably seem really odd, like Eiscue or Volcarona.

I wish we could have gotten a bit more insight into why Yoshino is so bad. It's clear he's power-hungry and a jerk, but it does seem like he's still following the facility's goals as far as we know- even the Musharna procedure seems standard, given Morello's mention of wiping the artist's memories. But obviously Morello knows he's even worse than that, because she put the whole facility at risk to try to get him. Maybe we could get a little more in the backrooms, like some data about how Yoshino could use one oddity or another to personally profit.

I found myself sticking to the same party over and over again- I think it might offer more variety to the player if you reset their party after each mission! It's one thing to keep Pokemon I already have with me, but if I have to go to the PC anyways, I might as well see what I haven't tried yet, right? (My initial suggestion was "Oh just delete the party and run the script to fill the PC again", but I had that idea before I realized the player was allowed to catch Pokemon on missions, so it's probably not that simple to implement.)

I was hoping we'd be able to get to hear a bit more about the anomalies after we'd captured them! I was kind of hoping people in the cafeteria would change their dialogue to talk about the antics of the newly-caught, or maybe even bringing in the nicer ones like how Clefairy gets to hang around!

Related to that idea, I thought it would have been nice to get to get to take a look at the summary of the anomalies and get to know exactly how their abilities or moves worked! The PBS files were an option of course, but it's not as fun that way lol. I actually helped Zaffre do something similar last jam, checking the summary of a Pokemon without actually taking ownership of it- I don't think I can give you the code for the jam because I didn't make it public at the time, but I could give it to you for a post-jam update if you're interested!

I poked around in the files a bit- initially just to try to fix an error stopping me from progressing, but then for funsies- and I noticed that you're using a different line of text for each pronoun option. (You didn't leave the project file in or anything, I just copied the map files into a vanilla GSC copy to edit them lol) Not to shamelessly plug my own scripts, but I think you might have an easier time in the future using my pronouns script! You could use \he, \him, \his, etc. to get pronouns, and you'd only need to write two branches- one for he/she is, one for they are- instead of having to do three! (Of course, that's just a suggestion for future work, going back through the game now when it works just fine would be pointless lol)

You can talk to the Move Maniac and Nurse without having any Pokemon in your party, and they'll act like you do.

I talked with Marcy and her moveroute got a bit off, leading to her walking into her plant instead of pacing her office.

Not sure if this is an error or if you only wanted it to work once, but Meganium's Mind Spore seemed to suppress my ability multiple times- I had expected it to work like Gastro Acid, just being used once and then suppressing the ability until the Pokemon switches out.
EDIT- I looked through the PBS and it looks like it was resetting stat changes each time, but only telling me about the ability suppressing?

I'm also not sure if this is an error or not, but the scene with the player going into space was just a black screen with text before the Volcarona fight started? (If that was intentional, I'd personally suggest just throwing on a few white dots for stars, so there's a bit more to the scene)

The event after catching Volcarona sets the player's captures to 1 rather than increasing it by 1, which makes it look like progress has been reset. The story still progresses just fine, though, and I think my captures even went back up later.

During the mushroom attack, the flavor text on Morello's PC still says it's "out because of the blackout".

In zombie Morello's lose text, she says "PN" instead of the player's name.

Some zombified researchers are interacting with the wall in text ("hitting his head on the wall" and "leaning on the wall"), but since they've approached the player to battle them, they're a few steps away from the wall.

The healing machine animation didn't play when I was operating it myself.

A few bits of flavor text near the end have this weird character-

I think that's just the generic error character, so it's probably showing up because you have a “ instead of a ". Essentials' fonts are picky and only want ", which is dumb because it displays as a “ anyways, and a lot of sites will automatically use “/”, so if you typed dialogue in Google Docs or something and pasted it in, that'd probably be what caused it. (Here's hoping those characters look different enough to distinguish between them and I don't just sound crazy lmfao)

In the backrooms, there doesn't seem to be any explanation for why Aromatisse is missing- no empty ball, no explanation as to why it's not there.

Exiting Milotic's room in the backrooms takes you to a different door's exit. (You end up in the room to the left of Smeargle)

For the doors that require a keypad, their second page is set to Action Button rather than Player Touch. Their rooms also don't seem to have any flavor text. I was only able to see this through the editor, because the text entry there only includes letters and not numbers- that might be an issue with the GSC kit, though.

Chrome crashed and I lost my screencaps for some of these, so I hope you'll forgive me for trying to just describe the issues as best I can. (

)

When I was going through the Untamed Forest, the first ledge the player needs to jump over in the untamed forest (the one in the upper left corner) couldn't be jumped over- instead, my character stood on the ledge, but couldn't walk past. (It's weird, because other people in this thread said they were able to get further in the game- I wonder if it's because I was playing in the daytime, so it used the day tileset?)

There's a few maps where you have tiles on the day tileset, but not on the night tileset, so if the player's there at night, it looks like there's just invisible barriers. The ones I noticed were:

The sunflowers by the artist's house
The skeletons in the Untamed Forest
The walls in the Man-Eating Ruins (which makes this level near-unplayable at night, since you're navigating an invisible maze)

In quite a few of the indoor maps, you have spaces like this:

Unfortunate little quirk of the GSC kit- I don't think there's any way to change the color that RPG Maker displays when the player can see past a map, so indoor maps need a few more tiles around them to prevent the player from seeing black instead of grey. (That would mean a lot of rearranging Transport Player events, though, so maybe not worth the hassle)

In some cases where it's near the door, the player's reflection will be viewable, too-

You may have already caught it- I was playing the earliest version in my playthrough- but the coffee cup tile is passable, letting the player walk on top of a table in the cafeteria and on a desk in Yoshino's office

Priority issue-

This is more suggestion than actual error, but I personally think the potted trees you use would look fine if you made the upper tile passable and just increased priority, like this-

Gives it a bit of depth, and makes some maps a little easier to navigate lol.

So,feel free - missing a space after the comma
Hey there new recruit! - comma after there
science-defying smeargle - Smeargle should be capitalized
hurt the Smeargle too much either - comma after much
you're goin in here for - goin'
but just in case I have backup on standby- comma after case
Apparently a magikarp-shaped - comma after Apparently, Magikarp should be capitalized
resembling a smeargle drawn - Smeargle should be capitalized
entity is capable telepathy - missing "of"
has survived a blast "Ultimate Weapon" - missing "from"
Nevermind how - Never mind

lichen · Aug 15, 2021

TechSkylander1518 said:
Finally completed all the missions! I really had a blast!

thank you so much for this super detailed critique! you have some really good ideas for it, and besides a few minor tweaks i'll implement in a bugfix patch soon, and a couple that I have no earthly clue how to code, i think they're all great ideas for a post-jam minor content patch i have planned :)

to make it clear for anyone reading, the OT for all the rental mons isn't SCALD simply because of "game not wanting to cooperate" reasons. I tried it at first, but it caused errors. maybe in the future I'll figure it out!

TechSkylander1518 · Aug 15, 2021

lichenprincess said:
thank you so much for this super detailed critique! you have some really good ideas for it, and besides a few minor tweaks i'll implement in a bugfix patch soon, and a couple that I have no earthly clue how to code, i think they're all great ideas for a post-jam minor content patch i have planned :)

Let me know if you’d like me to help on those hard-to-code ideas! Only fair that I’m willing to put in the effort if I’m suggesting, haha.

ranko · Aug 16, 2021

Hi! I'm having an issue after the

snorlax event

. After the event ends, I am met with the eternal black void. The game says I black out and then nothing happens, but I can move around and hear my character bumping into the walls. I assume it's not intended??

NocTurn · Aug 16, 2021

Hey there! I just finished my time with containment (I think the final boss softlocked me, oops) but other than that I really had a great time with the game. Please note that I am a first time SCP fan, I don't have much exposure to the 'lore' so take my thoughts as someone who's a total novice on the subject matter. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros:

Music! This is the first thing I noticed about the game. It's charming and excellent on the GB soundfront. I think you took it directly from the Pokemon TCG game which is awesome, that's one of my favorite soundtracks from that era.
Aestetics. The custom sprites for the anomalies were a pleasure to look at, and the custom portraits were also really fun- it gave a lot of life to the characters and the game itself. I really liked looking at the game, haha!
The concept was super fun! It leaves a lot of room for expansion and a lot of room for creativity, which I think you definitely took advantage of.
The dialogue was really simple but also charming in its own way! It felt smooth and organic, and definitely fit within the gen 2 textbox space.
There was a lot of flavor text which I always love! Better yet, most of it was characters talking to you about the things you were poking at, which gives exploration just a bit more character than the omnipotent narration.

Cons:

The game was really easy for me! Maybe I just picked a good team, but Trace Gardevoir made quick work of pretty much anything I came across. Maybe make some clause about some of the more powerful abilities like Indestructible not being tracable?
The wild Pokemon were really annoying! Usually I don't mind them because they're just a way towards progression, but here all of my Pokemon are rental and most are level 100. Plus there's not much point in catching any because they become rentals and are usually underleveled compared to your other rentals. So having so many wild battles really bogged the game down for me.
I wish the characters themselves were a bit more quirky/interesting! I think it would really elevate the game to a higher level. I wanted more banter between them because they all obviously had their own things going on. Obviously it isn't a requirement but it could be a great addition
I also agree with what Tech said about being able to see the SCPs after we capture them! I think it would be nice to have some sort of capture ward where you can see all of those SCPs being actually contained.

The cons list is deceptively long. It's mostly personal preference. The game is super fun, and for being your first solo dev I think you did an excellent job. I had a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see what you do next.

Porygon-Z's sprite is too high

There's a lot of issues with tiles being like 1 pixel too high so it cuts off and creates a small line

Priority issue

Priority issue, also cut off tiles

Passability issue

Cut off border (there are quite a few of these that I didn't report)

I can use the move rater even without Pokemon

I can heal with no Pokemon

Some move text gets cut off

The tree here has a green background behind it

Excadrill is too high

Passability issue

Border issue

Slightly cut off tile

Minior too low

I assume this Torkoal wasn't intended to be level 1?

Priority issue and also more cut off tiles.

lichen · Aug 16, 2021

TechSkylander1518 said:
Let me know if you’d like me to help on those hard-to-code ideas! Only fair that I’m willing to put in the effort if I’m suggesting, haha.

I absolutely would love that! DM me on discord sometime! (persephone#2043)

lichen · Aug 16, 2021

NocTurn said:
Hey there!

Thanks so much for all the feedback and the kind words!

Just for clarity, a couple notes:

The difficulty definitely has to do with some abilities not being completed yet. Some things have been fixed in v 1.04, though!
Torkoal being Lv. 1 absolutely is on purpose, its only point is to give Houndoom sunlight and die quickly, lol.

That said, 1.04 is released now! Only a few fixes, but some important ones!

Game doesn't softlock after beating Snorlax now lmao
Fixed one of the new signature moves
Fixed Floette's sprites not appearing properly
Fixed mons appearing with the wrong forms in the wild
Fixed a few collision errors

ranko · Aug 17, 2021

Hi, I played your game! I forgot the format in which I pace these. Here's my spoilery review:

Disclaimer: The following is my personal opinion, warped by how I personally played the game. Things I do and mention may rub off and be experienced differently to other players.

I absolutely loved this game! I need to start with the utmost positive, which would be the visual and game-play polish. I think it's very crucial to have a consistently good-looking game that doesn't dip up or down in terms of game-play and tileset quality, which is like the easiest way to get my attention. Something like "Oh, this is an actual video-game and not a parody of one" sort of thing.

While the writing isn't necessarily Pokémon faithful, it's consistent and holds it's own character. For example, it can be a little uncanny to mention some of the material referenced in fan-games (human sacrifice, mild swears etc) but it helped that the material was used well and it didn't try too hard to nail the effect. Basically the way you set the game's tone/graphic style up worked well with each other in a way that didn't make me wanna roll my eyes (in fact I thought it was nearly perfect)...which is very difficult to pull off! I think it's one of the first fan-games I've played I've actually felt that way, maybe the context of the setting, combined with the Generation style and the custom graphic imagery made it all work?? I'm not so sure, and I wish I could nail it in a few sentences so I could replicate it myself. I guess I can just heavily appreciate the care everything was given to make the game not just work, but feel like it works. It's brought in a sense of danger in the Pokémon world that felt like a natural progression to the genre rather than one the author just really felt needed to happen, probably thanks to the entire concept of anomalous Pokémon and borrowing from it's source material. In a sense, you've created your own kind of style, something like out of a spin-off game.

This is coming from my familiarity with the SCP Foundation (because I know the world of that series kinda sucks lmao) but I think this game put a very fun and unique spin on the entire thing, keeping the fondness of the Pokémon world and combining it with a bit of the sci-fi horror to create a feeling of Pokémon that's familiar yet introducing a new side of it that makes so much sense. I'm almost a bit jealous I never came up with this idea myself.

I do wish a bit more was done in terms of on-site activity, as it stays rather static throughout the entire game. I do wish we could see more reference to previous Pokémon anomalies, as I think the only anomalous Pokémon we meet while we're starting out is Clefairy, and I didn't even get to see the 'mon responsible for the containment breach! Perhaps there could be rooms of lower clearance, safe (or just not so safe) anomalies for the player to explore, expanding as their clearance level goes up? I was also a bit sad there weren't enough special containment procedures (but I suppose the containment balls are just that strong lmao). Also a big one, I kind of wish there more "origins" to how the anomalies were formed (although I am aware that even the source inspiration doesn't always have this). I think the Smeargle/Hatterene ones had fairly simple implications, but there's something that adds to the horror than knowing where it came from I guess (of course, the unexplained subtlety is better for these kind of things, like Patchwork Bear's little note). There's just so much potential in the premise I felt kind of sad of how quickly the day-to-day routines were occurring as well. Of course, this is a Game Jam game and thus, I can't fault on the amount of content as much as I can feel sad there wasn't more. I'm not sure if you could tell, but I spend literally all day just reading about anomalous Pokémon. You could make thousands of these and I'd probably read them all. It's just. So cool.

I figured I mention, but the characters do add quite a bit to the tone of the story! I love how expressive they were and how light-hearted they were most of the time until the anomalies start being dangerous. It felt right I guess? I also appreciated my character being expressive despite being a silent character, I actually heavily prefer it. Going to be honest though, I kind of didn't get the ending. I rewatched it on stream and was still a bit confused why the things were happening. But hey, I did get to read all of the logs so I was happy going out regardless.

Oh right, the actual gameplay. It made sense, and it saved time, so I do think it was a very clever solution that was outlined very well in-game as well. Unfortunately, I think this is where the game could use the most work. Since everything is level 100 already and the anomalous Pokémon gameplay loop just revolves around smacking it with it's weakness, there wasn't much in terms of actual gameplay progression rather than guessing what 'mons would work, sometimes losing on purpose to reprepare for the fight. The fights basically went as a complete stomp in either direction, and the ones that were trainer fights were fairly annoying at times. One thing you could try is implementing them as actual raid bosses, tweaking the stats and having them work like Dynamax Pokémon, perhaps in 2v1 style? Of course, since the battling lasted so very little compared to the story, briefings, etc, it didn't bother me too much, and I just think it could all be better handled.

I think if the game was as grimdark as the inspiration material, it'd get pretty uncanny pretty quickly (since it'd then be dismantling the Pokémon part of it). I think you did this concept some serious justice ~~and would love permission to add on to the series~~. I'll definitely remember this game extremely fondly, and I hope your next title goes even further!

I'm not sure if I'm forgetting anything I wanted to add. This game was pretty great, and I think you can find any minor inconveniences in the stream. 9/10, probably one of my favorite fan-games in years.

Completed Pokémon Containment

RedCellBestCell

Rookie

lichen

i make sprites , i think

Glacora

Novice

lichen

i make sprites , i think

TechSkylander1518

Wiki Dweeb

RedCellBestCell

Rookie

lichen

i make sprites , i think

lichen

i make sprites , i think

Porygon2

Novice

lichen

i make sprites , i think

lichen

i make sprites , i think

TechSkylander1518

Wiki Dweeb

lichen

i make sprites , i think

TechSkylander1518

Wiki Dweeb

ranko

The Wind and Snow Continue to Stare

NocTurn

Hoothoot enthusiast

lichen

i make sprites , i think

lichen

i make sprites , i think

ranko

The Wind and Snow Continue to Stare