Completed A Slice of Life

Foxowl · Aug 11, 2020

Updated to v1.1 to hopefully fix a bug that would crash the game after opening.

Foxowl · Aug 13, 2020

Updated to v1.2

-fixed a bug where pressing f12 to soft-reset would crash the game
-fixed a bug where pressing enter in the ev/iv summary screen would crash the game
-fixed a collision problem with side stairs

Foxowl · Aug 14, 2020

Updated to v1.3

-fixed a bunch of bugs reported by Michael

Ekat · Aug 14, 2020

(I know that you know this is just an edited and condensed version of my playtesting notes, but I figured I may as well post them on the thread. Now with 50% less repetitive rambling.)

The Writing

The main story of the game is very strong, for a couple of different reasons. To begin with, the overarching plot, while humorous, does give you a good motive to go travelling through time on wacky adventures. I felt like I had a good purpose as I'm retrieving the pizza plot devices. Along with that, you've done a very good job of keeping the game's story from being convoluted, despite how plot-heavy it is. ~~It's easy to make time-travel plots messy and full of paradoxes/other logistical issues.~~

The B plot of the player's friendship-related insecurity was great too. It was very subtly woven throughout their interactions, and it was awesome to see how it culminated in the climax. I really liked the twist of the thief's identity, even if you did spoil it for me, haha. Before that, I was definitely picking up on the hints of what was going on. There was also something oddly chilling about seeing the Snivy outside the lab. I suppose it was just the reminder of the player's insecurity? Who knows.

Another strong aspect of the writing is the characters you recruit. Switching to play as them really played into the traditional RPG atmosphere, while still keeping that Pokémon theme. I think it's a tossup between Dino Man and Phil for who was my favourite, but Luna also has excellent, witty dialogue as well.

Battles/Balancing

The balancing for the most part was done well. There were a few areas where the trainers were a couple levels too high, but we discussed those. My only other issue I think would be with the future. There was no shortage of trainer battles on the highway and in the factory. I would consider cutting out one of the double battles on the drive to the factory, as well as a handful (maybe one for the Luna side, one for the MC side) in the factory itself.

Trainers aside, my team generally wasn't in need of held items or TMs. But, I don't think it would hurt to scatter a few more across the world. It would particularly in areas like the future city, which was a bit more barren than most places.

Bugs

While I ran into a few softlocks, I'm pretty sure they were all caused by the same thing, which was you setting late-in-the-production checkpoint spots that the NPCs couldn't walk through. Other than that, however, I didn't run into any major issues. All the events were working as intended (to my knowledge) and if I fainted, I never seemed to wind up in the wrong place. More bugs will always pop up (such is the horrible process of putting out a game), but you have a very solid foundation.

Misc Thoughts

I had a blast with A Slice of Life the entire time I played it. If I wasn't snickering at the writing, I was enjoying the battles, and exploring the world. One of the game's greatest strength is its attention to detail. It was honestly a delight to explore the world, to see what tiny additions you'd made. There are so many neat moments, so many little hints and allusions. (From the thief's identity, to pizza-related lore in general.) This game gave me multiple "aha" moments as I played it. (The Queen having Rotom Heat to cook pizza, Mech-E being Mikey, etc.)

Great work with this!

Foxowl · Aug 14, 2020

Again, we talked about this, but thanks so much, Ekat. Your feedback was invaluable and I had a blast reading your comments. I’m really glad you picked up on a lot of the smaller details I put in.

Also god dammit I knew what was coming and I even saw Otter click the link but I did it anyway. I actually take everything I just said back, fuck you.

Ekat · Aug 14, 2020

Foxowl said:
Also god dammit I knew what was coming and I even saw Otter click the link but I did it anyway. I actually take everything I just said back, fuck you.

C'mon, ya'll had to know what was coming. I couldn't resist adding it :]

Foxowl · Aug 15, 2020

Made the tiniest update to v.1.3.1 for continuity/story reasons.

Foxowl · Aug 16, 2020

Made an update to 1.3.2 to fix a softlock I accidentally created in 1.3

Foxowl · Aug 22, 2020

Updated again (whoops) to v1.4.
Just some bug fixes and QOL changes, as well as making the game a little less grind-y (hopefully).

Foxowl · Aug 23, 2020

Another update, this time to 1.4.1 to fix a few more bugs, including disabling screen border because fuck that thing.

Foxowl · Aug 24, 2020

Yet another small update to make the credits not send you into an accidental time loop. Also I fixed a few doors. (v1.4.2)

HollowGap · Aug 25, 2020

I have given my thoughts to Foxowl as I break his game using screen border. But I'll try to visualize my overall experience with this badly drawn graph.

The best/most enjoyable is early in the game. Well, aside from the Pizza Theme, it's also where the pizza joke is still fresh. Transitioning to Prehistoric Era is a massive change in pacing because it's all battles with too many wild encounter and grinding (before you fixed it). For being a comedic game, having an extensive area with almost nothing to interact with doesn't feel as fun. There's a scene with Dino Man but I barely remember anything from him. The volcano stage surrounded by Pokemon is kinda cool though.

The game shines again in Medieval Era. Silly dialogues, silly NPCs, silly use of pizza for oppression and plot device... it's probably my next favorite part. I know you tried spicing it up by switching characters, but for Phil's case, there are too many guards blocking the way and it's pretty much the same fight every time.

Future Era has some good moments. Exploring the corporation tower > Exploring the factory. Luna might be the least fun character to play. There's a block pushing puzzle but only 2 blocks??? Some conveyor belts too but it's too short and linear to feel like a puzzle. I think if you dedicate the entire area as puzzle section and throw away all that wild encounters and reduce battling (there's already too many battles in the road), it'll play out better. Not everything has to be filled with battling.

And the Apocalypse Era, while having neat ideas and cool-looking maps, they are somewhat executed poorly. Like you said, the sky board puzzle isn't a puzzle. Switching back and forth between player and Marge breaks the pacing. The story of Bandit and Marge weren't that compelling. I think this is when the pizza joke ran out of steam, too. But it's not annoying so overall my experience is just flat here. It's disappointing because the sky backdrop is an awesome set-up.

The final part, well, it's interesting to have a Me VS Me & Me fight. Since the pizza gag has peaked early in the game, I wish you switched the main joke and used more time travel punchlines instead.

Overall, it's a pretty solid and varied pack. Congrats for finishing another game! ~~Ultra Jam is still my favorite, though.~~

Ekat · Aug 28, 2020

Check out @Thundaga's stream of A Slice of Life!

Jelo · Aug 31, 2020

I had a ton of fun playing A Slice of Life! I guess here are my spoiler-y thoughts on the game and some notes I took while playing the game.

It has a lot of spoilers... like 90% of it is spoilers, so if you haven't played the game yet I highly recommend you do :)

Start
I guess there's nowhere to start but the beginning. If I'm being honest, it was kind of plain and just regular life things (apart from the time travel and odd pizza), which I don't think it was inherently bad, I think that it's a good build-up to what's to come.

Prehistoric Era
I really enjoyed the mapping of the prehistoric era. There isn't too much to say about it from my perspective because I kinda sped through it unintentionally. I really enjoyed the character of Dino man and I wish I was able to see more of him throughout the story, aside from the End of Time and that last little bit at the end. I thought it was really nice to see a nicknamed pokemon that wasn't mine in a battle with Zappy.

Medieval Era
Oh boy, where do I start with this era? This was probably my favorite area despite a certain situation. I loved how cozy the town was (apart from the whole oppression thing). I think that the "interaction" between the two ladies at the market was really cute. The "knighttime" joke/puzzle was pretty clever (though i will admit I did have to use the document you provided because I'm dumb). I loved the part where I got to play as Phil. (I'll talk about the unpleasant part of this era fairly soon.)

Future Era
The future era felt long. I think it's because I enjoy exploring every nook and cranny of every location and there were a lot of things to explore. There were also a lot of double battles on my way to the factory, I think, like what Ekat said, those can be cut down a smidge. I think this was because I was severely under-leveled (based on my playstyle so you can skip this bit if you want), but the bots that I encountered in the factory were very hard. I didn't have many moves or pokemon that could counter steel types since my houndour A- hadn't evolved and B- hadn't learned fire fang yet, I completely forgot I had low sweep (which was completely my fault), which in turn made me struggle. Again, like the medieval era, I loved being able to play as Luna. While there's still a lot to the future area I didn't talk about yet, my game crashed when I attempted to use a full restore during the rotation battle (which I loved btw)... and I forgot to save since the beginning of the game, so the rest of this post is from a completely new experience. So let's eat that pizza of reality and "go back in time" a bit.

Medieval Era Part 2!
So the start of the game and the prehistoric era essentially played the same. It was a bit of a grind trying to get my old team back (Luxio refused to show up in encounters for like an hour and jangmo-o refused to stay in the Pokeball) but that was about it. Now time for the not so pleasant aspect of the medieval era which is entirely not your fault at all, just my playstyle (just want to shed some light on this, you can probably ignore it and move on to the future area). I didn't want to be under-leveled for the bots in the future era again, so this time, I grinded levels a bit more. The encounters with phantump and pumpkaboo were horrendous. As I'm trying to level up my pokemon, I'm constantly getting confuse rayed and will-o wisped and maybe a leech seed tossed in there. This made grinding levels very tedious, and a tiny bit longer due to the self hits, attack stat reduction, self-healing, and me having to walk back and forth between the forest and the rip in time. The rest of the medieval era played out the same apart from that.

Future Era but again
Going against the bots in the factory was much MUCH easier than when I had the first time. Mainly because I had prior knowledge of what to expect. I think the main grievance I had with playing through the future era again was Luna's team. I didn't use klink as much previously because vikavolt is just 100x more superior, but I wanted to switch things up a little. However, having 3/4 moves be stat reducing or raising moves made it difficult for me to continue using klink. The one attacking move it did have was not very effective against most of the pokemon used by the other bots and wild encounters (There was one battle against a togedemaru that didn't let me switch out to vikavolt, so I was just stuck there). When I did try to catch a pokemon for Luna, the mon kept breaking out until I had no pokeballs left. Other than those nitpicks, the factory was... "lovely" in a sense. The triple battle went a lot smoother than the previous attempt. Towards the end, I felt super dumb not figuring out that Mech-E was Mikey and I beat myself up about it for a few minutes, but I thought that was pretty clever.

Apocalypse
Because I had that mentality of not wanting to under level my pokemon and keep them on par, I spent a lot of time in the tall grass leveling up here since there weren't many opportunities to do so in the future era. Anyway, this post is getting long enough so I'll just summarize the rest of my experience with a few sentences. As per usual, I enjoyed playing with a different team, when playing as Marge (though "team" might be a bit of a stretch). Although I was really confused as to why rotom forgot overheat after one of the battles. Lastly, I laughed a bunch when Vince made us battle just because he wanted to be a boss fight.

Finale I guess
I'm thanking you a bunch for Dino man in this era/alternate universe. My fear of under leveling has never been so high as it has been when playing this game, so when I find out Dino man essentially just gives you free EXP (and a fair amount of it too) I was super relieved. I think that the professor me and "cool" me vs me battle was really interesting and nice, especially when all my friends came to back me up (I can understand why Dino man wasn't there but I wish he was because I would've picked him to fight with me on the spot). If I remember correctly, I found it really cool how the "cool" me had the exact same team as I had. The final credits sequence, I thought, was a nice conclusion to the story. It gives a tiny little epilogue without dragging out the story too much (And Dino man reunites with his mother :D!)

Overall
Golly gee this is a long post and I'm sorry for that, but here we are, the end. I hope I didn't sound too unnecessarily critical about the game, most of the things I had issues with were entirely my personal preference. Even despite all that though, I really enjoyed playing A Slice of Life! I love playing story-driven games, and even if that wasn't your intent (maybe it was, I dunno), I loved the story very much. I loved the little banter between me and the shadowy figure in the End of Time. Even if I'm the type of guy who enjoys pineapple on pizza, I loved the constant thrashing of Phil (who I can assume also like pineapple on pizza?). The characters were a joy to play as and interact with. Overall a very enjoyable experience!

Thanks, Fox, for making this wonderful game!

grookies · Sep 6, 2020

Hi I played this game and it was so great. This game almost feels like it was made for me. Lots of cool areas with different themes, but they're not too big. From the Dad jokes to Dino Man. And pizza. PIZZA I literally made a homemade pizza the day I beat this ~~too bad I had no pineapple.~~ I named my character Pineapple since that's immediately what I thought of when thinking of pizza. So that created some funny dialogue. Anyways on to some spoiler stuff:

I CAN'T BELIEVE THE FINAL INGREDIENT WAS PINEAPPLE AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! That kinda blew my mind. But yeah I was able to solve the knighttime pun, although I was just putting in knight at first and didn't get it till he said its not daytime. The characters were great how they sort of span across time. I liked the mysterious end of time person. I'm a big fan of how you did pretty much every character, its hard to think of any I didn't like tbh. I guess as far as criticisms the factory was kind of annoying with wild encounters, maybe have grass outside it to catch pokemon and keep the interior puzzle based. I really can't ask for more content since it was a gamejam and honestly you packed a lot into this game.

Overall it was a fun experience and I loved the style of this game. Not saying it was perfect, but for a months work its an amazing job.

Marin · Sep 30, 2020

Not knowing what I was getting into, it took a little bit to adjust to the tone and moral of the game. However, through first-person dialogue and some exposition, I managed to find my way in the story. A game centered around the creation of the Pizza of Reality, you've proved that creativity and innovation truly has no boundaries.

The maps were lively and detailed, with defined character to each location, interaction, and NPC. There's a good dynamic between the characters at the start of the game, which sets up the game in a nice way.

Although generally enjoyable, there were moments at which I questioned what the game was intended to be. On one hand for instance, there's mention of execution due to lesbian love, a very serious topic, and two seconds later you'd run into another pizza joke. I felt like that clashed a bit. Nevertheless, the story was well thought-out and the dialogue was well-written and had a lot of depth to it. The writing was given a lot of attention, and it shows.

The level balancing was good, although I felt like there was a small spike in between the 1010 CE and the 35something CE eras. I was fighting level 29 Pokémon on the highway while my 5-Pokémon team had a level 24 average. That highway, although technologically good work, was a huge drag for me though. You fight 5 trainers in a row with a wild battle thrown in between, which gets quite boring after some 3 or 4 battles. To top that off, you also had to battle the thief immediately once you got off the highway. That could've used a little toning down.

The type balance was a little odd to me as well. Part of what contributed to my experience with battles was not primarily the levels or frequency, but the type distribution I had. There were a lot of Dark and Steel types in the Medieval era, but I didn't have anything that was super effective against those types, and I do not recall running into any Ground or Fighting types. This happened again in the 35something era, with a lot of Poison and Fire, despite not having any Rock, Ground or Psychic Pokémon. All this made the battles much more difficult, and made them feel like a drag more easily.

As for bugs, once I found the Shroomish at the very start of the game, I caught it thinking that was what I needed to do and then gave it to the child. I kept it in my party however, which has essentially duplicated it: one on the overworld, and one in my party. You probably shouldn't be able to catch it, or it should be taken away if it's in your party upon returning it.

SomeVulpix · Oct 4, 2020

A quite fun game, only complaint is there there's only one spot in the entire game (medieval area) to buy items, and no endless source of cash to help until at the end where it was pointless, so the medieval boss battle was REALLY, REALLY annoying (enough for me to try to alter the game and fail). If there's a way to add a shop in the End of Time, I'd appreciate it.

Lots of interesting characters, Early Balls are fun looking (saved em all), Dino man is cool. Wish I could visit other eras after I finished the game!

Lopunny's team: (my character's name is Lopunny)

I also noticed before you began each era's plot, you could go back to the End of Time, but as soon as you began the plot, you couldn't. Is that on purpose, or...

Foxowl · Oct 4, 2020

SomeVulpix said:
If there's a way to add a shop in the End of Time, I'd appreciate it.

I could definitely do that.

SomeVulpix said:
I also noticed before you began each era's plot, you could go back to the End of Time, but as soon as you began the plot, you couldn't. Is that on purpose, or...

It depends on the era. Only the first rest spot in each era takes you back, so for say, Future and Apocalypse, where you get locked away from the first rest spot for most of the plot, it's unavailable.

Also I love your team names, heh. Marle really got shafted, huh? ~~Also install the fonts.~~

Also I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while-- I've been busy. I'll get one out soon!
And thanks to Hollow, Jelo, Grookies, SomeVulpix, and Marin for all the feedback! The balancing is rough and it's certainly not my forte but I'll continue to tweak things and take all your comments into consideration.

SomeVulpix · Oct 4, 2020

Foxowl said:
~~Also install the fonts.~~

no :P

Foxowl said:
Marle really got shafted, huh?

I'd probably call the Venipede that saved my rear end back in Medival times Marle, but you can't rename pokemon...

Completed A Slice of Life

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

HollowGap

How am I still alive

Ekat

That One Guy's GF

Jelo

Some No Name

grookies

Wanna cookie?

Marin

Moderator

SomeVulpix

Rookie

Foxowl

Professional Procrastinator/Idiot

SomeVulpix

Rookie