Completed Pokémon Villain Jam

fedorved said:

Nope, i disabled my antivirus and it doesn't helping

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Joroma said:

Finished playing this game last night with three playthroughs of about an hour each. I played as Giovanni, Ghetsis, and Piers. I had a lot of fun designing my teams and competing with the other villains. It's a quaint game that has nice detail and good backstory for each of the playable characters. I enjoyed the cutscene at the beginning a lot, but I did watch it three times and could suggest having the option to directly play as the other characters after beating the game without having to watch the cutscene, or just a simple skip or speedup (it wasn't a big deal, though). I like how each room had something to offer, and that even the objects were interactable. You integrated the jams well, and they really helped me at one point. I loved the "legendary" twist and thought it added more variety. The game has nice mechanics and is updated (I love me some mega Pokémon). One critique I have is of the grinding mechanic with the audinos, which I felt was interjected strangely, since you don't gain much exp. from the battles but the opponents' Pokémon get leveled higher after each battle. I didn't find the level gap to be too harsh, but it would make more sense to me if there was no exp. system at all and if everyone just had level 50 Pokémon. The game wasn't particularly difficult for me but I see how it could be, which may lend to the experience system, although I still wouldn't recommend a level increase for the opponents' Pokémon in later rounds. I also didn't understand the purpose of the healing machine in the main room, aside from aesthetic. Overall, I had a lot of fun with the variety, and I'm glad I got to use a few Pokémon I don't often get to use. I also had fun with the replayability, and the game was a nice length. Great job with a fun and unique idea!

Let me know if you have any questions!

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• I had thought about adding a skip button for replayability, however in the end I decided against it for 2 reasons: 1: I was afraid some people would skip the cutscene even the first time they were playing the game, and 2: The game has a speed up button integrated, which helps for the cutscene to not take too long.
• The whole EXP and grinding system was purely to try and make the game however the player wanted. If they wanted things a bit more difficult, then don't grind. If you're having trouble somehow (for whatever reason: you're not that good at competitive or battles in general; you picked a "bad" team; your 'mons don't have great movesets; you're playing against a villain that covers a lot of your weaknesses; his legendary is super OP; etc), then you can grind with the Audinos.
• The healing machine is a bit of a leftover from early development: before, your Pokémon weren't healed after each tournament battle, but I ultimately decided to change that out of fear the player would forget to heal and go straight into the next fight. Even so, the player's party is not healed after each training battle (because I forgot to add that, to be completely honest), so at least it still has purpose in that situation.

PurpleZaffre said:

That's very weird... I've known of situations like this happening in the past, but they're very rare and seemingly random. You are on Windows, correct? And you haven't moved Game.exe outside the main folder, and all contents of the .rar file have been extracted? Could you try running Game.exe in compatibility mode for Windows XP or Windows 7? Another thing I had heard was to move the entire folder outside of the Downloads folder and see if that works. If none of these things work, then I'm very sorry, but I don't think I can help you.

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Armin said:

Hello! I finished your game the other day, and I really enjoyed it a lot! Here are some more thoughts on it.

Spoiler: Some more thoughts on it

Did two playthroughs, once as Archie and once as Maxie, because they're my favorites. As Archie, I went for a Drizzle team with Pelipper, Gorebyss, Mawile etc., while as Maxie, I went for a Drought team with Torkoal, Houndoom, Machamp etc.

Premise, plot, characters
I really love the premise of the game. The whole idea of pitting villians against each other in a tournament is like those age-old arguments of whether <insert name of anime protagonist 1> can beat <insert name of anime protagonist 2>, except the opposite. Basically, I just really love crossovers like these. Like others have already mentioned, the opening cutscene's really cool and well-done. I know that the villians are a pretty antisocial bunch by nature, but I had hoped to see more interactions between them, beyond the opening. Like, perhaps, instead of using lines from their respective games (i.e. boasting about their plans), their lines can be more focused on their current situation in the strange tournament land, or their thoughts on their fellow villians' goals. Then again, them being them, they would boast about their plans to anyone they meet.

On the topic of plans, I love the idea of placing information tidbits on each of the villians in their respective rooms; it provides players unfamiliar with them a nice background to your game. But the introductions... aren't exactly the most positive-sounding ones? They sound like they're written from the viewpoint of someone who's against their plans, rather then, well, a villian, who are likely to have a different take. Like Lysandre's TV straight up mentioned that he did a lot of bad things and died. And the poor guy's watching the TV the whole time he's in his room. Though, now that I think about it, it would kind of make sense if it's Faba's doing, using their bad futures as a way of giving them the motivation to win the tournament.

The Hoopa reveal was great, and explains the whole premise nicely! The cry in the title screen was a nice touch. I do wish there was a final cut scene on the villian ruling the world with Hoopa and their new Legendary, to make the game feel even more complete, but I understand that it might be rather difficult to implement. Also - there's a Prison Bottle at the end of the credits, but no Hoopa and no post-game? Was it a bug / was something supposed to happen but didn't?

Gameplay, balance
On one hand, the scene where you're greeted by all your Pokémon in your room was absolutely adorable. But the fact that you can't preview a Pokémon's moves and abilities before picking them, plus the fact that you can't change your mind (i.e. drop a Pokémon) after a selection, made things rather inconvenient. I had to soft reset the game a couple of times because there're too many choices, and I change my mind way too often. (Also, for the Pokémon to have the Abilities I want.) I understand, however, that it might be rather difficult to implement the whole picking-dropping system, since the Pokémon are generated the moment you speak to them, and dropping them and re-selecting them might generate a different Pokémon, hence breaking the immersion. I guess you might want to consider pre-determined Natures and Abilities, in addition to the already pre-determined movepools? Though, I understand if you feel that it'll reduce the number of ways a player can go about playing the game, since the randomly-generated aspects would allow the same Pokémon to perform in different ways.

It's really, really nice to see, among the pool of Pokémon that can be selected by the player, Pokémon that the villian don't actually use in the games. For Archie, Mega Mawile was a godsend against the Mega Gyarados of Cyrus and Lysandre, which my team of mostly water-types would've otherwise struggled against. For Maxie, Stone Edge No Guard Machamp was really fun to play with. Letting the player have access to all the TMs was really amazing in that regard. I wonder then, about the opponent villians -- were the opposing teams of 6 pre-determined, or random selected from a pool like the player? If it were the former, perhaps consider changing up the rosters a little, even if it deviates from their in-game teams, to make them a tad less repetitive. Both Cyrus and Lysandre had a Mega Gyarados in my Archie run, and I'm sure Houndoom and Crobat and Mightyena (?) were repeated among Cyrus, Lysandre and Maxie. I guess villians really love their Crobat too much.

The Legendary segment was honestly a great addition. Catching Kyogre/Groudon as Archie/Maxie without the interference of pesky kids was unexpectedly satisfying! However, allowing access to their Primal forms might be a bit too much...? They can pretty much sweep the whole game from there on out. I guess there's an option to not equip the Orbs, but compared to poor Guzma (Maxie's opponent), who only gets a Buzzwole... plus, if you play as Guzma, and get Maxie with P-Groudon as your final opponent, are you not pretty much screwed? (I guess that's where the Audino training comes in?) I understand if this was the original intention of the game, to make some villians' pathways easier than the others, but if a fairer (?) game is what you desire, perhaps you might want to consider not including the Primal forms, and making sure that the Legendaries are more or less on par with each other in terms of stats.

Ahhh, that turned out to be longer than I intended. Sorry about that! Once again, to all of you who made this game, thank you so much for creating such a fun and enjoyable experience!

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King_Waluigi said:

Very enjoyable game! Great job!

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Ekat said:

Just beat the game! I took the Cyrus and Giovanni routes. Here are some of my thoughts.

Aesthetic

Spoiler: Aesthetic

The overworlds and trainer sprites for the game were well done. However, I did feel like there was some inconsistency in the tileset styles you used in the game's intro. (Piers's room in particular stuck out, as did the hard outlines with the tiles for Spear Pillar.) I thought the tournament chart was a cool visual detail, as was the silhouette of Faba on the screen.

The Gameplay

Spoiler: The Gameplay

I enjoyed the gameplay loop. It was fun to have so many options for my teams, and the battles never felt overly difficult to navigate. I also liked how I was able to catch a corresponding legendary mon! The jams were a clever addition as well. I think I've already mentioned it, but I like that you taught the AI to use the jams as well. A small detail, but a cool one!

The Writing

Spoiler: The Writing

The game has a fun premise, although I wish we got more unique dialogue from the characters. It would be cool if you could have proper, fully-fledged conversations with each villain in their rooms. I do like the inclusion of flavour text in the room, even if the chosen protagonist typically doesn't have much to say about any of it.

I noticed you're missing a question mark here, but everything else was fine. ("Wonder what it actually does?")

Overall
My notes are a bit short, but I really did have fun with this entry. Great job on it! And congrats for breaking that development time record, too!

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