Messages

Loved the demo!  Only problem for me was with the choice of aspect ratio (4:3) rather than the more standard (now at least) 16:9.

It looks pretty decent in fullscreen on my 16:9 monitor (it's slightly stretched), but yes that's something I was just thinking about while reading the responses. Even smartphones (all brands) are 16:9 now. It seems the only thing that isn't 16:9 is the iPad.

I wish this game could be played in full windowed mode.

What do you mean by "full windowed"? You can activate windowed mode from the settings utility (under Himalaya Studios in the Start menu). Although, I could only get it to work up to 1280x960 with my graphics card, and would like to go bigger. Did you mean you want to play in a maximized window?

[Things I liked]

Without any prior knowledge of the game whatsoever, I just played through the demo 3 times or so. Here's my thoughts (and I am being quite pedantic here because I figure the more feedback the better):

Things I liked

• I love the art style and camera angles. The backdrops are highly detailed and I really like the lighting effects and animations. They work very well. I also appreciated the camera panning effects where there is layered foreground for that pseudo-3d effect. The characters are well animated and more detailed than similarly inspired games.
• I also appreciate the higher backdrop resolution over similarly inspired games. I've lately been thinking "nostalgia is great, but if we really believe adventure games aren't dead we should use a modern resolution". I feel Mage's Initiation captures the desired aesthetic without resorting to self limitation.
• Very well written character dialogue/information. The only part I didn't quite get at first was Varner saying "Better" as opposed to "I'll do Better".
• The music works really well, as do the sound effects.
• I like the "equip" panel layout, particularly with the gem placements on D'arc's hands. I hope we'll see ever increasing gem powers so we might have two +5 gems equipped well into the game. That would add a nice little RPG element to it.

Overall, the demo was much more imaginative, detailed and polished than I was expecting.


Bugs / Usability / Dislikes

• I really hated the mouse acceleration. Fortunately it's not present in Windowed mode.
• In the settings (etc) panel, why isn't the close button [X] in the top right corner?
• Volume controls are non functional / fake - are they just placeholders?
• When the camera pans, the screen redraw is not always smooth - It appears to be a vsync issue where a horizontal disruption scans down the screen (most obvious in random passageway after entering the wrong door code).
• This was already mentioned, but I would like it if inventory items had the hot pixel rendered like the action icons do, so I wouldn't have to mouse hunt when using the bellows on the gem for example. Not a big deal, but I think small annoyances like this slightly disrupt the immersion.
• Combat went fine, except I seemed to get blocked by the bodies while trying to run away, which was a bit annoying. It was also too easy to get snagged on the tree, or perhaps something else was going on here.

Suggestions

• It would be nice if the characters could change in brightness as they walk through lights and shadows (not sure how feasible that is in the game engine, even if only rudimentary it would help with immersion).
• D'arc walks partially through the seating in reading hall. Paths could be improved here.
• When D'arc gets a door code wrong and reappears at the far side of the screen, the camera could pan rather than abruptly jump across.
• Do we really have to wait for D'arc to fully enter the screen before we start exploring with the mouse?

Really good job guys. I'm honestly excited for your game.