Yo. Hello. I'm stopping by to test your game. I haven't finished it yet, but since I've been playing it for over two hours and I just encountered a critical error that made me lose one (see the bottom of the comment), I don't have the motivation to continue right now. But I really like it. Count on me to finish it later.

P.S.: Sorry for my terrible English.

Let's move on to what I saw.

I like it:
-Design: I really like the game's design. It's very enjoyable. Even if the interface itself lacks personality, it's still very interesting.

-The choice of interface would lend the game well to smartphone gameplay!!!

-Dialogue and character. Lively. Although the language level prevents me from understanding everything. I really like the characters' personalities.

-Super nice music and super well-matched with the environment.

-Very enjoyable combat, team, monster, and fusion systems. Although I'll have some criticism for the formation and fusion below. The possibilities for progression are interesting. In a way, you're quite free to change your team as you wish, which makes it a very free-form team-building game.

Not to my taste:
-Combat scenery a bit repetitive

-Interface: Takes up a lot of space but remains very interesting.

-Fusion and formation system a bit chaotic, even if it doesn't detract from its appeal.


Combat system :
-All animations are in the top left corner.

-Combat: I don't know if it's a bug, but at one point, Heroic Souls attacked three times in a row (three times in a row on its turn).

-When you capture a monster, it stays in combat, which can be unsettling. If you have a free spot, it appears directly in the team.

-Chickling appears a little too high up when the player controls it.

-When you complete a combat turn, the cursor switches from "Pass" to "Catch," which causes unwanted captures if you move too fast.

Interface / Formation / Merge:
- Outside of the campfire, I managed to swap a monster from storage with one from my team. When I exit the option at the campfire, the cursor position remains on the selected monster. If it's on a monster in storage and I don't move the cursor, I can replace my first monster with the one from storage. So I potentially have 7 monsters on me.

- Storage can be exceeded. I've reached 15/10 monsters.

- The fusion system could be more readable by showing the techniques learned and the acquired statuses in a small window before the fusion.

- It would be nice to be able to see the skills in the fusion management. Currently, you have to exit the fusion option, then go to the menus to see the "Skill" option, and then return to Merge. Improving the status menu to display the skills could be a good idea. Optimizing learning with fusion is quite complicated. To compare, you either have to take notes or systematically recreate your team just to see the talents of the monsters in the reserve. The functionality is simple but deserves to be optimized.

Technique

-Teleportation Stele: I know it's boring to do. But create a unique choice branch for each stele that doesn't allow you to select where you are.

-Cinematics: It would have been more appreciated if the interface were absent during cutscenes.

Interface problem:
- The left health bars don't update after resting at the campfire. You have to wait to change maps or open the menu. The occurrence of updating the bars seems to be linked to the refresh of the scene, which takes away from its dynamic use. Especially if the change occurs without refreshing the scene (like the campfire). If it's done by Pluggin, I don't have a solution. Otherwise, define an event that compares the bar's position based on the real-time health, and reactivates the positioning when the results aren't identical.

Details:
-I would have preferred slower walking. The basic fast walk reduces movement weight (but that's just one point of view).

Stage 1:
-2nd map of the forest

-The movement of the spirits, especially the log, is not symmetrical (one extra square to the left).

-The automatic movement of NPCs stops when you pick up an item. Perhaps switch to a parallel event, or have the movement managed by an external event.

-The NPCs prevent each other from moving when one is in front of the other. Consider setting the NPCs to cross everything and manage the X/Y encounters based on the player's position. A player invincibility period to avoid chaining fights could be interesting.

Stage 2: I almost missed the vines.

I didn't go any further because I went back to stage 1 to train when I had...

!!!!! Critical Problem !!!!!

-Returning to talk to the girl in front of the first stone restarts the fight, the first appearance at the workshop with the conversation with the orange cat and the dream cutscene. The game freezes immediately afterward. Black screen and nothing els during 10 minutes (I gave it a chance).

In mi opinion:
For the moment I really like your game. The environment and the music are very appreciable and very well chosen. The dimensions of the game are also extremely effective. You should think about a portable version. Being a complessionist I have fun like an insect hunter comparing the monsters and getting to know them. There is a lot of subtlety in the structure of your bestiary which makes the richness of the game. The story also seems well written for the moment. but I'm waiting to see more before giving a real rating on it. In any case the characters are very appreciable. The only flaws I can see are the team management and fusion systems which are not yet well optimized and can be frustrating (see above). Also (but this is only my point of view) I find it a shame that you went through so many plug-ins which ultimately make your game certainly more worked on compared to a classic RPG maker project (it is also therefore much more stable and clean than my own project), but which from a visual identity point of view with regard to the combat system and the interface, it will not stand out from the rest of the projects which will use the same plug-ins.

Hoping that this feedback will be favorable to you. Please do not see any animosity in this and I thank you again for giving your opinion on my project. On that note, I wish you good luck until my next feedback and I thank you for your work during this Jam.

hi, i'm playing right now and having a really good time! something i would love to see in future updates is maybe a handbook for merging? i'm struggling a bit with it and wish i could get a refresher on how it worked! (if there is and i missed it please let me know haha)

edit: also, in the first dungeon, the juliette event is still there even after you've cleared it for the first time