Finished another game and looking for Beta Testers

Carebanet Girls is finished at last and I’m now looking for beta-testers to give a full course testing. A quick description about the game is that it’s a game about magical girl warriors and there is an actual combat system in place, with the random command heavily in use throughout the game.

The setting is fairly basic at first: you live in a city called Noach and there’s trouble coming in the form of monsters called Beings. Your friend has been chosen to fight as one of the eponymous Carebanet girl and you stumble into the situation, unaware of what’s going on.

For those who want to try the game out first, here’s a link to the game’s page. PM me if you’d like to beta-test my game and I will send a different link for you to beta-test. Thanks.

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Can I beta test please mate

I’d like to beat test this, but the choice is yours.

I’ve sent you a message to ask to be a beta-tester.

I like to beta test this

Would I be able to beta test, please.

Thank you for your replies. I’ve just woken up since I’m 13 hours ahead of EST so it will take me a bit of time to send out all of the links but everyone should be receiving it within the hour or so. Much oblige.

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I’d like to beta test this

I sent you a PM as well. I would love to Beta Test Cabaret Girls for you.

Just an announcement that I ill be slowing down work on Carebanet Girls for a while since Magikiras has now been released and I need to get to work on that baby as well. I did not foresee such a close release at all >_>

OK good luck, I’m happy your other game came out

Did you send out the links? I don’t seem to have received one. Well, if you’re busy I don’t mind waiting a bit before I get one.
(unless I was rejected as a beta-tester :scream:)

That aside, congrats on your other game getting released. :clap:

Uploaded a small update since there were some complaints to the fights’ difficulty. I’ve readjusted them so that they’re easier to beat now.

Can I beta test? This sounds interesting! I shall PM you if that’s…okay?

Minor update to the Beta in which I added in an achievement system. I will be looking at ways on how to turn Endurance into a more active skill next.

I’m having some trouble PMing you for some reason–I’ve tried the demo version and would love to beta test for you, if you still need testers :slight_smile:

@Grapefruit So I finally came around to look at the demo for this game. I don’t have enough time to really beta test it thoughtfully, but I still want to give you some feedback to what I already saw.

First some little things you may want to correct:

I think you meant her.

Second about the game itself. Let’s start with something positive: I really like the characters, like I already liked the characters in Magikiras, you really have a talent to create characters that are at least for me interesting enough to want to play every single character and romance branch that exists. And the magical girl theme. I really love that.

What annoyed me: The huge number of customizations to choose from, but really only because there was not a single tip what everything does. That is especially bitter because the battle system expects from the player to act somewhat strategically. So it would be nice to get at least for the carebanet customizations some hint or description of what the hell this beret/or earrings /or whatever even does, before we ultimately chose which item we take. (I’m not sure if the style or club we chose in the beginning also has an influence on the stats, but if they do, I think it is okay, if that early choices are left without clarification, because only after we become a carebanet the stats get a greater meaning. But that’s only my personal opinion, others may want to know from the start what character they are building). Also it would be nice to get some description of the carebanet stats earlier in the game. Otherwise it feels like fumbling around in the dark.

And with that we come to the next point. I really had for some decisions the feeling to do exactly that: fumbling around the dark, because the game didn’t even gave me a hint to what to do. Prominently is the decision between the fun house/horror house/ storage room, and the question about the name of Nanas sister, though the last one only because Snow in some not clarified language is not enough to come to Yukine (it isn’t even yuki, what most people could come to with guessing and google, but Yukine?! Really?) . Maybe I just didn’t pass the perception checks but in that case those checks are pretty high…

So on to the next point where I’m honestly a little bit conflicted about: the battle system.
I see what you want to archive with that, it feels really rpg-like, but the problem is choice games are not really the same medium as classical rpgs. The biggest problem are the repetitions. In videogames you just look at a short visual sequence that’s repeated, while playing a tabletop rpg either you or the DM can give the repetition some variation, but text based games make that difficult. And I didn’t see if you have some variation in the game in form of for example critical hits, but it’s possible I just didn’t notice, because honestly I stopped reading the description for the same choices during battles after a short while. And people will have to choose the same options repeatedly, just to play to their strengths and to have even a chance to win.

Also, I like that I don’t have to start the game from the beginning just because of some bad “dice rolls” on the other side I had to start some chapters over again and again, because even while choosing strategically, there were many bad dice rolls. Like really many. It just seems very random for people who aren’t used to typical rpgs (Though it even seems in comparison to the rpgs I’m used to sometimes unreasonable random). For some players that maybe too frustrating and leads them to quite the game. So if you want to stay with the battle system as it is, may at least make it somewhat easier, or give people the choice for an easy mode or something.

And I noticed that the relationships stats seem to get not very high (I think the highest I reached was somewhere in the 40s?), so you maybe should adjust them somewhat, so that it is a least theoretically possible to reach something near 100% (I don’t know maybe that is already possible but it certainly didn’t seem like it). What also leads me to the question to the scene with Helen, when we have to bring her to fight with us. Is there some point when the MC has a high enough relationship with her, so that it’s literally impossible, that she will let MC go on their own? Because if not there certainly should be. Otherwise it would seem somewhat strange.

That’s all I can think of now. Anyway good luck with the game!

Thanks for the error reports and the comments. It’s good to get something meaty to think and read about even though it’s morning when I’m getting this :slight_smile:

I’ve gotten wind of a few of these annoyances in the beta test already and I have tried to fix them already. There is now a bit of a tutorial in Chapter 2, explaining what each stat does in the battle system as well as explaining how the die system is supposed to work, as well as a false skill sheet at the start (you can thank @poison_mara for the second bit).

Yes, the fumbling around in the dark does rely on a bit on the player’s luck to hit the perception check (1 in 6 chance for the lowest perception score), which means I can do something to give the player a better chance and the Yukine bit was just me being a troll admittedly, although it does mean snow song. I’m making some plans on how to change that section up a little right now but only the beta test will be receiving updates at this point, not the demo.

The battle system is my experimentation into what the Choice system can do, to be honest. It’s more my pet project than anything else. I have made it somewhat easier in the beta to win the fights and I am looking into other ways to reduce the difficulty as well. Hmmm…easy mode…maybe I can think up something for that.

Thanks for notifying me about the relationship stats btw. I wasn’t sure if there was enough being delivered around. Also, the scene with Helen is based on your skill check but is modified by your relationship strength with her, not just your relationship with her. The check is relatively low (for that point of time in the game, at least) so a higher relationship strength bar serves to make success more likely.)

Thanks for all the input and I will consider what can be done to make these changes.

For my beta-testers, I’ve uploaded a new version of Carebanet Girls on the beta. Besides the usual spelling/grammar fixes, I fixed a bug where the player is taking full damage during fights instead of having their damage reduction working normally. That should ease up on the combat difficulty and thanks to @Sammysam for suggesting a critical hit function. Didn’t think about that at all, so now there’s one.

Since the combat difficulty has been dropped, this also means that I’m now insane enough to add in a hard mode function into the game. At the moment, it’s only on the beta test version and fully available in the first fight only.

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  1. Reduced game’s difficulty. Enemies do less damage, receive more damage and have less health than before (about 50% less). For the truly masochistic, a Hard mode has been added to the game which restores the enemy’s health and gives them a special attack.

  2. Added a critical hit function where you inflict more damage if you beat the target number by a certain amount. The bonus damage is increased if you use a support action to pull this off. As of right now, there’s no visual indication or changed text to show the crit though.

  3. Standard typo fixes and such but I’m certain there’s still more.

These changes apply to both the public demo and the beta test at this point. Next on the list is adding a new chapter for a little more character interaction and to spread things out between Chapter 3 and Chapter 5.

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