Scrap Story

What a nostalgia ride; has to be inspired from a certain Mario of paper!!

I played the demo and I think its a very fun game! The graphics are stellar and I love the artstyle. I do have some minor gripes though. 

I feel that the depth perception is a little off in some areas (cloud area at the end and the bridge after the jump pad before the cloud area). 

This is a personal opinion here, but I think the game may benefit from a few boundaries on some places. In the area where you first meet the mouse, I was having a bit of trouble getting the fruit as I couldn't necessarily see the bridge that lead to it all that well. 

In the in-game menu, I think that different directions for some icons would be nice (pressing up to go to settings as its more up than right). 

Some of the checkpoints were a little strange, as it seemed I progressed very far in an area (one before clouds), just to fall and get booted to the very beginning. It felt like I was falling a lot, and I think that more generous checkpoints or maybe just being more lenient on being on platforms/bridges would be nice.

Obviously these are all very minor things, and I think the game is really awesome and I am looking forward to more in the future! Thanks for this amazing demo :)!

Played the demo and I like what I see so far. I did end up making a bit of a list of stuff I thought was missing, though I imagine a lot of it may just be for polishing the game when everything is done. Can't wait to see more of it. (sorry if it's a mess, I was just writing stuff down as they popped into mind.)

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Kind of thought that I would be moving the character in the menu to which option.

Being able to equip an already equipped item into another slot (possibly with a confirmation)

Some similar looking fences I can jump over, some I can't.

Falling into a pit, would like to be closer to where I fell rather than way back (notably the area where you first run into jump springs or whatever.)

Wasn't really aware you could jump higher on jump springs initially by jumping as you land on it. Maybe also allow for jumping higher if you are holding the jump button when you land on it as well?

Hitting/swinging/shaking/jumping off stuff has no "impact" to it (no sounds or dust or anything.)

Adding onto the jumping on Jump pads, maybe it makes a higher pitch noise when you jump higher.

The rainy area where you find the Spin Dash, maybe make the water look deep or something (I figured I was fine walking into it since it was slightly elevated below the safe ground.)

Adding onto the rainy area, maybe make it so that when you get the Spin Dash, you have to then use it to get back (maybe the upgrade is in a hole and you have to use the upgrade to get out of the whole.) Wrote this when I missed that you use it to get the hidden Lemon.

Wish item pickups had some initial text saying what they do (didn't figure out that I could use Spin Dash to clear jumps until I inspected it in the menu.)

No idea if a UI is already in the works. Would be nice to see what upgrades I have currently equipped in the button slots (The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker's UI in the top right for example.) And of course, I guess for a way to hide UI elements.

Possibly differentiate the jump pads (Maybe the bigger one is a different color/has patterns)

"The bees don't like me killing flowers, where they watching me the whole time? Would they be chill if I didn't murder flowers prior to talking to them?"

Kind of wish Spin dashing NPCs made them twirl or something.

Wish hitting hammers against things stopped the hammer short of the ground.

Not sure if it was just me, but didn't see the safe spots in some areas unless I made a blind leap.

Wish the fall when you hit the rock roadblock wasn't so long. (Also unsure if it the block you break below the rock should look different from other blocks)

Hard to tell where the cloud platforms are.

Wish there were some invisible walls to keep me from falling off the front/back of some platforms (the first area after you leave the woods comes to mind. I fell off in front of the entrance, and also trying to get to the paper airplane part where

Wish I was moving a little faster in the background in the cloud platform section.

No idea what the progression on items is, but I feel like some may be too useful to have to keep equipping manually. Maybe have swappable equipment sets or certain items are bound to buttons outside the 3 equip buttons (just an example: Spin Dash to R2/Right Trigger, L2/Left Trigger to Paper Airplane.)

It's charming so far. Can't wait to see more of it.

Hello! I spent about an hour and a half playing the demo, and found the fruit and the note on the tiny island (I'm from Twitter lol)

There was a camera issue where it did not reset after falling from the area where you hit the rock with the hammer and fall to the small area below it with the cat character. Upon returning to the top part of the level the camera would still be stuck at that specific height instead of being like you were looking down slightly at the level like normal. I'm going to try and stream the demo in the near future and I will see if I can replicate this.

There was also an issue where the airplane power up would still exist even after I had collected it, so I was able to collect it a second time.

I think the biggest thing that stuck out to me though is how easy it is to fall off everything, and when I was trying out the spin dash + jump combo, and with trying the plane and would fall off the level, it became somewhat annoying that I would resume on an earlier portion of the level instead of near the platform I jumped from. This was easier to replicate with the plane in the part of the level mentioned before with the falling bridge part; I could become a plane from that area and float towards the left, fall, and then respawn waaay to the left of that area at the beginning with the rock in the middle of the fence. If falling is going to continue to be a part of this game, I would personally prefer respawning from the area you last jumped from instead of the area to where you are closest to. But I've never really made a game (yet) so I don't know if that could cause some issues. I figure that you've made things the way they are because of a process you have went through so it is difficult for me to feel like it is okay for me to criticize something like this.

One funny thing I came across during that part is the opossum guy would resume walking from A to B and would walk on thin air plus through the gate with the rock in it like it was nothing, lol.

I had no difficulty issues with the spin dash. It's supposed to be a bit hectic. But sometimes when I would jump with it I would make a collision with parts of the level like the corner of a fence which would stop me from advancing, causing me to fall and have to do it over again. That has more to do with the level layout. Getting to the green fruit was very challenging though. Maybe the spin dash could be changed to where you can stop on a dime? I had a hard time stopping sometimes.

The clouds in the last part of the area did not have the shadow underneath the character like on land which made it difficult for me to determine where I was landing as I was moving amongst them. I do not know if this is an error or on purpose. I had been using the shadow to determine difficult jumps.

I will see if I can record all of this again if I have time. Oh and it would be neat to be able to use the sword while using the spin dash, but I understand if this is an upgrade meant for later in the game :) Thank you for allowing us to play it!

hello! i finished playing the demo this morning and collected all of the fruit, and it was super cute and fun! most of the bigger issues have already been addressed by others here (there weren't really that many anyway,) but i have got a few things to say here if you don't mind.

first, i am a huge fan of the paper mario series, and i can definitely see the influence tied in with the originality here! i've only been following Scrap Story's development for about a month and a half, but when i found it i was super happy and instantly began looking through all the photos and previous development updates.

here i have a few comments/suggestions, and they really are mostly small little nitpicks. i'd appreciate if you read these, but please, PLEASE feel free to disregard any of these. for the most part, these are purely my opinion :p

in the very first area, if you go to the back and inspect the foliage it says "You can barley see the sky through the vast amount of trees and leaves." i am pretty sure you meant "barely" instead of "barley," and i think there was one more typo somewhere else but i forgot  * ~ *

i saw that the broken pieces of the breakable rocks disappeared a few seconds after they hit the ground, but maybe it could look nicer if they faded out instead of just disappearing in a single frame? i also thought that the rock pieces could look nicer if they split into more irregular, "rocky" fragments when broken instead of into the straight "+" pattern.

many people have said this before, but the spin dash was difficult to control and was a little slippery.

the speech bubbles were a little hard to read if i tried to read them as the text was scrolling in, so maybe it could look nicer if the text was aligned to the left instead of centered?

when falling off of the stage (which i did a lot, lol) i could see the bottoms of all the polygons/geometry as the camera fell with scrap girl. this did feel a little odd, so maybe either extending the level downward, heightening the point where you die at, or making it so that the camera stops falling with scrap girl at a certain point could polish that a little more.

maybe when scrap girl is still crunched after falling, her eyes could be dizzy or slightly in pain instead of going back to the normal eyes to make her a little more expressive?

and lastly, i noticed there was a small lack of sound in some places where it seems like sound would be expected. maybe sound effects could be added for: trees/foliage moving out of the way, breaking the wooden boxes,  text boxes opening and closing, bouncing, or landing from jumping/ falling? also maybe the footsteps could be a little louder? they are very cute footsteps lol

i hope these can help in some way! this demo was very polished for the stage it is at! i absolutely adore the paper aesthetic, it seems to be almost perfected. i love the way characters sort of wave around when standing still, i love the way scrap girl wobbles when she walks, and i love the little two-frame scribble animations on everything. i think that the last one in particular is a very underrated effect. the small little speech bubbles that appear as you approach characters is also a nice little touch!

overall, i absolutely love this project, this demo was amazing, and i am looking forward to the next demo and the finished game, whenever they may be! i hope i could help, i also hope i didn't write too much here... :p   and good luck working on the rest of this project!

I've been following you on Twitter for a while now so I'm very happy that I finally get to try out your game. It was really good. The level of polish on the graphics/art/aesthetic really shows. I liked  pretty much all of it but I'll go into the things that really stuck out to me below.

I really liked the two movement power-ups (i.e the spin dash and the paper airplane). The airplane animation is very good, and using it to traverse the large gaps of the island was fun (i.e. over to the lonely island with the lime).

I really liked interacting with the bridge that you hit your head off (after bouncing on the trampoline) and knock over onto the ground. When I did it the first time the bridge fell onto the trampoline blocking it so I had to bump it off the map. I always like playing with dynamic pieces of the environment.

I really like the post-processing filters as they give a new flair to the visuals that I can cycle through. I especially liked the cinematic one.

I only have two minor gripes. I think the Player/Equipment menu screen could be better laid out. I kept expecting the 'Outfit' section to be it's own part of the menu rather then a sub-part of the Equipment section (i.e. I kept pressing right when my cursor was hovering over the 'Equipment' badge expecting to the Outfit area of the menu rather then the Power Ups area).

I also felt like the jumps could be slightly more lenient/the standard jump made slightly longer. I kept falling into holes which I don't think were meant to be a challenge (e.g. the little hole before the dog that sells you the mallet).

I also found some glitches which you may or may not be aware of:

1) If you pause the game while you're in the air your downwards velocity(?) is still being updated in the background so if the game is paused for a while you slam vertically into the ground. (e.g. pause the game halfway through a jump -> sit on the menu for about 10 seconds -> unpause the game = slam fast into the ground).

2) The pause menu portrait of scrap girl only appears if you equip the scrap girl outfit in the first zone of the game (the heavily forested area) and disappears if you move into any other zone (e.g. Pick up the Scrap Girl Outfit Card -> Walk into the area with the broken bridge -> equip the Scrap Girl Outfit = Pause menu portrait is still blank.)

Hope that all made sense.

Took the time to play it, have been following Scrap Story's development for some time now. I don't have much to add from what I saw others talking about before, all valid complaints you've already commented on. 

That being said: SCRAP STORY IS RAD! It's lived up to the internal hype I've slowly been perculating within me, I love it. Seriously. Whole demo I played with a smile. <3 Looking forward to more updates (and the finished game) in the future. Can't believe this is the first game you've made.

This game is wonderful and I'm looking forward to more demos with more to do and so excited for the final game, what consoles will it appear on?

as for minor nitpicks:

the spin feels very loose in the air resulting in lots of seemingly uncontrollable deaths

the platforming was slightly difficult to do because of shadows and textures to land on (clouds)

the boxes near the dog had strange behavior when jumping on and around them while I had the cinematic filter on. Not sure if caused by the filter or not but def. worth checking out. 

FANTASTIC GAME GLAD I COULD PLAY THE DEMO GOT ALL THE FRUITS!

The game is super cute and was a lot of fun :D
Most of the minor issues I wanted to mention were already mentioned, but I have a few more^^
The first time you open the character menu (Esc) ingame, it takes a bit to generate/ load. Maybe you can preload it upon starting/Loading a game? :D

Also the Depth of Field  for post processing seems to only be "focused" in an area behind the character instead of 50:50 in front of and behind. (especially noticable with NPCs.)

Also noticed that the paper airplane card respawned when I reentered that room later^^

Good luck with further development :D

Hey! I enjoyed playing the demo guys! The music is cool and the graphics are really unique haha! The fact that you're gaining equipment throughout the game is just great! Keep it up! 

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Hey, me and my friend love this game a lot so far but we keep running into a glitch where after we create the first bridge, the mouse character runs across the other side in the air and we can't figure out how to create the bridge to get across, if you could either patch this or help us with this we would greatly appreciate it. 

Edit: So me and my friend found the thing we needed to get across the area and we're sorry for misunderstanding it. 

Hey! I liked this game so much that I created an account on this website lol. What can I say about your demo so far...

Positives:

+The style is AMAZING! It's apparent that you love Paper Mario and took fun aspects from old games to add fun mechanics to yours! The idea of spin dashing/ timing platform bounces/ breakable objects really add depth to this game.

+Characters are cute and lively. I'm sure there will be more unique characters all with stories and side quests alike. Can't wait!

+The music. Through there's really only one track, it helps set the happy go lucky mood, perfect for this game! Feels very Yoshi's world inspired.

+Equips and outfits add life to this game. I know that there will be even more costumes and weapons/skills that can really add some awesome customization into your game!

Negatives:

-Navigation of the menu. It feels super rigid right now. I'm using a controller right now and as much fun as I have moving in game, it doesn't feel good navigating to, lets say equip my item or going to settings. I think it would feel better if every input gave a direction, like say moving down makes the marker go right, or it just makes a noise for input confirmation.

-Menu noises. It doesn't fit the sound of the rest of the game IMO. It sounds like an obnoxious SPLAT as opposed to a light sound most of this game provides. A minor problem, I know.

-There's no way to close your game. You mentioned a way to get back into the main menu from the misc. section of the settings, but no way to turn off the game? cmoooonnnn.

-Vertical movement is kind of a nightmare. The camera is deadset on the character and while this usually is a good thing, it really sucks when...lets say you jump on the last trampoline pad before the paper airplane.  And sometimes when I was jumping on those pads, the camera DIDN'T pan with me! It felt lame not being able to look around with the right stick.

-Jumping over most fences but not ALL fences feels like a weird restriction. Specifically with that bunny dude whos chillin out all menacingly in the middle of the stage. Just seemed unfair that I can clearly jump over it but I get invisible walled.

And that's all! This was a fun demo and i genuinely cannot wait for the release of the main game!

Hello! I very much enjoyed the demo, and as such here are some things that can be improved:

-The initial instruction on how to equip items can be permanently skipped over, leaving the player without an instruction on how to equip the sword. If they didn't completely retain this information the first time around, this can lead to a lost player on the beginning area quite easily. A temporary sign of some sort that appears after collecting the sword but before destroying the rocks (that just brings up the instruction again) would be great.

-The fruit out in the background that is intended for the paper airplane takes you a bit too far back in the level if you don't make the jump. A checkpoint closer to that jump would be great.

-Spin Dash is a bit touchy. It can be hard to stop yourself after making your intended jump, leading to overshooting your target platform a bit too easily. Perhaps the ability to jump out of the dash to cancel it or some other similar approach would feel better as well as natural to utilize.

-The twisty trees can freak out when you strike your sword at them, but that's purely a technical glitch.

-More obvious signposting that lets the player know that there's not much else to the rainy area after the fruit would be great (you kind of have to figure out as such by spin dashing to the right until nothing's there, which I think is a death that can be avoided).

-Some invisible walls preventing the player from falling into the background when looking for the two bridge switches would be welcome.

-The effects of falling are based entirely on time spent in the air, but this can result in odd 'crushing' when the player is just caught on objects. Also, the player can get caught on objects, disallowing them movement and jumping ability. The player's vertical coordinate should be recorded whenever you leave the ground and checked against the resulting coordinate when they land to judge if the player should be crushed from the fall. If the player is falling long enough, check their vertical coordinate for about a second to make sure they're not caught on geometry, and if they are, respawn them. This can prevent softlocking should the player get caught on geometry.

-Allowing the D-Pad for menus would be welcome. I know controller support is in its infancy, but official PS4 controller support would be nice. By default it binds the Xbox buttons to incorrect locations on the PS4 pad, so its not too far-fetched to figure out PS4 support.

The demo was fun! I collected all the fruits and I'm going to be looking forward to this one! I hope these notes prove useful.

Hi! Just played through the demo (assuming it's over when you've collected all the fruit) and I'm absolutely loving the potential here! Here's some notes I jotted down while playing:

Compliments:
- The presentation is absolutely wonderful. The characters, the environments, the animations, and even the GUI are just downright charming. I honestly can't say enough good things about how adorable this game looks!
- Equipping skill cards is intuitive and a good way to keep exploration engaging. The skills themselves are quite fun to mess around with, too, and add some depth to what would otherwise be pretty typical platforming.

Critiques:
- The spin dash is REALLY hard to control. Most of my deaths were because I hit the spin button and hurled myself off the edge of a platform. It became a bit easier when I realized you could jump out of a spin, but I didn't realize that until I figured out you can Inspect the equipment. Having this info pop up when you initially collect the card would save a lot of frustration.
- Depth perception was a big issue for me. More often than not, I found myself missing jumps because I was slightly too far back or forward, with the low angle of the camera making it hard to judge where I needed to be on the depth axis. This is especially problematic when trying to land a jump with the spin dash.
- There seems to be a bit of an issue with misguiding the player. For example, there's a sign near the beginning that says something about turning into an airplane and gliding across, but if you come back later and try that, you just die (unless I missed something). Additionally, I tried for quite a while to get the green fruit on the island using the spin move with that jump pad (since it's located shortly after acquiring that move, and I had figured out that spinning into a jump pad makes you jump higher/further) only to give up after a while and realize later that the jump required an item acquired later. Funny enough, if the sign about turning to an airplane had been there instead, it would have solved both of these issues.

Overall, I'm very impressed with this prototype, and I can't wait to see what's next! It sounds like the way the skill cards factor into battles is going to make for a unique and varied battle system. Keep up the great work!

(Sorry for the long comment, but thank you for taking the time to read this far!)

Hi, 

just finished playing the Scrap Story demo, it was great! The game really captures the same kind of vibe that the old Paper Mario games used to have, but also feels very fresh and original at the same time. The controls and UI felt really good and intuitive, and to say the game looks gorgeous is an understatement!

I did have a few small problems with the game though. The thing that bugged me the most was the places that I would respawn after falling off of a cliff. For example, in the second area with the hidden switches and the cool opossum friend, falling off anywhere before the bridge brings you back to the very start of the room, and walking back to where I was became a little irritating. It was also somewhat hard to see where the cliffs were in some spots due to bushes or grass blocking the view. I think putting invisible walls in these places could help, or making the objects near the cliffs transparent when the player approaches so that they can see where exactly the cliff is.

The other issues I had were just a few bugs. When walking to the platform with the orange on it, I found myself getting stuck on and having to jump over some sort of invisible object in between the bridge and the platform that the orange is on. There was also a part where I fell a long distance downwards and decided to use the paper airplane to fly around a bit, but once I landed the camera was at a weird angle that caused it to clip into the ground, and it stayed like this until I left the room. There were also a few areas with objects like trees that seemed like they should be solid but allowed me to walk through them. That's all the problems I encountered on my play through.

I should probably clue this comment up now, as it's turning into more of an essay at this point lol. Last thing I want to say is how excited I am for the full game. The visuals, music, character designs, dialogue, and controls are all spectacular and left me wanting more. This demo leaves pretty much no doubt in my mind that the final game will be stellar. 

Keep up the fantastic work, I can't wait to learn more about Scrap Story :)

~Tristan