This long critique is not meant as a diatribe but is intended to be wholly constructive. I immensely respect the gargantuan task that creating a fangame entails, and to do all this as a solo dev is awe-inspiring.

This write-up was done after a playthrough of Chapter 1, without playing anything of Chapter 2. I plan to play what's there of Chapter 2 but want to judge the first chapter on its on first. I apologize if I make incorrect assumptions that would be made more clear in Chapter 2.

-- KANAKO --

As people have said in previous threads, Kanako doesn't have a strong personality and this mainly comes down to a lack of flaws in which she can cause or escalate conflicts. I actually do think making the secondary protagonist someone with a clear, not complicated, earnest friendship/romance with the player character is refreshing and stands out from Toby Fox's ensembles, and I would keep that aspect of Kanako as it is.

I found the trip through Chapter 1 to be almost entirely conflict-free, and I chalk that up to two compounding issues: a lack of recurring characters to antagonize the lightners, and Kanako always being on the same page as Cole. To talk just about the latter issue, Kanako doesn't have any personality- or motivation-derived issues that can slow or derail progress (or speed it up depending on how it's utilized). I think it's well enough for her to let Cole take the lead, and in fact an expectation for others to do things for Kanako would fit the only child of a well-off family, so long as it's used against Kanako at some points. If, partway through the chapter, responsibility is thrust upon Kanako—such as when a human-blocking field appears—we could see her unpreparedness, coupled with other negative traits, cause problems for the party. Even if it's not an arc to be resolved it would make the ride more interesting, ups and downs on a rollercoaster.

Making Kanako sheltered and a bit spoiled works for the reason mentioned, but you could also draw from her parents' negative traits.
Ceroba is loyal (can be dialed up to being possessive), bad at thinking plans through, won over by flimsy sentimentality, thinks she's smarter and more capable than she is, and exhibits tard rage at a couple points in UTY.
Chujin is single-mindedly obsessive, blames others for his failures, eager to engage in self-destructive behavior, can miss the forest for the trees, and his love for his family can make him act irrationally. (He's also racist but if any of that rubbed off on Kanako she wouldn't apply any of it to Cole, so it wouldn't cause conflict in Chapter 1)

You could take a few of the above traits and then put it through the light of a hormonal, impatient teenager carrying a very large club. When I saw the memory matching game I quickly thought, "the game could reprise this with but with 80 cards at a progress gate, and then Kanako bypasses the game by smashing the hustler's desk." It would parallel the scene of Ceroba breaking the computer screen in UTY's pacifist Steamworks.

Another way to make Kanako conflict with Cole in a subtler way is if she's the voice of dissent for the Warden's criminal roundup. It's not the lightners' problem, she just wants to go home, but Cole's brain has been rotted from western movies and he's ready to LARP. Whether you spare, arrest or attack the criminals becomes the player's decision, but if Kanako only goes along with the arrests for Cole's sake that would make the party goals more dynamic on its own.

Lastly, to focus on Kanako's positive traits: I think a couple scenes could be tweaked/added to to show Kanako's sensitivity and care toward Cole. I wouldn't have Kanako directly bring up Cole moving away in the beginning school scene—Sadie seems to not be entirely fond of Cole from her one conversation in Chapter 1, and making her insensitively bring up Cole moving away, then having Kanako try to salvage the situation and console Cole after Sadie leaves, would reinforce the pair's bond.

Ludonarratively, I think the scene of Kanako jumping in front of Cole to protect him from Bearington would be strengthened if Kanako used her diamond barrier to tank the hit, get knocked into Clover from the pushback, and then two teeter over the edge. (And while I'm talking about that, if you choose to jump off I would have Cole grab Kanako's arm rather than leave her behind.) In that exact vein, I was surprised when Cole could scratch at the cracks in the jail until his fingers bled but it wasn't remarked upon after reuniting with Kanako; if Kanako notices, heals Cole and then remarks on the fact that she has that power, it would both show her reaction to the special abilities the pair has, increase the feeling of interactivity in the world, and strengthen the party's bond.

-- TUTORIALIZATION AND QOL --

I think it's great that there's a Talk functionality in the game, and I checked it every room multiple times. However, the fact that there are sometimes multiple Talks per room, without any tell, made checking for those extra bits of dialogue a tad cumbersome, especially going into the menu and scrolling to Talk every time. My proposal: if a party member has something unique to say they could have a small dialogue box above their head, that fades after a couple seconds. For flavor you could make it an ellipsis, excalamtion mark or question mark depending on what the character has to say. For even more QoL, it would be very useful if there was an optional Talk keybind to skip the menu navigation. It could be the [V] key as a default, or unbound altogether until the player manually binds it.

I disliked that [Z] both advanced dialogue and fast-forwarded the dialogue box. In Deltarune, [Z] only advances and you have to press [X] to fast-forward to the end of the text box. In cases where characters were talking with ellipses I accidentally fast-forwarded the dialogue a good few times. Following Deltarune's conventions would have improved my experience with the cutscenes here.

I tried but could not find an instance of the game telling the player they could run by holding [X]. While it's a reasonable expectation that 99% of people playing DRY have played Deltarune I think it's still good design to explain things like this in edge cases where the player never runs. The best place to put this tutorial, I feel, is in the chase scene with Bearington: if the minimum rubberband speed of Bearington and his goons was about 10% faster than walking speed, then the player would have to run to avoid getting hit. If the player does get hit by colliding with Bearington, Kanako could tell Cole to run faster and "Hold [X] to run" could fade in at the top of the screen.

I thought it was odd to not have any kind of tutorial for Clover's soul mode. I understood that he entered it because he's in justice mode, thinking about hunting down a wanted criminal, but having a momentary scene to introduce that element would to a LOT. The easiest way to segue into this would be to have Pennilton sucker punch the party by throwing pennies at them; freeze time, have the player press [Z] to shoot one down and make a gap, and have Kanako remark at how motivated Cole suddenly seems. For extra effect you could have a "WANTED!" HUD effect appear when a battle against a criminal starts, similar to the "WARNING!" that appears in the Mega Man Zero games.

-- ANTAGONISTS AND NARRATIVE --

The other half of why I felt there wasn't enough ups and downs in Chapter 1 is the general lack of interaction with the antagonists. They didn't feel fleshed out, and I think that's a serious crime for an Undertale fangame given how much personality Toby puts in even one-off random fights. Similar to how Kanako needs more flaws, I feel the antagonists both need more screentime and more quirks.

Pennilton was the fight that made me aware that this was going to be an issue. As a one-off character with only two mentions before his fight there's no need to give him a complex backstory or long-reaching motivations, but I felt the few bits of information given about him weren't expressed in his fight.

This darkner has been involved into[sic] multiple thefts in 3 different Dark Worlds. If you see him, do not accept his offers no matter what.
Behind me is a path that goes inside, but my partner-in-crime, Pennilton, set shop up ahead.

Both of the quoted lines made me think Pennilton was a conman of some kind. Given he's also a penny I pictured someone thrifty, who would try to bargain his way out of the confrontation with the lightners but offer an insultingly awful deal, perhaps a "deal" with not even a marginal benefit to the lightners but he tries to disguise it with fast talking, so it takes a second for Kanako to transition from refusing the deal on principle to getting insulted at the terms of the deal themselves. As soon as he can't do that, he would respond with force to get what he wants.
How Pennilton actually acts doesn't feel related to the two quotes above and he felt very one-note if you only took his behavior in the fight itself. You could make him a self-serving "look out for #1" type but I would try to flesh him out just enough for the other aspects of his character to come through. I would compare it to someone like (no pun intended) Deltarune's Clover, or Doggo from Undertale. Here's the scene as it plays in my head while I try to rewrite this character:
>Pennilton is loitering right behind the memory matching game
>party points out he's wanted
>Pennilton offers a deal so terrible that even Kanako, who's not gung-ho about apprehending criminals, gets upset and wants to see him brought in
>Pennilton tries to bargain again, makes the deal even worse
>when the situation becomes unsalvageable, throws coins at the party for Cole to shoot down, starting the fight proper

Ringo had no dialogue which makes characterizing him very hard. I think the castle area would benefit from a second floor, one where the extra rooms can try to hype up Ringo more. If there were two torture rooms stacked on top of each other, and Kanako heard Ringo's noise being piped in when she enters the lower one, that and talking to the inmates would add intrigue. You could change the mechanism to open the door in the central hall of the first floor to something else, such as the proposed gag where the memory matching man tries to rematch with way too many cards and Kanako brute forces him to open the stairway. After that, have the bells get louder the closer the party gets to Ringo's room, and make Ringo completely oblivious to the suffering he's causing; he is tone deaf and cannot read the room. Sparing Ringo, from that line, would be laying on the hints that his behavior is bothering the people around him.

Bearington is a stuffed animal, and I think giving him a more juvenile understanding of the dark world with some childish affectations (e.g. using corruptions of words the way a Rugrats character does) would implant him with some more personality. He felt like a very generic antagonist in his fight, and he only had one scene prior to the final boss fight of the chapter. The first thing I would do is add one scene with Bearington in the middle of the castle section, maybe just of him talking with his henchmen and threatening to send them to Ringo while the party is out of sight.

I don't know your plans for who is the Outlaw, but if it's Sadie like I've seen proposed then giving Bearington an unspoken but implied connection to the Outlaw would be very fitting, given the bear is Sadie's abandoned toy. Bearington might have heard the word "outlaw" but uses the wrong word in its place and Kanako never picks up on what it's supposed to be. From that, you could tease Sadie as the Outlaw by having Cole and Kanako deliver the bear to her.

Speaking briefly on generic enemies, I think there could be interplay between them. Penciller and Eraserhead come to mind the most due to them having multiple out-of-battle cutscenes together; given an eraser exists to correct the pencil's mistakes, I would introduce light banter by having Penciller get facts wrong and then having the eraser stoically correct Penciller.

Foxlace was underutilized but I get the impression from the threads that you're going to heavily expand its role. That is a good call and I look forward to seeing what it is you do.

-- GAMEPLAY AND PACING --

There are too many enemies before the Dark Jail scene in my opinion and cutting the encounters down by about two would help with the pacing. I also feel some enemies are too "bulky" whether you fight or spare them; both Pennilton and Ringo took too long to spare in my playthrough, feeling as lengthy as the superboss. Cutting down the time it takes to beat them and changing their ACTs to be in line with whatever you do to flesh out their personality would greatly help those fights.

Having certain ACTs disable other spare methods for generic enemies doesn't feel properly communicated to the player and I think it's a bit player-hostile in general because of the lack of a flee option in the fight. I'm unsure if it's even possible to spare Mopper after you make a mess, besides reducing its HP so it gets tired. If negative ACTs are to be kept I think it should be better communicated, after the fact, when an ACT is made no longer possible because you used a different ACT.

Eraserhead's bouncing eraser attack has its hitbox greatly expand as it bounces off the ground, catching me off-guard. While this technically follows the sprite, I think being lenient in the player's favor and keeping the hitbox the same horizontally would reduce frustration.

In the Foxlace fight I think Cole, who can't progress the mercy percentage on his own, should have a support ACT of some kind. Maybe a defense boost for the whole party, maybe he gets in front of Kanako and him getting hit by the attack contributes to the mercy meter as an act of selflessness, I'm not certain which way to go.
The white-and-blue flame attack that travels leftward felt easier to dodge by treating all the bullets as white and micrododging than trying to use the blue attacks, due to how slow the bullets travel. If the flames were made faster but the waves were more spaced out (so the frequency of attacks reaching the player stayed the same) there would be slightly more time for the player to move out of the way of a white flame and then stop to go through a blue flame. The rotating flame waves felt a bit too difficult to no-hit and I think reducing the frequency of the waves slightly would make it more manageable.

I actually almost no-hit the Bearington fight on my first try, only choking and getting hit on the turn he became eligible to getting spared. I think you introduce the attack patterns well in that fight, but having slightly harder variations of those patterns after a few turns would make the fight feel more like the final boss.

-- MISC --

Does Cole consider Martlet to be his mother, or just a foster parent out of many? I wasn't sure about that since he only calls her "Martlet" in his monologue. I think giving Cole a strong parental bond with Martlet would make the tragedy they're going to go through more heartbreaking, and Cole calling Martlet "mom" would instantly convey that. If that's not the case and you don't want a close connection then ignore this feedback.

Simlar to changing Kanako's mention of Cole's custody change so Sadie says it, I think Ceroba shouldn't mention it in such a direct way to Cole's face. If you eavesdrop on Ceroba's and Chujin's conversation after the meal and Ceroba bluntly tells Chujin to just wait a week, it would hit harder in my opinion. In that vein, I think Chujin being racist is a good character trait but I think he should be more emotional about it. Instead of clinically saying

All humans are cunning, selfish beings. He is just biding his time.

he should be talking about the pain Kanako would feel when Cole gets what he wants and just tosses her aside. If we go with the idea that Chujin got screwed by a human business partner this would add some projection to the scene.

I had an awful bug in the hospital where, after talking to Kanako's classmate, the dialogue restarted after a second every time. This happened even after getting away from the classmate, and didn't end until leaving the room.

There's probably more I want to say here but this is already a massive text dump and I've covered my main bases. I'll correct anything I misinterpreted after I play through Chapter 2 and add anything else that comes to mind after. I again have to congratulate you for getting a playable chapter out at all, and I hope you find your vision and put out something soulful.

Edit

Pub: 21 Jun 2025 10:19 UTC

Edit: 21 Jun 2025 10:32 UTC

Views: 37