I loved this game. Can't wait to buy the full version. I only wish there was any hint at how to get past the rats in the last room of the cellar, where there are too many of them
Thank you, working hard on the update now. As for the rats, if I were you, I'd look closer at the strange cabinet with vials in the room on the top right from the rat swarm ;)
How long is the full version going to be? (The more the better as I've absolutely enjoyed the demo. 9 hours and running as I want to unearth all the hidden gems. Already found Mario, the Bechdel Test and Dorothea's childhood friend. Wondering if that spot on the old man's map is included within the demo.)
The comment below criticizing your dialogue feels so unfair. To me, it reads just great, period-appropriate and witty, never feeling too long or boring. I'm not a native speaker, but I read and write in English a lot, I used to translate fiction into it so I can appreciate the effort you put into making your characters' speech flow so smoothly. The Dnege's line praising the guards for politeness, in the very beginning, is my favorite.
With all the visual beauty and great stories, I must say the carnival points are weird at best. At Level 1, I had a decent amount of these, but once I advanced to Level 2, they were nullified (I didn't use them up in battle, they were just reset to zero at this precise point). Before facing the Duchess, I pumped my CPs to 48 using the grapes, but entering the battle, Triche appeared to only retain a meagre amount while Dr. Becco still had all of his CPs. I'm puzzled by whether this is a bug or the way CPs are supposed to work.
Thank you so much for your kind words, happy you enjoyed the demo. It really means a lot to me and boosts the determination to finish the full game even more!
It's hard to say exactly how long the whole story will end up being. Consider the demo to be approximately 30% of the entire game.
It's great you've been noticing easter eggs. There are also little refferences to, e.g., Undertale and Skyrim, and many others (perhaps not so obvious though).
Amazing that you finally found the treasure! It is pretty crucial to the old guy's arc, storywise. Also you can try to solve the puzzle with the small birds in the city if you want.
As for the Carnival points - consider this to be a special attack meter (like in fighting games or TPs in RPGs) and not your typical MPs (nevertheless, you can still fill up you Carival gauge and use Carnival-based abilities outside of the battle but you can't keep them for a combat - and vice versa). I wanted Carnival points to be that way to compliment the lore, that chaotic, under-researched nature of Carnival energy. On the other hand, Feint (purple) gauge works as a regular MP gauge.
And my special gratitude to you acknowledging the language, that means a lot!
You're welcome :) That's the very least I can do to thank you for making this awesome game.
The birds puzzle? Oh, looks like I've totally missed this one... I don't even remember coming across small birds in any part of the city location.
I reached the demo end this morning, viewing the intriguing scenes after credits. For now, I'm really invested in Dorothea's story. I hope I'd be able to make her happy in the full version. (No, please don't tell me what you've got in stock for her - I'd rather discover that on my own.)
The old man's my next favorite. That medicine for his joints cost a fortune (90% of money I had at that moment) but was totally worth it. And I'd love to meet the Dnege once again - he's such a good fun.
I streamed this game for this review. The link will be below.
Pitch Black Secrets of Epiotica (which is a mouthful, so I'll just call it Pitch Black from here on out) is a game with a lot of style and a lot of flaws. It has a lot of potential, but as it's just an early beta, I recommend holding off playing unless you plan on providing valuable feedback to improve the direction of the game.
Pitch Black should immediately be eye catching to you. The developer clearly has an eye for design as each of the UI windows, map design, and character designs all look quite stunning. But this design may impress you at first, but the veneer will quickly slide away as you play more.
As an English player, the dialogue has clearly been machine translated, and it has not been particularly well executed. A lot of the dialogue gets lost in translation. There are glimmers of interesting moments in the dialogue, so I think if you were a native speaker (of whatever the dev's native language is), the writing would impress. However, as an English speaker, things are translated laughably, and sometimes results in a tonal whiplash. What exactly is the tone this game is going for? Is it a dark, Gothic mystery? Well the art style sure lends itself to that. Or is it a light-hearted hunt fit for the Mystery Machine crew? The execution in the dialogue certainly leans towards the latter.
When it comes to combat, it holds no punches. It throws you into the deep end (something that might be fitting of a grim-dark tone) and…really just feels like a pretty bog standard turn-based game with a lot of states to keep track of.
As Pitch Black is touted, it is meant to be a mystery solving game, but the dialogue drags on long, and the mystery solving lacks player agency, as the mystery will unravel itself so long as the player knows which NPC to talk to next. From what little time I had played the game (due to way too much dialogue), it never seemed like the game wanted to let the player use their brain to piece the puzzle together themselves.
I hope to see this game develop into something great, because it's got the visual aesthetic down, but it has a lot of other things that clearly need to be polished.
If you'd like to watch my experience with the game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing.
p.s. is this a kink game? It's even in the devs name. This is clearly a kink game.
Thank you, Nolan, I'm really grateful for your time and critique! I commented on some points under your video there, just wanted to hightlight one thing again: the entire text was translated manually (no machine translation at all), and the main creative goal was to reproduce the stylistic features of classical authors from the Renaissance, modernity, and the Victorian era. There are nearly verbatim quotes from Leo Perutz, Charles Dickens, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and François Rabelais - both the sublime Gothic style and the carnival humor. Anyway, thanks for pointing out the inaccuracies; there’s always room for improvement.
I finished the demo. And I was mesmerized by the setting.
There is a lot to like:
The maps are beautiful, and the main city is breathtaking.
The mystery is just the right mix of what the F is going without being overly creepy (yet?) and kept me going wanting to unravel this crazy thing.
Some of the side quests are well done, especially Dorothea's; I felt very invested in needing to know how it ends (unfortunately the demo ended before I got the conclusion).
The battle system felt like a standard RPG Maker battle system, and I found the battles to be more on the harder side. (Meanwhile other gamers felt the battles were easy).
I hope the writing will be more engaging in the future releases and characters become more likeable. Currently, there is a whole lot to read.
All in all, the game feels of commercial quality with cool graphics, custom art, and a whole lot of WTF is going on with this mystery.
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I loved this game. Can't wait to buy the full version. I only wish there was any hint at how to get past the rats in the last room of the cellar, where there are too many of them
Thank you,
working hard on the update now.
As for the rats, if I were you, I'd look closer at the strange cabinet with vials in the room on the top right from the rat swarm ;)
Yeah, my bad. Was so concerned about getting my characters poisoned that I steered clear of that cabinet altogether! Thanks for the hint.
How long is the full version going to be? (The more the better as I've absolutely enjoyed the demo. 9 hours and running as I want to unearth all the hidden gems. Already found Mario, the Bechdel Test and Dorothea's childhood friend. Wondering if that spot on the old man's map is included within the demo.)
The comment below criticizing your dialogue feels so unfair. To me, it reads just great, period-appropriate and witty, never feeling too long or boring. I'm not a native speaker, but I read and write in English a lot, I used to translate fiction into it so I can appreciate the effort you put into making your characters' speech flow so smoothly. The Dnege's line praising the guards for politeness, in the very beginning, is my favorite.
With all the visual beauty and great stories, I must say the carnival points are weird at best. At Level 1, I had a decent amount of these, but once I advanced to Level 2, they were nullified (I didn't use them up in battle, they were just reset to zero at this precise point). Before facing the Duchess, I pumped my CPs to 48 using the grapes, but entering the battle, Triche appeared to only retain a meagre amount while Dr. Becco still had all of his CPs. I'm puzzled by whether this is a bug or the way CPs are supposed to work.
Ah, found the treasure :)
Thank you so much for your kind words, happy you enjoyed the demo. It really means a lot to me and boosts the determination to finish the full game even more!
It's hard to say exactly how long the whole story will end up being. Consider the demo to be approximately 30% of the entire game.
It's great you've been noticing easter eggs. There are also little refferences to, e.g., Undertale and Skyrim, and many others (perhaps not so obvious though).
Amazing that you finally found the treasure! It is pretty crucial to the old guy's arc, storywise. Also you can try to solve the puzzle with the small birds in the city if you want.
As for the Carnival points - consider this to be a special attack meter (like in fighting games or TPs in RPGs) and not your typical MPs (nevertheless, you can still fill up you Carival gauge and use Carnival-based abilities outside of the battle but you can't keep them for a combat - and vice versa). I wanted Carnival points to be that way to compliment the lore, that chaotic, under-researched nature of Carnival energy. On the other hand, Feint (purple) gauge works as a regular MP gauge.
And my special gratitude to you acknowledging the language, that means a lot!
You're welcome :) That's the very least I can do to thank you for making this awesome game.
The birds puzzle? Oh, looks like I've totally missed this one... I don't even remember coming across small birds in any part of the city location.
I reached the demo end this morning, viewing the intriguing scenes after credits. For now, I'm really invested in Dorothea's story. I hope I'd be able to make her happy in the full version. (No, please don't tell me what you've got in stock for her - I'd rather discover that on my own.)
The old man's my next favorite. That medicine for his joints cost a fortune (90% of money I had at that moment) but was totally worth it. And I'd love to meet the Dnege once again - he's such a good fun.
Congrats on beating the demo!
I desperately hope your interest doesn't completely fade by the time the full game is released =3
I streamed this game for this review. The link will be below.
Pitch Black Secrets of Epiotica (which is a mouthful, so I'll just call it Pitch Black from here on out) is a game with a lot of style and a lot of flaws. It has a lot of potential, but as it's just an early beta, I recommend holding off playing unless you plan on providing valuable feedback to improve the direction of the game.
Pitch Black should immediately be eye catching to you. The developer clearly has an eye for design as each of the UI windows, map design, and character designs all look quite stunning. But this design may impress you at first, but the veneer will quickly slide away as you play more.
As an English player, the dialogue has clearly been machine translated, and it has not been particularly well executed. A lot of the dialogue gets lost in translation. There are glimmers of interesting moments in the dialogue, so I think if you were a native speaker (of whatever the dev's native language is), the writing would impress. However, as an English speaker, things are translated laughably, and sometimes results in a tonal whiplash. What exactly is the tone this game is going for? Is it a dark, Gothic mystery? Well the art style sure lends itself to that. Or is it a light-hearted hunt fit for the Mystery Machine crew? The execution in the dialogue certainly leans towards the latter.
When it comes to combat, it holds no punches. It throws you into the deep end (something that might be fitting of a grim-dark tone) and…really just feels like a pretty bog standard turn-based game with a lot of states to keep track of.
As Pitch Black is touted, it is meant to be a mystery solving game, but the dialogue drags on long, and the mystery solving lacks player agency, as the mystery will unravel itself so long as the player knows which NPC to talk to next. From what little time I had played the game (due to way too much dialogue), it never seemed like the game wanted to let the player use their brain to piece the puzzle together themselves.
I hope to see this game develop into something great, because it's got the visual aesthetic down, but it has a lot of other things that clearly need to be polished.
If you'd like to watch my experience with the game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing.
p.s. is this a kink game? It's even in the devs name. This is clearly a kink game.
Thank you, Nolan,
I'm really grateful for your time and critique!
I commented on some points under your video there, just wanted to hightlight one thing again: the entire text was translated manually (no machine translation at all), and the main creative goal was to reproduce the stylistic features of classical authors from the Renaissance, modernity, and the Victorian era. There are nearly verbatim quotes from Leo Perutz, Charles Dickens, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and François Rabelais - both the sublime Gothic style and the carnival humor. Anyway, thanks for pointing out the inaccuracies; there’s always room for improvement.
I finished the demo. And I was mesmerized by the setting.
There is a lot to like:
The battle system felt like a standard RPG Maker battle system, and I found the battles to be more on the harder side. (Meanwhile other gamers felt the battles were easy).
I hope the writing will be more engaging in the future releases and characters become more likeable. Currently, there is a whole lot to read.
All in all, the game feels of commercial quality with cool graphics, custom art, and a whole lot of WTF is going on with this mystery.
Thank you, Ryder, for this high appreciation of my work.
I prepare some improvements for the demo right now (and play your beautiful piece too).
This is a really cool game.
I'm a young videogame music composer and I'm interested to compose some tracks for this game, let me know if you are interetsed.
Thank you, would be glad to cooperate in the future development.
Thanks. I will wait for your future hiring, if you are interested you can contact me via the email that you can find on my website
Look forward the updates I love rpg games
Thank you, I'll do my best to deliver!