Denkō Chaser - Sword of Diablos (Demo Ver.)

Hey there,

I streamed your game. Overall I feel like this game has some potential, but really lacks a lot of polish.

Denko Chaser jumps right into the story with our protagonist pursuing a space pirate or something. However, the lack of polish already begin to rear its ugly head as our main protagonist guy is either too dense to know who the target they are there to capture is or this law enforcement agency is really poor at being a law enforcement agency, as our main protagonist guy doesn’t even know the gender of the person they are there to capture. There are a lot of things I can suspend my disbelief on, for example, the main protagonist guy having the authority to break formation, ignore orders from his superior, and go about his merry way on his own. Just anime things, you know? However, it seems strangely daft of this protagonist man to not know what the target looks like.

However, just like how the game just jumps right into the story, it also just jumps right into gameplay. This is a good thing. I cannot recall the number of times I found myself sinking deeper into my chair in complete boredom as Indie Dev #1,153,067 over indulges in a long intro filled with nothing of interest. So the fact that Denko Chaser can just get right to the meat and potatoes is a huge boon for the game. However, there are definitely balancing problems here; not in the sense that things are too difficult, but in the way of optimal strategies due to poorly considered numbers. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The game really likes to do text-dump tutorials and hopes that is good enough for players to figure it out. These text tutorials are usually out of context of when that information is needed. (For example, giving battle information when a battle isn’t currently active). This leads to a disconnect in the learning. I would also advise the dev on considering a “sandbox fight” which would be a fight where the player can comfortably and without worry explore what their kit can do. With a combination of more sensibly placed (and paced) tutorials, along with a sandbox fight, the game would be greatly improved in introducing the player to its combat.

The gear system itself is rather confusing as well, as there are way too many gear slots with way too many abbreviations to make sense of what anything is. You have these pick up single use items that deal damage and are told they do 9999 in a single attack, but they don’t actually deal that amount of damage, they deal rather pitiful amounts of damage; an amount of damage that I suspect will be quickly out-paced by player level.

Which brings me back to the combat; later when you get your other teammates, it becomes pretty apparent how useless TP attacks are; they take at least a total of 2 turns to charge and on the third turn, finally execute for damage barely more than a basic attack. Meanwhile, the magic caster can spend 1 turn charging his MP and charge enough MP to cast his magic attack 4 times, and his magic attack does more than twice the damage of the TP attacks, and more than the consumable damage item that promised 9999 points of damage.

There is a certain “anime” mood that I think it establishes quite well; it’s very assured in the world that it crafts, and it’s that confidence in what it wants to be that is where I see the potential lies. With some clean up in the things I mentioned, I can see some folks really enjoying this game.

If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.