TLDR: Tourmaline is a satisfying conglomeration of tried-and-true mechanics from the games you already love, with a very nice soundtrack and ambiance to set it apart.
Art:
There is a decided character/vibe to the entire game. It's not something that's easily put to words, but the visuals of the itch.io page demonstrate it pretty well: Things feel "grander than thou".
Chilling drops into silence after the grandure of a boss battle,
Killer suspensefulness walking long corridors,
Frightening and surprising enemies
Clearly, much detail is spent crafting each asset. However, assets are certainly limited right now, leaving some things feeling a bit empty. I fully expect further releases of the game will see more of these assets re-used and recycled to create a more populated world.
The music is all-original and changes dynamically based on what's going on in-game. There's actually some pretty catchy melodies in there, too. Visual effects are also nicely sprinkled into the experience -- but I won't spoil that for you. You should see in motion for yourself.
Gameplay:
The physics feel good and the controls feel right. You can tell a lot of fine-tuning went into things such as jump height and feel, etc. Once your familiar with the controls, it's actually super satisfying just to platform around the map.
I love the inclusion of many different kinds of weapons, all with unique traits and animations. I appreciate that there isn't any certain set of weapons that must be used. Rather, you can just choose your favourite combination, and stick with it.
User Experience:
Installation is easy, and updates to the game automatically write over previous installations (without losing your save-files). This is nice.
The UI is maybe my biggest complaint with the game. It's definitely not the focus of the dev, but it's at least clearly built to support future expansion. I hope to see some elements (such as inventories!) get more unique menus as opposed to lists soon. But in the meantime, they do feel very sturdy and predictable which adds a lot to the overall feel of a good game. In general actually; everything feels very concrete and solid. The engine feels robust and expandable. Things usually just work how you think they should.
Concluding:
I certainly reccomend giving it a play, it shouldn't take too much time from your day (assuming you don't start speedrunning it like I did). I urge you however, to use a gamepad. Keyboard controls don't do this justice.
I look forward to see how the full release will combine good art and gameplay with (what I hope will be) a much more narrative driven world.
Hey there Duke, I have played your game ahead of the rest of the list because of the kind way you asked for it. I hope this gameplay review video will help you with your new game here! All I am asking is your subscription to my YouTube channel, it will surely help me, it is like a help for help ;) LOL. The video here contains a lot of information, opinions and reviews, so you might want to watch it fully. However, in case you don’t have time, here are some notes.
I love the style of the game; medieval era is my favorite of all times.
The soundtracks and music are greatly matching the game style! So well done on that one.
There is an issue with your tutorial instructions; the writings seem not that clear and they are not in a good position. Also adding to that, the descriptions of items like weapons for example is so small! In the video you will notice that better.
When the player dies, the game takes you to the main menu at the start. Maybe instead of that adding a restart option better.
I think there is a small bug: When there are those two big men, only one of them is trying to hit me, the other is standing next to him (around 20 minutes inside the video).
Of course the video contains more than these notes, so feel free to watch it. If you decided to update the game and solve the magic feature, let me know by contacting me and I might give it a shot and play the game and finish it, or maybe to show the new updates.
I have watched your video and enjoyed it, it was very useful as it showed me a lot of things that could be improved or made clearer to the player. It is unfortunate that you were unable to finish it but this is understandable as there were many things (like the magic feature) that I now realize were not sufficiently explained to the player.
While watching I took some notes about different parts where you had been confused and would like to clarify some of them, I've also included time stamps so you can see what I am referring to.
Time In Video, 3:37 - For some reason the tutorial text boxes were not displaying correctly for you, there should have been a box behind the text to make it easier to read.
Here's how it looked for you:
Here's How it should have looked
I am not sure why it displayed incorrectly, and I will try to fix it for future versions.
Time Stamp, 6:46 - To clarify, the reason for why touching enemies hurts you is to make sure you can't run past them when you shouldn't, at least, not without getting hit
Time Stamp, 10:00 - I agree, you should not be booted to the menu after dying, I will fix this in the future, thanks for the suggestion.
Time Stamp, 12:16 - This is a health orb, it heals you when you hit it (but you had max health), the tutorial mentions this but sadly due to the bug mentioned earlier you may not have been able to read this (I may have also forgot to include that tutorial, I will check)
Time Stamp. 12:36 - You can change the size of text under Options -> Accessibility -> Text Size. Making it bigger may help you to read the item descriptions and the name of items when you pick them up
Time Stamp. 36:00 - I think the hitboxes may be broken here, you should have been able to hit this enemy easier with the lance, I will fix this for the next version
Most Importantly:
To use magic you have to hold the spell toggle button (By default W) and press the attack button (By Default E), you can cast the spells as many times as you like so long as you have enough mana (The blue bar at the top)
Another thing I realized is that the second half of the demo (where it goes dark) is not easy to understand at first. A big part of why you had difficulty with that second boss is because there were new weapons and spells in the dark version of the level (Two weapons in the tower area, and a spell where you first unlocked the dash ability), I can see why it would not be clear that you should explore this area fully, sorry for not making it more clear. If you ever decide to revisit the demo hopefully with this new information you would be able to complete it.
Thank you for checking it out though, your feedback is helpful, I've had two other people test out the game but they've been playing it since the first demo, so its useful to see someone who had never played that demo try this new one, so thanks for your time.
Whether or not you decide to go back to the demo, I hope to speak with you again in the future, and I will inform you whenever I make any new releases or major updates. Again thanks for your time.
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My Review
TLDR: Tourmaline is a satisfying conglomeration of tried-and-true mechanics from the games you already love, with a very nice soundtrack and ambiance to set it apart.
Art:
There is a decided character/vibe to the entire game. It's not something that's easily put to words, but the visuals of the itch.io page demonstrate it pretty well: Things feel "grander than thou".
Clearly, much detail is spent crafting each asset. However, assets are certainly limited right now, leaving some things feeling a bit empty. I fully expect further releases of the game will see more of these assets re-used and recycled to create a more populated world.
The music is all-original and changes dynamically based on what's going on in-game. There's actually some pretty catchy melodies in there, too. Visual effects are also nicely sprinkled into the experience -- but I won't spoil that for you. You should see in motion for yourself.
Gameplay:
The physics feel good and the controls feel right. You can tell a lot of fine-tuning went into things such as jump height and feel, etc. Once your familiar with the controls, it's actually super satisfying just to platform around the map.
I love the inclusion of many different kinds of weapons, all with unique traits and animations. I appreciate that there isn't any certain set of weapons that must be used. Rather, you can just choose your favourite combination, and stick with it.
User Experience:
Installation is easy, and updates to the game automatically write over previous installations (without losing your save-files). This is nice.
The UI is maybe my biggest complaint with the game. It's definitely not the focus of the dev, but it's at least clearly built to support future expansion. I hope to see some elements (such as inventories!) get more unique menus as opposed to lists soon. But in the meantime, they do feel very sturdy and predictable which adds a lot to the overall feel of a good game. In general actually; everything feels very concrete and solid. The engine feels robust and expandable. Things usually just work how you think they should.
Concluding:
I certainly reccomend giving it a play, it shouldn't take too much time from your day (assuming you don't start speedrunning it like I did). I urge you however, to use a gamepad. Keyboard controls don't do this justice.
I look forward to see how the full release will combine good art and gameplay with (what I hope will be) a much more narrative driven world.
Hey there Duke, I have played your game ahead of the rest of the list because of the kind way you asked for it. I hope this gameplay review video will help you with your new game here! All I am asking is your subscription to my YouTube channel, it will surely help me, it is like a help for help ;) LOL. The video here contains a lot of information, opinions and reviews, so you might want to watch it fully. However, in case you don’t have time, here are some notes.
Of course the video contains more than these notes, so feel free to watch it. If you decided to update the game and solve the magic feature, let me know by contacting me and I might give it a shot and play the game and finish it, or maybe to show the new updates.
I have watched your video and enjoyed it, it was very useful as it showed me a lot of things that could be improved or made clearer to the player. It is unfortunate that you were unable to finish it but this is understandable as there were many things (like the magic feature) that I now realize were not sufficiently explained to the player.
While watching I took some notes about different parts where you had been confused and would like to clarify some of them, I've also included time stamps so you can see what I am referring to.
Time In Video, 3:37 - For some reason the tutorial text boxes were not displaying correctly for you, there should have been a box behind the text to make it easier to read.
Here's how it looked for you:
Here's How it should have looked
I am not sure why it displayed incorrectly, and I will try to fix it for future versions.
Time Stamp, 6:46 - To clarify, the reason for why touching enemies hurts you is to make sure you can't run past them when you shouldn't, at least, not without getting hit
Time Stamp, 10:00 - I agree, you should not be booted to the menu after dying, I will fix this in the future, thanks for the suggestion.
Time Stamp, 12:16 - This is a health orb, it heals you when you hit it (but you had max health), the tutorial mentions this but sadly due to the bug mentioned earlier you may not have been able to read this (I may have also forgot to include that tutorial, I will check)
Time Stamp. 12:36 - You can change the size of text under Options -> Accessibility -> Text Size. Making it bigger may help you to read the item descriptions and the name of items when you pick them up
Time Stamp. 36:00 - I think the hitboxes may be broken here, you should have been able to hit this enemy easier with the lance, I will fix this for the next version
Most Importantly:
To use magic you have to hold the spell toggle button (By default W) and press the attack button (By Default E), you can cast the spells as many times as you like so long as you have enough mana (The blue bar at the top)
Another thing I realized is that the second half of the demo (where it goes dark) is not easy to understand at first. A big part of why you had difficulty with that second boss is because there were new weapons and spells in the dark version of the level (Two weapons in the tower area, and a spell where you first unlocked the dash ability), I can see why it would not be clear that you should explore this area fully, sorry for not making it more clear. If you ever decide to revisit the demo hopefully with this new information you would be able to complete it.
Thank you for checking it out though, your feedback is helpful, I've had two other people test out the game but they've been playing it since the first demo, so its useful to see someone who had never played that demo try this new one, so thanks for your time.
Whether or not you decide to go back to the demo, I hope to speak with you again in the future, and I will inform you whenever I make any new releases or major updates. Again thanks for your time.
It is a very interesting game! Thank you for all these words and explanations! I would be happy to revisit your game.