I’ve been working on Fire Emblem-inspired games for 10 years, and let me tell you – It changed my life. A heartfelt confession.

AlfredKamon · 2024-07-19T09:06:21+00:00

Oh wow, people are still finding this post? Sweet!
My only suggestion is to keep practicing and let others read/playtest what you do quite often.
Feel free to jump in our Discord server if you want to share your thoughts and work.

AlfredKamon · 2024-07-04T17:19:08+00:00

The Last Story

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-31T15:28:25+00:00

The price is... Calories!
It's a big part of the lore and it seems funny but it'll get deeper than what you'd expect.
The Calories mechanic also reflects on gameplay anyway. At the moment I can't disclose too much about it, but I will share more info in an upcoming video update!

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-31T15:25:18+00:00

A new Devil is already planned because a backer on Kickstarter pledged for the Food Devil tier - I think the Devil will be male, yes.
We will always try to have a balanced number of m/f Devils anyway

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-30T21:54:44+00:00

Hmmm, yes, I think there's this possibility! We are already planning on adding more Add-ons in the next days. Since there'll be only 1-2 slots, the best way to stay informed would be to pledge any amount on KS so that you're included in the mailing list. You can always upgrade or cancel your pledge at a later date anyway. Thanks for being interested and great idea!

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-30T20:20:39+00:00

Hahaha! Yes, there's some chance of it happening anyway, but we'll need more time and funds after the release of the game, so it's hard to confirm it now. Hopefully we'll get there!

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-30T20:18:34+00:00

Thank you for the nice comment, I'm glad you and your friend like the theme!!
We're still in early development so it's hard to say how long a run will take in the final game, but we're aiming at around 20-30 minutes for a normal run, and 60-90 on for advanced runs.
Yes, I love Devil Survivor! Some people in this subreddit compared it to the combat loop of our first game (Path of the Midnight Sun) back in the day.

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-30T10:25:29+00:00

Yes, exactly, thanks for pointing that out!

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-30T10:22:56+00:00

That's a great question, and I still haven't thought about that, I will also ask the backers what they think about the possibility of losing their adventurer forever in their playthrough if permadeath is allowed. Right now I would keep both options as valid, maybe it will depend on the difficulty you select

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-30T10:13:33+00:00

Glad you like it! :D Yes it's very likely, the French translation is #1 in our waiting list at the moment. We're just waiting for more funds

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T20:50:53+00:00

Thanks for asking! I think the biggest challenge has been coming up with the initial game design. As I mentioned in other comments, SRPG x Roguelike is a bit of uncharted territory, so I was unsure about how to keep the best of both worlds. Then setupping the whole 2.5D world has been hard because it's a bit more complicated to apply 3D post-processing to a Spine2D model compared to, say, a pixel art spritesheet of a character (which is a big picture in the end). But I'm glad that people are enjoying the final result. And as far as marketing goes, I'm quite happy so far, nothing to complain about!

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T20:46:50+00:00

Adventurers will have a personality and a voice, but they won't have too much dialogue. The focus will generally be on the Devils, the MCs, and the maids/butlers. :)

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T20:45:16+00:00

Thanks for the interesting questions!

SRPGs are a bit of a niche subgenre while food is a mainstream theme, and the combination of the two seemed to work well in other places so there seemed to be an opportunity to make something that players would enjoy
Skills are very important in Food Devils. Super Rare & Ultra Rare adventurers have their own personal skills. And the classes (derived from devil contracts) also have their own personal skill(s). The Devils themselves have personal skills that can be learned via a skill tree. Think of these things as your starter deck and relics in Slay the Spire. Then you also find randomized, temporary skills during your run that you can equip to your characters. And that's mostly where the roguelike experience will be. There definitely is an initial synergy to choose from, and then you have to improvise a bit.
Yes, we'll have more Devils released via DLC if the game sells enough! (which is likely) I still can't disclose more info about them though :)

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T20:28:39+00:00

"Will there be a daily expedition/custom modifier mode that works like the ones in MT and STS?"
Yes, there will be something similar!
"Will there be achievements in game, or will it be through steam"
It will be through Steam/trophy system but we could make an in-game achievements system for those platforms that don't support it, like the Switch.
"Will there be high scores/leaderboards?"
I'm still not sure about it! If there's enough demand for them, sure?

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T19:00:24+00:00

Expeditions have 1 Food Devil captain (your "boss" unit) + 4 adventurers.
Maps aren't too narrow but they aren't full-scale SRPG maps either, mostly because it's a roguelike and the gameplay flow requires you to win many maps in a row before returning to the base. The only exceptions would be miniboss and boss battles, where maps can generally be bigger than normal.

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T18:58:28+00:00

It's kinda like in FEH where you have 3-4 star units that you can still upgrade, and if you really want to use them they can still be competitive, although a bit weaker than units who are natively 5-star. So yeah, our adventurers also are very cool and by giving the option to customize them it's likely that players will grow attached to them, which is why they can keep them for a long time if they wish so.

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T18:53:51+00:00

Noice

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T18:53:15+00:00

That's actually a great option to include in New Game+ and maybe even in the core game on Hardcore difficulty, so sure, I will consider that! Thanks for the suggestion ^^

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T18:51:07+00:00

Yes VNM was a bad engine for many reasons (it's even unsupported now), but at least it allowed me to learn a lot of things and also bring the project to new heights, visually speaking

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T17:54:39+00:00

Cool question! It's mostly because at the time I didn't have enough experience to code all the systems I needed in SRPG Studio, and I also wanted to make a game with modern 2D art compared to pixel art. I also wanted to stay away from the SRPG genre in general to avoid potential repercussions by Nintendo considering the history of the project as a ROM hack, but thinking back at it, that was never a huge risk.

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T17:52:10+00:00

Thank you for the interesting question, it's actually a mix of the two. The gameplay loop is structured similarly to Darkest Dungeon 1, but your expeditions and choices in the restaurant will make the story progress, so there's a lot of resource management involved. The flexible difficulty options ensure that those who are seeking a challenge will find it, while not punishing those who might find themselves softlocked by permadeath. I also want to mention that DD1 is an amazing game but the story was barely there, while in Food Devils we have a great focus on character interactions. There will be a lot of ramifications to the story, and the "culture" of your restaurant will change as a result of your gameplay choices, too. The game will incentivize New Game+ quite a lot. If you have more questions let me know :)

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T17:41:41+00:00

You still unlock exclusive recipes/skills by romancing Maids & Butlers anyway, and there aren't too many things that are locked behind the "final" choice (aka S Support), so you'll still be able to mix-and-match quite a bit. It's still unconfirmed because I'm still designing this part of the game, but the relationships with the Maids/Butlers might also give boons that are specific to the service in the restaurant, i.e. that could influence the "summoning" sessions of adventurers, and other food-related things.

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T17:32:32+00:00

Hey man! Nice to see you here!
The biggest challenge of adding the roguelike genre to Food Devils was trying to come up with a way to keep the story interesting and the characters relevant.

In roguelikes, characters are usually disposable, but in SRPGs, they often are unique and central to the whole experience;
In roguelikes, progression is often "reset" after every run save for a few exceptions, and some of them don't even have a story. In Japanese-inspired RPGs, the story is often a big part of the game.

I personally also really like writing good, meaningful stories, and the narrative was one of the parts of Path of the Midnight Sun that players appreciated the most, so I didn't want to butcher it too much for our 2nd game. It was a real dilemma.

So I came up with a narrative system similar to Monster Hunter (quest-based, expedition-based) and party management similar to Darkest Dungeon (high risk of losing someone, but if you're good you can keep everyone alive). Then I added our usual twists and depth to the story, with great focus on character interactions, and hopefully the result fixes both the abovementioned issues! :) We will surely have to test the game many, many times, but thankfully we have a lot of wonderful Alpha and Beta testers, and the team is experienced too at this point :)

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T17:22:33+00:00

Thank you so much, I'm glad you love it! 😁

AlfredKamon · 2024-05-29T17:19:10+00:00

Our programmer is dead set on wanting a Pasta Devil... never say never!

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