Hello there! 

The game has a great potential, really. But of course it has a ways to improve. 

First, in my own opinion, graphics can be made better - these walls with a HUGE squares (pixels) does not look good, and a grey rectangle as a "chest" obviously needed to be drawn as a chest. Next, the font is decorative but very hard readable. Many of HUD elements are too small, and some item icons (Longbow, Mace, Arrows) are missing. And last, adding some animations for movement will be just great.

I would like to recommend to play/watch "Shining In The Darkness", a great 16-bit dungeon crawler released for Sega Mega Drive 2 in 90s, so you will see the clear idea of what Your game would like to be. I really would love to see something similar in "Sundered Helix" in future builds. Keep Up the Great Work!

Hey CV33 👋,

I enjoyed playing Sundered Helix.

What Stood Out:

Exploration:

The twists and turns, unlockable doors, breakable tiles, provided a means of exploring the world you've created in a way that didn't feel forced.


Art Style:

The sprites look good, and blend well with the tile sets of the world.


Team Play: 

I'm a big fan of team play, and being able to watch the team members level up and grow stronger (although I'm not sure how they got stronger, but they were leveling up ^^) was fun.


Feedback:

Team Selection UI:

As others have already mentioned that first team selection screen can be overwhelming, until the stats, that you'd use to determine which members to pick are explained, it becomes difficult to understand what I'm looking at. At the end I just went with the recommendation of choosing a row.

I'd suggest splitting up this process:

1. Base stats

2. Secondary / Specialized Stats

3. Portrait and Name Customization

This might help with the pacing of information.

Trader UI / Tooltips:

I appreciated the tooltips when hovering over items in the inventory, however, upon checking the traders goods I noticed that some of the items (chest armor for example) didn't have a tool tip other than showing the price. So I was unsure of the benefits the item would bring.

Screen Resolution:

3440 x 1440 p prevents me from seeing the close and confirm buttons, I first thought I was stuck on the into lore screen, and tried installing other builds to make sure it wasn't build specific, I then later realized, upon messing with the settings, that elements are out of view in 3440 x 1440 p.



I like this game, and it has a lot of potential, keep it up 👏 ! 

This is a cool dungeon crawler, and the second game in this jam that has given me Daggerfall vibes.  It is cool to see that style coming back in some indie games!  Gameplay was solid as well, seems like a well made tabletop style rpg with graphics.  I think one of the gold pickup icons glitched and just showed on my screen for the rest of the time playing but I was still able to click and interact with things so it wasn't game breaking for me.

I would personally love to have a little village to run around in during the town sequences, maybe with different shop keepers or quest givers that could add additional objectives during the dungeon crawls.  It was pretty fun just running through dungeons and trying to keep the party kitted out either way so for sure off to a great start, I'm not sure if this is more of a quick jam game or something you were intending to build up a bit.  

Fun game though, nice job.

I have mixed feelings about this one, but I'll come back to that at the end. I never played the original version of this and kind of went in blind.

I found the character selection menu intimidating and confusing, and there were some visual bugs with different font sizes in different cards. I also found the loading screen with the story-so-far nearly unreadable. The UI is just too big when made fullscreen on a big monitor- it feels like it's sized for a much smaller window- and the font is stylish but hard to read.

The aesthetic of the game itself, on the other hand, is very nice and pulled me in immediately. It's retro styled and even has some nice touches like the way the pixels blend together. The subtle lighting of the dungeon is great.

Combat is... once I figured out how it worked I liked the concept but it took me a while to get there. It's not clear what the blue bar above the enemy means; the colour suggests it works like the characters' ACT bar but it seems to be a backwards health bar. It wasn't clear at first why characters weren't attacking when attacks were selected; there isn't clear feedback when characters are attacking on their turn (or when they're taking damage, for that matter).

I finished the dungeon and got out into the town. Trading seemed to be bugged or not implemented; I selected an item but couldn't do anything with it. I don't think I had any money; if there was loot in the dungeon I didn't find it. And then I accidentally quit to the main menu; it's way too easy to choose that option by accident.

This game probably isn't for me but it's hard to separate out what I don't like from what's a real flaw. I'm not really into games that are visibly numbers-driven, which I think is what is meant to be part of this game's appeal. It also definitely feels like an experience that you need to sit down and take your time with, and I just didn't this time around. I think the UX in the menus could be better and the combat could be improved, but that's all I really feel confident in saying. I did like the look of the game and I feel there's merit in some of the concepts even if it isn't really my thing.

Hi. This was nice. I enjoyed playing it. Although a bug prevented a chest to close and I had to quit the game losing my progress :-(

Given time and polishing, it may become really good. I do not know if you plan on continuing, or what exactly you have in mind, but you might want to include some minor tweaks like: the buttons remain pressed for example even if the mouse moves away, when in town to train, it says zero funds, although when trading it shows the funds and they increase/decrease. I also suspect you plan to include graphics for the missing items :-)

It was not clear at the beginning that when opening a chest you could switch between the party characters and actually move stuff from one another, but it is a great feature and the inventory system is pretty neat. Observation: When you move an item to equip it, it goes behind the slot until you place it in it, losing the item visibility for a while.