itch.io

Thank you for the feedback! Really appreciate you taking the time to think through our game's design like this. Reflecting on these points is making me consider it more deeply as well. Not necessarily disagreeing with your points, but some design justification for some of these decisions:

• I agree, the tips are an imperfect solution to our game's inability to convey itself. Much (but not all) of the tips hopefully convey themselves over a long enough time playing the game, but most of the pro tips are not at all easy or possible to intuit. Some, like the ability to place limbs in empty spaces or the increasing chance of ambush in the shop, could have been conveyed in-game.
  I agree that most players will not read the tips, so I hope that the most important information from them can be discerned through enough play time.
• The lack of detailed information in the shop was a deliberate design decision, and definitely one that I can understand taking issue with. We made this decision for a number of good reasons
  • We do not want to overload the player with information. Generally, players (especially new ones) will prefer simpler effects over complex ones that require too much reading and understanding. By leaving every effect as a one sentence summary rather than detailed stats, we hope we have given them enough to make an informed decision on whether they want to purchase the item without overwhelming them. For example, "Critical laser blasts" (hopefully) conveys that the laser vision eye attacks with increased critical hit chance, whereas the detailed (~8 line) description might just cause someone to move past it without understanding. However, your mileage may vary on how accurate or descriptive these descriptions are. With more time, they definitely could've used a second or third pass to make their effects more clear.
  • There is also (hopefully) a fun novelty in the discovery of learning what a limb does. We want players to experiment with limbs early on and see their effects in battle, so needing to buy them first forces you to bring them into battle. Needing to learn the effects of 40+ items may cause friction for new players, but we hope that this discovery makes their effects stick in your head.
  • For aesthetic reasons, we like that you don't actually know precisely what something does until you stick it onto your body. This fits nicely with the sketchy black market theme. Also, we think its fun when games are a little bit mean.
  There are good counter-arguments to be made here, and how much information to reveal and when is something we'll definitely be considering if we expand this game in the future.
• While I do not want to explicitly show the exact probability of a successful reroll, we definitely could have done more to convey the relative chance of danger increasing with each subsequent roll.
• I agree with your point about starting in the shop. We start in the shop because starting in a battle would have no meaningful decisions to make, and would be a hindrance for returning players. On reflection however, showing a battle early would immediately introduce the combat system, which would help contextualize the shop purchases. It could also be used as an impetus for an actual plot, which the game sort of lacks at the moment.
• It would be interesting to show the upcoming opponent to prepare. I'm not sure how much that would actually influence shop decisions, but it's an idea worth testing should we expand this game.

Sorry for my giant wall of text, you inspired me to think more about our design though, so thanks! I'm very glad you enjoyed the game.