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Holy Book's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #11 | 4.429 | 4.429 |
| Overall | #13 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Fun | #14 | 4.286 | 4.286 |
| Polish | #39 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Successful or Incomplete?
Success
Did development of the game take place during the 7DRL Challenge week?
Yes
Is your game a roguelike?
Yes
Turn-based
Yes
Meta-Progression
No
Roguelike Elements
Procedural skills
Screenshots
Yes
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Comments
I really like this and want to see it expanded on
My one complaint is that I want to be able to mouse-over enemies to see their stats
This is awesome, I'm a huge Achra fan and this scratched a similar itch of creating really cool combinations and watching your build just get out of control powerful. I like the ultra simple inputs as well, but also felt that (at least with my spells) I only ever wanted to proceed. With a little clearer information hierarchy and UI polish this would be even better!
Thanks!! You can tie in retreat/wait as trigger verbs which is nice because they are some of the only fully controllable triggers. In the future I also hope to have monsters that are dangerous enough that you would want to avoid their attacks. It's probably too easy now. 😋
Fascinating game - I’ve never played anything quite like it!
I loved the programing book concept, and this was super well executed especially for the time we had ⚔️
Great job, and great jamming with you! 🥳
I really enjoy the mechanic and the strategy behind stacking the different effects. Really impressive getting a mini parser working as a mechanic in just 7 days! I also relied on summons and stacking ally effects to win.
This was neat. It's impressive how much gameplay depth can emerge from just 3 inputs. I managed to win with an army of wolves with more wolfs spawning in constantly, plus enemies would set each other on fire when they attacked any of the wolves. Once you get your engine off the ground it feels really satisfying, though the first few times I thought I had it figured out everything would fall apart at a critical moment (usually running out of charges). Designing a build that doesn't get drained too early was interesting.
One thing that didn't really work for me was why the skill tree is a tree and not just a linear path with a new node unlocking each floor. The choice of which side to take at a fork only felt meaningful in so far as which words it added to my "inventory", as if the starting rule at a node isn't helpful I can just rewrite it. And there's no choice to pick up the words you find in the dungeon, so mechanically it's equivalent to just unlocking those words at the end of the floor. I think there's some polishing you could do around how words are added to the pool and how new verses are added to the book.
Still I had a lot of fun playing this!
Thanks for the feedback! You're right that the skill tree branching feels a bit unnecessary. My idea was that you might look at all options to see what keywords you could gain, but that's too tedious. In v1.1 you at least only see the next available options.
I think I'm going to change it to a model where each skill can only be changed by 1 or 2 words (maybe more deeper in the tree) to make it feel a bit more constrained/puzzly. With this approach your tree options will be way more meaningful.
I love the theme. But while the mechanical idea is interesting, I can't say I like the execution. I do not know how you could win this game and my decision space is so limited that I don't have much incentive to retry. After I lost I was pretty sure there was nothing I could have done better and I had no really interesting decision space to explore. I do like the art, though.
Thanks for playing. Just to clarify, is there a certain part of the decision space which is lacking: which skills to unlock, how to edit them (I think there's thousands of different skills you can write though arguably many are similar), when to retreat/wait/continue, or what upgrades to buy? Or you mean all of that together was too small of a decision space?
FWIW this game is incredibly undertuned right now and super easy to beat, so I wonder if you engaged with the skills?
I can't say that I got to see much of the upgrades system as the game felt very lethal. I would get two upgrades--I think health and damage, since the game was so lethal--then I'd get past that level only to not really have any points for the next level. Additionally I HAD to buy health, because otherwise I'd just die on the next level. So there just was not much to buy.
Retreat/wait/continue seems interesting at an intellectual level but when playing it, I don't think I like it all that much. Part of the fun of a roguelike is exploring the level. This system means you can't explore, you just go forward or backward or stay in the same place. It also took some getting used to. So that's another area where it feels like the decision space is constrained.
Ah I see. Apologies but the game is currently a little unclear here but that the main thing to do is unlock skills on the skill tree. You can do this immediately.
So you didn't interact with the core of the game (a clarity problem I think, which I'm definitely going to patch) and of course it's impossible without doing that. Would love to see you try it again with this knowledge. The part about exploration is definitely true. That's part of Path of Achra, which I'm trying to emulate here.
I ran into the same issue at first. I didn't realize I had to click the inverted triangle then press "Back" to get to the skill tree to unlock new skills. Once I figured that out, I had a blast!
Just FYI I updated it (partially based on feedback like this) to force unlocks at a set schedule so there's no way to miss it.