Heyo! Came from your TikTok as promised and gave the game a few hours of testing! First of all wanna say great job making a game, and getting it along this far, it takes a ton of effort, so hats off to you! I've wishlisted it on steam, and will probably buy it at some point, since ya deserve the support!
From my time with the game, firstly, I think there's definitely something fun here. I enjoy number-go-up just as much as anyone else, and coins definitely have space to be interesting!
I want to clarify before this upcoming section that this is not meant to be taken harshly. I'd actually really like to play a cleaned up version of this game, and want to offer some help. I've played hundreds of roguelikes, and wanna offer a lil bit of what I've learned about these games from my thousands of hours lol. I also want to state that I am not going to be 100% correct on everything, or necessarily match your vision for this game, so what I say should be taken with a grain of salt. This is your project, make what's fun to you!
I do however feel like a lot of the items are rather samey. There aren't really a lot of them that do much beyond modify either mult, or score. There are actually several items that have the exact same ability, so the game, despite having a *lot* of items, doesn't really feel that different from run to run. More often than not it kind of just boils down to picking the biggest number, because, with how many flips we get, the score will nearly always come out to an average. Not to say multiplying a specific number on a coin isn't good or anything, there's a bit of nuance I've found in my runs, but it kind of just there, and is pretty easily solvable.
This is pretty easily fixed by reworking how a lot of items trigger, and giving them asymmetric abilities. For example, 2>1 is impossible to argue. But Sheep>Duck is. In a game design context, abilities that are strictly numerical don't really get niche use cases or synergies. Meanwhile abilities that are less grounded in strict scoring, and vary in usefulness depending on the situation lead to a game going from a fun 10 minute romp, to something you play for weeks, if not years.
A few examples could include items that, rather than just triggering when coins flip a certain way, influence *how* the coins flip:
- Coins that were weighted to hit heads/tails more often?
- Items that disappear after a certain number of heads are flipped, or otherwise lose value. Perhaps a card who's mult "rots" every time tails is flipped?
- Maybe something that incentivizes good card/coin positioning, since that's not really relevant despite the button being onscreen constantly.
I think some of this game's struggles with item variety also stem a bit from the way the basic "coin flipping" works, since there's really not a lot of player agency, or mechanical depth to fiddle with. As of now the only stats you have to play with are either the default multiplier, and score, as well as the faces it can flip. Anything else is externally pumped in by items, which makes synergies either uninteresting, or nonexistent.
Let me give you an example here:
Balatro. Anyone who likes this genre has probably played, or at least heard of it. It has a similar score/mult system to your game, but it keeps all of its items interesting, since for the most part, they aren't strictly stat ups. For example, Credit Card lets you go into debt, which only works because there's a money system. A card like Pareidolia (all cards are considered face cards) only works because there are jokers that want face cards.
Basically a lot of the depth Balatro has is because poker, and the system constructed around it gives cards something to latch onto, and use.
Effectively, the coin flipping needs some sort of alteration, or added player agency. I understand that the weapon thing is meant to offer that, but it is only usable twice per game, and is completely unnecessary in most runs.
A suggestions might be to allow the player to alter the coin's faces and what they do, rather than strictly heads or tails. Maybe give each coin a "good" and a "bad" side, and let us draft sides to "stick" on, with more robust abilities.
The game might even thrive if you ditch the points/mult thing entirely, and follow a different direction. The sky is honestly the limit.
If you don't want to change it dramatically, you could add things like "potions" that can be used a as a consumable, or give the ability a cooldown, rather than a limited number of uses. Maybe turn it into a "flip any number of coins" rather than a flip all coins. Let the player feel smart, like they're "tricking the house" with the items at their disposal.
Maybe you could give those "potions" or whatever you skin it as, to the player if they finish an encounter before the time limit since there isn't really a reward right now? There's a lot of options.
That's really all for the primary section of this overview, but here's a lil list of other things I noticed:
- The word multiplier is misspelled sometimes. Sometimes it's "multiplier" other times it's "multiplyer"
- You can pull duplicates during the draft, meaning multiple options can be the same thing.
- The run is almost a complete loss if your first item doesn't directly buff stats, and since there are a few items that are conditionals (as in "three tails") that you can't achieve with only two coins, it's entirely possible have an impossible seed.
- I want to reiterate we don't get anything for finishing fights early. It kind of removes pressure, and leaves really good runs feeling unrewarded.
- Coins kind of "sink" into the table sometimes, probably an issue with collision, or where you put the coins (usually in the fourth/fifth slot), when they go to their default position.
- Endless scales incredibly fast, to the point it's impossible to keep up with for more than a couple turns.
- The name entry thing doesn't keep your name, or do anything at all seemingly.
All of that aside, I want to reiterate, the game has a fun core. I really do enjoy flipping coins, and getting points. Watching the number go up (especially during the middle fights, when you've got a good run) is very entertaining, multiple times during my hours with this game, I kind of just got into a trance of attacking and buying that was rather entertaining. Maybe it's my monkey brain that just likes gambling, but there's definitely something here!
There's a lot of "Juice" that's pretty well executed. The feeling of smashing the table and the coins flipping up into the air is really nice!
At any rate! If I missed anything, let me know! I'd be more than happy to play further demos/updates, or help in any way I can. Feel free to contact me on discord @stabbymcfishface if you'd like to ask me any questions or anything!