Thank you for your feedback. You know its interesting how playing a game can sort of be like archeology, revealing the changes and decisions that happen through out the development process. I say this because your suggestion about the game editor was exactly what we were going to do. The dungeon crawler developed into a level editor where you would be able to change elements of the playfield by purchasing them with souls and unlocking them from the shop. Part of this was the idea to add "boss rooms" where the player could add the boss battles as rooms in the playfield, sort of like a dungeon. Due to time constraints the editor never made it in in favor of overall pinball play which took longer than expected. This is why you see things like destructible elements and blueprints in the shop.
From my perspective I find it interesting that your unfiltered play through reveals decisions made at different steps of development that in a normal game development cycle would have hopefully been changed to match the new direction of the game, say moving the pinball camera to the normal high up perspective or foregoing the room idea in favor of just one pinball course.
Either way, the plan was going to be that you would start with a few elements, some would be locked until you progressed, then you would unlock them and add them to your playfield. In the end, there was no time to add the editor, so it was decided that it would be more fun to have a playfield built with all of the elements than an empty playfield with two or three elements and no way to unlock the more interesting stuff like the orbit.
Thank you again for your feedback. Where we go from here is determined by more play testing and trying out weird ideas until we find something thats fun, the editor? The dungeon crawl? Something entirely different? Either way, your comment shows you really cared to be observant of the game and while that means you caught all of the problems you also revealed so much about the intrinsic flaws in the game making decision process and how that process could be improved in future jams, which I think is infinitely valuable.
Viewing post in Akuryō jam comments
Glad to be of help! I totally get the issue of time constraints, especially in a game jam, and having to cut many features because of it. I've experienced it many times myself. Good luck with whatever you choose to do, and if you choose to continue Akuryo, I'm looking forward to see what you come up with!