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Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

So... I didn't really get the narrative behind this. Even when I got to the end and had the full prophecy, I didn't get it. Like, what is the prophecy supposed to be saying? I'm so confused by it. Even the name and the tagline don't make sense to me. I feel like there's a lot missing here.

As for the gameplay, there's a core problem to it: the player doesn't have to do anything and they will eventually end up with the conditions to win. I decided to take 20 minutes to test it, doing multiple runs where I did absolutely nothing but let the enemies run. After each stage, regardless of your actions, you'd get a power up. There was basically nothing to make me engage with the game, and thus I could just sit back and wait until I had the blood knights, the king, and various power-ups for improving player population and decreasing enemy population before I lifted a finger. To not have to engage with the game's primary game loop and still "beat" the game is a huge oversight.

This is also before I get into how the first unit is basically worthless. If you start the game and spend every point of population on those units, you won't even get to see the second enemy type because they'll be overwhelmed. Once you unlock the knight, there's never a reason to summon the first unit. Similarly, once you get the blood knight there's never a reason to summon the knight. If you were to go by their population cost, one would expect the knight to be 2.5x stronger than the first unit, and for the blood knight to be 4.5x stronger. In reality, the knight is something like 5x stronger and the blood knight is well over 10x stronger, both in damage done and in health. So even if you DO engage with the game loop (which, again, you don't have to until you have all of the power-ups), there's never a reason to use anything but your most expensive unit. This is just dull and boring. The game is listed as "strategy" but it took no strategy at all to win.

And I've not even mentioned the smaller issues like how you can hear two songs playing (the stage music and the end-of-stage music) when your run ends, or how there's just no sound effects, or how some enemies will just ignore the king and run through, or how you have the game set up where the bad guys can run all the way into the castle to damage your population but you can't swarm the summoning thing to do the same to them.

There is potential with this, but it needs a lot of work on it at this stage.

Hi hythrain! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and review the game in such detail! I’d love to see the VOD of your playthrough, please share the link when it’s live!!

On the narrative side, the prophecy and tagline were more of a reflection of your moral choice, as different playstyles will give different prophecy. Like if you choose to help your units by saving your population or use them as meat shields while attacking from behind. But I guess I made that too cryptic while aiming for a medieval feel, and is something I definitely need to revisit so it makes more sense.

I can’t believe I missed such a major issue related to the gameplay loop!! That’s straight up broken and kills any little strategy elements that the game had. Thanks for discovering that!

I do need to optimize the unit balance as well. I was aiming for something like, say you’ve unlocked the knight (which is slow but a tank), you can then drop scouts after he engages in battle to do quick attacks, as they are fairly cheap but weak. I calculated the DPS after seeing your comment and as you said, they are actually high (1x, ~3x, ~7x). TD is hard and it was my first time building such a game, guess there’s a LOT I need to learn about the genre and game balancing.

I completely agree on the smaller points you mentioned as well. I haven’t worked on the game a lot after the jam, apart a few builds fixing the issues mentioned during that time. I submitted this game to get these brutally honest feedbacks as I was not sure in which direction to take this ahead. I’m a tad less confused now, but yeah it does need a TON of work.

Again, a massive thanks for all the feedback and sorry for the late reply. I look forward to the playthrough once it’s live. Thank you :)

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"On the narrative side, the prophecy and tagline were more of a reflection of your moral choice, as different playstyles will give different prophecy. Like if you choose to help your units by saving your population or use them as meat shields while attacking from behind. But I guess I made that too cryptic while aiming for a medieval feel, and is something I definitely need to revisit so it makes more sense."

I wanted to respond to this because there's a bit of an issue here I feel: until you unlock the king, there's no difference in play style. You're just making units to try and defend against the inevitable.

With that in mind, I can now see how to correct this problem. First, make the king playable from the start but weaker than what the king ends up being later on. Second, make it that all units are available from the start. Now, shift the upgrades from being static and always available to being more random and based on how many enemies the player defeats (Not enough kills? No upgrade for you). Now you shift these upgrades into three categories: the People, the Enemy and the King. Upgrades about the People will do things like improve your population and reduce the cost for units (doesn't need to be just this). Upgrades about the Enemy will do things like reduce their population per wave and make them weaker. Finally, upgrades about the King will do things like make the King stronger or give and upgrade abilities that affect either the soldiers or the enemy. From here, you can now more clearly define playstyles using the various upgrades.

Another thing I'd suggest as part of this would be to change how waves work. Instead of each wave just coming, make it that a wave has to be completely cleared out before the next can begin. Also make it that the damage enemies do to population if they get all the way to the end is percentage based and that each wave will always have more than enough population to win in a single wave, even if you get all the Enemy category upgrades. 

These should help make the playstyle thing work and help shape the narrative stuff better.

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First, make the king playable from the start but weaker than what the king ends up being later on. Second, make it that all units are available from the start.Ā Now, shift the upgrades from being static and always available to being more random and based on how many enemies the player defeats (Not enough kills? No upgrade for you).

That actually makes a lot of sense. So the units/characters will have EXP in way and only give upgrades once you’ve collected enough. So the users will also have the choice of how to use each unit and have their own unique ā€œbuildā€ of the army.

Now you shift these upgrades into three categories: the People, the Enemy and the King.

I actually really like this idea! It kind of gives the card system a meaning, instead of just being there as another system in the game. It’ll also fix a lot of the other gameplay issues like you mentioned.

Another thing I’d suggest as part of this would be to change how waves work. Instead of each wave just coming, make it that a wave has to be completely cleared out before the next can begin.

I was actually thinking from a while to split the zones into different parts. An idea I had was to show multiple layers of the castle walls, each showing a layer of the society - king, ministers, knights, general population, slums. Each of this zones will have their own playable unit unlocked from the start. The units can explore the ruins outside of the castle walls during the day to find ways to defeat enemies, hunt for resources, progress the story, etc and then switch to a TD during the night to fend off waves of enemies. But again, I’ll have to do the balance between them right so it doesn’t feel like two games forcefully joined together.

Again, a massive thank you for taking the time and effort to playtest in depth, along with giving such helpful feedback, which is impossible to get during a normal jam. Really appreciate it :D