(Going to discuss the game completely spoiled in the reply below!)
Firstly: Thank you so much for the in-depth comment! Between this and the bug report comment I can 100% tell that the critique is coming from a place of enjoyment - getting to the black minotaur uncorrupted tells me as much, god damn - and it really means a lot you’ve put the time into the dissection. A lot of the issues you’ve described (and the bugs from your previous comment) are a result of the time constraints of the jam I was participating in, amplified by it being a solo project, so fair warning that’s going to come up a bit!
The dice is definitely a prime example of that - I definitely noticed early on the fact that sometimes they dont re-roll properly, but it ended up being a “better done than perfect” situation. Now I’m out of the jam’s crunch I have a much better idea of how to make that feel more random, and it’s definitely something I want to implement to make things feel more fair going forward. Different sprites for monster/player attacks also falls in there, as well as matching sound effects.
I’m glad the battle felt as close to the wire as they do! The difficulty balance was something I didn’t have a lot of time to perfect, but riding the line of using health as a resource was absolutely where I wanted it to land. The black minotaur level was where I suspected it might get dicey, since it was intended as a damage check that ended up a bit overpowered - that lines up with how far you got uncorrupted.
Definitely understand that the corruption mechanic feels like an inta-win. That’s honestly intentional: rogue-like gameplay is notoriously unapproachable to people who don’t play it, and with the jam not centered around roguelike behaviour I wanted something that auto balanced for people who aren’t as good/familiar with the genre. It’s a big reason why the cleric has the lowest health - if she goes down first, players have access to the “Heal All” mechanic early, which is handy coming up against the Unearthly/Spirit battles (which is a level that stumped a good few other people, especially with the unintended difficulty hike).
There are punishments for corruption - there’s a 50/50 shot of corrupted members leaving for good if they go down again, and you get a unique bad ending with a fully corrupted party - but they’re honestly pretty small penalties for the power even one corrupted memeber bring to the table. Knowing that power jump is there does also incentivise players to funnel towards seeing the smut content, since the transformations are the only place that features NSFW content besides the sprites in the current game.
Re: not losing to see the smut - 100% agree! So many games require you to game over completely to see anything good. I was trying to aim for a “fail forward” mechanic where players are incentivised to corrupt one or two members as part of the gameplay but not lose entirely (see why the game over screen is bare bones) with a virgin run being the hard mode. Definitely can see how it feels like you’re punished for not “giving into” that content though.
Typing this out now, I think there might be a sweet spot in making the corrupted members powerful early on, but weakening them in high levels as players get towards the final boss - a lot of their power comes from being able to tank hits, and making them more glass cannon-y and dangerously low health in the boss could be a good way to go. Pairing that with smut/worldbuilding passages between levels only accesiable uncorrupted also could help make a uncorrupted run feel more rewarding. 🤔 Options, for sure.
Re: the battles, since you mentioned it not feeling like a roguelike: The battles were absolutely intended to be more randomised than they are. You might of seen the number of enemies in some of the battles shifts a bit - 1-2 gargoyles in the second level, sometimes a tentacle in level 6. With the deadline looming I figured that a solid 10 levels + boss would be better for player experience than full randomisation with the fights, especially when I was worried that the game wasn’t beatable at points!
100% agree with the lack of detail in the epilogue as well - I really wanted to include an adaptive ending that shows how the four different party members end up post game. To say I ran out of time is an understatement though - everything from the pre-boss passage through to that final “you win!” screen, art included, was created in the last 12 hours before submission. Frankly I was more worried about being able to even get to the final screen at that point!
Definitely intending on doing a post-jam update - currently the game is locked while the submissions are rated - but at the very least I want to address the bugs that people have come across since its release. So happy that you enjoyed playing this and you’re interested to see what comes next! :D