I did a pretty long delve into it, started with 2 str 2 dex and 1 int, ended up with dumping most points into int anyway as shooting fireballs does more damage and you can charge it faster. With no defence and no dodging it's the most viable way of playing.
First impression is very nice, variety of monsters, plenty of chests, interractions with healing fountain or traps, I found a secret in a wooden area -always a nice surprise. Some enemies could wander around, right now they all wait for a wake-up. Went through the couple of levels until I ran into Deathcaller. Next level was a big difficulty spike, enemies got like 50% more health and now Deathcallers were common enemies. They're also immune to fire status effect so fighting them was very troublesome. Also balancing is kinda meh, I found dozens of powerful healing items but all weapons were basic - I found three 2-hand swords, three basic firebook spells, one rusted sword with worse stats and one poisonous dagger with which I wasn't impressed at all.
For me, initial enemies could be tougher and you should level up faster at the start to really feel your strength is growing, later on these enemies shouldn't scale and be somewhat a reminder how much you've grown. Also new levels should slowly morph into different biomes, going through 6 levels that have no distinct features feels lazy. What's more, having a random chance to spawn an unique item or to have a closed gate that you have to look for a key might spice things up a little. I'm guessing shops will come at some point as we have prices on items?
In short - very nice start, needs more unique items and random events, more variety of enemies, change your surroundings the higher you get.
Played it in german and went with max strength and some int. Turned out i didn't get any spells. Took the two handed sword and went into battle. First thing i noticed is that there is no defence. Can't block or dodge, so had to rewire my brain into face tanking everything and pop a potion sometimes. The quick bar is nice, however if some item count goes to 0 its not removed. I don't know if there is a way to remove items from the bar, i couldnt find one.
The attacks are nice with the red spot for crits, but its not always clear when you are able to swing your two handed sword again. It really takes some time and its a bit frustrating that there is no indicator. The curved sword was better in that regard and let me clear the level way easier.
The music is nice, but i think i already wrote that ages ago in an earlier demo. The style comes along great as well. I had a few weird occurrences with enemies, namely that a dead diseased dude was still giving me the life bar at the top with 0 health. Also some enemies seemed to swing their attack when they died? At least those spark particles and that sound happened next to me. Its hard to tell and even harder to time to really test it.
If this game gave the player a chance for learning, like a small level 1 with only boring enemies and then increase the amount of mechanics, that would be great. Had a lot of conditions put on me which i didnt understand by just looking at the icons.
Thank you for playing! There are few known bugs in this version I didn't bother to fix, like the health bar of the killed enemy showing up. I'll fix them in future builds. And some kind of tutorial level is also planned.
I really love this game as a base. I played with keyboard and mouse in the webgl build and didn’t have much problems with lag except when loading the level at the start as your message said.
Positive feedback:
I caught on pretty quickly that attack could be held and timed with the red bar for extra damage/critical hits.
The CRT shader works really well for appearance in game I feel.
Style is good and feels meaty despite it being pretty simple sprites.
Constructive Criticism:
The poison effects on the player got pretty annoying. I’m not sure if the levels are procedural but it feel like 2/3 enemies were putting a dot on me and my character was constantly yelling. The red flash and maybe an “acid splash” type of sound effect could work better.
I’m not sure if it was possible but it didn’t feel like I could dodge melee attacks. It could of just been me being bad at the game but it would feel cool if I could strafe backwards from an attack and then move back in to hit with my swing.
Scatterbrained feedback: A master option for the volume would be nice. Can't click the slide bar in the hotkey menu and the list doesn't scroll properly when I use the arrow key to navigate it. Enemies get stuck on chests and traps, they have trouble navigating around the library room.
^doomcaller stuck on traps
Items stay on the hot bar even after using them all. Is there a way to rearrange them? Enemy status effect should show up on their health bar Fire shield description says "lasts _ seconds"
I killed the boss, did a couple of floors and then got bored so I started running past enemies, I think that part is endless? I don't like melee combat in this game. The power bar is glacial and it takes too long to reach the red part so it throws away your timing. Also it's hard to gauge weapon reach by eye and holding S plus sprint while timing a strike over and over is not that fun. Could use some dodge/stun/block/push mechanics to be more interesting. I picked up a fire book from the initial chest and never used anything else. Mana replenishing automatically means that it's viable to use as your only weapon. My suggestion would be to balance around (an improved version of) melee combat and leave the spells as buffs/debuffs or a limited pool otherwise everyone is going to use nothing but spells considering that they're so much safer and more effective. The dungeon itself gets boring quickly, the only cool thing that happened was finding a secret in a library but even that gave me like 10 apples and nothing else. Visuals are not great, not talking about the enemy sprites but the dungeon itself: it's so blurry, repetitive and evenly lit, it's an eye sore.
I think you should re-evaluate the core melee combat mechanic and find ways to make dungeon rooms more exciting. I don't mind the billboarding sprite but I think they're only justified if you have a ton of enemies, people will expect either 3D models or more detailed and properly lit sprites.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! >Is there a way to rearrange them Right now you can either assign a different item to a slot, or do it twice to clear the slot. I don't clear slots after all the items have been used on purpose, so you don't have to reassign them if you find new ones. >I think that part is endless? Yes, it is currently endless.
Anyway, your points are valid. Corrections / fixes / changes are planned for future versions.
I don't clear slots after all the items have been used on purpose, so you don't have to reassign them if you find new ones.
Right, that makes sense. Maybe food items or duplicate weapons could have a flag that doesn't slot them in the hotbar automatically, or all food could be pooled into a single slot to reduce clutter.
Comments
I did a pretty long delve into it, started with 2 str 2 dex and 1 int, ended up with dumping most points into int anyway as shooting fireballs does more damage and you can charge it faster. With no defence and no dodging it's the most viable way of playing.
First impression is very nice, variety of monsters, plenty of chests, interractions with healing fountain or traps, I found a secret in a wooden area -always a nice surprise. Some enemies could wander around, right now they all wait for a wake-up. Went through the couple of levels until I ran into Deathcaller. Next level was a big difficulty spike, enemies got like 50% more health and now Deathcallers were common enemies. They're also immune to fire status effect so fighting them was very troublesome. Also balancing is kinda meh, I found dozens of powerful healing items but all weapons were basic - I found three 2-hand swords, three basic firebook spells, one rusted sword with worse stats and one poisonous dagger with which I wasn't impressed at all.
For me, initial enemies could be tougher and you should level up faster at the start to really feel your strength is growing, later on these enemies shouldn't scale and be somewhat a reminder how much you've grown. Also new levels should slowly morph into different biomes, going through 6 levels that have no distinct features feels lazy. What's more, having a random chance to spawn an unique item or to have a closed gate that you have to look for a key might spice things up a little. I'm guessing shops will come at some point as we have prices on items?
In short - very nice start, needs more unique items and random events, more variety of enemies, change your surroundings the higher you get.
Thanks for the review, I appreciate it!
Played it in german and went with max strength and some int. Turned out i didn't get any spells. Took the two handed sword and went into battle. First thing i noticed is that there is no defence. Can't block or dodge, so had to rewire my brain into face tanking everything and pop a potion sometimes.
The quick bar is nice, however if some item count goes to 0 its not removed. I don't know if there is a way to remove items from the bar, i couldnt find one.
The attacks are nice with the red spot for crits, but its not always clear when you are able to swing your two handed sword again. It really takes some time and its a bit frustrating that there is no indicator. The curved sword was better in that regard and let me clear the level way easier.
The music is nice, but i think i already wrote that ages ago in an earlier demo. The style comes along great as well.
I had a few weird occurrences with enemies, namely that a dead diseased dude was still giving me the life bar at the top with 0 health. Also some enemies seemed to swing their attack when they died? At least those spark particles and that sound happened next to me. Its hard to tell and even harder to time to really test it.
If this game gave the player a chance for learning, like a small level 1 with only boring enemies and then increase the amount of mechanics, that would be great. Had a lot of conditions put on me which i didnt understand by just looking at the icons.
Great stuff though, keep it up!
Thank you for playing! There are few known bugs in this version I didn't bother to fix, like the health bar of the killed enemy showing up. I'll fix them in future builds. And some kind of tutorial level is also planned.
I really love this game as a base. I played with keyboard and mouse in the webgl build and didn’t have much problems with lag except when loading the level at the start as your message said.
Positive feedback: I caught on pretty quickly that attack could be held and timed with the red bar for extra damage/critical hits. The CRT shader works really well for appearance in game I feel. Style is good and feels meaty despite it being pretty simple sprites.
Constructive Criticism: The poison effects on the player got pretty annoying. I’m not sure if the levels are procedural but it feel like 2/3 enemies were putting a dot on me and my character was constantly yelling. The red flash and maybe an “acid splash” type of sound effect could work better.
I’m not sure if it was possible but it didn’t feel like I could dodge melee attacks. It could of just been me being bad at the game but it would feel cool if I could strafe backwards from an attack and then move back in to hit with my swing.
Really great game overall though
Thank you for the feedback.
Yeah, you can't "dodge", only move away. Maybe I'll add such feature in the future.
Scatterbrained feedback:
A master option for the volume would be nice.
Can't click the slide bar in the hotkey menu and the list doesn't scroll properly when I use the arrow key to navigate it.
Enemies get stuck on chests and traps, they have trouble navigating around the library room.
^doomcaller stuck on traps
Items stay on the hot bar even after using them all. Is there a way to rearrange them?
Enemy status effect should show up on their health bar
Fire shield description says "lasts _ seconds"
I killed the boss, did a couple of floors and then got bored so I started running past enemies, I think that part is endless?
I don't like melee combat in this game. The power bar is glacial and it takes too long to reach the red part so it throws away your timing.
Also it's hard to gauge weapon reach by eye and holding S plus sprint while timing a strike over and over is not that fun.
Could use some dodge/stun/block/push mechanics to be more interesting.
I picked up a fire book from the initial chest and never used anything else. Mana replenishing automatically means that it's viable to use as your only weapon.
My suggestion would be to balance around (an improved version of) melee combat and leave the spells as buffs/debuffs or a limited pool otherwise everyone is going to use nothing but spells considering that they're so much safer and more effective.
The dungeon itself gets boring quickly, the only cool thing that happened was finding a secret in a library but even that gave me like 10 apples and nothing else.
Visuals are not great, not talking about the enemy sprites but the dungeon itself: it's so blurry, repetitive and evenly lit, it's an eye sore.
I think you should re-evaluate the core melee combat mechanic and find ways to make dungeon rooms more exciting. I don't mind the billboarding sprite but I think they're only justified if you have a ton of enemies, people will expect either 3D models or more detailed and properly lit sprites.
Hey, thanks for the feedback!
>Is there a way to rearrange them
Right now you can either assign a different item to a slot, or do it twice to clear the slot. I don't clear slots after all the items have been used on purpose, so you don't have to reassign them if you find new ones.
>I think that part is endless?
Yes, it is currently endless.
Anyway, your points are valid. Corrections / fixes / changes are planned for future versions.
Right, that makes sense. Maybe food items or duplicate weapons could have a flag that doesn't slot them in the hotbar automatically, or all food could be pooled into a single slot to reduce clutter.