Post by slabdrill in Surviving Magic Academy as a Demon Lord - Demo comments

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I saw this game but didn't click it at first because it sounded like a visual novel title... Guess I should look more closely at genres next time.

Since Shadow Comprehension is the only thing that actually remains between loops, it'd be nice to have more ways to get it. As is, I'm pretty sure it's optimal to just get the initial 4 from the timid student then immediately quick-restart on loop, since going through the exam takes too long and I don't know of any other sources in the entire map (though of course I haven't looked through everything yet). If you could get more Shadow Comprehension from going to other places or had some other form of persistent progress in the game, it would incentivize exploring more instead of immediately ending the loop to grind. (If you have metaprogression in the game, it immediately becomes a primary goal to grind it out. This is why a lot of roguelikes with metaprogression tie gaining it to the intended main goal.)

I feel like the game could use a glossary or something to explain what all the stats mean. They're all fairly unintuitive, even with the conversion descriptions, so it'd be nice to have. For example, I don't know what Vitality does at all, nor the Perpetual keyword on an action, so using them doesn't really tell me anything about what behavior I should be expecting. And reading the v0.2.0 changelog implies that Calmness actually increases action speed rather than time speed, which is an important distinction that actually significantly changes how important the stat is--but I only learned that from reading the changelog.

I also have no clue how to obtain a lot of things used as ingredients like Raw Material, though it's true I haven't spent that long looking for things yet. It feels a little bad being completely aimless about how I might find such a thing, but I suppose it's fine in the end. (I'm wondering if I just missed a branch of actions to go through somewhere. But I thought I did everything somewhat easily accessible.)

GMRin12 days ago(+1)

First of all, thanks for the feedback!

Shadow Comprehension rewards increase the farther you move from the starting point. You can sit near the beginning and farm the +4, but you’ll be missing out on the most important resource which is "map knowledge"

That’s why the game is so difficult to balance. It isn’t exactly quantifiable. Even if you started with 999,999 Strength, you could still starve to death or lose a fight that nullifies Strength if you don’t know the map.

I know that, given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game, so adding a large end-of-run multiplier based on total Shadow Comprehension gained might incentivize deeper exploration?

I also agree that the game is currently unintuitive for new players. I’m planning to rework the newspaper feature to provide more diegetic in-game tips. Maybe as a rumor system where players can select a topic like “Stale Soda” and see what other students are saying about it. That said, I’ll have to ruminate on the approach since I’ve wasted time on the newspaper, and it isn’t accomplishing what I hoped it would.

slabdrill12 days ago (3 edits)

I mentioned this in my other new comment (now that I played the game more), but the main problem with Shadow Comprehension is actually that I had missed the actions that led to giving more of it, leading to me assuming that they weren't present in the game at all. I still haven't found more than 32 total in the entire game, and by now I believe I actually *have* seen most of the game... and all of those except the exam one are like a minute from the start position.

If the game gives me a reason to believe that map knowledge is actually worthwhile (for the primary goal I'm aiming for which is "getting shadow comprehension"), then I become way more incentivized to look for it. But when literally every action I do doesn't lead to getting any more, I have no reason to keep looking.

It probably doesn't fully help that mapping things out in my head is hard and I can't actually remember which actions I haven't checked for any actions behind them yet. If I knew which actions I had to check it'd be a lot easier to devote a run to just checking that action... though of course this only helps in the event of most unchecked actions having something behind them. The reason why I stopped checking a lot of them was that most of the options I was checking early on were leading to long action chains, and trace amount of stats don't really matter and they just never were leading to anything better. Making the game explicitly communicate which actions you haven't checked for followups is also a strong motivator that that is something that the player should be using as a progress metric.

Reverie Requiem12 days ago (1 edit)

Kill the goblin if you can. It gives 12 and is basically free (you may need a few starting stats already to get there quickly though?). Janitor's closet is 4 and isn't too far compared to student. Although I don't really know why you need to deface a statue to get to the bottom of the map.

slabdrill12 days ago

Ah. I thought I checked that one already, but I guess I did spare the other time too. This is why I think it'd be useful to have something that tracks which actions you've completed before.

GMRin12 days ago

Other players have asked for something like this as well, but the way the system is currently set up makes it somewhat difficult to implement.

slabdrill12 days ago (3 edits) (+1)

Okay, played a bit more and got a lucky run (lucked into screaming mandrake + haste potion from witch. also got 100 calmness before trying witch, since this was a foxification run and I didn't want to lose the run early, which makes it extra funny), which basically lets you do whatever you want) and managed to win super easily from there (screaming mandrake for hero kill, and haste potion to be able to survive long enough via cabin). It does feel great to get a lucky run, even if it feels like getting a few more epithets isn't all that big of a reward. (I wish I wasn't so scared of the demo lord so I could use the opportunity to pick up A on the exam as well; I thought it was supposed to be a killscreen rather than a trivial fight. Displaying enemy stats ahead of time would help with planning for the battles better.)

It turns out I was missing a few major shadow comprehension sources since they were locked behind a few of the specific actions I hadn't checked yet. I'm not sure how I got that unlucky with what I checked. I still feel like the sources all too focused on the left side of the map and there should be more toward the right. +12 for free every run once you've found the actions is pretty nice, though I wish I found them earlier - that winning run was done starting at 68.

Bug report: The Epithets menu appears to get cut off on the bottom with no way to scroll lower. I had to switch my browser to fullscreen to be able to read the bottom one (no clue how to get it, btw). This is probably a screen resolution issue.

itch.io

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