Post by OffByTwoDev in subject 38 comments

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This was fun to play!

Things I liked:

the music
the sound effects
the overall art style
the overall gameplay loop

I'm going to describe some things I found frustrating, and then how I would go about fixing them (which of course you are free to ignore).

Frustrating things / things to improve:

its too easy. IMO the difficulty curve feels too easy to begin with. This also links to my next point
Its not chaotic enough (specifically in the early/mid game). The chaos mainly came in when you spawn in the "ring" of enemies around the player
The ring of enemies being spawned in is visible (IMO they should be spawned in off screen)
There's not many upgrade options or enemy variation (but obvs this is an early build so understandable)
Minor points: There's some typos in the abilities; may as well bind the arrow keys to movement as well as WASD.

How I'd improve these:
My first 2 points could be addressed by a few things. I actually think the "true" difficulty curve is perfectly fine - it's just the players feeling of the difficulty thats off. I'd slightly up the base movement speed, everything feels quite sluggish to start with. The movement speed upgrades are imperceptibly small, I was left questioning if they had even done anything. Especially for how powerful some of the upgrades are (e.g. gaining the orbs, or upgrading the push ability), I think the movement speed upgrades should be higher.

I also think some more varied & more difficult enemies earlier on would be good. Or maybe bosses. It felt like whatever I chose for the first 8 or so upgrades didn't matter that much. IMO in this type of game you should have to be working towards some kind of combination of abilities that work well together early on (and if you dont get this, you should be punished by taking damage and losing early). But this is just my opinion. More abilities would also help.

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All that being said, this was genuinely fun to play and I think its a really solid first public build. I just thought I'd give as much advice as possible; maybe I have missed the mark and please don't take my feedback as a negative thing! If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know!

subject0387 days ago(+1)

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such detailed feedback — I really appreciate it.

I’m really glad you enjoyed the core loop, music, and overall feel.

About the early difficulty: you’re actually touching on something I’ve been experimenting with a lot. Earlier versions of the game had a noticeably harder opening and a more chaotic early game, but after a lot of testing I decided to step back from very hardcore starts — at least for the first level — to avoid overwhelming new players too quickly.

That said, I completely agree with your point that the perceived difficulty and sense of pressure early on could be much stronger. The feedback about movement speed and imperceptible upgrades is especially helpful — if an upgrade doesn’t feel impactful, it’s failing its job.

Enemy variety, earlier meaningful choices, and better early pressure are all things I want to push further, and your suggestion about punishing weak early builds fits very well with the direction I’m aiming for long-term.

Thanks as well for the smaller notes (visible enemy spawns, typos, arrow key) — those are great catches and easy improvements.

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback. This kind of input is incredibly valuable at this stage, and I’d love to hear your thoughts again after future updates.

itch.io

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