Hi! Just finished playing the web version, here are some thoughts:
- The game creates a very cozy feeling, which I like. Music, enemy and character design, animations. All that gives me a lot of chill vibes similar to, let's say, Stardew Valley. Which is an interesting choice considering the game genre, so curious about where you plan to take it.
- Character controls and attacks feel smooth and behave as anticipated.
- The base loop of running around the map, killing monsters, gaining exp to level up and upgrade, and gaining gold to upgrade between runs - all that works, as it is a genre standard.
- Enemy visual design is very neat. I like the visual variety of animations and locations. Locations easily convey the intended biome. Even though it is just a recoloring of the background.
- Game difficulty is on the lower side, I suspect, with the intention of being more cozy than chaotic, but that creates situations where there is not much to do. All the enemies are dead, or I can stun lock them + the bosses, and the maps themselves do not have anything to explore.
My main complaint is that, at the moment, while there are quite a number of different locations, enemies, and bosses, they all feel the same. All locations are just infinite fields of nothing, all enemies and bosses just run at you with various speeds and HP. This makes it feel very repetitive, as the game neither introduces new scenarios nor forces me to adapt. So instead of an emergent system where various combinations of enemies require me to learn how to deal with them, I can just keep circling.
And my second main concern would be the variety of perks. Currently, there are several; however, I did not find any that will synergize with each other or create various builds. And that makes the game even more repetitive from 1 run to the next, as I just keep peaking the same upgrades and getting the same results.
Random thoughts:
- Add rarity to perks.
- Change music when the boss arrives to intensify the perception.
- Lacks tools for movement apart from running. Having some abilities like dash or roll can add interesting variations to gameplay. Assuming there is sufficient demand from the game's side, it necessitates using those.
- Sometimes colliding and being damaged by enemies, while not expecting it. Particularly when moving diagonally
Other than that, I enjoyed the overall experience, and I see potential in exploring the direction of combining this genre with the cozy vibes. So thank you for the demo and hope to see the game evolve :)