I might be biased because I absolutely loved Dungeon Encounters, but I think your formula works and I had a lot of fun playing your game through the end. I think becoming dispirited mid-way through the jam is far from unusual, I wasn't sure myself if my game was any fun before publishing it.
The battle system worked very well and my old DE reflexes kicked in immediately, it's constant fun to try and get hit as little as possible, and when things start to go wrong, they can spiral down pretty quickly as your timing strategy collapses, so to me combat was a total blast. The combat UI is very clean, readable and polished.
I loved the art (characters, environments and monsters), the jazzy music hit the right notes to me, so the game feel was really smooth and chill.
I had a bit of trouble with the control scheme (I couldn't get used to A&D to turn until the very end), and wished the arrow keys worked in the menus.
I found a few bugs:
- On the first or second red map, I was able to trigger the map completion bonus as much as I wanted just by trying to get back on the teleporter (the teleporter didn't trigger, instead I got the bonus each time)
- When you're moving but not forward, I've noticed that:
- the tiles are not displayed on the minimap,
- the teleporters don't trigger,
- the encounters behave like walls
In terms of difficulty, I was in a very tight spot once or twice, so it felt just right to me. I didn't get to use the laser saber much because I was saving my energy for a potential boss, and I found that I was never really forced to use ranged weapons because no enemy had an absurd amount of melee def, but honestly I think you balanced the game pretty well for such a short dev time.
I really enjoyed your entry, that was great!! Thanks 😊