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Rainbowrain-TW46 days ago

Thank you for the compliments! I also really love the concept of the turrets, and there are actually a lot of expanded mechanics that I didn't have time to implement. Regarding what you disliked, I think it’s a bit of a dilemma. If enemies don't get stronger, the game loses its challenge; but if their scaling matches the player's upgrades too closely, it definitely weakens the sense of progression.

I hope I can figure out a design that balances both. Thanks for pointing it out—it’s definitely a problem worth diving into!

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WarpZone46 days ago(+1)

HoloCure did it by rubber-banding the enemy's health to player damage, and enemy speed to player speed. But, crucially, both were capped so they wouldn't outscale the player, just gradually trend back towards the original difficulty curve over time after a wave change. (New enemy graphic.) And even with that soft auto-balancing, even with meta-progression upgrades normalized for Timed Mode, it was expected that broken builds would be possible when a lucky run goes off the rails.

But how could this be done within the constraints of a Jam? 🤔I suppose the most important thing is to end the game via Time Limit, like Vampire Survivors and HoloCure did, not by increasing the difficulty until the player gets overwhelmed. Then again, maybe that's a fix that would only be useful after there's more content in the game, long after the Jam is over.

Either way, good job doing so much within a short time period. 👍

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Rainbowrain-TW46 days ago

That’s incredibly professional advice — thank you so much! I’m a big fan of HoloCure and Vampire Survivors myself, but I’ve mostly enjoyed them from a player’s perspective. This game jam experience really helped me understand the design aspects you pointed out, and I’m sure it’ll be extremely helpful for my future projects.

You’re absolutely right about the progression and endgame. Even though I did include speed caps in my initial implementation, the fact that the upgrades still felt neutralized means the sense of investment and power-up payoff wasn’t strong enough. Also, not having enough synergy for “broken builds” was definitely a missed opportunity — discovering those crazy combos is honestly my favorite part of these games too!

Using a hard time limit for the endgame is also a great suggestion. My original idea was to let players clear the main stage and then test their limits in Endless Mode, which is a common loop, but my current upgrade system clearly isn’t deep enough to support that kind of long-term scaling yet. That’s probably what led to the “inevitably overwhelmed” feeling. This is definitely something I’d love to improve in the future. Thanks again for such a thoughtful deep dive!

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