This is a very impressive game given to have been made in a jam timeframe! So really good job there.
It's a fun and satisfying core loop that's pretty well-implemented here. Very much scratches that "number go up" itch.
Unfortunately though I think the part of the game that falters for me is its take on the theme. In theory the trade-off between getting more money vs getting to use the time for something is good, but in practice here it just doesn't work for a few reasons:
- There are many thing that are made more fun by adding time pressure. Unfortunately trying to read and parse and large skill tree is not one of those things, it just feels really bad to skim read and therefore not really make interesting decisions about your build.
- Once you eventually do then become familiar with it though it completely flips, and now there's no reason to spend more than like 3 seconds after the round is done so it no longer is an interesting decision whether to skip for the gold.
A few other minor nitpicks:
- I'm never a big fan of skill trees that just do smaller percentage increase things. I want upgrades to do big things that change the way you play.
- It's really annoying that the old bodies stay there. When I had a good run and did like 50 waves at a certain point I just couldn't see the enemies any more due to all the corpses. I thought maybe if I didn't skip the round timer then the little goblin would come out and clear the bodies but I waited a full round without skipping and he didn't come :|
- The bow definitely feels way stronger than the other weapons. It's got a way higher base damage plus you then immediately can get extra shots and bouncing shots, so very quickly you're doing like 15x more damage than the other weapons. However I will also say that did make it super fun and I'm a strong believer in jam games are better when they're crazy than when they're balanced.
Despite having a lot of critiques, I do think this is still a really solid game and a really impressive piece of work!