Overall I really like it. I think I reached the end of the content for now, and I will come back for the next versions.
Nice work!
I want recipe sorting/filtering.
Also item sorting was a bit weird, too. It wasn't clear how to sort/filter to the equippable items versus materials.
I hate spam clicking so I just used an auto-clicker instead.
I think without an auto-clicker it would be a pretty slow to progress game, but with auto-clicker its slightly too easy.
I think spheres should be accrue resources or have longer countdown. I don't want to feel the pressure to check back every 1-2 minutes to click on them, even with the collect all upgrade. Also the pop-up about the collection is a little annoying since I have to click close on it, better if it auto-closed like a toast instead of a forced confirm dialog.
The last 3 bosses were difficult even with auto-clicker. I noticed the militia people took a lot of resources to get the last level, like thousands of cores, so I didn't bother with that yet. I assume that was an intentional soft wall due to it being WIP.
Skills felt a little under-powered to me.
I think an auto-fight unlock would be nice to have.
Excellent comments, thanks!
The crafting definitely needs some work. Overall, it's a bit too cumbersome—too many items, too many recipes, too complex crafting chains—and it definitely needs to be either simplified or the crafting system itself made more user-friendly.
I also agree about the slow progression. During a normal playthrough, there's a constant mana shortage, which is annoying. During development, I was more focused on coming up with mechanics and features in general and how they interact with each other. I spent less time on balance and progression. These things won't be difficult to fix.
I was planning to add more automation and idle elements to the gameplay—increasing minion auto-damage, auto-combat with spheres, auto-completion of raids, etc. I also have ideas for an Expeditions mode, where you'll send groups of minions on independent expeditions.
The final levels of minion upgrades, requiring thousands of cores, are simply placeholders until all evolution stages are fully designed. And for the final three bosses, the key was in the sequence and opening new damage element type. First, upgrade the Bird minion (Never-Echo-Omen) to stage 3 and gain Blood damage to break the Chaos shield of the Zalthor sphere. Then, as a reward, get the next minion with Chaos damage to kill the next sphere with Fel Shield, and so on.
I think it would be a good idea to design a Tutorial system to indicate upcoming tasks and milestones for the player to complete (something like a Quest Journal). But first, i need to catch a bunch of bugs and fix everything, to make people stop hating the game :D
I did kind of like the upgrade chains and almost would like more of them. I like the idea that you're usually not building and then throwing away low level items, but instead use them to build bigger and better.
As a side note, it was way less clear to me when playing that spells cost mana in the sphere fights. I thought it was just managing timeouts. It wasn't until the raid encounters and not being able to cast spells that I realized, and then I briefly thought it was cost in the raids, but just timeouts in the sphere battles.
I kind of had to go back and go oooooh when I realized I was killing my mana farming by trying to rush through it with spells.
I did manage to complete the raid
Spoiler
You need equipment that adds different kinds of shields ;) And I used 100% of my mana casting heals and keeping it on cooldown
I'm so glad you're so deeply immersed in the gameplay, buddy! I appreciate it.
Yeah, I also like the idea of upgrading equipment like they do in Terraria with trinkets (as I remember), so I decided to add that feature to my game.
I need to improve spells, balance the costs, and make the cost more obvious. Initially, they were intended to have features like new damage types (fire to help with Ice shield). A slow to help with Hunt completion (by the way, isn't the "minigame" of catching the Orb in Hunt mode too annoying?). For now, spells make the most sense in raids, I think. I want to add new spells with different damage types, AoE effects, and more crowd control effects (to stun or freeze units in raids).