Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So this was pretty fun! It gives a bit of a Legend of Zelda vibe with the top-down view and collecting treasures in dungeons. I also found the gameplay pretty simplistic.
Before I get into my feedback on the gameplay, I want to note some issues I had with remapping keys. Before I knew what the gameplay was going to be like, I had read the controls and wanted to change them to make my left face button be my first skill, my bottom face button be my second skill, my top face button be my third skill and the right face button be my shield. Of course, I eventually realized that this wasn't a good idea and switched it back (though I would argue that the bottom face button should be the default for the first skill, but that's just me), but before that I caught some problems. First, remapping the skills also remaps the confirm and cancel buttons, which I feel shouldn't be changed. Perhaps have the option to set those as their own controls, so players who are used to Nintendo style controls can set those to how they would like? Second, I noticed that certain in-game labels didn't update to the remapped buttons. For example, if I remapped what you initially labelled as the B button, then when I went to a rest it would still be labelled with B instead of whatever I set. Lastly, I think it'd be an idea to make the labels automatically change based on the player's controller. You already have support for the Switch Pro Controller in there (as evidenced by the fact that the game didn't go berserk when I used mine, which is what happens when developers don't put add the support in due to how the Pro Controller natively works on PC), so it'd be nice to see it pushed a bit further so that labels matched. Basically, this would have the X-Box controller remain with the current labels, the Pro Controller see A-B and X-Y switched, and a Playstation controller would become the symbols.
I also want to note one oddity I noticed... whenever I would pause the game for the first time after starting up, the game would freeze for a moment. Again, it was only for a moment but this feels like something that shouldn't happen.
Okay, now for the gameplay stuff.
First, I noticed that enemies could start trapped in blocks. Depending on how deep into the blocks they are, they could become impossible to fight (I noticed this even happen in the dungeon with where you get the Compass Shield). While the Compass Shield and bombs can correct this, I feel like this can still look bad.
When I started up a second run, I noticed I had the option to upgrade the Compass Shield immediately despite not having the shield yet. While it seems the game does keep memory of items you've obtained in previous runs, it doesn't make sense to let me upgrade something I don't have yet.
I encountered a room design where it simply was not possible to get the reward in the middle without taking damage from spikes. I don't know how common this may come up, but I feel like when this happens that the rewards should just be far better. Either that or there should always be a way to get to the reward without taking damage.
One thing I don't remember learning about was that bombs remain active if you move rooms, which is something I think players should be made aware of. I ended up testing this myself after I encountered a room where the only way to progress further into it from the door I took was to plant a bomb, but the only way I could stay safe from the bomb was to leave the room (There was another way into this room, but it was all spiked off). While personally I'd rather see it that I wouldn't have to leave the room (and instead the rooms are always designed to give me room so long as I place the bomb correctly), if the player at least is informed that bombs keep going when in another room then this would be fine. In fact, I would say that there should be a tutorial room to show them this.
Is there any correlation between how I touch enemies and how the fight begins? For example, if an enemy touches my backside then do they start behind me? Or if I touch an enemy on their left side, do I start on their left side in the fight? I ask because I noticed that fights were inconsistent about how the player starts relative to the enemies, even when doing additional encounters with the same enemies. I'd either like to see it remain consistent in some way (either all fights start with the player on the left side of the arena or each enemy has a specific start that never changes when you encounter it on the field) or to have it that how you touch the enemy matters (so an enemy touching you from behind means it starts behind you, and the side of the enemy you're on determines which side you start on).
I also understand that the design of combat is pretty simplistic because the game is supposed to be more about the stuff you deal with outside combat, but I do wish it was more engaging than it is right now. Currently, it's just to occasionally use skills and then perform dodges and shields. Part of me wishes I had more control over the fight and more ways to do stuff, even if that meant taking away the simplicity of it.
Lastly, there's one thing I'm still rather iffy on... the trail of darkness. One thing I find that the trail of darkness prevents is backtracking. If you want to return to a previous town to buy supplies or realized you missed a dungeon, now you're just putting yourself at risk for a Dark Dungeon, which I realized are just insanely deadly. While I'm not opposed to the idea outright, I feel like it needs some tweaks to improve it. I'm going to offer a list of various ideas that I think could help.
1. Make the Trail of Darkness start later. Give the player time to adjust to their run before it starts becoming a problem. There should be a key boss that the player has to defeat before it begins.
2. Slow how fast the Trail of Darkness grows so that the player can more easily do backtracking without putting Dark Dungeons in their way.
3. Don't make it that every tile gets the Trial of Darkness. Instead, make it only appear every few tiles. That way, the player has more wiggle room to backtrack.
4. Create ways for the player to erase the Trail of Darkness.
I think that's everything I got! Good luck with the game and I hope to see more!