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Ideas Sticky

A topic by Anil Demir created Apr 17, 2016 Views: 963 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 5
Developer (1 edit)

Here you can tell me what I could have done better and what you would like to see in the game.

Deleted 4 years ago
Developer

Thanks for playing :) I hope it's fun.
There is an ending battle with cut scenes but I guess no one will be able to see it.

This is because combat works without damage rolls but only with attack rolls. So when they can hit you, there is no chance they will give you only 1 damage. They have a high damage range. It's on my list of things to fix because as you said, when you get to ogre level 2, it becomes unbeatable. I mean, there is a chance to beat but very low.

Escape is also based on a dexterity roll btw, probably your roll fails.

So sorry for this, I don't update the game now because of voting process but after it's finished, I'll deal with that.

Deleted 4 years ago
Developer(+1)(-1)

Wow that's impressive! :D You must be the only one who has seen the cutscene!

It is very hard to balance this kind of game now I realize. Later on, I may go with simplified version of an already working system like dungeons & dragons battle system to not to invent the wheel myself.

Even with full dexterity, there is a chance to miss that roll. Especially when opponent's dexterity is also very high.

Thanks a lot for feedback and your nice words :)

(+4)

Tried it out from the big bundle. Overall quite interesting though flawed, glad to see you've been developing a follow up. 
Some relatively small tweaks could greatly improve it.

Played as knight, and generally focused on melee.
I’d split the phases of the game Into early-game, mid-game, and late-game
Early-game: when you don’t have any stats maxed
Mid-game: when you have one stat maxed
Late-game: when you have more than one stat maxed
The early-game was a bit frustrating, but I also only went to the store page and read the "How to Play" around the beginning of the mid-game, so it’s probably because I didn’t know what a lot of things did. I didn’t know that P was potions, and assumed that the “defensive stance” mark was the one potion I had. The game became much more fun to play once I realized I had more than one potion stock.
Mid-game starts getting grindy and tedious somewhere between 2-3 stats maxed. This is when one wants to be able to speed up transitions and text appearing. But this is also the point where I found the game most interesting, where I had enough valid choices in combat to make interesting decisions. Perhaps have the initials levels come faster at first to make reaching this point faster, to reduce players quitting before it gets good. 
-I had a misconception that the more consecutive “Explore” actions one did, the harder battles would get, with higher EXP rewards. It appears that it is actually a random encounter table based on level/stats.
Late-game one's stats are high enough that you can settle into an optimal rut and it is kinda boring as a result. It becomes a cycle to farm EXP because all other resources are plentiful. Events become pointless because you always have full money for potions and heals and the scroll isn't useful if the stat is maxed.
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Events have an issue with text being cut off at the top, which interferes with legibility as much as the font. In general, you should break a word to the next line if it can’t fit, as it is hard to read words which have only one or two letter broken to the next line. Seems you already know this though.

Scroll event is mostly frustrating after the beginning because it it doesn’t check if you have a maxed stat before awarding — leads to many times where you get an uncursed scroll, but it is useless anyway because it increased a stat that was already full, mostly intelligence. Ironically the first time it increased a stat other than intelligence, it was strength, which I had already maxed. I got to a point where I skipped all scroll events because they were useless to me.
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Below the stats, there is a bar labelled +, which was a mystery for awhile, and is not clearly explained in your How to Play. It represents how many stat points one has, but when you have stat points, the red arrows appear, and there is no reason not to use them as soon as you have one, so I don’t understand why there is a need for a bar to track them. It is unclear and unuseful because in almost all use cases, this is 0 or 1 - where 0 isn’t useful info, and 1 is also indicated by the red arrows and thus is redundant. It would be much more useful if this was a bar that showed EXP and how close you are to leveling up again. This would factor into choices about whether to go to town and recoup or explore again in hopes of leveling up.
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I never went to town to restore mana, because it passively refills, and by the point I had spells that used it, my physical attacks were way stronger and effective. The only spell I found useful was Heal, when I wanted to save potions during battles with weak enemies. But only using heal, mana recharged before I needed it again. 

 In general I didn’t find battle actions other than physical attack to be optimal. I really wanted defend to be useful, but it is only useful when you are a bit outclassed, and with only two rounds of buff, and it not working every time, it was really 50/50 whether it’s be more effective than just attacking. 

 By the time I built up enough Dexterity for Escape to be useable, I was so strong that it was a waste of EXP to use it. The fact that using it again doesn’t roll for another chance to escape seems a wasted opportunity, especially since it is possible to encounter an enemy that you cannot defeat. 

 I think this could be improved if some enemies were more susceptible to magic damage, or even impervious to physical damage like the WIsp, or the Ghost. This would validate using Magic attacks, and also for characters that don’t yet have magic, validate using Escape. 

 I appreciate that the stronger attacks and magic are more likely to miss, but it is random enough to eschew tactics regarding it. It would be nice if it had a system similar to Chrono Cross, where the more small hits you land, the more likely a big hit will also land, up to a point. 

 Sometimes the transition animation would just stay up after the transition period, obscuring the text. This only happened to me after I got to mid-game but I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not. As a result, I already had memorized the possible text and button positions and was able to muddle through. I noticed this mostly on explore events, but I think it may have happened going to town also.  
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I almost made it to the ending, with Dexterity nearly maxed, and Luck halfway, everything else maxed. But I had my friend take the controller while I took notes for this feedback, and they died to an Ogre. I’m not willing to go through the grind again, so gonna miss out on the ending. Thus, I also recommend a save system be implemented, even if it’s only one save slot. It’s simpler than implementing some kind of meta game where the early game gets faster level ups based on how many times you’ve died or gotten further in the game…

Developer(+3)

Thank you very much for the effort you took writing this detailed feedback. Honestly, I'm not working on the game anymore, I have started the mobile version but shelved it due to other work coming up. Hopefully it will be unshelved one day to see the light of day.

This version here was a result of a week long jam, when I was quite a rookie in game dev. I'm still not as advanced as I want to be but if I would do the same game again, it would definitely be better. You are right about most of the things you wrote. I'm always surprised how many downloads it still gets (before the bundle as well) even though it's a quite repetitive and well, boring game. I think there is something about the game that requires attention. In the mobile version my plan was to expand more on the idea of events with much more variety and turn combat into a tad bit more elaborate version of the current one (a combination of war and a regular ccg). You can kind of see the direction in my devlog post I've written long ago.

If I get back to it, it will be for people who still play the game and especially for people like you. Once again, thank you. Your feedback will go into my knowledge database for my future games <3

P.S. Don't worry about not being able to complete the game, end boss is unnecessarily difficult and completely RNG, if not impossible. If you give me contact info (twitter, email etc.) I can send you a gif of the introduction sequence of the end boss.

(+2)

Between the theming, look, sprite quality, and gameplay loop, I'd say it's a pretty appealing game. Your store page is also good at presenting it, which is more than the average gamejam game on itch.

For a one week gamejam, I'd say it's quite successful at what its trying to do, you can take pride in that. What I saw in the devlog looked interesting and exciting, and if you ever get back to it I'll check it out.

(+3)

This game has potential to be a lot better.  I saw this was a game done in a week, and I think it's great for such a short time.  And saw that development on it is shelved for the time being.


Pros:

Art style is cool

Inn and battle music

Great potential for expansion

Cons:

Text is incredibly hard to read

Text is cut off when checking/taking a potion or scroll (I thought it said "You sense Lures")

Repetitive grind to level up

Ogres are a pain to beat/escape

Magic healing is only worthwhile against weak enemies

Hit rate is unclear.  The strongest attacks hit 99% of the time, then randomly will miss 5-7 times in a row, then go back to hitting 99% of the time

Glitch where the top and bottom of the screen don't finish transition


Most of the cons are minor annoyances, I think the game is really good (if not very grindy).  If there ever is an update I'd love to see stuff like buying better weapons and armor, dungeons, quests, and NPC interactions

(+1)

I didn't get very far with my rogue - I managed to max one skill (strength) and bump up a few more but couldn't finish it in one sitting, so, with no save abillity, that's as far as I got.

The only feedback I have in addition to what's already been said + what's already in the "Next Step" is that I actually found it a little too easy. My potions bar never went below six (most of the time I had around 11), and toward the end of my playtime I was just waiting for it to get harder - all the enemies I encountered dealt very little damage when they dealt damage at all (they would often be stunned for most of the few turns they got before I killed them).

Making enemies deal a little more damage, so I actually use up my potions, would be nice, especially with the higher-level ones, though I know balancing the too-hard vs too-easy line can be really hard (and based on other feedback I've read, it seems some people have had the opposite problem with enemies I haven't encountered).

Also starting out with less potions/gold or having more things to spend gold on might make them a more meaningful resource.

That being said, overall I found the game very charming. Regardless of whether or not you add more in the future, I enjoyed playing it and I love the art style.