Hey Ben! Thanks for such thoughtful feedback, appreciated.
On the mono-modal interactions... that's partly lazyness and time pressure :P Once I'd got bow physics working it was easier to just make physics buttons and interaction than building out a whole UI and switching to pointer input. Generally I prefer immersive interactions though, so I'm thrilled that came across. Sorry about the accidental upgrade removals ;(
On bow-vs-gun, I generally don't enjoy violent stuff so lent away from gun. You also technically don't kill the drones with arrows, just knock them... they only die to impacts with the environment. I don't think this is very clear in the current build but I'd want to make that clearer and more meaningful. I also like the sprint vs fire trade-off... and I also don't feel like it's balanced right. I wanted the stamina to be quite limiting initially to make stamina-affecting upgrades more tempting but I'm not sure that worked? I'd be curious to know if you have any thoughts on how to improve balance / feel there?
Oh yea, you're so right on the entrance door! I was pretty concerned that all the challenge would disappear because of it, I didn't get time to address that concern. I considered having bombs spawn after X seconds near the entrance to push the player out ... but your idea of a breakable entrance is great. It makes me think there should be MORE breakable cover in arenas and increasing it's health, size, etc should be an upgrade tree!
On autobattlers I've barely played any, but I tried SNKRX earlier this year and had a great time with that. Immediately felt like that shop & upgrade system was an exciting space to explore. I read an insightful post by the snkrx dev, which I assume you've seen because you're always so on this stuff, one thing that stuck with me is that the "auto" part of the formula is actually a detractor, because it's largely waiting or low interactivity which by definition is less engaging. That felt very true to me and so with this I tried to keep both the "play" and "shop" parts highly interactive. It's a really powerful system and it's so rewarding to see players stop and spend time considering their options in the shop. Two things I'd love to explore more here are:
1) teaching the shop (it's tricky by nature and takes people a while to figure out ... but once they do it's magic!)
2) testing class synergies (during the jam I just kept quickly playing through and seeing how things felt, but I imagine there are smarter ways to explore combinations quickly at higher levels)
Which autobattlers are you enjoying most?
Another good insight on the enemies, I would have loved to get to more type and challenge levels + larger area sizes.
Again, thanks for taking the time to play and share your thoughts.