Back again with Clessidra! I played a few runs and actually beat a few monsters this time, although the bear killed me more than anything. I think I am getting the hang of it and the tutorial was a really good addition. That being said it still feels rather difficult starting out, is there a way to make the first few fights easier? I liked that the timer didn't start until you moved and the question rooms add a good layer to the game. What are you planning on adding next?
Glad to hear back from you after the changes I made, in particular I'm happy to hear that you found the tutorial useful.
> is there a way to make the first few fights easier?
The problem with making the first fights too easy is that they risk becoming a formality for an experienced player when starting a run, and I fear that this initial downtime will impact the long term replayability (which is what I'm trying to get right the most). I'll keep working on making fights easier at lower difficulties; in particular I want to make some enemies' moves and abilities, like combo absorbs, proportional to the selected difficulty. In the thread the idea of having a puzzle mode, where new players can practice matching without it feeling like a tutorial, also came up, and I'm definitely considering that as well.
>What are you planning on adding next?
As far as mechanics go, the last big thing I'm planning on adding is wits (consumables that have an effect on the board). I already added a testing version of them to the game, they're the three buttons at the bottom right next to the statuses; I just need to see if they make sense, and if yes, design a few more of them, make them available thorough the run and add them to menus, tutorials and help texts. For QoL, I don't have much else planned, other than fleshing out the statistics page and having a summary of the run when you die/win.
After that, the demo version of the game will pretty much be completed! For the final version, I want to make a run longer by adding another 2~3 floors (after you defeat the current boss you'd advance to the second floor instead of winning), which is going to involve making a boatload of new enemies, relics, starting bonuses and events (I'm unsure whether I should add other orb types, I'm still considering it).
As far as difficulty goes in my experience most games are easy at first to have a low barrier of entry to the game itself because nothing is worse than a new player putting the game down after dying in the first few minutes. Roguelikes like slay the spire, ring of pain and even non-roguelikes like dark souls all start off easy allowing new players to clear massive amounts of content in the first run and encouraging them to do another run to do better. For experienced players these games are easy in the beginning but allows them to perfect strategy and focus on starting a build, although it is still possible to die even for them. I only bring these examples up because they have massive replayability while also having easy beginnings.
All the plans sounds great and new floors are a must! Best of luck getting it done :)
