itch.io

First off, I would like to say I really appreciate you recording gameplay with commentary. Seeing people play is important indirect feedback on it's own - very useful.

I was going to write a lot, addressing things you were mentioning, and what you wrote in the comment  but I realized it would probably make a lot of sense to show how I play myself.

https://litter.catbox.moe/yc7g8f.mp4

I played from the start to pretty much the same point you did.

Let me clarify some things:

• There is an option to play with unlimited time. I try to show it in the video. It's in Hub Area => Dungeon Location => Time Limit tab.
• It's a shame you cancelled the first dungeon run. It only had 3 rooms between The Entrance room, and The Magic Mirror room (that's the easy level that is "impossible to fail").
• The Dungeon is the only "level", other location in the hub serve different purposes. Dungeons are generated based on custom templates. The longer you play the harder templates get unlocked.
• You don't have to complete all objectives. It's best to always return to the entrance before time runs out.

I get what you mean by the tutorial being very verbose. It's a lot of mechanics, and information to digest for players. I was told multiple times the tutorial takes a while to get through, so I don't really want to expand on it even more (I cut out rooms from the tutorial, and split it in two parts).

All dungeons are actually beatable with no mana/no jump abilities, but having them gives more options.

Given all cutscenes, tutorials and extra reading it takes a while for players to get to the core gameplay loop. I don't want to bore them with very easy dungeon rooms that still feel like train wheels (beginner templates already don't have bigger rooms, and vertical rooms).

One of the things I have planned for future it to have a practice mode, where already discovered rooms can be replayed on their own, so players can figure out how they want to proceed through them. I hope that and the option to play with unlimited time (but at the cost of far less gold) is going to help with the initial learning.

I'm interested what you think about those ideas, and if my video clears up some things on how to play.