Super cute art and good concept. I love the roguelite elements and the tradeoff between health and money. There could be some balance tweaks (it is really, really hard to die which makes the pace of the game very slow) and I'm not 100% sure what the objective is (getting as far as possible? But it's not super clear which floor you're on--I know the exit cost goes up the further you're in but a clear floor indicator would be great for measuring progress). But all in all this is a great basis with a lot of potential to build on and makes excellent use of the limitation.
Viewing post in Dodge'Ems and Dragons jam comments
Hello! Yeah, a few people have brought up the easy difficulty (what comes of attempting a genre I have no prior proficiency playing I suppose! What seems lightly challenging to me ends up being a walk in the park for a wider audience.)
The game’s objective is definitely to ‘get as far as possible’; though I think it would have improved the game a lot to build on the story hook of ‘adventurers trying to pay off their debts’ mentioned in the description, and use reaching an amount of gold as a win state. As for dungeon floors, we were definitely hoping to make variations on the dragons and dungeons to imply they were different hoards, but there did not end up being art budget for that - so this is in fact the same dragon in the same dungeon every time, that you are just continuously robbing. What can I say; you’re playing some greedy folks!
Thanks a lot for giving it a go, and the kind words! (and I’m in much agreement about the lovely art, all credit to my teammate there!)
I actually did die the first time I played, and it does become challenging if you stay on a floor for a long time--I think what it is is that the exist cost is low so you can keep ducking out with a decent amount of profit and keep upgrading until you become nigh invincible. I LOVE your idea with the amount of gold as a win state, since that would really make you have to weigh the pros of staying in the cave to get more money while the difficulty also increases vs escaping, getting upgrades (but setting you back against the win state) and knowing that future failure is more costly since the exit cost increases with every attempt (I can't remember off the top of my head if this was already the case or not, but the starting difficulty gradually ramping up as you attempt more times would also highly incentivize risking staying on a floor a long time and somewhat counteract your upgrades too). I think you 100% have the right idea with that!! I actually liked robbing the same dragon in the same dungeon again and again, kinda explains why it gets harder to exit + any difficulty increase every time. The dragon is getting tired of your greedy butt :)