itch.io

• Very polished feature rich game. I feel it could benefit from general hints and tooltips.

• Then again, perhaps this game is stylistically tailored towards those who enjoy a frustrating experience where you figure it out through trial and error. 
  • I found it quite frustrating and I feel it might lose some people due to this. 
  • I think the game could benefit from some hints after a certain number of deaths in the early waves of The Mines, eg. try retiring early to save up cash for the perks.
• I didn't realize  the list of things next to the levels were perks and that the number next to them was the resource cost to unlock.
  •  I also did not realize that you have to click the number to buy the perk. 
• I found the loop of farming the first stages of The mines to unlock perks feels a bit grindy.

•  For me it was impossible to progress beyond wave 3 without unlocking a 3rd layer to stack in.

  
  

  • An idea would be to introduce some of the power-ups in the early stages when the game is more difficult to have a less steep early difficulty curve.
  •  It was also not obvious to me how some of the power-ups worked so tooltips would help here as well. 

• I feel that the music in this type of game(in the first level) could benefit from more variety or a random selection from a pool of tracks, to avoid a feeling of repetitiveness and listening fatigue. This is because you spend a long time grinding in each level which already adds a lot of friction for the player so the music variety could be used to release or reduce some of this. 

• I think this game has a lot of potential and the visuals are great. I just struggled a bit with the early game balance 

Edit:

• Played level 2 and enjoyed it a lot more. I feel the attack 2 ahead or  range3 are the most powerful as they allow you to not drop hearts while dropping resources thus get further. This disincentivized me from picking other power-up.

• The shield feels weak as it only blocks 1 hit. The extra damage paired with the  attack 2 ahead and the range3 on its own, actually allowed me to clear the second level twice.

• The music in this level felt more like something I could listen to for longer periods.

Edit2:

• In my opinion the range3 is by far the most powerful and might be a bit too so. I managed to get to wave 36 on level 3 with ease. As long as you don't make a mistake I think you can keep going without dropping a single heart.

• Overall I would say once you add the power-ups it's pretty fun, the beginning is just a bit rough. This might be because I initially played it at a pit of a slower pace, trying to think my way through. The art is quite lovely and I came to appreciate it especially in the golem design the more I played.

• This game was fun. I played a bunch. The shark jumping over the boat to attack it was amusing and the tentacles coming up kraken style were a great touch. 

• I felt that the boat was initially too tanky for the dangerous water as I was able to get back to safety without much effort.  Could have been cool to have some kind of boost features with a stamina or limited bar.

• Didn't notice much of a difference to speed with the engine upgrade.  

• I found the coastal zone and pelagic zone to be a bit too easy to fish in. Could be interesting to make them a bit harder at the Coastal zone and Pelagic zone as everything up to the Benthic zone is quite doable with no upgrades. I managed to get to the Benthic zone, grab a couple of fish and leave without dying with zero upgrades. 

• Overall a pretty fun game. Interesting way to integrate the theme.

Bugs:

• Spamming the spacebar to drop and pick up the net makes the game show you are still in the zone in which you started spamming it in. It switches to displaying the correct zone once you stop spamming it. 

• The fish caught counter seems to not be displaying what I caught. Checked before and after selling and both were 0. You can see your fish in fishmonger though

• When you die and replay it doesn't reset your Total Money, Current Balance or Upgrades.

• Loved the art. The buzzer sound was a little loud and  jarring.  

• Narrative and humor is fun, however I found the gameplay feels a wee bit unintuitive.

• Perhaps a help tooltip that shows up if that player fails too many times on the first level with an explanation of how the game works or a hint or two would have improved the experience.  

• I felt the defeat screen a tad too quick for slower readers. Also, I think I broke the timer by going back and forth in the middle of the line on the first level

• Graphics and audio are very clean.

• UI sounds are quite satisfying. Very polished and well executed. The game is quite intuitive. 

• Fitted well with the theme. 

• Could be neat to have more emphasis (like a specific sound or graphical effect ) when you get a max dice roll and when going over the target. 

• Would be nice if one could drag to select the dice (by round 14 I had 19 dice) 

• The any 8 or 6 rolled counted 3 times is very powerful and snowballs very quickly. 

• Once you get sufficient money and dice I don't know if it's possible to lose as you can buy re-rolls using your interest and your money never goes down. By round 14 I had $256 44 re-rolls and 19 dice.

• Would be interesting to scale the risk reward with the amount of money and dice the player has. Perhaps adding something to get the player to wager or spend more money or even dice the better they are doing so there is a risk of losing it.