itch.io

I just completed my first reincarnation, so I was still in early game.

However, I do believe some stat balancing is necessary. Spending 500+ xp each to get one maximum singular fighter is not a good balance. That's like 0.25% increase in stats, it's very negligible.

Edit: I also notice that the swarm follows my mouse, which is good news. However, it's also a bad news as the swarm doesn't engage in attacking with enemies. Some swarm units would travel pass the enemy instead, leaving their back wide open for free kill. 

You could argue that it's for encirclement and stuff. But would my units encircle correctly? No, it'd try to punch into the center and get encircled by enemy instead.  

Heart of iron 4 has a mechanic called "frontline" where units will fill the gaps, if similar mechanic could be introduced into the game then managing my placement would be less infuriating.

The danger arrow is nice, but I didn't know the hitbox would be that wide. Giving a player an indicator how large the danger will be should be fine.

Perhaps making the players doing some puzzle like pushing box to make bridge, or button to open the door to make pheromone would be nice. 

Maybe player need to go to the solution, they need to toggle a switch. Which would cause the return path to be blocked so players have to toggle the switch again to return

Suggestion for improvement in case these ideas aren't considered yet. Feel free to disregard these suggestions if they aren't what you have in mind. No hard feeling :3

- Improvement on bot:
+ Currently, the bot controlling other weapons aren't the brightest. They seems to target the closest the closest enemy, which is not ideal for weapons like mortar which benefit from grouped enemies, nor missile which took a long time to get to their target. I would like a way to change their targeting.

- Terrain: 
+ Currently, the terrain is monotonous. There's no terrain effect, no river, swamp, hill, building, cover, elevation, etc.... Having different terrain each round may give the players different experience.

- Units deployment:
+ Currently, units are placed in a line by the game. Which is nice for basic game, but if you were to implement terrain system, then perhaps allowing players to deploy their troops where they want is not a bad idea.

- Multiple attack directions:
+ Currently, enemy units come from one direction, but I wonder if you could scale the difficulty by gradually introducing more directions in which the enemy could attack from. It'll force player to diverge their intention.

Complete the game in 38 loops (total time was 1h15m). It's a nice puzzle, I definitely faced some troubles trying to find more efficient routes. Some routes are matters of execution and I simply didn't know the technique for it.

Area that you could improve the game in my opinion will be a table/graph of your previous loops like:

This will make it much easier for players to compare runs, understand where optimization is needed and determine if they were correct.

Thanks for correction!

"Collect Life Essence" only give 1 essence upon completion instead of 40 as display

I didn't know holding "Ctrl" will reveal nodes' details (including completed ones). I wish I knew about this before taking screenshots for shadow comprehension source guide. :0

Ver 0.3.1 Shadow Comprehesion source guide

This is intend to help newer players navigate the map for shadow comprehension sources. Let me know if I'm missing any.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSOOOubU8f1R3U4O5md2PZapcoYpxXUVj4dFxbTIwOXxRFVGR-I31BujPZVz3NkNw/pub

After completing "Pick Up Litter" node, I got the favour text for "Kick Plotted Plant"?

Anyhow, finished Empiric, Ashened Tongued and got lucky with Screaming Mandrake to finish 1 of the 2 rng one

As of version 0.2.0, I got 4 out of 8 Epithets:

- Forever Forsaken

- Shadow Touched

- Foxified

- Bearer of Perfect Reason

As for others, I find them unachievable or too luck based.

- Empiric is simply impossible to achieve currently, the inspiration points from "appreciate artwork" is 4, "Draw on the Statue's Face" is 1. Meanwhile, to get arcanophobia, "Analyze Classical Theories" requires 1, "Reframe Classical Theories" requires 3 and finally "Reject Contemporary Mana Studies" requires 2. 

- Acquire of Tastes needs Screaming Mandrake and I'm not too keen grinding on that luck 

- Liquidator of the Final Ledger requires 1 million which I can only assume it requires selling the Screaming Mandrake.

- Apotheosized, I have hypothesized that it was locked behind "Mediate Even Deeper", so I decided to try maxing it out. After carefully managing the hunger and the fatigue, I managed to max that 99/99, which unlock "Seek Enlightenment" with 0/999. Unsurprisingly, I wasn't even close to finish that 999, my hunger and fatigue was at near bottom after 99 "Mediate Even Deeper"

Anyhow, I would recommend you showing a grey node or translucent node where the players had been to. For example, if I reached "Enter the Main Hall" and I decided to reincarnate, the game should show the path leading to "Enter the Main Hall". This will help newer players track where they have been.

Currently, Shadow Comprehension becomes relatively useless at 280+, would recommend adding something like "Add Calmness by 0.1*Shadow Comprehension" or something like that.

After finishing the 99 'mediate even deeper', you'll see "Seek enlightenment" with 0/999. I forgot how much time it cost but it's definitely impossible to complete in the current 0.2.0 version