The firebreak nature of this game feels like it should be a whole genre. I don't know if I've seen something as focused on logistical horror as this before, and it feels like a really obvious theme.
The level where Covemonty is connected to three ice cubes is bizarrely glitchy, and I don't know the intended solution or if it's actually possible. Glitch specifics: pushing a block into the water makes the ice able to push it further somehow?
Edit: Okay it probably wasn't a glitch, just very poorly documented.
Very pretty, but the fencing was sufficiently obtuse that I died a lot and lost track of the atmosphere. Also, I don't know what the hint for the lockbox is, although it's probably something to do with the teardrop symbol on the sun painting and the four dots on the melted armor - but the group portrait looked like a hint, and apparently wasn't? And I'm not sure whether the cube shield was a hint for that or the alchemy lab. The interface was too annoying to brute force, though.
And I didn't find a use for the heated blanket. I'm guessing you have four routes past the monster, and they are swordfighting, music, poisoned meat, and meat-plus-a-meal. Maybe swordfighting doesn't work? It seems a shame that only one obstacle has multiple intended solutions.
I also wonder if this had some influence on Nowhere Stars, or if it's merely convergent evolution/shared influence from Dark Souls. The less-obviously-doomed ending was still pretty weird for suggesting you need brighter light, though. And I'm really surprised that the bells can actually hold back the precession of the sun, rather than just shielding the locals from its influence to some degree.
A considerable refinement on Demonbones, which I played second. I quite liked this.
(A way to find out what pieces actually do before taking or not taking them might be nice, but it's probably not essential at this deck size and game length. I think I'd enjoy a multiplayer version.)
The last puzzle was frustrating - I figured out roughly what needed to happen, took ages trying to make it work, and then solved it by accident - but the ending was kind of charming.
I was initially interested because the thumbnail looked like a good match for a Millennial Scarlet game.
...Reading more deeply, no, this game's about trying to solve demonic catastrophes because you're the only ones who can, despite the fact that this will draw government attention and the government basically always presumes people who come to its attention are subversive elements (whom it should, coincidentally, enslave). Millennial Scarlet is about living in a world where the American government claims to have won a war with Hell, has outsourced most building exorcisms to the moderately incompetent private sector, and is generally a lot more boring and frustrating than scary, even when they're being super shady.
They state that they corrupt Villagers but don't explicitly specify that it's only villagers, and it's one of those things that are hard to keep track of during the transition from a friendlies-who-tell-the-truth-and-enemies-who-lie paradigm to a friendly/unfriendly-versus-truthful/lying four-option matrix, deserving of special highlighting I think. I also missed that the Poisoner only targets cards right next to it initially, possibly because the terminology wasn't standardized with the # Cards Away abilities.
I think what I'm saying is that a glossary/rules reminder guide would be helpful. :)
I think there needs to be a much more obvious reminder that Outcasts can't be corrupted, then. It'd go a long way toward explaining why I went from winning perfectly to dying very frequently when the Poisoner showed up.
I'm trying to download the game and it's telling me that the download failed? I've tried downloading both the Linux and Windows versions; neither has worked.
Wait what? Not just the immediately adjacent cards? That was not at all obvious from the Alchemist's description, and makes him much more powerful.
My confusion remains; why is the Plague Doctor not corrupted, despite being next to a Pooka? It doesn't have the Corrupted flag, and is stating accurately that Alchemist is not corrupted. Are Plague Doctors, undocumentedly, immune to Corruption?
What happened here? Do multiple Corruptions cancel out, making it so the Plague Doctor's corruption undid the Pooka's? Or is it actually that coruptors can only work if they're revealed before their neighbors? I'm deeply confused.
(Forgot to send a bug report while I was still on the screen. Sorry.)
Caliban isn't a base license, but I feel that if a suit of power armor can be built for consistently inflicting knockback on things ten times its size, the Ferrous Whip should probably be able to pull things uphill.
Seems fair. I do hope you keep the dev files backed up, though, or even release them as-is - the previews we've gotten are pretty cool, and would be neat to see finished up someday. Maybe someone else could pick them up, or you could find yourself with a bunch of spare time one summer a decade from now? Even if you don't, properly mothballing projects you don't think you'll pick up again does let you self-plagarize more easily for other work.
It's a jumpscare that renders the game unplayable (presumably unless you reload), and there's also an interruption of "be careful, you are progressing the timeline" at the 666 mark.
Fun concept, good art, secret boss too hard given the rest of it, can't refight secret boss after final boss because final boss room has no route back to the rest of the game for some reason. Also, no good way to deduce where targets for Spark are since partial reveals aren't a thing, so you're lucky to do 1 damage per AP per target.
Won with all but one star (needed to farm health/strength/agility on the second boss at 4 stars). I think the game would be more fun if you could discard items in a manner other than leaving them on a loot grid; there were as many as several things I'd have liked to get but couldn't because I didn't have enough free space to get rid of the thing I wanted to swap them for.
They're dull colors/textures with minimal borders, which is kinda ugly. That was popular in free browser RPGs fifteen years ago, so it might be a good choice if your game is deliberately riffing on those, but I don't think that's your intention here.
In the Battle Network series, tiles and buttons were simple, but careful color choices and some slightly ornamented borders did a lot to make them look good. MMBN Chrono X is mostly what I'm thinking of here, because it's fully displaced my memories of the originals. Here's an example, if you like: https://www.mmbnchronox.com/news/126
Well, I really want to play a decent MMBN-like, but I'm afraid the bikini armor is turning me away from this one. It's a shame, because the logo looks pretty decent!
Another thing that would help the aesthetic considerably is nicer art for the buttons and battlefield tiles, and maybe a different font for the stats and such. They take up quite a lot of the screen - and show most of the gameplay information - so it's weirdly important for those to look good.
Edit: I'd missed that rerolls keep you on the same depth (meaning the same die) and landing in the golf-hole changes dice. Might be worth adding a description.
Idlewild doesn't seem to reset self-damage properly, at least if it's been damage-buffed. Problematic if something has been Rile Up.
The Bat badge may be related too.
(This is probably demo-only. Also, it was nonobvious from the game itself that the full version was available yet. Also also, I think a cool Modifier would be "start with Countdown Badge: must equip, makes all stones clear, adds Streak Ender to equipped spell". Probably rank-neutral?)
When I try to play from Firefox on desktop I get a firefox-UI popup saying:
html-classic.itch.zone Error: Couldn't load project data at path ".". Is the .pck file missing?
If you've renamed the executable, the associated .pck file should also be renamed to match the executable's name (without the extension).
and the game window just says
indirect call to null
in what looks like Unity's UI.
I've tried allowing cookies from itch.zone through uMatrix, which was the only thing it was blocking besides googletagmanager, but that didn't fix it even on a hard reload.
Okay, more nitpicks from an interested stranger who didn't actually know about this in time to back the Kickstarter:
*The dark-blue windows with light-blue trim look great. The light-blue with dark-blue trim, not so much. You probably have a much better idea of how to fix that than I do; gold borders feel insufficient.
--(Also y'all are almost certainly already familiar with the OKLCH color picker stuff, but if you aren't, possibly you'd find it interesting.)
*The zoomed-in menu icons for mech selection feel awkward. Probably the high-effort solution is a bunch of little icons, maybe possible to simplify to military-role/'rank weight and movement types' icons?
*The pointier mech cards in the combat UI feel less Obviously An Overlay. Presumably you'll be tinkering with this anyway.
Fall damage is negated when falling into water.
One way to deal with it, although walking an ultra off a skyscraper and being fine because you landed in a puddle is kinda funny.
So I finally made it through at least 1950 of the 1973 pictures in the Game UI Database's Dialogue page - it's being weird, so I don't know what 23 I'd be missing - but I haven't found the one I was most looking for, namely the snarking about a coffeeshop customer demanding satisfaction with a katana for not being allowed to have 10 espresso shots at once. Do you recall what that one's from?
