itch.io

Thanks a lot, especially for the long gameplay recording. That helps a ton - you're better at my game than me, lol.

Thanks for trying it out, and for the compliments.

>You could make the XP progression a little more obvious.
Good idea, I can add some increasing glow or more intense animation with higher tiers. The shop items have colored icons over them indicating a rarity tier, too, but I don't think those are particularly obvious, either. I just took the classic Phantasy Star rarity color scheming, but of course there's no C/B/A rankings here that actually give that info.

>I also felt like the XP progression ground to a halt after the crossbow guys show up
It seems the same way to me when I test it. I think it's because the hollow soldier enemies are too spongy, so all your money drops are covered up by a blob of them.

>The magic circle having infinite range seems a little not right
Interesting observation. I was thinking of keeping its damage lower against enemy HP scaling (right now static bullet shooting enemies don't have any scaling), but giving it an increasing period of stun or slowness so you can use it for better crowd control. I have stuns & knockback implemented, but I think right now the only weapon that does that is the upgraded magic circle (like 1% chance to get from a chest, lol) which pulls enemies to the center.

Thanks for playing it!

I'm going to make the pause indefinite & at-will, since it's buggy & annoying everyone (including me, lol). I mentioned this in my reply to Gatherdev in the general, but I'm going to make the progress bar much more obvious when it's filled - a jingle & much more prominent animation.

The issue with a "forced" Survivors style pause in this game, is that it's a bit more shmuppy than most of those, so getting paused, then kicked off once you pick an upgrade is a recipe for taking unfair damage.

Chests will also get a proper animation & probably a manual click-to-open thing in that box on the right. I was thinking about "key" items you can get which will improve your loot tier out of chests, so you could want to save them sometimes.

Thanks for trying it!

You can hold down left mouse to shoot automatically, but I am going to add an toggle option since Myrmidon doesn't really lose anything by stopping attacks. The second character gains damage & loses speed for every continuous manual attack, so it's an option because of gameplay variations like that.

I'm definitely going to make the shopping pause infinite & activatable at any time, since that's a common complaint and a bit buggy anyway.

Rat wave density will go down, since that was just a test on pattern spawning, and I'm going to tune damage across the board with enemy HP since I haven't given that any work yet.

Losing gems to the bottom of the screen is a common complaint, but it's definitely something that requires some strategy the player movement. I think I'll slightly increase the base pickup range & make its upgrades more effective, as well as some uncommon "powerup" drops that will suck all gems towards you.

A pleasure to play, as always. I honestly have nothing bad to say, it's really coming along. Keep at it, man. It's fun.

Lots of interesting pieces that can hopefully be put together in a cool game. Awesome art and great details on everything both graphics & interaction-wise.

I think I figured out all the controls, but having them on the game page at this point would be helpful. I couldn't find a way to restore MP at the home base, so I just tested out moves and then got myself killed. Not sure if there was.

The main attack requires jumping, so that really made me pine for a double-jump & a way to angle the shurikens downward. I didn't find all the items that other guy did, so maybe that's already an upgrade? It's an idea, regardless.

The game itself is pretty neat. The problem is, it's impossible to figure out what you're supposed to do input-wise, lol. The ESC key (my muscle memory default for closing menus in strategy games) quits to desktop, which is not ideal. For the phase changes, it'd probably solve all the problems me and the other guy mentioned by having a GUI appear on its own with the fight, end turn, etc options. It seems that already happens when you end your move, but not in other cases, which is confusing.

As for the design of the intro, it really wasn't appealing just taking turns to walk down a hall while you watch AI having fun fighting on the other wise of a wall, lol. Maybe that makes sense narratively, but feeding the player gradually bigger tasks rather than just moving around & spectating is ideal for a reason.

The UI and everything is really snappy & satisfying once you figure it out, though, same for the combat effects & all that. Tactics games aren't really my thing, so I didn't play a long time. Those were my first impressions, though.

Comfy. I played for about half an hour, and I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot. Did you make the music? In any case, leaning in to the mood & art, this could be unique in its genre as a relaxing experience.

I see this being a very nice game when it's fleshed out with more enemies, rooms, features, etc. I think your artstyle would be incredible in this with a few frames of animation on everything. I love the character portrait, she's very cute.

Some small issues I found that I hope help:

• The interaction button (which was my first choice to advance the intro) just skipped the entire thing. Having a confirmation to skip by a prompt + a second press/holding would be good.
• All audio buses start very loud until you go to the options and touch their respective slider, at which point the volume is properly set. Just need to initialize those properly.
• The menu selection buttons are honestly too cacophonous. The menu theme is really nice, but scrolling through the options really ruins the mood, lol.
• Having the attack sound be piano keys somewhat clashes with the background music, which is piano. Maybe a different instrument for the attacks, like a harp?
• It seems like the player's hurtbox is too big, or maybe capsule-shaped, which led to some unexpected damage.

Thanks for trying it out. Yeah, definitely going to lighten up enemy density & add more bullet patterns to dodge. Spamming enemies is easier, so I went with that for demo day, lol.

Thanks :)

I actually meant to decrease the density so you don't need an upgraded staff or magic missile to get through without damage. So that'll be made a bit more fair.

Thanks for trying it out.

Yeah, I'm still tuning speed as it pertains to gameplay - the scroll speed, bullets, and enemies all need to work well together, and I haven't really given it thought among all the other stuff going on yet. Pretty much everyone says the player needs to be faster, so that helps.

The archer shooting speed was actually a bug, lol, it's fixed in the build I'm working on currently (they also only shoot when they're on-screen, now).

Another thing that isn't uploaded yet: when you get enough money to buy from the shop, the game automatically gives you pause time when your mouse reaches the GUI on the right. 

And similar to the speed, I made all those enemy values & spawn patterns in ~20 minutes before I uploaded; I'm definitely considering a better curve!

Played a bit for the time I had free, it was fun and I want to play more.

No real complaints except that the font is pretty hard to read.

Thanks for checking it out. :)
I realized it was absurd having to buy items live when I added all the enemy types & spawn patterns today, lol. I'll probably do like a slow-mo feature you can activate on command each time you get enough cash.

No worries, I just wanted to submit something playable, but it isn't quite tuned to be "playable". No balance, debug level, not many graphical effects for items, no info, etcetera. Thanks for trying it out & recording, though :)

I'm away for the weekend but I'm looking forward to trying it out! Looks like a lot of good work has been put in to it.

You've gotta alt-f4 and relaunch the game. Solo indie developer, prease understandu.

But yeah the balance is all out of whack and it's missing tons of necessary features, but it's a functional foundation! I'll be working hard on it in the months to come.