itch.io

Sorry if this comment sounds a bit harsh.

The key defining aspect of the roguelike/roguelite genre is heavily randomized gameplay. Traditionally, this means randomly-generated levels, though modern games will sometimes instead go for randomized modifiers such as power-ups. This game doesn't have that; the levels are pre-made and you get to choose which stat gets lowered.

The ranged enemies also don't feel fun to fight. It's often impossible to get in range to attack them without taking a hit because the passages are so narrow and your hitbox is so big.

The lack of ways to heal feels very punishing.

Sacrificing damage seems to be excessively harmful; you start off able to one-shot everything and losing that is a huge penalty. I focused more on lowering attack and movement speed because those seemed to matter less.

This game feels like pure luck. The only player input is deciding whether to brew or scrap, but even that has an element of chance to it.

It could be much more fun if there were choices to be made, like if you could pick which treasure you get after a room. If I'm a Trickster, I need attack speed to stack my slow as fast as possible, so I shouldn't be forced to get a Chainmail that slows my attacks.

Just had multiple runs in a row where no higher-tier life support upgrades were offered, making it feel like it was literally impossible to get past a certain points. It feels unfair, and possibly unintended, that these upgrades are so rare when they're so important.

I did have a few runs at first where I got better life support at a decent rate, but after one run where I nearly won (only lost because I didn't understand the Antimatter Drive) they just stopped appearing entirely. I only get upgrades like the Overclock and Emergency bonuses, but no actual base capacity increases.

This is a great concept for a game. The big flaw is that progress can feel a bit slow at first. It's frustrating when whatever you're doing gets interrupted by the demon.

My suggestion? Add achievements for completing certain quest lines, with a large one-time bonus to progress in certain stats. For example, becoming an ally of the elves could make it so on subsequent playthroughs, you can learn elven language much faster along with a bonus to precision; helping the fairy could give you a bonus to alchemy.

This would solve the main point of frustration by giving the player a clear road to progress. Even if you can't beat the demon on this loop, you still accomplished something significant if you get an achievement.

Okay, so I misunderstood how this works. I didn't realize I could only rate games if I participated in the jam.

With this information, I managed to finish the game! It was a fun game, I'll give it a good rating in the game jam when voting opens.

There were a lot of typos, but not so many that it was hard to understand what was being said. I get that in a game jam, actually making the game work is a higher priority than having a perfect script.

The main criticism I have is that the rules aren't explained very well. In particular, I didn't realize until I saw your comment that the same skills can stack, and that you need a certain level of some skills to pass some areas (fight power, knowledge for the druids, holy power for the vampire). This should be an easy fix with just a few tweaks to the dialogue, though; if, as you said, the cause of death is made clearer, that would help get this across.

Also, this is just a nitpick, but I don't understand why it's described as a roguelike. I get that it's a very loosely-defined term, but the key defining element of the genre is randomness, whether in terms of level layouts or upgrade selection. I'd categorize this more as a puzzle game instead.

I know that looks like a lot of negativity, but they're really minor issues; just polishing up the writing would make this go from good to great. I truly had a fun time figuring out how to get past each area.

I managed to get rid of the vines in the west and east forests, but my expeditions still die there without leaving a message explaining why.

Thank you for understanding, unlike the other commenter here.

It can be hard to understand how hurtful the use of slurs can be if you've never been part of a minority group that's often dehumanized by such language, but I hope you can eventually learn how to empathize with people whose life situation is different from yours.

Or if you are part of a minority group but haven't been harassed with slurs, I don't wish for you to become the target of such insults, but I hope you can come to understand why certain people might be more sensitive to such language than you are.

I was having fun until Abra called me the r-word during the 5-peg tutorial... I get that she's supposed to be an ass, but there's a difference between mild insults and actual slurs.

I really hope this is just a misunderstanding of how offensive that word is, and that it'll be removed from the game.

I got 26:51

The knife is in the first level. The trick is that spikes don't kill you if you touch them from the sides or gently drop down on them (while standing on a ledge next to a spike pit, press down and jump). Once you get it, you can kill Nazi fuckheads by walking into them from behind or dropping from above.

Nice game! Not too scary for me but the ending kinda got to me.

I made a TV Tropes page for it.

Maybe it was just really bad luck on my part.

It feels like the odds of busting are actually much higher than what's displayed.

This is a good autobattler. It'll be better when other classes are available.

One thing I've found that's not immediately obvious is that the 1-star and 3-star bonuses for upgrading equipment are permanent, even if you're not currently using that item, so it's worth it to invest into refining multiple items.

That said, I don't understand what the "+3 Weapon/Armor Tree" perks do. EDIT: Figured it out, there's a limit to how many equipment upgrades you can have and this increases it.

The music only plays in my left ear.

One thing I didn't like was the random palette modifier, I thought it'd be a harmless one but some of the color choices actually caused me physical pain IRL. It also seems like it'd cause issues for colorblind players.

Aside from that, it's a very interesting game concept, inverting the formula of picking random upgrades into random downgrades instead.

This is a very well-made game with some clever puzzles.

That said, I don't like the randomized order of the tile types. I get that the point is to make the player adapt and not follow one solution, but some levels feel like they DO have one solution, and you're out of luck if you get the wrong tiles. I'm convinced that 3-13 is impossible unless you get very lucky with the right order of tiles.

Basically, the puzzles need to be much more forgiving if you want them to actually have multiple solutions.

But the graphics and sound are great! It doesn't look or feel like a game jam game at all.

Because the tank is out of fuel so you can't drive it.

There's a huge delay between the music and when you're supposed to hit the keys. It makes not very fun. If you fixed that, and maybe added more songs, this could be a very good game.

Thank you! I didn't find Alice and Joey, which is where I was stuck.

I'm stuck at the part where you have to make a suit of armor. Where's the location of all the parts? I swear I've inspected every object in the game several times...

I don't remember the exact values for each animal, but I think the bug may be because I had no blank hats (since usually, touching a blinking circle starts an event that consumes a hat).

Found a bug. After giving up on the search, I followed the path and stepped onto a blinking circle. Then the game threw an exception and crashed.