itch.io

Thanks for playing again! Sorry for the boss bug, indeed he should sacrifice his minions, not the player.

Each treasure is supposed to be a puzzle solvable with little to no damage taken, but can be very easy if you have certain cards.
For example the one with the flaming stairs with basic deck goes something like: shield up to 3, shift to the ledge, walk up the ledge and restore shield every turn, shift to the safe ledge, kill the ice enemy (douses fire), jump to the newly made safe tile, shield up, walk the rest of the flame path to the treasure.

Or if you have some substance flask in you items, or a rain spell, or a long teleport it becomes trivial.

I'm adding more mobility (the new Untether card grants free movement for example), but also I might add interactible elements that will make the player want to move more.

Thanks for feedback! Cheers!

1. I probably got confused, I thought Melvin was supposed to move the already deployed character. I guess I must have misread it, but a visual cue here would maybe help.
3. I think there are points to be made about generic fantasy being boring, but safe. There was this old design approach I recall, that 80% of your thing should be familiar to the user, and 20% should be new, so they don't feel overwhelmed and run away. For most players going beyond the great leaders should probably be treated as showing them the "new". I think Civ does real work not to feel like a history class, which unfortunately for most people wouldn't be a positive. I honestly have no idea where the balance lies though. 

Thank you for playing and for this very detailed feedback. Now that I'm adding more overworld map stages I am planning to redesign a lot of things, your thoughts will be very helpful. Thanks!

Thanks for playing and for the recording! I'm sorry about your kernel, I will test with Steam Deck, maybe that will help me catch Linux-based issues. Good feedback, I will take it into account! Thank you.

Thanks for giving it a try! I need to work on a better hook and snapier tutorial I think!

The video is very helpful. Will try to fix the crash asap.

EDIT: Crash fixed.

It's a vibe, although I have no idea how to play it.

1. I feel like I'm piloting a big mech, that's a huge plus. The variety of weapons, the battlefield with artillery barrage falling down, the aiming HUDs, the refit hangar, it all feels right for me.
2. I have no idea how to play, I tried shelling hostiles from afar, but there is no feedback if it's effective, if I get to close I just die.

Anyway, I like mechs, I am looking forward to seeing what you do with this.
Good luck!

I tried it a bit and found it very confusing, but nonetheless very pretty too.

- I don't think it is a dead end, but you seemed to have focused on making it very juiced and artful, before establishing a clean and understandable gameplay loop (at least in my short playthrough I was very confused). I think it can be salvaged and made great, the concept of assigning characters to trigger events in the city is good. the visuals of how these events happen are phenomenal imo.
- I have no idea what's going on, a tutorial or a low complexity start would do wonders here (one or two characters, one or two locations, maybe an item, a simple starting narrative)
- The art is good, but probably could be a bit more readable. Everything seems a bit hectic now, that could be a good thing probably, if I understood the underlying logic first.

I'm not experienced with this kind of games, so please take what I say with a grain of salt.
Good luck!

Progress since DD68

Big changes:

• Controller support and keyboard shortcuts.
• Difficulty progression and unlocks across runs.
• Simple tutorial.
• Achievements and stats.

Minor changes:

• More VFX and camera shake.
• Granular mid-combat saves.
• Combat restarts for Insight.
• Polish localization (text only).
• Past run deaths marked in encounters.
• Some new cards and gifts.

Thanks for playing!

It looks like there is a lot of stuff implemented already, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get far enough to see it.
My first playthrough I managed to beat the tutorial level, then I got a bit confused by shop options, and accidently bought a health pack instead of repairing the ship. Next level I got killed. I tried restarting serveral times after that, but the tutorial kept breaking for me.

Some thoughts:
1. It is very easy to break the tutorial. I noticed that just tabing out is one way. But on my last attempt I tried to use tab only when nothing was happening, but after breaking up the first asteroid I still ended up in a limbo, with nothing happening.
2. Point management seems very unforgiving. Maybe rapair could be free? At least initally?
3. Inability to restart without the tutorial is a bummer. It seems like the game is simple enough, the tutorial really should be optional. I usually lack the attention span for that.
4. Animated border is a bit confusing, makes me think I'm moving when I'm stationary.  I know animations are nice, but maybe something pulsating instead of constant movement would be less confusing.

The game is very pretty and seems to be on the right track, at this point the tutorial seems to be more trouble than it's worth tho, at least for me.

I think it is really fun to play. I played it for about 40 minutes, managed to recruit two guys, but other things to do seem hard to accompish.

1. They keep eating worms, before I manage to get to the seashore - it would be nice to forbit certain items.
2. Some dangerous encounters/combat would be great here.
3. Crew being near death/dying needs to be more strongly signalled, only after some time I realized one of my guys is missing (starved to death)
4. Some campsite improvement/basebuilding would give the player something to work towards
5. Maybe some basic narrative to work towards would be nice too, idk
6. Initially I had no idea where to get the worms, but I guess I figured it out eventually so probably not a problem, still the resources needed for repairs seem very hard to obtain

Great job! Good luck!

I played two games against a bot. Two losses unfortunately. I liked it a lot anyhow!
Very polished. Congrats on the hard work. It feels professional and complete.

Some thoughts:
1. Not sure if Melvin Dewey card is not bugged out. Overall not being able to play cards with on play abilities you cannot trigger seems quite punishing.
2. I like it that the premade decks seem to have a theme going on, it could be maybe even stronger. It might be due to personal preference, but I find a total historical mix inferior to a more focused approach (for example old civs are better than the latest civ, because you still had some anchor in leading a particular nation etc).
3. I see the marketing potential of this game being a loophole for schoolkids to play games in history class or as homework, I am guessing it was your intention. But maybe it needs something (see point 2) to not feel like an educational game too much.

Great work. Good luck!

Thank you very much! Great insights.

I always found the .99 pricing a bit sly. I like honest numbers more, like 10 or 12. ;)

12 divides nicely for discounts too! might go for it eventually.

Damn, thanks for the advice. I definitely won't hit EA before the next demo day, but your post got me thinking to maybe do it soon after.

How would you price it? I hope to put two more bioms after the demo one (meaning 3x enemies and bosses than the demo)

I want as many players as possible, but I fear that making it too cheap might also scare some players.

Thank you!! I watched your run live and I appreciate it so so much.

I'm planning to tone down the cringe and experiment with a more serious tone.

BTW. I'm not Russian, but I'm making a kind of a soviet/modernist/brutalist underworld city as the second biome the player enters, hence the cyrillics. I tried learning the languange at some point though, with poor results. ;)

Thank you for trying it out!

Great points, I will try to flatten out the learning curve!

The style is in the works too.

Thank you for playing and the feedback! I'm glad you liked it!

I'm going to iterate on the logo and UI for sure.

I like the idea of more unpredictability when choosing the next step too.

A Dyson Sphere around the sun for example. Or an interstellar gateway. Or massive space stations of various use.

It is an extreamly pretty game! The interactions are fun too and once I started to notice them I enjoyed the combat.

It feels like it needs a tutorial and a sense of progression. Ability to learn the abilities and what counter-acts what gradually.

And maybe a variety of oponents?

Anyway, an amazing combat system + graphics.

It's fun and feels quite polished. I've completed a couple of rooms and the difficulty seemed to be well balanced for me.

Maybe the pause after receiving damage or triggering the bomba should have some animation, visual clue that this is on purpose (at least I think it is, but it looks a bit like a performance drop).

I didn't figure out what is the purpose of the flying doge companion.

It feels very good, judging by my very limited platformer experience. The ass kick description should probably mention to hold the jump key, it wasn't obvious for me.

Maybe a bit too difficult in general? (I'm pretty bad at these kind of games so maybe not.)

Ah, also the rocket jump could be more forgiving, first two tries it didn't trigger for me as I shot the rocket too late (following the standard logic of not shooting oneself in a foot with an armed warhead.)

It is very nice! Played it semi-actively until I had 1k ore/s. The only issue I had was the readablity of small/low contrast text, especially the prices of research,

I'm not sure the pirates fit the theme for me here. I'd rather have some megastucture building to strive towards, stellaris-like.

I like the idea of the martial art jrpg. I was also quite impressed by the amount of content in the game!

• I tried accessing the tutorial, but it seems broken. Unfortunately, going in blind, the combat is confusing. My tactics are basically repeating a type of attack that the opponent doesn't block, until I'm out of mana, then I block a bit, then attack again.
• I finished the quest in the gas station, by beating up one guy.
• I tried to distract the guy by the bin, but beating him up didn't help, neither did talking to him nicely.
• After the fights I seemed to be teleported somewhere random every time.
• On a second conversation about a guy with a yellow mahawk, going south:

___________________________________________

############################################################################################

ERROR in action number 1

of Other Event: User Defined 1 for object oDialogue:

Unable to find instance for object index 213

at gml_Object_oDialogue_Other_11

############################################################################################

gml_Object_oDialogue_Other_11 (line -1)

gml_Object_oDialogue_Step_0 (line -1)

Thank you for playing and for the detailed feedback!

I struggle with difficulty adjustment a bit. I was afraid I actually made it too easy this time!

Will make adjustments for the next DD! :)

Changes since DD67:

• Significant performance improvements
• Damage and push previews
• New “Inspect” context menu and improved tooltips
• Electro- and psycho-conductivity visuals
• Most items now cost 0 Energy
• Shrine now offers a choice between a new or existing card domain
• Lower overall volume
• Minor fixes and tweaks

Thanks for checking it out!

Combat feels quite satisfying, with the autoaim and all the animations, but of course it's lacking in challenge or depth at this early stage.

I like the visuals.

Looking forward to playing it again, once more features are implemented.

I like the concept, quite relaxing. I don't have much experience with the genre but here are some thoughts:

• the clicking minigame (Manajade prep) was a bit confusing initially (I thought that me clicking made the arrow yellow, not that arrow becoming yellow should make me click it, maybe a "DON'T CLICK" text would help here)
• memo minigames seemed too forgiving, I could have almost bruteforced them without actually memorizing
• I'm undecided whether the slow start of the round is good or not, on one hand it makes it chill (nice touch with the guests stopping at the cloakroom), on the other I want the points, I need my clients at their tables now
• the music minigame seemed too simple, and not very music based (solvable just by looking at the glowing bars)
• three (maybe) gliches I encountered:
  • the soundtrack stops playing after circa 10 minutes of gameplay
  • popups in the cafe (with some new unlocked stuff explainations irrc) resized/blinked on being shown
  • guest exclamation marks blinked red whenever I returned to the kitchen, seems like they should do that when the customers patience is at an end

I can see there being space for more interative dynamic abilities here. Maybe teleport could be a RMB cooldown limited ability, maybe some spells to interact with the guests.

Good luck with the project!

I really appreciate the commentary! Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback!

Great point about capping the framerate, I already made significant improvements to performance so hopefully the next demo will be more gentle on the CPUs.

Will work on progression too.

Just to clarify, it's possible that in both cases I asked at least 5 questions. It just wasn't anything insightful, that should prompt the suspect to break.

Good luck!

This is a fun concept!

It could do with some locally run LLM I think, to reduce the stiffness of the conversation (no idea how realistic is something like that technically).

I managed to get two confessions, but it felt very chaotic.

The first guy confested right away after being asked "why he's here?",

the second randomly started describing the murder after I asked him "why he's gambling?" irrc.

I enjoyed the humorous bits too.

PS. I can't even image how the name Grzegorz will be prounounced in English once the officer Pulaski appears.

Thanks for playing!

I will try to improve on that front!

Fixing the temporal blur might be tough though (although I have an idea).

I played a couple of rounds and I think you are cooking something interesting.

Some toughts:

• For me the strong part are the enemies and their round defining abilities
• Player ability part is weaker for me (but admittedly, once someone remembers what abilities do, it probably become easy)
• Maybe there is something like this later, but some sort of quick time event things happening on the tetris board could work here (something unexpected falling down, or an ability being tiggered like a note from guitar hero), may be better than the current abilities (my eyes are on the board, I cannot loose focus and look at my ability counters)
• Strong visual effects when the enemy messes around with your blocks would go a long way for readablility

Thanks for playing!

Damn, I need to somehow force variety between the runs. There is currently three options for each of the three starting fights.

Will also address the other issues (there should be info about healing golemics in the heat dmg tooltip, but need to make it pop more).

Initially I wanted to set the game in space, but decided that adding gravity to all that would be too much for me.

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you liked it!

I really need to work on the early game.

Performance on the next DD should be way better. I'm doing a major refactor now, and already seeing good results.

I will also try to deal with that crash.

I think it will be very cool when polished.

Some thoughts:

• The visuals look great, but are hard to read. It took me a while to notice the two dots on the map that are the playable missions.
• There is a lot of information on the screen, and it's hard for me to prioritize what I should focus on.
• The only tactic I came up with was releasing smoke and moving out of it after a break, I don't understand the system well enough to know what I actually have control over.
• I managed to complete the city mission, would be nice if there was a stronger indication that the objective was completed and I can extract.

Also I dig the setting and vibes as far as I red into the descriptions.

Thanks for playing!

I enjoy the dissonance of throwing in some undead nazis, a mammoth, and a golem together. The second map is going to be an underground soviet utopia-attempt gone bad.

The setting is near future, descending to the hollow earth.

Not sure how much of that is readable.

I played it through to the end and I liked it a lot!

Some thoughts:

• I'm not sure if abilities should change shortcuts mid play, even if you plan on there being more than 10 it might be easier to go beyond numerals, but keep the shortcuts static
• I played quite actively but I'm not sure if there is anything preventing a purely passive play (it might take a few more runs to get the abilities, but eventually every enemy gets auto-deleted)
• There could be a hint in the menu if there is anything purchasable in the skill tree, so I don't need to go in if there isn't
• The skill tree is hard to navigate and hard to read
• I not sure if randomness is good here or not, on one hand it rewards attentive play, on another it somehow breaks the mantric repetition, idk

Good stuff! I would like to see more of it in the future.

The enemy designs are absolutely terryfing. Especially more so, that I have no idea how to kill them with that quite limited attack.

I like the camera switch idea.

I think the concept has potential.

Neat concept and an excellent name.

Feels like there could be even more crazy play with gravity and interesting ways of traversing this hell.

Very unsettling. Got me a bit curious what stillborn monstrocity awaits there as a boss (maybe a bit disappointing there wasn't anything out of the ordinary there).

It was very unclear to me that I was looking at an overworld intially, then I was confused as to where I'm located and which nodes are open to travel.

StS style card mechanics are good, maybe 2 Strength for 0 manna seems too powerful.

Honestly a bit too unpleasant for my taste. But that probably means it's doing exactly what it was designed to do!

Great combat visuals!

Some thoughts:

• combat ui requiring two clicks to use skills is cumbersome
• a stronger visual communication whos turn it is would help
• visual distinction between a single target and mutitarget in the dots (similar to Darkest Dungeon iirc) would also go a long way
• visual communication when a character has low health could be nice
• the music is too intense for my taste, but I see the retro appeal
• for me it feels bad if enemies get to attack before I have even a single turn to adapt
• the overworld is not aligned with cardinal directions, initially not obvious for me where W will take me (maybe not a big issue, as I got used to it pretty quickly)
• if all enemies in the overworld are passive (3x slime for example) it becomes quite boring

Overall a great prototype! Looking forward to next updates!