itch.io

Thank you for your kind words!  I appreciate the thoughts you have here.  And I'm glad you enjoyed the game.

I'm definitely in that balance/dilemma of - what do I leave for discovery vs what does the player really need to know to discover?  I also went with full discovery required in my initial drop.  The first update was to make the game more understandable for the player because the feedback (you can see) below was all about not understanding what was happening.  I think there's still visual polish that is required and better information that is needed to make this fun for most players.  I also haven't really done much balancing and this is just a portion of the full depth I wanted to add and explore.

The next drop will move away a little bit from the chaos into a system that is a bit more predictable.  Though I think I will still need more passes on the visual polish to really make this functional.  One of the biggest issues is the screen size (imo)... this is just more involved because I'll need to make several sizes of the same pixels and I'm still not sure I have the full set of information yet that's needed to make the visual upgrade viable.

Thank you for this review; I really appreciate the feedback.  I'm glad you were able to pick up the amulet and enjoy your time.
I know that there is a lot of polish I need to do yet, but all of these reviews help me target exactly what I cannot see well.  If I'm getting past the functional stage and into the polish stage, then that's when I know I have enough baseline for people to enjoy and it's a more a matter of giving it a visual and audio upgrade.

Enjoyed this game.  The mysterious abilities were neat.  Once I started to understand how the game was setup, I really liked the interaction with the various abilities.

A thought, though, it would be nice to understand what upgrade means in the context of the ability.  and swapping an initial damage ability for something else was actually a great strategy consideration, but - it became difficult to actually play with more creatures requiring more damage and the abilities not necessarily offsetting.  So it seemed like the best course was almost always feeling like - how do I get upgrades on my initial damage dealing abilities.

Really excited to see where this goes!

Thank you so much for this!
No doors in this one :)

Seems that a few more guides here and there with the information would help solidify what's going on.  Thank you so much for exposing this all!

Thank you so much for the detail!  I really appreciate your level of detail.

My goal for this specific entry was low friction - but I clearly didn't do enough to give a player a sense of what to do.

One more point for future players, there _is_ an in-game help under `?`, but I'm not sure that was visible or helpful.  From the comments so far, I cannot tell if I just didn't express well or if it wasn't found.

Upgrades:
Skills auto unlock through usage.  Within the inventory, there is crafting, transmutation (skill unlock), attunement (skill unlock), and refinement which allows players to really control the output of the combination from transmutation.  floor bosses unlock new slots.

Sounds:
The sounds were hacky, mostly so I had _some sound_.  Mostly tonal for certain, though nothing phone specific.   All of the content is original.

On the Ascent, the game will spawn many more mobs and they will all hyper focus on the player.  This is by design and it should be more difficult if you have not spent some time to skill up.

I do agree the general procedural generation is untuned as is the spawning.  At the moment, the only thing explicitly controlled is that the starting area _should_ have a heal.  However, the point is that this will change as the player or creatures interact.  For example, if a player leaves corpses behind in the room, the room will "eat" them and it will then add death to the biome list.  With max skills, players can actually remove biomes.  If a player understands how to manipulate the biomes, they should be able to add healing to any biome and also should be able to remove biomes (eventually with skills maxing out).

The items also confer abilities.  And it is possible to construct a heal ability.

Hey this is a great concept!  Loved it.

I loved this!  Thank you for the fun!
I would have liked something that let me hold down a key so I didn't need to continously press it, but otherwise the concept was clean and executed well.  Thank you!  So many places to expand if you were inclined on variances.  Good job.

Hey - thank you for building this!!  I really liked the concept.

Some thoughts for you as you update:
- I was not sure how to wander around and interact at first.  an in-game help would be really good.  maybe `?`
- when I tried to go back and look at the initial splash screen that had them all, listed, it flips by too fast to reread

Hey this was fun!  I loved the loot and the design.

Some thoughts for you as you update
- I was a little confused about how to actually enter the castles.  I think it might be helpful to have a pop-up to click on
- I was less precise with the mouse.  I liked the easy, but the constant clicking was starting to give my finger fatigue.  I kind of wanted something in between the mouse movement and the wasd.  I'm not sure how that might be accomplished, but hopping into a room where a mob was already attacking was tough.
- I took a power potion, and it disappeared but I didn't note any affect.  Wondering if that was just me not seeing the callout in the text scroll.
- the front menu for hall of the fallen was jumbled visually

Thanks for this!!  I really enjoyed playing.

I think most of the thoughts below are thoughts for you as you update your game, and nothing bad with what you have right now already in play.  I really like the design!

Some thoughts for you
- I think the balance is probably okay, but the pet mechanic is cumbersome to play with.
- seemed like the creatures were feast or famine.  
- with maybe 2 hits to live despite the 3 hearts, it felt like I was only able to progress with the pet out and it was more in the way than not.
- felt like there should be more immediate content where the player was and less roaming around

so only minor things.

- I was confused at first by the equipment - what it really conferred until I hit the button.  maybe more info on the button would be helpful so I knew what it really gave me (e.g. weapon/shield).
- I was a little sad I couldn't pick things up and hold onto them.  but it was a good design choice.
- On that note, it might be nice to auto upgrade pickup.  if it's an upgrade, you get it.  I'm not sure that's worth the extra code, or if you have a clear upgrade, but it could be nice.

So fun!  I enjoyed digging into this one too.  I know you spent a little bit of time on the rendering, but great start!  Happy to see where it all goes.

I'm kind of a sucker for light in games, so this hit my cozy cool spot.  Thank you so much!

Loved the artwork!  What pack did you use?

I loved this concept.  Really unique.  What a fun time.  Thank you.

Great idea!!  Love this.

I think I was confused at first with the "it takes time and press ." but I got the hang of it.  It seemed also that it was difficult to gauge whether or not I should consume something and how much it would benefit me.

Based on feedback so far, two suggestions.  1) make sure observe (should be `.` or `x`) is leveled and 2) use tab.  Realistically, though, I probably need more effort on some visuals

Thank you so much for playing!!

I've been sitting here wondering what to do.  I love this feedback but I have no answer yet.  

Thank you so much for playing!

I think I am going to have to consider how to make what's available more accessible to players in a future iteration (I suppose that's a month from now)

Thank you for playing! 

This is a really fair critique. 

I did struggled a bit with explaining.  The idea I really wanted to explore was: what happens when players can manipulate the biomes?

I was able to hook in both sound and music, but never really allotted time for that.  The sounds that do exist are quite basic!  I do plan to add more there.