itch.io

Hello there,

I am looking for some feedback on my alpha:

Game: Healing boss rush roguelike
Number of Players:  Singleplayer
Approximate Session Length: 10-20 mins max 
Other Details: This is only the core loop. It does not contain story or the full game.

https://valentinlouvet.itch.io/healer

• What felt frustrating?
• What was your favourite part?
• What did you want to do?
• If you could change one thing, what would that be?
• What were you doing?
• Can you describe the game in a sentence?

I am looking to make the game better before releasing a demo on steam with different bosses and environment but same atmosphere.

The goal is to test if the game is good enough as this stage.

You can contact me directly on discord if you have any questions:

https://discord.gg/R6fgNK3y7Y

Thanks

Thank you for the feedback!

I will keep iterating until it feels right. It has been hard to replicate the cooperative part for a while. I was thinking about adding a combo system between the allies and the player that creates unique attacks with a special meter.

I am also looking to make the puppets more fun and look like real enemies.

Join me on discord !
https://discord.gg/R6fgNK3y7Y

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback! I will fix the performance issue. It is an unreal game so if you don t cap fps you will be at 200 in the menus.

I am trying to find a balance between evading and getting damaged. If they evade everything, you don't have to heal.

For now, I am focusing on making more bosses with cool interactions.

It is good that you finished the content.

Thanks! I will keep adding content and interesting interactions.

Hello there!

First thing first make the cutscene skippable with escape especially in a demo. People wants to see the gameplay to know if they will purchase the game.

I walked around for 10 mins not knowing where to go and examining every guards. The first guard I saw was the one with the carriage. The path should be clear at the beginning at least for the tutorial where you should go.

The camera moves so fast. It is hard even with the lowest sensitivity. The platforming does not feel good because of the low jump high. When landing sometimes the screen becomes totally purple. 

Usually, to put down an item, you use the same key as taking it. The combination of ctrl+click is weird since click is throwing it. Ctrl key does not seem to work.

I think if you want to make a story driven game, you should keep it linear at least at first to guide the player and make the interaction feel good and rewarding especially during exploration.

Hey there!

--Overall impression of the game

I really love flushing toilet paper! I think the mechanics feel good and the puzzle are cool.

Sometimes feeling I am going to vomit when my character walks in and out of something that is used to move boxes.

 --Does the progression through the hub feel intuitive, or are you getting lost, not knowing where to go next?

  When reaching the first real room, there is 3 doors. It is not immediatly obviously what our goal is. I did the 2nd right door then went to the breakroom then the left door then the first right door. Since I did it that way, the double jump did not appear obvious at all.

--Does the navigation in and out of puzzle levels feel intuitive?

The gameplay feels really intuitive in terms of movement and interaction. There is some friction sometimes but overall it feels good.

I would make the transition when you open the door more seemingless. It teleports me to a different location and that feels weird. You feel the transportation not a door opening. Probably because the door remains closed sometimes. The breakroom text in red same as when no quota makes it feel like an objective to achieve. I went there and did not see any objectives. After reaching the 2nd computer, I have no idea what to do.

-Does the quota progression make sense to you?

I don't really care about the quota. The fun part is figuring out the puzzle. I would make the box disappear after a short amount of time. This would avoid people trying to put the box in manually. I mean I tried haha 

PS: I would remove the reticule when you display a message in full screen.

The sound saturates when the box hits the wall too many times.

I think the idea and overall look will be appealing when the game is done. It fells like Party House, Balatro but with a medieval village.

In terms of UX and game design, it is hard to make the correct choice. It is a bit unclear what each character differences are.

For the gameplay, are we just hitting until we are at 5/7 or I missed something? When you fail, it does not really feel that you did since you are still earning money.

Overall, I like the animation and the idea. But I feel it is hard to know your score until you hold. In balatro for example, you can calculate your score before you actually end the turn. And, each decision you are making is clear. Here I feel I don't need to make any decision to win. Just take the green cards and when at 5/7 hold.

Thanks for the feedback!

- Normally when you click, you can see the casting of the spell on top of your health starting. The game is meant to feel like healing in an mmo with casting and channeling.

- Yes I think I need to review the resource alert to something more user friendly. Overall, it is a resource management game with cooldown. The goal is to recreate the mmo healing same as mini healer.

- I think I can add an activation delay to switch to another target. It also happens when you are not moving the mouse and just moving the character. It will pick up what is under the mouse even though you did not move it.

- I want to recreate the combat style of an mmo in a boss rush format. I think this is the most interesting part of healing in mmos. Learn the boss mechanics and try to defeat him. 

- The dispel is used to remove bleeding effects and curses. It will be more useful in later encounters. The 4 first bosses are meant to test one part of the healing: focus on the tank, positioning, triage and environment awareness. Then the next bosses will test more skills that are associated to the healer role in mmo. 

Just 3 little questions: Did you defeat all the bosses? Are you familiar with healing in mmo? Which version did you play?

Let me know if you think my analysis was appropriate.

Thanks for the feedback. Did you try to change the key bindings in the settings menu?

The spells have a tooltip description. The attack spell does damage overtime and you can see a debuff on the boss bar with the same icon.

Maybe I should change the color of the damage number when they come from the healer making it more obvious.

You also have 2 vfx associated to the cast of the attack and it landing on the boss.

I am not sure if you are familiar with mmo healing. It mainly works with mouse over.

So when you mouse over a target the heal will be launch on him at the end of the cast.

You can either mouse hover the bottom bars or the characters directly.

Which version did you play? Did you defeat all the bosses?

This is a prototype containing the main gameplay loop.

I am trying to make sure the game is fun.

I plan on adding more bosses, more boons and 5 more classes when the core loop is fun enough.

Answers to the following questions would help me a lot:

• What felt frustrating?
• What was your favourite part?
• What did you want to do?
• If you could change one thing, what would that be?
• What were you doing?
• Can you describe the game in a sentence?