Hello! Congratulations on the release! I have been following this game since very earlier in its development (I missed being able to contribute to your Indiegogo campaign by a few weeks, but I pre-ordered it on the first day you made the option available, way back in 2013). I was very excited to finally receive my AdventurOS key last weekend, and I have been having a lot of fun playing the game and exploring my hard drive so far.
Anyway, here are some issues I've run into, as well as some ideas I've had for some of the areas you are looking to improve upon. (I know you are a small team, with limited time and resources, so I am certainly not expecting you implement anything I suggest! I'm just sharing some thoughts).
Skill progression is too fast, making the game to easy: In my first playthrough, I had unlocked every skill by level 15. Part of this was due to using one of the Lvl 15 item exchange NPC to cash in all of my unused loot. That gave me over 100 AP, which was more than enough to buy all of skills I hadn't unlocked yet. This was only after playing the game for about 2 or 3 hours, and before I had found any of the totems. Having Levitation before facing any of the bosses took away most of the challenge, and not having anything left to unlock didn't give me much incentive to keep exploring my hard drive.
I have started a new game after editing the skill cost in variables.ini. I set the starting cost to 10 and the increment to 20 (this means it takes 1000 AP to buy every skill, vs. 275 in the default setting). I have been enjoying the added difficulty and the feeling of really needing to work for new unlocks. But I could also see how someone who has a small hard drive or prefers a more casual experience would like faster progression. I don't have a problem with editing the .ini myself, but maybe you could make this adjustable in game? Or maybe offer difficulty levels for people like me who enjoy a longer, more difficult game?
What does Ghost Dash do? I haven't been able to figure out what this skill is supposed to do or how to activate it (if it is even an activated skill? Or is it passive?)
"Shift" key for Dash isn't mentioned in the control lists.
Elements don't seem to mean much: I saw
another post where you mentioned that elements currently give a bit
of a damage boost against opposing elements, and that you are looking
at rebalancing them. I think making this more noticeable would
add a lot to combat - making the damage boost significant would give
players more reason to care about it. And maybe change the color of
the numbers so it is obvious that you are doing bonus damage (that visual cue will be enough for a lot of people to want to take advantage of it). But
don't stop at giving a damage boost - grant resistances! Make enemies
take reduced damage from elements they are strong against - not so
much that they are impossible to kill with the wrong gear, but enough
to make people want to switch to a different element. Extend it to
the player, too. Make your base element and your armor give you extra
protection or extra vulnerability vs opposing elements.But most importantly, make it obvious that it is happening.
I think this would add a lot of depth to combat, and give the player reasons to care about changing their character's element and using gear other than whatever has the highest attack and defense stats. "OK, this room has a lot of paper enemies. My fire sword will make short work of them, but it is going to be useless against that metal .exe over there. Oh crap! I didn't see those electric guys! I need to change out of this metal armor before they fry me!"
Item description issues: "Mistery Curtana" should be "Mystery Curtana". I also found an Advanced Bluetinted Hood that didn't have any stats other than being "metal". I found that on an earlier build of the game, though, so I don't know if that has been fixed already.
OK, that is probably plenty for you to read for now. Hopefully there is something buried in all of my rambling that you find useful. Keep up the good work!