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Way To Crown

Turn-based deck-builder, minimal visuals, focus on advanced strategies and builds. · By AlSoKnown

Feedback on the game

A topic by unaware-robot created 46 days ago Views: 56 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3

I played your game and I like it. I’ve played a lot of Slay the Spire (which I’m assuming inspired this game) so this is my kind of game haha. There seems to be some good card and item variety. I like the fact that you get an item after every fight. The fatigue mechanic seems interesting, I didn’t really play around it yet though.

I like the bestiary, it seems you already have a lot of varied enemies as well.

My main points of feedback would be about the presentation of the game.

  • There is a lot of text, I would say too much text. I don’t think so much detail is necessary. e.g., explaining that spikes deal damage back in the explanation of ‘Melee’. This is also the case for the tutorial IMO. Since this reminds me of Slay the Spire, I would recommend looking at the new player experience of that game. I don’t remember if there is a tutorial or anything, but I remember that things were pretty clear without too much explicit explanation. Or maybe you could let the player choose between a basic or detailed tutorial? Just a thought.

  • Also, the language in the game is very technical. I.e., mathematical equations and sentences such as “decrement absolute value”. I can imagine this scares away people not familiar with this genre, and for me still it looks a bit daunting.

  • A lot of the UI feels small. I would make the HP, Mana, defence, etc. stats bigger. I would also make the end turn button bigger

  • Icons instead of text would make everything look better. It’s a bit difficult to read ‘fatigue + 1’, ‘defence + 1’ in the short time they are on screen.

  • Overall, I’m missing some ‘oomph’. When you play a card it doesn’t feel like a lot happens. Some more visual effects / more prominent sound effects / screenshake maybe? would add a lot I think.

Hope this helps!

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.

Since this reminds me of Slay the Spire, I would recommend looking at the new player experience of that game.

This game is indeed directly influenced by Slay the Spire and adding more complex mechanics and interactions was central development goal. So some amount of extra tutorial is probably unavoidable. I will think about making tutorial shorter for more experienced players.

decrement absolute value

Many (most?) games basically opt to simplify every mechanics until it is easily explainable, which is often a good choice. However, this leaves a bit of uncharted design space and I try to explore that. For example, statuses in Slay the Spire can not go negative, which is definitely much simpler design. Just by changing that bit, I allow for plenty of new and interesting combos / interactions, but the price is the need to express such concepts as absolute value.

In this specific case, do you think “decrease if >0, increase if <0” would be better?

A lot of the UI feels small.

Since this is browser game, you can zoom in/out like normal web page. That said, I will consider increasing default sizes.

Icons instead of text would make everything look better.

You mean replacing some common words in card descriptions by icons?

It’s a bit difficult to read ‘fatigue + 1’, ‘defence + 1’ in the short time they are on screen.

Do you mean animations?

Some more visual effects / more prominent sound effects / screenshake maybe?

I agree, this is simply due to lack of my artistic ability. Will work on this part more.

(1 edit)

Ah ok, if the idea is to have a more complex game then the amount of text makes more sense. I guess you target players more experienced in this genre. But then the tutorial could skip over some of the more basic stuff, like ‘reducing a monsters HP to 0 kills them’

In this specific case, do you think “decrease if >0, increase if <0” would be better?

In this case, if you’re targeting more experienced players, ‘decrement absolute value’ would be fine I think.

You mean replacing some common words in card descriptions by icons?

Yes, but also things like the words ‘gold’, ‘HP’, ‘MP’, etc, similar to how defence and fatigue already have icons.

It’s a bit difficult to read ‘fatigue + 1’, ‘defence + 1’ in the short time they are on screen.

By this I mean also replacing the words fatigue and defence (that pop up when you play a card) with the icon

Developer

New version is out, addressing some of your concerns. Thanks again for feedback.