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Feedback / Suggestions Sticky

A topic by Massive Galaxy Studios created Oct 18, 2019 Views: 1,191 Replies: 38
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Developer

Leave all your feedback here regarding cards, mechanics or any gameplay related suggestions.

First off, the game is beautiful. I love the pixel art and I look forward to the finished version. Nice work! Here are my notes:

Gameplay:

It would be cool to be able to use all of your cards on the other team and not just offensive cards. I can't envision a situation with the cards I've seen so far that would make you want to heal your opponents' ships, for instance, but there could be one

It would also be nice to have the option to skip taking a reward card or get money instead of a reward card so that if you have a deck you are happy with you don't have to add more to it unnecessarily. 

The fuel mechanic is interesting, and I would like to see more varied consequences such as losing cards from your deck if you run out... "Attacked by pirates while out of fuel! They took your missiles but spared your life!" or you could also implement zones in later stages of the game where the rewards were greater but if you ran out of fuel you would just game over, so you'd have to be very careful if you went exploring there, but maybe you could find unlocks for new ships and cards?


Status indicators:

It would be cool to be able to see enemies applying negative effects visually as damage on our ship and not just in the status text. Likewise, it would be nice to see status indicators to tell if ship is on fire.

It's hard to see that thief drone is doing anything because there is not an indication that you're actually getting any money. Maybe add a little gold +5 money over your ship and -5 money over the enemy?


Balance issues:

Obviously there is a lot of balance to do from an alpha state. As a roguelike it is too easy. The enemies don't do enough damage, maybe, or their damaging effects aren't damaging enough.  I was able to exploit the fact that thief drone does so little damage to basically break the economy within the first couple of battles... maybe give each enemy a set number of gold that they can lose, or make the thief drone card have a chance of 'breaking' after each use?

Ringdown removes all shields and disables the entire enemy team... up to 3 ships in the battles I saw. For the same cost, crippling ion only disables one ship and does 2 damage. It may be good to establish a table of value... each effect costs so many points, each amount of damage costs so many points, each effect applied to all enemies costs so many points, etc. Maybe common, uncommon and rare cards could each get so many points worth of effect, if that makes sense.

Thanks! I'm looking forward to seeing this grow.

Developer

Great feedback!

We are implementing some of the changes you suggested and balance changes are coming for the next patch.
About 'healing' effects, it's just for your ship. We are implementing some real consequences if you spend all the fuel.

Thanks a lot!

Are there any plans on a linux/macos port?

Developer(+1)

Only after Early Access release on Steam. Linux will probably be released, but we cannot promise anything right now about macOS.

Thanks!

Hello,

First of all very fun game so far. Been loving what I've seen so far.

Gameplay:

The gameplay so far has been pretty fun. There are two things that I think would improve the card gameplay. First, I've run into an issue where I have more cards in my hand than can be displayed at once. As such, some cards are made unavailable since they're out of sight despite the fact they are in my hand. Maybe you can add a scrolling option for when this happens ? Second, I agree with barraketh about the cards. There have been times where I want to keep my deck as it but I have to keep adding cards to it thus diluting it. It would be nice if I could edit my existing deck and get rid of unnecessary cards (or sell them at a shop or something like that). I think barraketh's suggestion is also good

I look forward to seeing the game grow. Keep up the great work !!!

Developer

You are not supposed to have more than 5 cards, and we already got that issue listed. Should be resolved in the next patch, with all the other smaller issues. Thanks!

I have now played FTW on an ultrawide monitor and the scaling is not adjusted properly, the edges of all the dialogue boxes scale to the horizontal margin rather than the vertical margin, resulting in an awkward crop as seen below.

Developer

Thanks a lot for testing it, there are plenty of ultrawide monitors variations, but we will try to make it look 'decent' in most of them.

I have a couple of suggestions.

The first one is that in the victory screen could be a little more detailed, it would be nice to see totals of how much you stole with thief drones and syphoning drones in the combat end screen.


Also, I am curious about how drawing works... Sometimes I have drawn the only copy of a card in my deck two or three turns in a row. Is your hand drawn at random from all of the cards in your deck pool? It's an interesting shift from having a discard pile.

It would be cool to have cards that drain life from your opponent... right now the only really viable strategy I have found is to get 15-20 shields as a health buffer and keep them high, because shields are much easier to restore than health and enemies in later stages can knock out 75 health in 2 turns if you are unlucky. If you had life drain cards you could potentially build a deck without relying on shields. It could be a life drain equipment that heals your ship correspondingly for damage done to enemies?

Likewise it would be cool to steal energy from them... maybe you could steal two energy or something and leave them with the 'disabled' condition from being drained?

When the trader ships offer to buy fuel from you, the amount that they offer is insultingly low. Like, little trader guy, I know fuel only costs 4 credits at station but we're out here in the big dark and it's keeping me alive.  I will not sell my fuel to you for 35 credits, please sod off. 


That's a 'NO' from me, captain. The only time I ever sold fuel, I sold it by mistake... and then that same little bastard came and sold it back to me for 20% of my credits when I ran out one turn later.

After opening 100 bomb and junk crates I found one with a rare item today and that felt good. Can you also get equipment out of junk crates? 

Developer

Hi!

Once you use the cards, or by the end of the turn, they are all shuffled back into the deck and you draw 5 cards.

There is no discard deck, just the main deck.

About the space crates, yes you can get rare card drops, and I plan to include more equipment drops, not just on crates.

Thanks for the suggestions, 'life drain' mechanics are not planned for the next cards, but other things are coming. Thanks for the victory screen suggestions.

Can you add the ability to resize/rescale the windowed mode? On a 2560x1600 monitor at 100% scaling, I can just about fit 16 windows of FTW :)

Adding a 1.5x, 2x, 3x scale would probably be good enough!

Developer

A 'pixel-perfect' mode and zoom options will be available, maybe next week! Thanks

Excellent!

Oh also, can you add an option to enable/disable windowed mode during a game? I think it's only in the Title screen options. (Same goes for the upcoming 'pixel-perfect' and zoom modes!)

Developer

It actually was already available, but because it was buggy, it was removed... temporarily! :)

(+1)

Hi, got access to alpha, spent some time on it, and wanted to share my experience.

I play many games, big fan of tactical, turn based, card games, like FTL, Into the Breach or Slay the Spire, so I probably am part of the targeted demography.

I'm aware that game dev is A LOT of work, and am not challenging the work already done, nor attacking the people behind it.

This feedback is meant to bring a user viewpoint to the team, because I want this game to be a success, not enough feedback is usually what makes projects fail, and only critics can better products.

I know this is an early version and it's taken into account in my feedback.

I have been testing games for quite some years now (Crying Suns recently), but this is still a personnal experience, feel free to discuss my points.

So without further ado, have some feedback:


  • First of all, the pixelart is truly amazing. Congrats for the artist. You rock.
  • The texts are kinda hard to read though. I get it brings a lot of atmosphere, but: character font's lisibility is quite low, all the text are bright on a dark background, and all this creates an effect quite hard and straining for the eyes. Better colors, contrasts (darker text on lighter BG) and fonts would really be amazing for the readability.
  • The music is really and groovy nice. A bit repetitive after a while though.
  • Music off/on in the option menue during game doesn't do anything. A volume tuner option would be nice too.
  • The game could use a bit more communication and community building. A discord server (and subreddit?) for your studio's projects Massive Galaxy and For the Warp might be a good idea.
  • Mouse pointer gets all tiny when hovering our ship in the map screen
  • Equipment popup window could be a bit nicer and more developped.
  • Prices don't always turn red when you have not enough money in stations. Some do, other don't.
  • Being able to see the text of all cards in one glance in their default state in your hand would be a very nice touch.
  • Card rarity is a bit hard to identify. The color changes are a bit subtle, and you hardly see the differences in ornaments when they are in your hand and need to hover to compare them, if available. Some clearer symbol/shape/texture/color could help with that. Minidiscs, holo datacards for different rarities?
  • Energy is limited to 6 it seems (Saw that after using the equipment that give +1 energy and two of the "+2 energy next turn" card, is that intentional?
  • Also, once you use an energy boost (+2 for example), the next turn you are shown 3 green and two grey empty energy bars.
  • If you are out of energy and only have 3 costs or rare cards (not sure) in your hand, the autoend of turn won't trigger, gotta do it manually.
  • The "hitbox" to select smaller ships when a boss is here is a bit wonky. Big ship takes most of the space, its "hitbox" is way bigger than its model.
  • Markets go away when looked at once. You leave then can't come back.
  • What are the draw rules? First round is 3 cards, then more, how and why?
  • More highlight when a card is selected would be cool, an effect on the mouse cursor (crosshair for attack, green wrench for repairs, small shield, etc) and highlights of allowed targets.
  • It would be lovely if we could be told the number on conditionnal cards. Multiplied by the number of cards the same rarity, +N for each card Z in your hand, your energy (total or current by the way?) multiplied by 6, etc...
  • No way to unselect cards? I selected one, clicked on background to unselect it and it triggered (shields).
  • Information needs to be conveyed better during combat. Sometimes the stats change first and then the projectile arrives, this kind of things. It gives a "what the hell happened here" feeling quite often. I know there are logs but it's not ideal.
  • We need icons for status effect, that stay and can be hovered. icons for credits & fuel could be a good idea as well.
  • In combat screen, the (awesome) background should be disjoined at the diagonal separation line, to really show the ships are far apart.
  • I really like what you have done with the cards and their effects. Some rounds are simple but others bring interesting choices, combinaisons, and tactics. The ennemies are a bit too basics though in terms of what they do, and their difficulty varies wildly. Also some higher rarities cards are broken, once you have them, you just play waiting for them to show up and end the fight. Even some common cards are broken, you can easily farm and cheese ennemies and get MASSIVE amounts of fuel, credits and life, destroying the game's balance in the process.
  • Some animations are a bit "floaty" (buttons in main screen feel wierd), a bit more polish on that and better transitions, clearer feedback and conveying what screen is what would be nice.
  • The "FTW" animation when we win is strange. Hands show up in victory screen.
  • More events are needed (hopefully that's already on the roadmap) with interesting choices, effects, risks & rewards (and an illustration of some sort?).
  • The map: Not super interesting in terms of choices. No pressure, nor hard choices. We don't feel in a vast and dangerous unknown space: this is a small static square grid with blockers here and there. I get it goes with the retro aesthetic, but it's really not super exiting.
  • Foes & random tiles look like huge physical objects,
  • More depth and variations, stuff to interact with, changes in the environment would be great. A better sense of scale too. Bigger distances, smaller objets, to show we really are out there, in a merciless infinite void.
  • Lisibility on the map could be better too, some kind of fog of war would help to know where we've been or not.
  • We spend most of the playtime in combat, and they start to quickly feel really repetitive. More differences and variations in combat (more win conditions for example), as well as more stuff to do on the map would bring a better rythm.
  • Replayability. In order to respect player time, some kind of metagame progression (even in case of failure) would be nice. Unlocking stuff, ships, quests, foes, cards, equipments, difficulty, game modes, challenges, trophies, etc, like Slay the Spire or Dead Cells do.

That's it, for now. If anything's unclear feel free to ask fore more details.

Good luck and have a good week!

Developer

Thanks a lot for the feedback, and you will get a detailed reply once we get thru all the items

I've just discovered this game via a YouTube vid. I loved Slay the Spire and a scifi version of that is right up my alley. however my only drawbacks are the X-X damage. I would rather it be more like slay the spire in that it tells me how much damage is coming my way so I dont have to waste energy/cards. But I will definitely be keeping a close on on this one.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback.
It was a design decision not to give exact results, but that might change as more feedback comes in, but we can't do any promises regarding any future changes on this.

Thanks for the detailed explanation here on the boards, just bought it! :)
Already played your game in events here in Lisbon, but will finally be able to play the entire thing more carefully at home.
Keep up the great work guys!

Developer

Thank you! :)

Picked this up after itch advertised you on twitter, and I am a huge fan of Slay the Spire. I'm not great at these games, so keep that in mind. I can't get past the first boss, and I don't know how much is after that. I don't know if this level of difficulty is intentional or not, so I reserve judgement. I just thought it would useful either way to know that I find this very difficult.

Developer(+1)

Hi, at the moment the feedback we are having is that the first boss is quite doable. The 2nd system might be the hardest. 
You just need to make sure to have at least some 'disable target' type of cards in your deck, and or one or two rares.
Just make sure you don't lose too much hp before you reach the first boss, and some luck of course...

I had a scrapper ship offer to scrap one of my cards for $20, I couldn't remember whether there were any cards I wanted to get rid of so I said Yes to take a look at my deck, decided not to scrap any and clicked the X, and it left me at a blank screen.  I exited to the main menu and then clicked Continue and it went back into the game fine.

Developer

Hi, thank you for the feedback, we will fix that issue on the next smaller patch.

I had the same issue and when i loaded back in i had a different event trigger then the scrap a  card event.

Got the card that's supposed to summon 5 4/4 drones, give 10 max shield and charge 10 shield can't remember the name seemed legendary in quality. However on use it only gave one drone and none of the shield effects.

Also had issues with the deal 5 charge 5 shield and discard one card. With only dealing 5 and ignoring the other effects that the card states.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback, those issues will be checked out.

(1 edit)

The missle barage card that does 12 damage for 3 energy makes no sense cost wise. Using 2 basic attacks does 12 for 2 energy and plenty of cards do more damage for either 1 or 2 energy.

The possibility that bosses do back to back 30-60 damage attacks is really bad RNG.

The traders that want to buy my fuel should ask for a smaller max quantity of fuel. I feel it's currently set to 80%of my fuel and personally i'd lower it to 70%.

An option to sort our deck by: Obtained, Cost or Name. 
This feature should also work when you get a trader who'll scrap a card for €20 or when the option is available at a space station.

(1 edit)

5th System, cool looking ships and the boss was really nice.
Tried to cheese it and 1 shot the CTO ship with the instakill card only to find out it's also a boss :p, unlike the 3rd boss 2 other ships.

It needs to be  tweaked. The drone gimmick is cool, but with the limit of 3 alien ships on a side you can just ignore the drones and focus fire the CEO. I took out the CTO first cause i thought he summoned the drones and after that i had 2 drones and the CEO all with low damage output.

Also ran into as issue with 3 enemy ships using their ultimate moves all at the same time, not fun to take 16-24 damage times 3 on round 2...

THe new relic hunt event is cool but the placement of the actual goal is to out of the way where sometimes it's really not worth it to back track 10 squares, even with this awesom item i got from it Iscreenshot below)

Space stations should have a repair option in the mix which comes in handy on later stages, similar to the option they have to scrap  a card.

Traders wanting to buy my cards should also ask for my unused equipment cards and not only my deck cards.

The randomness of the maze evewnt should give me the option to choose if i want to keep the card i find.
I'm already spending fuel and HP on it no need for any card to "clutter" up the deck. I feel the same should be applied to the cards from space crates.

The Destroyed ring world should have something for a reward. Either some credits or 2-4 fuel it's now the same as traveling to an empty space square with an unskippable cutscene. Or  give me an investigate option which either gives the above rewards or a space fight with the alledged destroyer of the ring.

Ignite needs a rework or more synergy cards/effects the 1 damage per turn  isn't doing anything usefull right now.
This is the most prevelent in the 2 energy card that ignites all enemies for 2 turns.
For 1 energy i can do 3 damage to all targets with Plasma Wave

My drones only atack the middle target which might not be the target i'm trying to kill. Perhaps make it so they attack the target i fire on last.
If i have 2 drones and drone 1 kills the target drone 2's attack does nothing since it also hits the same target wasting good damage.


Also this happened, not complaining:

Developer

Thanks a lot for the feedback, you got very lucky on that card drop.
A new version should be up on itch soon, thanks!

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