Damn, that's going to be tricky to debug, I've tested the current apk on my phone and it worked as always. Do you mind giving me some info like your phone model/OS, a screenshot, and whether the ingame version matches the web one (0.8.4B)?
The tutorial is quite nice, I remember you posting about it in the thread. I'm still not good enough to hold my weight in this game though. In one of the runs the sloth was on 53 hp, I completed a 3x combo but it didn't had any damage orbs so the sloth destroyed me with 1600 damage.
It's nice to see you are still working on the game and polishing it further, keep up the progress!
After maybe ten or so runs, I got this far in my best run. When I run into the guy with horns and green eyes it's over. Can't even really chip him, even with 3 wits and good items. I prefer the tangled status over the time honestly, and consider it a bonus, as you can make a great combo without just doing it in your head beforehand. Also, I would maybe prefer more rows of play in the puzzle, just because the drop-in combos feel like a huge proportion gets cleared just by luck from tiles I couldn't see yet, dropping in. If the board was taller, I wouldn't feel like it depended on luck as much in that case, as you manipulate a larger proportion of the bricks if you know what I mean.
>When I run into the guy with horns and green eyes it's over.
That's the boss, and I'd say that reaching him is a nice result! I have kept him noticeably above every other enemy, even considering its boss status, because in the demo beating it unlocks higher difficulties, that require an higher average combo to have a shot at. When starting the game, tangled feels like a bonus because in the allotted movement time new players can't really make more than 60 profitable moves, so the time aspect is just an added difficulty. With more experience you start moving orbs fast enough that you make around a hundred moves on average to clear the whole board relying on muscle memory (example run), which makes tangle a status that forces you not to rely on speed.
>If the board was taller, I wouldn't feel like it depended on luck as much in that case
This also ultimately depends on the player's experience. At a high level, increasing the board size would increase the variance of your average stat output, because you clear more orbs and the probability that the orbs replacing them cause additional combos increases.
Translation is fine, though I found it funny intends was spelled at itends:
Game feel isn't missing anything. The abrupt music restarting is a little annoying, but I assume it's temporary.
While I enjoyed myself, it's way too hard for someone like me(only able to do at best a 5 combo, where several orbs need 8+ to do 2x damage). I could do a couple of normal encounters, but the green and the boss blew me away. At any rate, the design seems pretty solid, with varying relics and orb effects to change how one plays.
Overall, well made if difficult game. May come back to it to try and beat it.
Thanks for commenting on the bullet points I asked about, and for pointing out the typo.
>The abrupt music restarting is a little annoying, but I assume it's temporary.
Now that I'm rechecking, the battle music's loop offset sounds like it was slightly off, thanks for this as well.
As for the difficulty, I'm glad to hear you got to the boss despite finding the game hard. You do well in pointing out that some orb sets are too unforgiving compared to others, considering the other mechancis I added I should make their utility more granular.
Music and art are excellent. The game is very difficult. It's all about thinking very far a head where if you don't use up most of your moves her turn, you will barely do any damage. The best combo I got did 268 damage against an enemy that has 2k. The game needs balancing, but other than that, it's pretty good. No idea how to start the easy mode.
Thanks for commenting, the difficulty definitely sounds like the biggest problem at the moment.
>No idea how to start the easy mode.
It's the default, to unlock harder difficulties you'd have to beat it. Anyways, point taken, I'll lower enemy stats on 0.8.3 (in fact, for anyone reading this when that version is up, let me know if things require further tweaking).
I'll probably try to play some more in a day or two so you can do whatever you need or want to do to the game. I really think it has a lot of potential and I hope you can get the game to be what you want it to be.
Can't say anything bad about the audio-visual side of the game. Music is good, pixelart is also good.
Personaly, I would like to see what certain orb does by simply holding it in a place for a second instead of having to open the help menu. Not a big problem since most people will memorize what they do quickly anyway.
The difficulty seems way too high to me, but I fully admit that I'm a scrub and I don't play games like this very often. To me, it seems enemies have like 4x as many HP as they should have, considering they like to block very often too. I did four runs and I always defeated like one or two encounters before dying. Personaly, I would put in some kind of system that scales the amount of HP they have after each encounter. So the first encounters much easier. But as I said, I suck at these games so it is quite possible the the fault is on me.
The first few encounters are easier by virtue of being drawn from a different encounter table than the one used later on, but reading your comment "easier" isn't the word to use. While it's true that the skill ceiling for this game is high, I certainly don't want the easiest difficulty to feel too difficult even for a beginner. I'll chop down their HP and block a bit more, thanks for the feedback!
This is the last DD submission for this game, as the demo is, for practical purposes, complete. As such, some of the areas where I'm most interested in feedback are:
- game feel (are any VFXs bad, and are any missing?).
- whether the japanese translation is acceptable.
- the easiest difficulty's balance (especially if it's your first time playing). ideally it should be at a level where you die without feeling discouraged.
Of course bug reports, general feedback and random design ideas are welcome as always.
Comments
tried it on my phone, in combat the orbs never dropped into the board
Damn, that's going to be tricky to debug, I've tested the current apk on my phone and it worked as always. Do you mind giving me some info like your phone model/OS, a screenshot, and whether the ingame version matches the web one (0.8.4B)?
Sure, I'll do it when I get a chance, phone's dead/off for holiday
Tried 3 runs, died in all of them
The tutorial is quite nice, I remember you posting about it in the thread. I'm still not good enough to hold my weight in this game though. In one of the runs the sloth was on 53 hp, I completed a 3x combo but it didn't had any damage orbs so the sloth destroyed me with 1600 damage.
It's nice to see you are still working on the game and polishing it further, keep up the progress!
After maybe ten or so runs, I got this far in my best run. When I run into the guy with horns and green eyes it's over. Can't even really chip him, even with 3 wits and good items. I prefer the tangled status over the time honestly, and consider it a bonus, as you can make a great combo without just doing it in your head beforehand. Also, I would maybe prefer more rows of play in the puzzle, just because the drop-in combos feel like a huge proportion gets cleared just by luck from tiles I couldn't see yet, dropping in. If the board was taller, I wouldn't feel like it depended on luck as much in that case, as you manipulate a larger proportion of the bricks if you know what I mean.
>When I run into the guy with horns and green eyes it's over.
That's the boss, and I'd say that reaching him is a nice result! I have kept him noticeably above every other enemy, even considering its boss status, because in the demo beating it unlocks higher difficulties, that require an higher average combo to have a shot at. When starting the game, tangled feels like a bonus because in the allotted movement time new players can't really make more than 60 profitable moves, so the time aspect is just an added difficulty. With more experience you start moving orbs fast enough that you make around a hundred moves on average to clear the whole board relying on muscle memory (example run), which makes tangle a status that forces you not to rely on speed.
>If the board was taller, I wouldn't feel like it depended on luck as much in that case
This also ultimately depends on the player's experience. At a high level, increasing the board size would increase the variance of your average stat output, because you clear more orbs and the probability that the orbs replacing them cause additional combos increases.
Translation is fine, though I found it funny intends was spelled at itends:
Game feel isn't missing anything. The abrupt music restarting is a little annoying, but I assume it's temporary.
While I enjoyed myself, it's way too hard for someone like me(only able to do at best a 5 combo, where several orbs need 8+ to do 2x damage). I could do a couple of normal encounters, but the green and the boss blew me away. At any rate, the design seems pretty solid, with varying relics and orb effects to change how one plays.
Overall, well made if difficult game. May come back to it to try and beat it.
Thanks for commenting on the bullet points I asked about, and for pointing out the typo.
>The abrupt music restarting is a little annoying, but I assume it's temporary.
Now that I'm rechecking, the battle music's loop offset sounds like it was slightly off, thanks for this as well.
As for the difficulty, I'm glad to hear you got to the boss despite finding the game hard. You do well in pointing out that some orb sets are too unforgiving compared to others, considering the other mechancis I added I should make their utility more granular.
This was really fun! Too bad I own an iPhone.
Music and art are excellent. The game is very difficult. It's all about thinking very far a head where if you don't use up most of your moves her turn, you will barely do any damage. The best combo I got did 268 damage against an enemy that has 2k. The game needs balancing, but other than that, it's pretty good. No idea how to start the easy mode.
Thanks for commenting, the difficulty definitely sounds like the biggest problem at the moment.
>No idea how to start the easy mode.
It's the default, to unlock harder difficulties you'd have to beat it. Anyways, point taken, I'll lower enemy stats on 0.8.3 (in fact, for anyone reading this when that version is up, let me know if things require further tweaking).
I'll probably try to play some more in a day or two so you can do whatever you need or want to do to the game. I really think it has a lot of potential and I hope you can get the game to be what you want it to be.
Can't say anything bad about the audio-visual side of the game. Music is good, pixelart is also good.
Personaly, I would like to see what certain orb does by simply holding it in a place for a second instead of having to open the help menu. Not a big problem since most people will memorize what they do quickly anyway.
The difficulty seems way too high to me, but I fully admit that I'm a scrub and I don't play games like this very often. To me, it seems enemies have like 4x as many HP as they should have, considering they like to block very often too. I did four runs and I always defeated like one or two encounters before dying. Personaly, I would put in some kind of system that scales the amount of HP they have after each encounter. So the first encounters much easier. But as I said, I suck at these games so it is quite possible the the fault is on me.
The first few encounters are easier by virtue of being drawn from a different encounter table than the one used later on, but reading your comment "easier" isn't the word to use. While it's true that the skill ceiling for this game is high, I certainly don't want the easiest difficulty to feel too difficult even for a beginner. I'll chop down their HP and block a bit more, thanks for the feedback!
This is the last DD submission for this game, as the demo is, for practical purposes, complete. As such, some of the areas where I'm most interested in feedback are:
- game feel (are any VFXs bad, and are any missing?).
- whether the japanese translation is acceptable.
- the easiest difficulty's balance (especially if it's your first time playing). ideally it should be at a level where you die without feeling discouraged.
Of course bug reports, general feedback and random design ideas are welcome as always.