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A jam submission

Deep ForcesView game page

Fight demons with precognition, clever tactics, and psychic powers.
Submitted by Zorch43 — 2 days, 5 hours before the deadline
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Deep Forces's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit)

I really enjoyed Into the Breach so I was excited to try this.

I think increasing the number of playable units is an interesting change, although the map feels a bit cramped as a result since one of my units spawned in a corner with an enemy blocking its path more than once.

I believe attacks should say exactly how much damage they deal. Numbers seem to range from 1 to 3 so any difference in damage is significant. Also, since the enemy takes far more actions that the player in most turns it seems like you are forced to take a couple of hits so knowing that would be great.

The controls work fine and they are intuitive, although sometimes it was a bit hard to select which tile to move too. That should never ever fail in a game like this because the player is going to perform this action hundreds if not thousands of times during the course of a playthrough.

I also think you need to make it more clear that enemies can't be pushed off the level to kill them like you would with a normal pitfall.

Besides that I'm intrigued by the XCOM like scan system. I wonder if you want a UFO Defense like early game where you are expected to lose dozens of recruits to the alien menace. That would explain the higher unit count and rather unfair enemy advantage. I honestly prefer that approach where you play as an organization rather than as individual characters because the latter were one of the weakest aspects of Into the Breach in my opinion, but that's just me.

Submitted

Interesting take on Into the Breach,  with no buildings but a lot more units.

The attack descriptions should show exactly how much damage each attack does. Also the currently selected unit should be highlighted. Other than that the UI seems to convey all the needed information.

3 actions seems a bit low with the number of attacks you have to deal with at once, though for the demo it was barely enough to scrape by.  Also I wish your units had more mobility as the battlefield ended up getting pretty cramped. Having flying units or units with more movement would help a lot.

Submitted

I have yet to play into the breach, just for the record. Sorry for no in depth feedback.

I managed to softlock the round where I couldn't click literally anything except for the menu while I had actions left to do, after performing a double suicide.

Pushing doesn't seem to work properly, or the level edges don't actually work as pitfalls.

Selecting tiles is wonky. Sometimes I can only do that by clicking a small top segment of it.

The action economy feels bullshit with only 3 actions compared to all the shit enemy side can do and spawn. I'd need a few smaller tutorial levels to get used to the mechanics and get familiar with all the weapons. Are the battles randomly generated? That's quite a brave concept since I would expect that sort of gameplay requires fine tuning scenarios by hand.

Should it be impossible to undo attacks?

The ambiance might be annoying when listened for a long time. It has those long resonating high tones that sound like they might give you a tinnitus.

Submitted(+1)
  • your screenshots are too small, and their quality is low. look into ffmpeg, it will change your life
  • the enemy takes its turn too slowly
  • new enemies appear from nowhere with no warning
  • it is indeed an into-the-breachlike, but there is too much going on from the first battle in terms of enemies and players
    • there are no interesting choices to make other than pushing enemies
  • some of the sound effects and ambience are a little grating, but that doesn't matter for an early prototype
  • the buttons were intuitive, i didn't need a tutorial
  • i felt the mouse click missed a few times from where i was aiming. i think better highlighting on what i'm pointing at would fix that