I played it a lot, because I did not play it last DD. I did not record it, but I wrote things down and took many screenshots. I realized I got way too many important screenshots so I named them, organized them and zipped them. You can find them here https://mega.nz/file/uIskRIAR#IuiFpGtY0YZz6z9585pfQIco-JeRhFvOtrPixRc-pms
Let me know if mega does not work for you and we can figure things out. Anyway, here's a list of things I wrote down while playtesting:
The game seems even more random now. There is less player involvement and control which is not something I like.
It’s really hard to come up with builds when your starting symbols are random, and you also do not know what boss you are going to face.
On first level, I found the broken machine to be much harder to deal with than the ghost.
Turning off the extra tooltips stopped my game from lagging whenever tooltips appear. I remember us talking about how the lag was due to me playing the game with Wine on Linux, but it is odd that turning those detailed tooltips off fixes it.
I did not fight many enemies that were new to me, because whenever I got to level 2 and 3 I was very picky with my fights. Maybe just for testing purposes you could give testers ability to start on later levels with some gear.
Headache did not seem to work with Rainbow.
Nothing is capped! There should be a cap on Midas and Shell, and possibly introduce some “Sudden Death” after x number of turns.
For the whole fight please refer to the PLEASE CAP folder
Sucker Punch should have minimum 1 dmg.
I have never beaten the space invaders minigame (even with Joystick item)
I played pinball once, and I at least got some tokens out of it.
Unlocking system is nice. I would like to see requirements for Unlocks not just from the title screen (especially when there is no good way to get there). I would also like to b able to see a full list of items and symbols in the game.
The most OP symbols in my opinion are Straws, Midas Touch, Empty Wallet. (See my multiple victory sreenshots in Victories folder)
just one out of 5 victories I got
The coolest symbol is Angry Meal.
Sometimes map generation really wants me to backtrack a lot. I wish there were less obstacle tiles connecting vertically that essentially split the map in half.
My Unlocks at the end
You can see the whole progression in the Unlocks folder.
Good feedback, I agree with it. Other cool combinations are the Bar item with the Eagle symbol, or the Brand New Suit with the symbols that give extra turns.
In my opinion, the game primarily needs to get people into playing it, since it is great fun once you do get into it.
I only had a few unlocks that I had not unlocked after playing for a very, very long while before starting to try to unlock those specifically. The Spades symbol (unlocked by having enough blue symbols in your deck) and the item making mini-games easier (play enough mini-games) were some of the unlocks that I had to do specific runs for. I also had to do a specific run to get the 100 maximum health unlock, I got it by grinding the bouncers with a deck that included the Apple symbol, life steal, and money gain, a green-yellow deck (I have a screenshot of the deck in the posts below). I do not remember what other unlocks I had to do specific runs just to unlock them.
Thanks for playing and for taking so much time to give feedback, great stuff! I'll respond to things point by point
How does the game feel more random? I'm pretty sure 2 DDs ago the 1 reel system was already there. Is it other stuff that feels random?
Starting symbols are a DD afterthought, there will be a better selection system for them in the future, probably locked behind an unlock
Yeah, Malfunction is probably a bit too much at the moment
I will look at the extra tooltips script to see if anything is stinky there, but it's a Wine exclusive problem so it's odd
Not sure if healing in shops is needed, that's the only thing Plinko and Space Invaders have that the shop doesn't. If anything, maybe Plinko should offer health more consistently
I agree with your ordering of things on the minimap. Symbol sheet should probably be cheaper. Space Invaders is still a rough WIP, I don't know if it's staying
I might leave debug functions available for next Demo Day to let people test things freely, it's not great that you felt the need to avoid enemies later
Headache not working with Rainbow is an oversight on my part. Headache (and Photo for that matter) are actually White, while Rainbow has 5 normal colors. I'll add White to Rainbow
I won't cap Money Shield or Shell or anything else if I can help it. The problem here is that some enemies have no scaling at all. Now that I think of it, the Bodyguard item + no ways to attack is a softlock against Blue Crookey. I'll review all enemies and ensure they have some scaling
Sucker Punch not being able to finish enemies is on purpose, probably won't change it
Space Invaders is not really beatable, I kinda just take what I can and leave it at that. Bad game design though. Again, this minigame is very WIP and kind of on the edge of a trash can
Did you not enjoy Pinball mechanically, or find it too slow, not worth the effort?
Unlock screen will be available during the game eventually, full list of symbols and items too. Currently it's just glued together for DD
I also had some cases of map generation going too vertical with the obstacles, forcing me into Bouncers. I might leave obstacles out of the topmost row to ensure it connects there always (though enemies and especially bosses will still block the path sometimes)
I will lower the requirements for Hearts/Diamonds/Spades/Clubs symbols to 6 of the same color, 8 is a bit unreasonable. Might lower total symbol unlock from 15 to 10 as well, since you didn't unlock it and no one ever wants that many symbols
It is a minor thing, but it makes it easier to describe which enemy you went up against, such as if you encountered a bug or an issue with that specific enemy, or if you died and want to describe your run and how it ended.
I went specifically for a starting deck that could grind the blue dice. In a previous run, I had bones, the green symbol that has dissolve and gives health, bitcoin, shield, and midas touch, and I ended up with over 2800 chips after two battles with blue cubes.
In this run, I got a starting deck close to what I wanted like the above, except I got fists instead of bones. The blue dice were defeated too quickly, but it still generated a good amount of chips from red dice. But then I stupidly decided to go up against the tinker, which was blocking a hole in a wall on the map. As it turns out, bones would probably have been better in this case, since bones would probably have worn down the shell accumulation.
so yeah going into a fight against the tinkerer wit just one dmg dealing symbol is not good enough. I finally managed to defeat him, but it took hours.
You can check out the feedback I written above. I also posted a mega link with more screenshots including the symbols I used for my completed run.
Really nice. In my build/deck when going up against the tinkerer, I had 5 non-dissolve symbols (Shield, Bitcoin, 2xMidas Touch, Punch), instead of 4 as in the starting deck (Shield, Bitcoin, Midas Touch, Punch), which meant that the probability of getting matching Fists was significantly lower, and even when I timed the first reel correctly, it more times than not did not match the Fist.
yeah, it is even worse when you got fists to match, but they were disabled. There really has to be a cap on shell, and maybe some sudden death after x number of turns.
Was shocked at how fun this was. The art threw me off at first but I really started to enjoy it the more I played. The combat was so unique and fun and the music was very fitting. You have a real winner on your hands with this game! I think it could be a massive hit.
Played a game of space invaders, and again got the “you won” screen bug. Pachinko also has the issue that if you click on “View Reels”, you can accidentally drop the ball.
It is the same bug as the pachinko one. It may be a mini-game bug where you get the “run won” screen showing as if you had defeated the final boss, even though you just completed a mini-game.
I had gotten to room 3 of the game, and played a game of pachinko. Once the ball hit the bottom, I got the “you won” screen that normally happens when you defeat the final boss.
Confirmation that bouncers can be grinded for both maximum health and for chips if you have the right deck and items. I did not have all the symbols and items shown below when I started grinding the bouncers.
the newly rebalanced icons and items seem to be done well. i haven’t found any icons/items that i would take in every situation which is a good thing
i like the new HUD, i think. i’m used to the last one
except that the black lines and outlines on the enemy intentions “thought box” visually messes with the black outlines of numbers
i think the art and animations of the Grenade Crookey are really good
i hate starting with random items. some builds feel impossible to win the first few fights with
i had hoped that unlocks would be unlockables that you’d be able to choose for your starting build. i’m just not a fan of the “play to unlock randomly appearing content” design and i can’t see what value it adds
i think Midas Touch in its current state is too good to be a starting icon
the new map generation is mildly more interactive, but still nothing interesting happens on the map stage and i have too much freedom to sometimes avoid fighting entirely and walk to the money & healing, store, and then boss which feels optimal but not fun
even the fact that there are enemies that counter my build, that i have to know that before choosing to fight them, and that i can just not interact with them, is unfun to me
something about your build relying on paying $100 to pick one of three random icons isn’t that fun
moreover, money is so limited that you don't get to make many interesting choices at the deckbuilding level before you’re spent
i think not getting an icon after every battle is a good change because that was the engine to getting easily overpowered, but it feels like there was nothing to replace its functionality
i think Red Wine dissolves even though its description doesn’t mention it. i didn’t get to test it this build
Starting builds will be redone at some point, they're currently too random. Might be reworked into a manual choice system, but it will also be an unlockable thing
Unlocking things that start appearing randomly has the purpose of time gating complex mechanics until the player knows what they mean and (admittedly artificially) encouraging trying different builds. This is a first iteration of unlocks so unlock conditions and the actual unlockables are subject to change
I understand why you feel the map is too free. I might crank up the obstacle and enemy counts on later chapters, or as a thing for higher difficulties. I tried generating the map with higher obstacle count and it turned it into a maze with enemies frequently blocking the way and dead ends. It's not necessarily a worse design, but it doesn't work well with Bouncers. Personally I feel like there's enough pressure to min-max my moves - if I mess around too much, Bouncers might kill a shop with an item I was saving for. Perhaps this would be felt more if the balance was tighter
I might add a thing where refusing a symbol or item choice refunds portion of money spent, then it wouldn't feel as bad to get a dud for 100
Red Wine indeed dissolves, I forgot to update its custom description
my life insurance seemed to never expire and i won the battle while blocking several fatal attacks. i activated 3 "yellow present" symbols during the battle. i didn't pay enough attention to be sure, but i'd speculate that i activated life insurance then "yellow present" (which i'm sure only added two items) so i'd speculate that would be the cause
Sorry, I thought at the time that it was the easiest approach to winning. I experimented much more later on after the stream (but I still rerolled a lot of the times, even when trying different stuff), and got wins with a variety of runs, including (some of these overlap):
One or more wins with red or red-mixed decks (the "angry meal" symbol with lots of extra dissolves is really powerful, and a red deck with good power increases is really powerful against most bosses and several enemies).
One or more wins with yellow or yellow-mixed decks (both with greed, one run I got the money bag symbol (or two of them) as well as two wallet items, though several runs with yellow or yellow-mixed decks failed against the final boss, the "greed" of the final boss can hurt if you do not have defense, and I failed to get that in one run).
One or more wins with green or green-mixed decks (green has gotten significantly nerfed it feels like, and the game has gotten harder, but symbols that deal damage as a proportion of health can work well against bosses and the final boss if you ensure that you engage the bosses with full health even if you have to avoid any and all fights. Also, the symbol that deals 1/5 to you and 1/2 to the enemy as proportion of health is extremely powerful, but will not guarantee you the win by itself).
Maybe one or more 3+ color mixed decks. I might have won, or gotten really far, with a deck with bananas (extra damage per dissolved symbol), lots of dissolved symbols (maybe green, maybe yellow, I think at least the darts, maybe red), and the "angry meal" symbol, and maybe some purple.
In some of the runs above, I mixed in purple symbols with success, but I have generally avoided most purple symbols, which I bet was correct in most cases, they are often interesting traps (which I like). In one run I decided to take a purple symbol, just to get confirmation that it was basically a trap (the eagle symbol), and I was confirmed in it being a trap, though I might have reached the final boss with it, due to mixing in the "blood orange" symbol. In another run, one specific purple symbol might have been the key part of the run, but I do not remember its name or its function, sorry.
I do not believe that I ever succeeded with a blue deck, one time I might have gone far, but messed up and attacked the wrong non-boss enemy in room 2 or 3. The first bosses, and many enemies in general, require strong offense, their attacks will get stronger and stronger (which they have to, otherwise you can farm them with yellow decks), and will eventually outscale your defenses. The key may be blue symbols like the one that converts defense into power, but that I never really experimented with that (and it might become risky, since with a blue deck, you might be relying on defense for protection instead of items). Mixing in money shield works, but money shield works really well in a pure-yellow deck.
The game can be very frustrating, and the last boss in particular is daunting, even if you have a strong deck. The "deflation" ability can quickly destroy the offensive potential of a deck, and then it is all but over. Even power-increasing symbols can be wrecked by deflation. The "greed" of the boss can be lethal for yellow decks, at least if they do not have sufficient defense. I began prioritizing symbols that were "resistant", like dealing damage proportionally, or dealing huge damage without relying on power. The "ace-type" symbols are also attractive for this, the red ace is automatically resistant and only slowed down by deflation, the yellow ace (a proportion of earned money dealt as damage?) deals enormous damage quickly as long as your money generation, the green ace dealing damage equal to half of health lost in current battle makes it for most decks excellent, at least if you ensure that you go into battle at full health. But how frustrating the game can be, including the trial and error, also makes it nicer when you do manage a win, even if getting a win is often up to chance.
Money costing symbols that cost money even when never hurt (the money shield/"Midas touch" symbol is not one of these, since it costs nothing if you do not get hurt), are interesting, even though they are dicey, unless your money generation and efficiency (like if you have the item that decreases cost) is so high that you gain money on any battle. If your money generation and efficiency is not sufficiently high, it may be best to avoid all battles and preserve both money and health, and only pick battles with great care, which is interesting and a kind of challenge.
When rerolling, I often avoided lemons and bones. The lemon symbol is not bad, but it makes it really difficult to get cost-efficient battles unless you pick up a cost-reducing item or get good money generation. I can see it being good against the first room boss however, even without cost reduction or money generation, if you save up, even by scrounging money off the floor. Bones is just weak almost always, both in theory and mostly in practice, but that does not make it bad, it is a nice puzzle for the player to figure out, and rerolling is quick (even if the player has to go into the menu to discover that they have the option of rerolling by restarting). I also often avoided some other symbols, typically the "fifth" symbol. I do not necessarily think these symbols should be removed from the start, it is part of the challenge to figure out what might and might not work.
The money generation of the game makes it harder to balance, but also makes it different and interesting.
The game is difficult to "balance", but it is also interesting.
Should the current mode be "Hard mode" or "New game+", since it is substantially harder than before I believe (not getting a choice of symbols from enemies makes it much more important to pick your battles well, and randomness plays a large factor)?
The boss battles in the first room are rather dangerous, and decreases the viable decks you can build early. Which is not necessarily bad, figuring out which decks are viable, and balancing long term vs. short term is interesting. I dislike the broken machine boss however, it felt too much like a "you get this boss, you lose even when you played well". Unless the purpose is to artificially increase how much of the player's time is wasted, it is frustrating. The only real strategy I found to be effective against it was the "banana" symbol, since "banana" is multi-color and the broken machine boss repeatedly introduces a huge number of "dissolve" temporary symbols, but you cannot easily get the "banana" symbol. I am tempted to suggest that you rework this boss or something, though it may just be a skill issue on my part.
I never timed the reels.
I tried a few mini-games, but the skill-based one, space invaders, was rather difficult and also felt random. But the whole game is about risk and reward and chance, it is fine for the arcade mini-games to be unfair.
The map generation has issues at times, and learning it includes trial and error, but the random nature of it and risk and reward fits the theme of the game.
Is the avocado symbol a pure green symbol? It has a red core in it.
Will a color-blind mode be added to the game, which specifies the "colors" of each symbol before picking or buying?
The game is fun in my opinion, but I remember it being difficult to understand and get into, and another poster here described how they like me in a previous demo day took a lot of time before they grasped the in-combat click-button mechanic. I do not have a good suggestion on how to improve this issue, however, but it might be really helpful if you figure out a good solution to it. My feeling is that a pure UI solution that does not change the gameplay might work.
(do not ask me how much I played this game, I spent more than a few hours off-stream).
Interesting that you haven't had any luck with Blue. I thought it's the easiest to win with, since you're taking no damage at all, and grind enemies down with Retaliate. You gotta pick your fights though cause enemies that like to set up will end it. I didn't play a lot since the introduction of unlocks however, so it's possible that the Spade symbol is what made it easy, and that being locked now made Blue that much worse.
Bones I think aren't too bad if you get a Power build. They're worse than Fist at the start, but they even out at +1 Power and become better at +2.
The Malfunction boss is meant to be countered by having a large quantity of symbols. Might be too strong however, probably shouldn't give 2 symbols per turn right away.
Avocado is pure green, the core is brown which is not a symbol color. Might make it black or gray to reduce the risk of confusion.
Color-blind mode is absolutely necessary for full release and will be implemented... Somehow. I have no idea how this is going to play out in practice. Reels fly by fast so glance value is important, I don't know if extra symbols or frames will be clear enough unless I slow down the reels. It'll be a headache to implement for sure
To make the game easier to understand, I think just explicitly telling the player in a tutorial that reel timing matters should be enough. I could even do a hand-holdy tutorial that won't progress until the timing is perfect, but I don't like those.
For blue, I also did not try it a lot and did not go for it really, which contributed to not getting a pure blue win or substantially mixed blue win. The removal of rewards of symbols for common enemies made the game harder. For blue, after you wrote this reply, I tried specifically to unlock the Spade symbol, and only succeeded after some time. Most everything else was unlocked before I tried unlocking the Spade symbol. I may have wrongly assumed that one strategy would not work, which I may have employed in a previous demo day some of the time, namely to get to a point where your defenses are strong, your money making is strong, and then just go to weak enemies and have the battles last for a long time and get lots of money. It is not easy, but you can actually get to a point where you can grind the bouncers for money without taking any damage in return. At that point in time, you have probably already almost guaranteed a win, of course, but I feel like the bouncers should get more powerful every time you defeat them in a room, even if they only get a bit more powerful each time you defeat them. But this is mainly yellow decks that may have some blue mixed in.
I did not succeed in finding a good combination of blue using the Spade up and running, though I have only played a smidgen after unlocking the Spade symbol. I can see it being powerful, since it does not consume Block, and there are blue symbols that either builds up a lot of Block or persists block between rounds. And the Ace of Spades symbol only get stronger over time, even when facing the final boss.
Bones can be powerful if you get a very large amount of Power, but that is difficult to get in the first room, and defeating enemies effectively is helpful in getting money in the first room to try to clap together a viable game-winning deck, or at least one that can defeat the boss of the first room and then try to clap together something good in the second room. And even if you have a mediocre amount of Power, bones may not be worth it. For the early game, if you have 3 matching Bones, you get 2x2 + 1x2 + 0x2 = 6 damage. Not bad, but not amazing either. If you compare it with the Fist symbol, you get 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 damage. Now, if you have both Bones and Fist, and you match 3 Bones and then 3 Fist, you get 6 damage total. Making the Bones worse than useless, apart from matching. Each bone can potentially make every subsequent hit 1 worse. So if you have Bones first and then X hits from subsequent symbols, you maybe deal damage for (2 + Power)*2 - X. If Power is at 2 and X is at 10, you potentially lose out on 2 damage compared to if you did not have Bones. And you can have multiple Bones match early. On the other hand, if you have huge Power, like 15, the multiple hits of Bones are worth it. But that is often in the late game and when you likely have a powerful build already, not in the early or mid game.
But I do not mind Bones being weak or a drawback early, it is a part of the challenge to figure out whether and how to use Bones. Just please enable rerolling at the start or some other way of avoiding or dealing with Bones.
The map generation for some levels can be very punishing, with long vertical walls ending in dead ends or mini-boss enemies before the passage, and other issues with the map generation.
Avocados having a brown core: My brother in Christ, what in the world are you saying? The RGB code for the brown core of an avocado symbol is 0Xa96521, the RGB code for the core red color of a Chili item is 0Xd74646. These values are not far from each other, in particular when looking at them at a glance. Almost all other symbols are great at avoiding ambiguity in colors. [Imagine an image of a crying, sad and cute cat here]. Please do at least tweak the color to reduce the risk of confusion and ambiguity, thank you.
I personally almost never tried timing the reel, and I would not have cared about colors there if I was color blind, except for the sake of learning and understanding the game and what is going on. But I do care about the color of the symbols when I am picking and selecting them, and which color(s) a symbol is when picking or buying is in my playtester-role-opinion (which is basically worthless, I have no stake in the game, always be careful with the opinions of others) significantly more important than matching them on the reels. Though being able to see which color(s) a symbol has, is helpful for learning the game at the start, and people have already had problems with understanding the game. Maybe let the player have an icon in the hover UI that shows the color(s) of a symbol, maybe right below the “SYMBOL” text in the top-right corner, both in the shop, when picking in the room, and when viewing the symbols in the UI? You could honestly get inspired by the color icons from Magic: The Gathering. To me, as long as the color-blind player can learn which colors a symbol has, the silhouette of the symbol should help, many of the symbols in the game has more or less mutually-distinct silhouettes. But if you really want color-blind players to see it, maybe add small tiny icons in some corner of each symbol on the reel, each of them having an easy to differentiate silhouette? It would require testing either way.
There are many fun and sometimes surprising combinations. Like the Star symbol with the Brand New Suit item.
A tutorial is a good idea, even a brief one should help. I would personally not care about getting the timing right with the reel spinning, it is perfectly possible to play without timing, and some people may want to play the game without any timing or reflexes at all, like a pure turn-based game. I did not personally pin the game as having timing be important, to me it is all just deck building, predicting and picking fights, exploring strategically, and having the right strategy, and learning the game mechanics and discovering funny and interesting combinations, and stuff.
Maybe the right kind of green deck could also grind the bouncers, in order to get an arbitrarily high maximum health. But that kind of deck might be viable for winning the final boss either way.
Also, the trial and error of learning what enemies do can be a bit annoying, it lengthens the duration of the game. This can be solved in-game, or by the game having a (maybe user-made) wiki. Though enemies "not revealing their hands" and not being described up front is a part of many successful games, such as FTL, in particular its final boss.
Great game, I streamed it. Substantially harder this time around. I found one blocking bug:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2024480033?t=1h54m46s . Arrow keys did nothing, the Bandit walked off the screen, maybe she sobered up.
I don't think you should have the intro movie play immediately upon the game loading. It feels like it jumps out at me and maybe I want to adjust the graphics or audio settings first?
Fantastic intro movie, love her expressions.
I'd like to be able to do maximized windowed because that allows me to see it on my full screen but I can easily jump back to my browser to type my thoughts.
So happy you got rid trying to time each reel. I ain't built for that kind of focus these days, I'm an oldfriend!
When the silver platter comes out, it should move slightly or have a shining effect, to indicate to the player they must click it to open it and see what they get. It would also be nice juice.
The "Enter" button for the gift shop is too small. Why don't I enter when I click anywhere on the gift shop?
It told me I got a hammer Symbol but now I don't see it... Edit: I understand now. It is available in the game but I don't get it. As someone who doesn't play roguelikes this confused me.
When I have the symbols window open, I'd like it if I could click outside of it to close it rather than having to click the top right icon again.
How do I use Perfume? Edit: oh I guess I need another symbol with Dissolve? I didn't realize that when I bought it.
You need SFX and music for Space Invaders!
I started another run. It told me I got a stinky cheese symbol. It looks like this symbol is bad because it heals the enemy? And then it says it applies poison to the opponent. Are "enemy" and "opponent" the same?
Is the slot machine completely randomized? I was trying to time the first reel but gave up.
It says the Bouncers are coming but it doesn't seem like they move each time.
Gave up after my second run. It's pretty hard. I sort of see how I can strategize it well but I don't think I'm patient enough to keep trying. But for fans of the genre I bet they'll love this.
I thought starting games with intros is fairly common, no? But fair enough, maybe at least volume settings should be accessible during the intro somehow
I can probably add support for resizing windows freely, I'll look into it and see if the game doesn't look gross when resized imperfectly
Good suggestions for the silver platter, enter button and symbols window, will add to my to-do
Space Invaders is a WIP, I haven't fully committed to giving it graphics and sounds as I'm not sure if it's staying
Enemy and opponent are indeed the same, I gotta do some proofreading. Cheese is actually not bad - enemies don't get overhealed so at the start of the battle it's just free 3 Poison. It will sometimes annoyingly save the enemy, but it's pretty good overall
Slot machine is semi-randomized. You can stop the first reel manually and time it perfectly once you get the hang of it, but 2nd and 3rd are fully random
Bouncers move up every 10 moves, there's an indicator on the left side of the screen (appears once first warning shows up). The ghost bouncers show up when there's less than 5 moves left
Very cool concept. I'd wish for the following changes:
- The bandit being either completely reflex-based, but with infinite time, (each reel spinning indefinitely, and stopping ~immediately on button press) or not at all (no button press, combat is completely automatic). The way it currently is, with 2nd and 3rd reel stopping shortly after first one, automatically - maybe I am just skill-issued, but I always feel like there WOULD be right time to press the button, it's just too tedious for me, to calculate the reels in the head. And I just try to press when I see red or whichever color I stacked on the left and then hope for the best. Idk, maybe just offer all 3 styles of Bandit and let the player decide.
- The initial loadout not be randomized. Either always the same, or a few different ones to choose from ("classes")
- For deciding which symbols to pick up, perhaps I haven't understood the full depth yet, but I felt that just stacking one single color was easily the best strategy. Otherwise I would just get too many dud spins. Don't really understand the combo/multi pieces, though, do they count as any color? Anyways maybe you can come up with more ideas to enable mixing the colors, or balancing dud spins. Or maybe they already exist in the game. Was just my thoughts while playing.
My performance so far, if you care: First run died to first enemy (a dice), second run died to first boss, third run went up to 500 coins at first encounter, reached second floor, lost 60 health to a barwoman pitching drinks so I had 4 health at the 2nd boss and lost. I have no complaints. (Reading through this again, makes me think, what if there was no health, but you lost at 0 coins? Would fit the flavor very well and make for sth. different compared to all the other roguelites with coins.)
The animations and visual style I think are very cool and fitting. The unlocks are confusing to me, because why am I unlocking these things? I am barely even finding items in the game world. In the first 15 minutes I "unlock" 3 items, that have exciting descriptions, but I only find a single item to actually pick up. But this is something that I don't understand in many Roguelites, e.g. in Enter the Gungeon it makes absolutely no sense to me either. But in RoR2 I love it, because the unlocks come from doing more or less crazy things in game. There's the special satisfaction, the first 10-20 hours of playing RoR2, where you do something insane and have the beautiful popup with an item unlock. Like the game telling you, ya, that was indeed mad.
So, I am a fan of this genre and I would've bought your game on steam for 5-10€ from the pitch and screenshots. Keep trucking!!
edit: Playing a bit more, I realize I have been stupid. The 2nd and 3rd reels can never be controlled, I thought they could be if one pressed fast enough. So it's quite a bit of luck, all in all, I like that. The Multi symbols clearly have 2 different colors. That is also nice.
The slot machine being completely reflex-based was tried before and not popular at all. People were getting tired of trying to constantly time it, and it became a game where you're constantly in Quick Time Event mode, and the payoff between timing it right or not was so huge that you couldn't just give up on it. Making it fully automated would make the game a complete auto battler, with no player agency in battle. The current system is the best middle ground I could find, where you can time the first reel to nudge the odds in your favour, but the quality of the follow-up spins are random, lifting the pressure from the player significantly. Players who want an autobattler already have the choice to just mash the button immediately
Randomized starting loadouts will be an unlockable feature, and yeah, they probably need some refinement
Stacking one color is indeed one of the best ways to go, however there are enemies in the game designed to counter a specific color so I usually like to go 2-3 colors. Going for more than 4-5 colors will end up quite inconsistent unless all symbols are 2+ colored
I considered making money equivalent to health, so that you're trying not to go "broke" instead of having generic health, but I think that would take away too many health-based interactions.
Unlocks are completely arbitrary with no thematic reason. Kinda imitates Binding of Isaac in that way, where things just show up because stuff happened. Not the best in terms of integrating the theme, but I think it's an acceptable standard in the genre
>The current system is the best middle ground I could find
Yeah, I agree it’s good. Just didn’t understand how it works at the start. My only experience with One Armed Bandits is from Pokémon 1st gen.
edit: To be clear, the way I thought the reels worked was that you have a short 1-2 second window to stop all of them manually, one by one. I did not understand that the 2nd and 3rd are completely uncontrollable after hitting the button once. So I was even more stressed out than people that played the old version, because I thought I should find the perfect timing for reel 2 and 3 within the 2 second window after stopping reel 1.
I am getting stutters in the game, it feels like each time I start it, gets worse. You can maybe feel it in the stream recording. Stopped OBS once to see if that was causing it, but lags remained.
Idk, playing more, I really don't know about these random reels. I feel the strategy comes down to "stack 1-2 colours, and know which 1-2 types of enemies you can beat with that." The other enemies are in some cases not only "hard" but statistically nigh impossible. There is a bunch of enemies that grind you down badly if you do not find an ultrafast K.O.
Timing each reel individually, there would be some point in playing a "jack of all trades" all-colour build, if you are very good at timing, because it would have the benefit of being able to farm all enemies. But as things are right now, if you have too many colours, you simply will never hit anything.
Expanding on this, I feel the enemies that manipulate your slot machine are really stupid (now?) because quite soon you are just unable to hit anything. You go from an OK machine to regular 3-4 turns of nothing in a row.
Maybe the fix to individual reel-stopping being to stressful is just making reels (much?) slower? After all, there is also a strategic angle in deciding, given 3 randomized reels, which 9x9 you want to hit. If you are stacking all red, you don't care, but if you have more mixed colours, you can actually try to hit blue vs. machinegunners, and red vs. tourists, and yellow when you need money, and so on.
Just some more thoughts, idk, take it or leave it, might play more and change my mind more. Need to get a purple build running at least one time....
Cool that you can control camera in minigames now.
I wonder if the 1st map is too hard? All the times combined I played OAB (with previous DDs) probably amounts to about 3-4 hours and I defeated the 1st boss only 2 times so far. I don't mind this, but I fear it could be a filter for a new player getting hooked. This is can only be determined by a sum of multiple people's experience, so that's just my hunch.
Nice to see there's more assets for enemies and pickups, and improvements like health bar looking better now. The polish is increasing. Can't wait to see more.
I've had that bug happen a few times, just didn't get around to debugging it because I haven't implemented a seed system and therefore can't consistently cause it
1st chapter is probably too hard indeed, I'm usually finding myself with a broken build mid-chapter 2 if I reach it and just roll over everything from there. I'm aware of this imbalance, just didn't focus on fixing it yet.
Comments
I played it a lot, because I did not play it last DD. I did not record it, but I wrote things down and took many screenshots. I realized I got way too many important screenshots so I named them, organized them and zipped them. You can find them here https://mega.nz/file/uIskRIAR#IuiFpGtY0YZz6z9585pfQIco-JeRhFvOtrPixRc-pms
Let me know if mega does not work for you and we can figure things out. Anyway, here's a list of things I wrote down while playtesting:
The game seems even more random now. There is less player involvement and control which is not something I like.
It’s really hard to come up with builds when your starting symbols are random, and you also do not know what boss you are going to face.
On first level, I found the broken machine to be much harder to deal with than the ghost.
Turning off the extra tooltips stopped my game from lagging whenever tooltips appear. I remember us talking about how the lag was due to me playing the game with Wine on Linux, but it is odd that turning those detailed tooltips off fixes it.
I still think shops should have some healing.
Shops > Items > Symbols > Dropping Minigame > Pinball > Space Invaders
I did not fight many enemies that were new to me, because whenever I got to level 2 and 3 I was very picky with my fights. Maybe just for testing purposes you could give testers ability to start on later levels with some gear.
Headache did not seem to work with Rainbow.
Nothing is capped! There should be a cap on Midas and Shell, and possibly introduce some “Sudden Death” after x number of turns.
Sucker Punch should have minimum 1 dmg.
I have never beaten the space invaders minigame (even with Joystick item)
I played pinball once, and I at least got some tokens out of it.
Unlocking system is nice. I would like to see requirements for Unlocks not just from the title screen (especially when there is no good way to get there). I would also like to b able to see a full list of items and symbols in the game.
The most OP symbols in my opinion are Straws, Midas Touch, Empty Wallet. (See my multiple victory sreenshots in Victories folder)
The coolest symbol is Angry Meal.
Sometimes map generation really wants me to backtrack a lot. I wish there were less obstacle tiles connecting vertically that essentially split the map in half.
My Unlocks at the end
You can see the whole progression in the Unlocks folder.
Good feedback, I agree with it. Other cool combinations are the Bar item with the Eagle symbol, or the Brand New Suit with the symbols that give extra turns.
In my opinion, the game primarily needs to get people into playing it, since it is great fun once you do get into it.
Yes, the BAR and the Cin that gives more tokens whenever you get tokes are instant buys for me
Also I am ashamed to say that I have all implemented unlocks, unlocked.
Good job. I've beaten the Owner 5 times, and still have some missing, but I doubt I would get them without doing specific runs just to unlock them.
I only had a few unlocks that I had not unlocked after playing for a very, very long while before starting to try to unlock those specifically. The Spades symbol (unlocked by having enough blue symbols in your deck) and the item making mini-games easier (play enough mini-games) were some of the unlocks that I had to do specific runs for. I also had to do a specific run to get the 100 maximum health unlock, I got it by grinding the bouncers with a deck that included the Apple symbol, life steal, and money gain, a green-yellow deck (I have a screenshot of the deck in the posts below). I do not remember what other unlocks I had to do specific runs just to unlock them.
Thanks for playing and for taking so much time to give feedback, great stuff! I'll respond to things point by point
How does the game feel more random? I'm pretty sure 2 DDs ago the 1 reel system was already there. Is it other stuff that feels random?
Starting symbols are a DD afterthought, there will be a better selection system for them in the future, probably locked behind an unlock
Yeah, Malfunction is probably a bit too much at the moment
I will look at the extra tooltips script to see if anything is stinky there, but it's a Wine exclusive problem so it's odd
Not sure if healing in shops is needed, that's the only thing Plinko and Space Invaders have that the shop doesn't. If anything, maybe Plinko should offer health more consistently
I agree with your ordering of things on the minimap. Symbol sheet should probably be cheaper. Space Invaders is still a rough WIP, I don't know if it's staying
I might leave debug functions available for next Demo Day to let people test things freely, it's not great that you felt the need to avoid enemies later
Headache not working with Rainbow is an oversight on my part. Headache (and Photo for that matter) are actually White, while Rainbow has 5 normal colors. I'll add White to Rainbow
I won't cap Money Shield or Shell or anything else if I can help it. The problem here is that some enemies have no scaling at all. Now that I think of it, the Bodyguard item + no ways to attack is a softlock against Blue Crookey. I'll review all enemies and ensure they have some scaling
Sucker Punch not being able to finish enemies is on purpose, probably won't change it
Space Invaders is not really beatable, I kinda just take what I can and leave it at that. Bad game design though. Again, this minigame is very WIP and kind of on the edge of a trash can
Did you not enjoy Pinball mechanically, or find it too slow, not worth the effort?
Unlock screen will be available during the game eventually, full list of symbols and items too. Currently it's just glued together for DD
I also had some cases of map generation going too vertical with the obstacles, forcing me into Bouncers. I might leave obstacles out of the topmost row to ensure it connects there always (though enemies and especially bosses will still block the path sometimes)
I will lower the requirements for Hearts/Diamonds/Spades/Clubs symbols to 6 of the same color, 8 is a bit unreasonable. Might lower total symbol unlock from 15 to 10 as well, since you didn't unlock it and no one ever wants that many symbols
Random Boss, random starting symbols, less opportunities to get symbols (no symbol reward after normal fights).
that's good.
maybe add some sudden death, or remove all buffs every x turns or something like that.
It's not that I don't enjoy pinball. It's that it can easily be a net negative to play it.
I am happy you listen to feedback, and thanks or replying
A request: When in a battle, please give some way to see the name of the enemy, names such as “tinker” or “queen of diamonds” or “DJ”.
Not sure why this is useful, but sure I guess?
It is a minor thing, but it makes it easier to describe which enemy you went up against, such as if you encountered a bug or an issue with that specific enemy, or if you died and want to describe your run and how it ended.
I went specifically for a starting deck that could grind the blue dice. In a previous run, I had bones, the green symbol that has dissolve and gives health, bitcoin, shield, and midas touch, and I ended up with over 2800 chips after two battles with blue cubes.
In this run, I got a starting deck close to what I wanted like the above, except I got fists instead of bones. The blue dice were defeated too quickly, but it still generated a good amount of chips from red dice. But then I stupidly decided to go up against the tinker, which was blocking a hole in a wall on the map. As it turns out, bones would probably have been better in this case, since bones would probably have worn down the shell accumulation.
those are some rookie numbers. You gotta pump them up
Very nice. What does your deck/symbol set look like?
It was also the starting symbols
so yeah going into a fight against the tinkerer wit just one dmg dealing symbol is not good enough. I finally managed to defeat him, but it took hours.
You can check out the feedback I written above. I also posted a mega link with more screenshots including the symbols I used for my completed run.
Really nice. In my build/deck when going up against the tinkerer, I had 5 non-dissolve symbols (Shield, Bitcoin, 2xMidas Touch, Punch), instead of 4 as in the starting deck (Shield, Bitcoin, Midas Touch, Punch), which meant that the probability of getting matching Fists was significantly lower, and even when I timed the first reel correctly, it more times than not did not match the Fist.
yeah, it is even worse when you got fists to match, but they were disabled. There really has to be a cap on shell, and maybe some sudden death after x number of turns.
Was shocked at how fun this was. The art threw me off at first but I really started to enjoy it the more I played. The combat was so unique and fun and the music was very fitting. You have a real winner on your hands with this game! I think it could be a massive hit.
Played a game of space invaders, and again got the “you won” screen bug. Pachinko also has the issue that if you click on “View Reels”, you can accidentally drop the ball.
What's the space invasers bug, not sure I saw it?
It is the same bug as the pachinko one. It may be a mini-game bug where you get the “run won” screen showing as if you had defeated the final boss, even though you just completed a mini-game.
Thanks, found the bug
Strange bug report:
I had gotten to room 3 of the game, and played a game of pachinko. Once the ball hit the bottom, I got the “you won” screen that normally happens when you defeat the final boss.
Confirmation that bouncers can be grinded for both maximum health and for chips if you have the right deck and items. I did not have all the symbols and items shown below when I started grinding the bouncers.
Making them scale with each fight is on my to-do
Thanks for playing!
Starting builds will be redone at some point, they're currently too random. Might be reworked into a manual choice system, but it will also be an unlockable thing
Unlocking things that start appearing randomly has the purpose of time gating complex mechanics until the player knows what they mean and (admittedly artificially) encouraging trying different builds. This is a first iteration of unlocks so unlock conditions and the actual unlockables are subject to change
I understand why you feel the map is too free. I might crank up the obstacle and enemy counts on later chapters, or as a thing for higher difficulties. I tried generating the map with higher obstacle count and it turned it into a maze with enemies frequently blocking the way and dead ends. It's not necessarily a worse design, but it doesn't work well with Bouncers. Personally I feel like there's enough pressure to min-max my moves - if I mess around too much, Bouncers might kill a shop with an item I was saving for. Perhaps this would be felt more if the balance was tighter
I might add a thing where refusing a symbol or item choice refunds portion of money spent, then it wouldn't feel as bad to get a dud for 100
Red Wine indeed dissolves, I forgot to update its custom description
crash when trying to view reels during an area transition
my life insurance seemed to never expire and i won the battle while blocking several fatal attacks. i activated 3 "yellow present" symbols during the battle. i didn't pay enough attention to be sure, but i'd speculate that i activated life insurance then "yellow present" (which i'm sure only added two items) so i'd speculate that would be the cause
There was a bug with life insurance never expiring in that version, been fixed for a while now
The fact that you're even playing out of DD season is quite a compliment
i don't think i had used life insurance before, so i assumed it was a complicated bug.
i think i've played it out of season since DD52. it's fun to play idly, but i preferred the old versions
just having Copyhat against an opponent with Envy status and gaining 1 power is enough to create a softlock
Damn, I had something to prevent this. Must not be working
Is it intended that Red Wine permanently doubles negative power?
Yes
Was my stream of the game useful? Is there anything I could have done better for testing the game?
It was useful, yes. I wish you didn't reroll for Darts so much though, it made all those runs Poison themed
Sorry, I thought at the time that it was the easiest approach to winning. I experimented much more later on after the stream (but I still rerolled a lot of the times, even when trying different stuff), and got wins with a variety of runs, including (some of these overlap):
I do not believe that I ever succeeded with a blue deck, one time I might have gone far, but messed up and attacked the wrong non-boss enemy in room 2 or 3. The first bosses, and many enemies in general, require strong offense, their attacks will get stronger and stronger (which they have to, otherwise you can farm them with yellow decks), and will eventually outscale your defenses. The key may be blue symbols like the one that converts defense into power, but that I never really experimented with that (and it might become risky, since with a blue deck, you might be relying on defense for protection instead of items). Mixing in money shield works, but money shield works really well in a pure-yellow deck.
The game can be very frustrating, and the last boss in particular is daunting, even if you have a strong deck. The "deflation" ability can quickly destroy the offensive potential of a deck, and then it is all but over. Even power-increasing symbols can be wrecked by deflation. The "greed" of the boss can be lethal for yellow decks, at least if they do not have sufficient defense. I began prioritizing symbols that were "resistant", like dealing damage proportionally, or dealing huge damage without relying on power. The "ace-type" symbols are also attractive for this, the red ace is automatically resistant and only slowed down by deflation, the yellow ace (a proportion of earned money dealt as damage?) deals enormous damage quickly as long as your money generation, the green ace dealing damage equal to half of health lost in current battle makes it for most decks excellent, at least if you ensure that you go into battle at full health. But how frustrating the game can be, including the trial and error, also makes it nicer when you do manage a win, even if getting a win is often up to chance.
Money costing symbols that cost money even when never hurt (the money shield/"Midas touch" symbol is not one of these, since it costs nothing if you do not get hurt), are interesting, even though they are dicey, unless your money generation and efficiency (like if you have the item that decreases cost) is so high that you gain money on any battle. If your money generation and efficiency is not sufficiently high, it may be best to avoid all battles and preserve both money and health, and only pick battles with great care, which is interesting and a kind of challenge.
When rerolling, I often avoided lemons and bones. The lemon symbol is not bad, but it makes it really difficult to get cost-efficient battles unless you pick up a cost-reducing item or get good money generation. I can see it being good against the first room boss however, even without cost reduction or money generation, if you save up, even by scrounging money off the floor. Bones is just weak almost always, both in theory and mostly in practice, but that does not make it bad, it is a nice puzzle for the player to figure out, and rerolling is quick (even if the player has to go into the menu to discover that they have the option of rerolling by restarting). I also often avoided some other symbols, typically the "fifth" symbol. I do not necessarily think these symbols should be removed from the start, it is part of the challenge to figure out what might and might not work.
The money generation of the game makes it harder to balance, but also makes it different and interesting.
The game is difficult to "balance", but it is also interesting.
Should the current mode be "Hard mode" or "New game+", since it is substantially harder than before I believe (not getting a choice of symbols from enemies makes it much more important to pick your battles well, and randomness plays a large factor)?
The boss battles in the first room are rather dangerous, and decreases the viable decks you can build early. Which is not necessarily bad, figuring out which decks are viable, and balancing long term vs. short term is interesting. I dislike the broken machine boss however, it felt too much like a "you get this boss, you lose even when you played well". Unless the purpose is to artificially increase how much of the player's time is wasted, it is frustrating. The only real strategy I found to be effective against it was the "banana" symbol, since "banana" is multi-color and the broken machine boss repeatedly introduces a huge number of "dissolve" temporary symbols, but you cannot easily get the "banana" symbol. I am tempted to suggest that you rework this boss or something, though it may just be a skill issue on my part.
I never timed the reels.
I tried a few mini-games, but the skill-based one, space invaders, was rather difficult and also felt random. But the whole game is about risk and reward and chance, it is fine for the arcade mini-games to be unfair.
The map generation has issues at times, and learning it includes trial and error, but the random nature of it and risk and reward fits the theme of the game.
Is the avocado symbol a pure green symbol? It has a red core in it.
Will a color-blind mode be added to the game, which specifies the "colors" of each symbol before picking or buying?
The game is fun in my opinion, but I remember it being difficult to understand and get into, and another poster here described how they like me in a previous demo day took a lot of time before they grasped the in-combat click-button mechanic. I do not have a good suggestion on how to improve this issue, however, but it might be really helpful if you figure out a good solution to it. My feeling is that a pure UI solution that does not change the gameplay might work.
(do not ask me how much I played this game, I spent more than a few hours off-stream).
Interesting that you haven't had any luck with Blue. I thought it's the easiest to win with, since you're taking no damage at all, and grind enemies down with Retaliate. You gotta pick your fights though cause enemies that like to set up will end it. I didn't play a lot since the introduction of unlocks however, so it's possible that the Spade symbol is what made it easy, and that being locked now made Blue that much worse.
Bones I think aren't too bad if you get a Power build. They're worse than Fist at the start, but they even out at +1 Power and become better at +2.
The Malfunction boss is meant to be countered by having a large quantity of symbols. Might be too strong however, probably shouldn't give 2 symbols per turn right away.
Avocado is pure green, the core is brown which is not a symbol color. Might make it black or gray to reduce the risk of confusion.
Color-blind mode is absolutely necessary for full release and will be implemented... Somehow. I have no idea how this is going to play out in practice. Reels fly by fast so glance value is important, I don't know if extra symbols or frames will be clear enough unless I slow down the reels. It'll be a headache to implement for sure
To make the game easier to understand, I think just explicitly telling the player in a tutorial that reel timing matters should be enough. I could even do a hand-holdy tutorial that won't progress until the timing is perfect, but I don't like those.
For blue, I also did not try it a lot and did not go for it really, which contributed to not getting a pure blue win or substantially mixed blue win. The removal of rewards of symbols for common enemies made the game harder. For blue, after you wrote this reply, I tried specifically to unlock the Spade symbol, and only succeeded after some time. Most everything else was unlocked before I tried unlocking the Spade symbol. I may have wrongly assumed that one strategy would not work, which I may have employed in a previous demo day some of the time, namely to get to a point where your defenses are strong, your money making is strong, and then just go to weak enemies and have the battles last for a long time and get lots of money. It is not easy, but you can actually get to a point where you can grind the bouncers for money without taking any damage in return. At that point in time, you have probably already almost guaranteed a win, of course, but I feel like the bouncers should get more powerful every time you defeat them in a room, even if they only get a bit more powerful each time you defeat them. But this is mainly yellow decks that may have some blue mixed in.
I did not succeed in finding a good combination of blue using the Spade up and running, though I have only played a smidgen after unlocking the Spade symbol. I can see it being powerful, since it does not consume Block, and there are blue symbols that either builds up a lot of Block or persists block between rounds. And the Ace of Spades symbol only get stronger over time, even when facing the final boss.
Bones can be powerful if you get a very large amount of Power, but that is difficult to get in the first room, and defeating enemies effectively is helpful in getting money in the first room to try to clap together a viable game-winning deck, or at least one that can defeat the boss of the first room and then try to clap together something good in the second room. And even if you have a mediocre amount of Power, bones may not be worth it. For the early game, if you have 3 matching Bones, you get 2x2 + 1x2 + 0x2 = 6 damage. Not bad, but not amazing either. If you compare it with the Fist symbol, you get 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 damage. Now, if you have both Bones and Fist, and you match 3 Bones and then 3 Fist, you get 6 damage total. Making the Bones worse than useless, apart from matching. Each bone can potentially make every subsequent hit 1 worse. So if you have Bones first and then X hits from subsequent symbols, you maybe deal damage for (2 + Power)*2 - X. If Power is at 2 and X is at 10, you potentially lose out on 2 damage compared to if you did not have Bones. And you can have multiple Bones match early. On the other hand, if you have huge Power, like 15, the multiple hits of Bones are worth it. But that is often in the late game and when you likely have a powerful build already, not in the early or mid game.
But I do not mind Bones being weak or a drawback early, it is a part of the challenge to figure out whether and how to use Bones. Just please enable rerolling at the start or some other way of avoiding or dealing with Bones.
The map generation for some levels can be very punishing, with long vertical walls ending in dead ends or mini-boss enemies before the passage, and other issues with the map generation.
Avocados having a brown core: My brother in Christ, what in the world are you saying? The RGB code for the brown core of an avocado symbol is 0Xa96521, the RGB code for the core red color of a Chili item is 0Xd74646. These values are not far from each other, in particular when looking at them at a glance. Almost all other symbols are great at avoiding ambiguity in colors. [Imagine an image of a crying, sad and cute cat here]. Please do at least tweak the color to reduce the risk of confusion and ambiguity, thank you.
I personally almost never tried timing the reel, and I would not have cared about colors there if I was color blind, except for the sake of learning and understanding the game and what is going on. But I do care about the color of the symbols when I am picking and selecting them, and which color(s) a symbol is when picking or buying is in my playtester-role-opinion (which is basically worthless, I have no stake in the game, always be careful with the opinions of others) significantly more important than matching them on the reels. Though being able to see which color(s) a symbol has, is helpful for learning the game at the start, and people have already had problems with understanding the game. Maybe let the player have an icon in the hover UI that shows the color(s) of a symbol, maybe right below the “SYMBOL” text in the top-right corner, both in the shop, when picking in the room, and when viewing the symbols in the UI? You could honestly get inspired by the color icons from Magic: The Gathering. To me, as long as the color-blind player can learn which colors a symbol has, the silhouette of the symbol should help, many of the symbols in the game has more or less mutually-distinct silhouettes. But if you really want color-blind players to see it, maybe add small tiny icons in some corner of each symbol on the reel, each of them having an easy to differentiate silhouette? It would require testing either way.
There are many fun and sometimes surprising combinations. Like the Star symbol with the Brand New Suit item.
A tutorial is a good idea, even a brief one should help. I would personally not care about getting the timing right with the reel spinning, it is perfectly possible to play without timing, and some people may want to play the game without any timing or reflexes at all, like a pure turn-based game. I did not personally pin the game as having timing be important, to me it is all just deck building, predicting and picking fights, exploring strategically, and having the right strategy, and learning the game mechanics and discovering funny and interesting combinations, and stuff.
Maybe the right kind of green deck could also grind the bouncers, in order to get an arbitrarily high maximum health. But that kind of deck might be viable for winning the final boss either way.
Also, the trial and error of learning what enemies do can be a bit annoying, it lengthens the duration of the game. This can be solved in-game, or by the game having a (maybe user-made) wiki. Though enemies "not revealing their hands" and not being described up front is a part of many successful games, such as FTL, in particular its final boss.
I just discovered that the eagle symbol and the bar item are a very strong combination.
Great game, I streamed it. Substantially harder this time around. I found one blocking bug:https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2024480033?t=1h54m46s . Arrow keys did nothing, the Bandit walked off the screen, maybe she sobered up.
I don't think you should have the intro movie play immediately upon the game loading. It feels like it jumps out at me and maybe I want to adjust the graphics or audio settings first?
Fantastic intro movie, love her expressions.
I'd like to be able to do maximized windowed because that allows me to see it on my full screen but I can easily jump back to my browser to type my thoughts.
So happy you got rid trying to time each reel. I ain't built for that kind of focus these days, I'm an oldfriend!
When the silver platter comes out, it should move slightly or have a shining effect, to indicate to the player they must click it to open it and see what they get. It would also be nice juice.
The "Enter" button for the gift shop is too small. Why don't I enter when I click anywhere on the gift shop?
It told me I got a hammer Symbol but now I don't see it... Edit: I understand now. It is available in the game but I don't get it. As someone who doesn't play roguelikes this confused me.
When I have the symbols window open, I'd like it if I could click outside of it to close it rather than having to click the top right icon again.
How do I use Perfume? Edit: oh I guess I need another symbol with Dissolve? I didn't realize that when I bought it.
You need SFX and music for Space Invaders!
I started another run. It told me I got a stinky cheese symbol. It looks like this symbol is bad because it heals the enemy? And then it says it applies poison to the opponent. Are "enemy" and "opponent" the same?
Is the slot machine completely randomized? I was trying to time the first reel but gave up.
It says the Bouncers are coming but it doesn't seem like they move each time.
Gave up after my second run. It's pretty hard. I sort of see how I can strategize it well but I don't think I'm patient enough to keep trying. But for fans of the genre I bet they'll love this.
I thought starting games with intros is fairly common, no? But fair enough, maybe at least volume settings should be accessible during the intro somehow
I can probably add support for resizing windows freely, I'll look into it and see if the game doesn't look gross when resized imperfectly
Good suggestions for the silver platter, enter button and symbols window, will add to my to-do
Space Invaders is a WIP, I haven't fully committed to giving it graphics and sounds as I'm not sure if it's staying
Enemy and opponent are indeed the same, I gotta do some proofreading. Cheese is actually not bad - enemies don't get overhealed so at the start of the battle it's just free 3 Poison. It will sometimes annoyingly save the enemy, but it's pretty good overall
Slot machine is semi-randomized. You can stop the first reel manually and time it perfectly once you get the hang of it, but 2nd and 3rd are fully random
Bouncers move up every 10 moves, there's an indicator on the left side of the screen (appears once first warning shows up). The ghost bouncers show up when there's less than 5 moves left
Thanks for playing!
Maybe play when they start their first run then not again. I feel like usually there's at least studio and publisher logos first.
Very cool concept. I'd wish for the following changes:
- The bandit being either completely reflex-based, but with infinite time, (each reel spinning indefinitely, and stopping ~immediately on button press) or not at all (no button press, combat is completely automatic). The way it currently is, with 2nd and 3rd reel stopping shortly after first one, automatically - maybe I am just skill-issued, but I always feel like there WOULD be right time to press the button, it's just too tedious for me, to calculate the reels in the head. And I just try to press when I see red or whichever color I stacked on the left and then hope for the best. Idk, maybe just offer all 3 styles of Bandit and let the player decide.
- The initial loadout not be randomized. Either always the same, or a few different ones to choose from ("classes")
- For deciding which symbols to pick up, perhaps I haven't understood the full depth yet, but I felt that just stacking one single color was easily the best strategy. Otherwise I would just get too many dud spins. Don't really understand the combo/multi pieces, though, do they count as any color? Anyways maybe you can come up with more ideas to enable mixing the colors, or balancing dud spins. Or maybe they already exist in the game. Was just my thoughts while playing.
My performance so far, if you care: First run died to first enemy (a dice), second run died to first boss, third run went up to 500 coins at first encounter, reached second floor, lost 60 health to a barwoman pitching drinks so I had 4 health at the 2nd boss and lost. I have no complaints. (Reading through this again, makes me think, what if there was no health, but you lost at 0 coins? Would fit the flavor very well and make for sth. different compared to all the other roguelites with coins.)
The animations and visual style I think are very cool and fitting. The unlocks are confusing to me, because why am I unlocking these things? I am barely even finding items in the game world. In the first 15 minutes I "unlock" 3 items, that have exciting descriptions, but I only find a single item to actually pick up. But this is something that I don't understand in many Roguelites, e.g. in Enter the Gungeon it makes absolutely no sense to me either. But in RoR2 I love it, because the unlocks come from doing more or less crazy things in game. There's the special satisfaction, the first 10-20 hours of playing RoR2, where you do something insane and have the beautiful popup with an item unlock. Like the game telling you, ya, that was indeed mad.
So, I am a fan of this genre and I would've bought your game on steam for 5-10€ from the pitch and screenshots. Keep trucking!!
edit: Playing a bit more, I realize I have been stupid. The 2nd and 3rd reels can never be controlled, I thought they could be if one pressed fast enough. So it's quite a bit of luck, all in all, I like that. The Multi symbols clearly have 2 different colors. That is also nice.
Thanks for playing!
The slot machine being completely reflex-based was tried before and not popular at all. People were getting tired of trying to constantly time it, and it became a game where you're constantly in Quick Time Event mode, and the payoff between timing it right or not was so huge that you couldn't just give up on it. Making it fully automated would make the game a complete auto battler, with no player agency in battle. The current system is the best middle ground I could find, where you can time the first reel to nudge the odds in your favour, but the quality of the follow-up spins are random, lifting the pressure from the player significantly. Players who want an autobattler already have the choice to just mash the button immediately
Randomized starting loadouts will be an unlockable feature, and yeah, they probably need some refinement
Stacking one color is indeed one of the best ways to go, however there are enemies in the game designed to counter a specific color so I usually like to go 2-3 colors. Going for more than 4-5 colors will end up quite inconsistent unless all symbols are 2+ colored
I considered making money equivalent to health, so that you're trying not to go "broke" instead of having generic health, but I think that would take away too many health-based interactions.
Unlocks are completely arbitrary with no thematic reason. Kinda imitates Binding of Isaac in that way, where things just show up because stuff happened. Not the best in terms of integrating the theme, but I think it's an acceptable standard in the genre
>The current system is the best middle ground I could find
Yeah, I agree it’s good. Just didn’t understand how it works at the start. My only experience with One Armed Bandits is from Pokémon 1st gen.
edit: To be clear, the way I thought the reels worked was that you have a short 1-2 second window to stop all of them manually, one by one. I did not understand that the 2nd and 3rd are completely uncontrollable after hitting the button once. So I was even more stressed out than people that played the old version, because I thought I should find the perfect timing for reel 2 and 3 within the 2 second window after stopping reel 1.
Played some more, this time recorded https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026572022 & https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026584363
Just some more thoughts, idk, take it or leave it, might play more and change my mind more. Need to get a purple build running at least one time....
Cool that you can control camera in minigames now.
I wonder if the 1st map is too hard? All the times combined I played OAB (with previous DDs) probably amounts to about 3-4 hours and I defeated the 1st boss only 2 times so far. I don't mind this, but I fear it could be a filter for a new player getting hooked. This is can only be determined by a sum of multiple people's experience, so that's just my hunch.
Nice to see there's more assets for enemies and pickups, and improvements like health bar looking better now. The polish is increasing. Can't wait to see more.
Thanks for playing!
I've had that bug happen a few times, just didn't get around to debugging it because I haven't implemented a seed system and therefore can't consistently cause it
1st chapter is probably too hard indeed, I'm usually finding myself with a broken build mid-chapter 2 if I reach it and just roll over everything from there. I'm aware of this imbalance, just didn't focus on fixing it yet.
Surprised the game started with the intro animation and there was no main menu (I think).
But the presentation is amazing and I manage to beat some native American ghost to reach the disco themed area.
I wonder if this game does rely on randomization and trying stuff again, because it'd technically fit with the casino theme.
Some enemies have fun designs and I also like the mechanic of bouncers going up to pressure you into progress.
Thanks for playing!
There is a main menu, with the lady sitting at the table, and New Run/Quit/Unlocks. It's not much of a menu, but it is there
Yes, there is a lot of randomness in the game, both in actual battles and the map generation
Glad you liked the game