Hey, a Zanzibart reference! I got it!

I actually kinda enjoyed the combat, at least when fighting the knights. The "dance" you have to do, when both of you are charging your attacks - it's really cool and engaging. The enemies in general are very well designed, both in terms of graphics and gameplay. Though goblins are annoying, not a fan.

The AI may have some issues, since a lot of times enemies were standing still looking like they are stuck in the wall. They also don't avoid the spikes.

Dungeon crawl was challenging until I realized fighting monsters is pointless - I can just zip through the level, open chests and proceed. It was fairly easy. Same with the boss - he applied a ton of debuffs, but I had a lot of healing items so killing him wasn't that hard, did it in first try.

The core gameplay is good, needs more polish though. I liked it a lot,  hope you keep working on it!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2139486122

Tech seems to work more or less.

Gameplay: Feels kinda dull. Hate that charging your weapon makes you so slow. I could not figure out a way to beat the knights without losing hp. I like Arctower a lot, and your combat and movement atm just feels worse in every aspect. I think the charging weapon swing has potential to be neat, but so far it's rather boring "hold LMB for 2 seconds and btw you can barely move while you do this." Jumping is very odd! Skeptical about the delay on SP regeneration, I did not immediately understand why I sometimes stopped swinging my weapon at all. Really I would like to play this as a shooter, not like an autistic sword fighting simulator. I mean, I guess Dark Souls style can also be fine, but obviously a lot is missing for that, too.

 The classic roguelike UI on the right is more an annoyance. Would be cool if it showed at least the full floor (as far as you have discovered), since one easily wanders in circles. But map is so zoomed in it barely helps with that.

Wish you all the best with your efforts, would love an Arctower style game with less metaprogression and more classic rogue progression.

first of all, the basic gameplay is already solid. i enjoyed it

the enemies attack too fast and their range feels greater than the player's.

also, the first room you find yourself in when you climb the stairs should be a safe room. nobody likes finding themselves completely surrounded without having the chance to do anything about it

I didn't get very far at all but I did have some criticisms from the short time played:

• I love the art style and sfx thus far. The goblins sounded sufficiently gobliny.
• Please let me edit the mouse sensitivity.
• In the inventory I tried equipping a sword I found by double-clicking on it. I didn't see the "Use" button at the bottom of the screen until I was trying to figure out why that didn't work.
• The ladders looked weird with having the flat texture on two different planes. I feel like having it be a 3D model like chests or other interactable entities would look a lot better.
• I like the Dead By Daylight-like "hold until you're in the sweet spot" for combat but it felt very swingy. Hitting the sweet spot was always a kill, and missing it did nothing.
• Maybe this was because of the rusty sword I had, but it felt like monsters had a lot more effective attacks on me compared to how often I could attack.
• There are some UI scaling issues. For reference, I have a 3440x1440 monitor and there did not appear to be any option to not go fullscreen. This lead to some odd UI things like below:

Mouse sensitivity is way too low, wish there was an option to change it. There are interesting concepts here (like the status effects being as stong as they are), most of the weapons feel too same-y and you basically play the same way regardless of what you wield, with the numbers being the only difference (exception being the poison dagger). I couldn't find any use for mana yet but I assume that's not yet implemented. I like the style the game is going for visually, but the mix of nearest and linear filtering looks weird.

I like what it's going for, just need a bit more complexity and variety in gameplay and maybe even different builds/playstyles.

Echoing what others have said, the combat is infuriating. I hate games that are all about dodging and waiting for openings, I want to be proactive. Even the fast low-damage weapons attack way slower than what the enemies are capable of, with you also unable to sprint while charging an attack. It feels like the game is adding obstacles and slowing you down in everything you do while the AI get to act with complete freedom.

It’s really jarring that the environment has linear filtering while everything else is nearest. In general it looks like at least three different art styles smashed together. The menus and UI are quite nice though, they seem the most polished.

Yeah, this ain’t it chief. I was really intrigued by the capsule art and seeing the big vertical HUD but the gameplay just doesn’t gel, it’s a mess.

cool.

I think the dungeon should be smaller, and have an exit to get to another floor

This is a really cool concept.

The dungeons look okay, but the sprites are a bit rough.
You should be able to use items by double clicking on them, and maybe some quickaccess slots would be useful especially if you decide to add combat utilities like throwing knives and such.

Combat is a bit meh, you fight all enemies is kind of the same, you backpedal out of their attack and then take your swing, it could use some variety.
For example the goblin and other unarmored creatures could get stunned when damaged so you could be more aggressive against them.

Map generation seemed fine, but sometimes enemies that spawn in a corridor get stuck:

I can see the concept working well, especially when spells and better gear get throw into the mix, I hope to play more of this.

Played a bit into level 3 until I got sick of seeing the same things. I'm guessing its pretty early days for this game.

• Needs an invert Y mouse option.
• Graphics are a bit inconsistent, with weapon and enemy sprites being cartoonish while the environment is less.
• Enemies need to be more aggressive, walk around a bit.
• No real reason to kill enemies, I assume there'll be XP and such later?
• Combat feels a bit too simple, will you add skills/spells too? Would help a lot I think, blocking etc.
• Sometimes an enemy's HP will say 0. You could always round their HP values up instead so it won't happen.

Nice demo, keep up the good work.

Far too difficult. 

• Weapon damage is very low
• Weapon start up is too high (in comparison to the enemies move speed/attack rate). 
• Too many enemies in a room
• Enemies are very tanky

The only strat i found that worked was training the enemies around over the spikes to actually deal damage. 

Lean into either slower, higher stake combat with less enemies and maybe add an evade/block (soulslike), or faster paced lower stake combat (boomer shooter).

That being said, the music, main menu and dungeon layout generation are all very good. The art is good but a bit incohesive (expected in an demo).

Juice and polish awaits in Mortreon!

Tried the german localization and didn't encounter any errors from what i've seen. Keep in mind im bad at the game and died a lot, so might not have been that much text that i saw.

The menu polish is off the charts. Pressing buttons is really satisfying and even though everything looks pretty simple, it has a lot of charm. Audio is really good, the music gives that desperation vibe from the original Diablo i think, which is amazing. 

The game itself is a bit rough and unfriendly to noobs like me. After i died the first time, i quickly opened all chests in the starting room and got up the weird looking ladder (i'd say make it only one sprite or give it the simple 3d style of the chests with pixel textures). However, i was helpless as some greedy gobbo smacked me and i forgot to equip a weapon. I know that being unarmed is supposed to be an exremely big disadvantage, but disabling attacks in that state seems inorganic to me. You could make your fist deal 1-2 damage or some ridiculous low number, since weapons seem to have a way higher rating from what i understand in the inventory. 

Inventory UI is another thing that needs more polish. Some icons are not clear in their meaning. Weapons for instance seem to have an attack rating, a stamina cost and something thats symbolized by a yellow thing... is that speed? Tooltips might be great for that. Other QoL improvements would go a long way too, like using items by double clicking instead of being forced to click the big button on the bottom of the screen, which is annoying if you just selected an item in the uppermost row.

On my third run i found a poison dagger, but it didn't seem to trigger any poison effects on hit. Is it bugged? Is the effect something subtle i didn't notice? In the end i always die to the larger, armoured enemies as i cannot deal damage to them. Maybe im just unlucky with the items, but since its an alpha version balancing is probably not on the table yet, so thats fine.

Visually and audio wise its a feast for an early demo and it shows lots of potential.