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Aboard the Cosmic Cradle's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- 3rd Place Score: (99/150)
- One of my personal favorites of the jam, this one! There is a surprising amount put into this, given it is just a jam entry for the time being. The pregnancy content is extensive and very player-controlled, the combat has more depth than one would expect without being too complicated. However, there was a certain lack of explanation given to much of the world, mostly due to the lack of a real story - don't get me wrong, the intro tells us a fair bit, but I would have liked more tidbits from the Host and our Main Character, to make them both more of actual characters, for lack of a better word. Besides the lack of any real story beyond the beginning, I would have liked some incentive to fight the bigger monsters beyond a (seemingly?) higher chance for good cards. As it stands now, the ideal way to play is to rush to the end and beat the boss as fast as you can. That also brings me to the issue of the pregnancy mechanic. It requires a bit of a rebalance as it carries a lot of risk with it and discourages people from taking their time or, for that matter, from doing many of the random encounters. Still, it is perfectly possible to beat the final boss while having contractions with 10 babies in your oven, so it's not that bad already - it just needs some adjustments. I'll be eagerly looking forward to the further development of this one, that much is for sure.
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есть ли здесь способ лечения помимо SPA?
Can you post the sprite sheets?
Unlikely. But we do plan on eventually having an unlockable gallery. But that’s a long ways out.
understood
This game's way too pretty and thought out for a 3 week game jam whaaa?! Fantastic stuff!!!
TY! We tried really hard! :3
we need more... love this one or at least a save game option thing???
i did get to have fun thanks for the game >:3
Y'know, I've seen comments relating to adding babies aside from the '?' events, and my immediate thought was to maybe implement the contraction system some other way. The reason being, I think it could be neat if once the preg bar filled up, maybe it also added a baby and then reset (or maybe changes color or something to show that it has been filled) but idk, I'm not a developer or a game designer, but it's just a little idea I had while playing, thought I'd share
we already have plans to change the contraction system for the game :3
Have not played mutch and i like the game so far, but i wish there were more screen options cuz right now i can only play on my second screen and not my other screen
Definitely hope to flesh out the settings more. Didn’t have time to build it all out in the three weeks for the jam and there’s definitely some room for improvement.
Absolutely awesome game, the game mechanics were really fun to mess around with and it was very intuitive to grasp, the icons underneath the character was a nice touch to remember what cards you played in your deck. The way the belly scales based on number of babies you have and the way that art changes to reflect that is *chef's kiss*
The Host and style of the map layout reminded me heavily of Dicey Dungeons and was one of my favorite games to watch, and I think it fits perfectly for this type of card game.
Was wondering if there's birth mechanics going to be made after the jam for the game and if there's going to be any art made for it during some sequence because that's what I'm hoping for.
Anyways, this was one of my favorite games for the jam and I think it was the most fun to play, you guys did a fantastic job!
Thank you for the glowing review. NyPod actually has never played Dicey Dungeons, and their original design for the host was crazy similar to Lady Luck. We definitely made the final design for the host much more unique. But I agree the game show vibes work super well.
As for birth mechanics, Elra is going to give birth between acts. Nothing super explicit will be shown since we’re aiming for more ecchi than full on hentai. But there will still be something eventually.
This game was absolutely fantastic! The ebb and flow mechanics were unique and super satisfying to pull off, the animations were amazing, the premise is interesting, and the gameplay overall was quite a fun time ^^
That said, I did notice that things seemed to not immediately update when in the overworld. Money wouldn't update till the next event, and if you restarted the game, your stats would remain (temporarily) for the start of the next run. Not game breaking though!
A more serious issue is that some of the cards such as (I forget the exact name sorry) infant missile would not actually hit for the amount of babs currently carried, and I believe this issue also applied to cat scratch if more than one enemy had static (not entirely sure about this one though, my memory is rather poor ^^;).
Thank you so much for the kind words. They mean a lot. There are definitely plenty of minor issues scattered throughout this build of the game as a result of the jam deadline being unforgiving. Definitely expect future updates to be a lot more polished as we won’t have any more hard deadlines. Thanks so much for the feedback!
Of course ^w^ They're more than well earned!
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what this game holds in the future!
Good roguelike. cards present are solid mechanically, and art is fun too. Hope to see more card types and healing options later down the line.
I really like what you two have so far! The art, premise, and system are all pretty fun. I'm by no means experienced with deck builders, but the system still felt pretty easy to pick up and roll with in my opinion.
Great stuff, I'm really looking forward to more!
The kind words are greatly appreciated. I’m glad the game is still enjoyable for those new to the genre. We’ll definitely be continuing to expand the game into the future.
My recommendation is speeding up all the cutscenes, and movement- if this is meant to be a roguelike with short plays, frequent resets- you don't want those to take longer than they need to!
I'd also recommend more healing options- perhaps with cards that apply debuffs (Like a certain other submission!), or otherwise.
Art looks nice, though more in-between stages is always a good idea- especially when in combat.
On the same note, potentially adding resets, or shrinks to the belly size- if the retry aspect isn't doing it enough- is always good for extra replayability.
Definitely plan on adding a skip intro button in the near future. Probably even an auto skip button in the settings.
There are definitely more plans for healing. I will say, we haven’t focused on balance yet. We plan on adding all of most of our planned mechanics in first before we start to hone in balance.
There are actually a lot of belly sizes already. I will admit, there could definitely be more intermediate steps when you have fewer babies. But when you’re packed with them, there are plenty.
As for belly shrinks, although it’s interesting and opens up potential design space, both NyPod and I enjoy the inevitablity afforded by pregnancy. And we also have other mechanics (current/future) that rely on it only increasing. If we do end up adding reductions, it would be rare and not a consistent thing the player could do.
Thank you for the feedback. It’s very appreciated and well make sure future updates are as good as they can be!
I must've not seen too many sizes through my playthrough, in that case- it didn't seem like it updated during combat, but it certainly does. Must just be where you said, where there's less steps at smaller sizes.
Definitely looking forward to seeing how the game progresses!
It was fun, though a little short I feel.
It could definitely do with a little bit of a tutorial kind of explaining the UI, but most of it is similar enough to any other Rogue-like deck builder so it wasn't the end of the world for me.
It isn't the hardest game but it doesn't need to be, and I did very much like the Ebb and Flow cards , they made me want to try and plan ahead, even more so once I figured out a boss' attack pattern.
I'd love to see more updates come to this post-jam!
We definitely have tons more planned for this game. At least 3 stages worth of content and plenty more cards with cool mechanics. The balance present in the current version definitely isn’t indicative of the final product. Definitely ran into time constraints that prevented lots of balancing, polishing, and tons of features from being included in this version. Current plans our to first add in all the jam features we had planned before moving on to including loads more content. Stay tuned
how do you save XD i lost a fight with a hard enemy and lost all progress that on purpase?
Yeah, that’s intended. It’s a roguelite so every run will be a little different. Death is permanent but runs are short so you’re able to experience new things each time you play.
I need more of this game
there will be more :3
honestly I can not wait. I played slay the spire the entire day afterwards lol
Really fantastic stuff. Played through twice (wiped out the first time, hit the end the second).
Blanket praise: love the character design, incredibly cute catgirl, the UI is very slick, the highly stylised card and event art looks distinct and works really well. It's fun to play and stack up preg stats. The background art and the enemy art are great. The overall implementation is very high quality, it's really clear how much time and effort has gone into putting this together.
Other points - I know there's a ton of stuff here that's obviously just time limitations etc. so sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know, but here's a list of stuff that struck me as odd or quirky- it took me a few goes to realise that I was playing cards and not discarding them. Even a simple animation or a number pop or something would make this clearer
- an option to skip the intro would be nice
- Someone explained this to me on discord, but the contraction mechanic totally flew over my head - I had no idea why I was taking damage every turn, even when I stacked up tons of block. Clearly this is explained somewhere but the conveyance could be better
- it seems like an optimal strategy to find a weak opponent early on and just cycle through your deck spamming pregnancy boosting cards so you can then pick up the cards that scale with pregnancy. Not just because pregnancy scaling cards are good, but like, as a game about getting the character pregnant, the player wants her to get bigger. Maybe this is okay as a power strat? Could be mitigated by slapping Exhaust on those cards
- the cards related to pregnancy are fundamentally more attractive for the fetish content - making a fire deck or an ebb & flow deck lacks appeal because there's no obvious road to hugeness there. If these could be tied to different ways of being pregnant or different elements they might be more attractive, eg the ebb/flow cards relate to breast growth or if growth vs number of babies is a different strat. Or if there were more obvious fetish payoffs like ebb/flow cards that increase or interact with preg
- you have to click "skip" to close the loot window, even if you take the gold & the card. It should maybe close automatically after you make your choice?
- some cards "deal damage" and some cards "deal stamina". This seems to mean the same thing? It confused me, at first I didn't bother with the stamina cards until I realised they dealt damage too. If there is a difference between damage and stamina, it's not clear to me what it is.
- it would be nice to be able to see the character on the Stats screen, especially when you sometimes hit back-to-back events that increase the # of babies
I’m so glad you enjoyed our game enough to leave this review. It means lot! I agree that many mechanics and happenings in combat are poorly conveyed to the player. We definitely plan on addressing this with more animations, dialogue, effects, and more so it’s more obvious what is going on at all times.
While scaling pregnancy early can be a solid strategy, it can also lead to more residual contraction damage over the run so it can be risky. I have some ideas to address balance around this so the risk reward aspects are more meaningful.
I agree about cards interacting with the fetish being very vital. We definitely have tons more planned that should tie in the combat more to the pregnancy while still having interestingly designed mechanics.
Good point about the reward window. I do plan on doing a reward overhaul at some point since right now everything gives the same rewards. I’ll do this when I get to that point.
Deal stamina/deal damage are the same. We thought about saying deal stamina since it’s not technically an hp bar but the verbiage sounded weird. I didn’t make a second pass over the entire card pool when we decided to switch. My bad.
Character on the stats screen is definitely in the works! Ran out of time on the stats screen.
Thanks for your review and feedback. In addition to what you’ve listed, we have tons of other planned features. Please be sure to keep an eye out because your support means a lot!
Really good, especially for a game jam. Keep up with the competent work.
TY! Also, are you the same Metrobook who posts stories to deviant art? If so, I love your stuff! An Elf, an Orc and an Agreement is one of my favorite stories!
Yes, the same. I reciprocate the feeling, keep up the great work.
Glad you enjoyed it. TheNyPod4 is truly a pleasure to work with. As a fellow NyPod fan, I was honored to work with them and they were constantly surprising me with amazing art. Sadly, this release suffered from being too ambitious for a 3 week time frame but that’s perfectly fine and we have plans to continue the game with more updates fixing issues and adding tons of new content. Stay tuned. (and rumor has it NyPod has posted concept arts for unreleased enemies on their subscribers only sketchbook)