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(+1)

First of all, congratulations on finishing a game, and you did a great job on what you have accomplished! I really like the dark/gothic fantasy atmosphere and style of your game. Also, claw wizard - brilliant!

I had a few runs and here's what I thought of gameplay and balance. 

The first run I tried to explore everywhere and bought the first upgrades that were presented to me. I found I ran out of gold very quickly and so many rooms presented upgrades I was unable to obtain. This was a little bit frustrating as not many rooms contained gold. I died about half way up when the difficulty of the monsters increased and I didn't know the best way to beat them. 

The second run I also explored everywhere but this time was more selective in the upgrades I chose, which helped, but I still struggled when the claw wizard absolutely destroyed me. It seemed to do quite a lot of damage, however, maybe I wasn't paying attention to my hp as I was focusing on trying to sap it's mana. 

The last run I mainly headed up the tower as quickly as possible only stopping the at rooms on the way or visible from the stairs. This time I got all the way to the top to face the tyrant but struggled to defeat him before dying as I had no way to heal myself. 

Hopefully that will give you some insight into how a player might approach the game. I wouldn't want to comment that the game was too hard as I feel like this is probably intentional, and to make the player make conscious choices about which skills to increase and which resources to use including mana. 

One suggestion I would make is to make items available in combat, as this would allow a player to have at least 1 way of healing during battle. I think on one of my earlier runs I had a hp sap type spell but this was offset easily by the damage the enemy would inflict on that turn, making it less effective as a healing tool. 

Some of the skills had more obvious uses that others, for example, strength, toughness and arcana have obvious benefits to combats and traps. I felt dexterity only had a use for traps, which I could use something else to overcome. I didn't see any use for faith so it was unclear what this would affect. Other than more damage, I think having some more feedback that the elemental spells were more effective would be helpful. 

All in all I think you have a very good base, and I'm really impressed with the progress you've made in the bootcamp with this. I think there's a lot of room to build upon what you have already to make this even more great! 

(+1)

Hi, thanks for such great feedback and for taking the time to really play my game! I had a lot of fun drawing the claw wizard sprite, though maybe made them a little bit overpowered in the game, probably also my favourite enemy though :)

As a few folks have pointed out, there are balancing issues here with the supply of gold, the enemies, sequence of events etc, it's the first thing on my to-do list so hopefully I'll be able to share an updated version soon that's improved in this regard - you're right it's meant to be a bit challenging but not flat out unfair.

I intended to add a 'use item' branch to the turn-based battles actions but simply ran out of time and energy, however it is certainly also on my to-do list for continuing the project.   

You are absolutely right, there are stats that need more of a useful purpose. I intended the 'faith' stat to power up holy attacks to use against undead enemies such as zombies etc, or to resist some status changes (in this build only poison is a thing). Dexterity I thought could be used to dodge or counter, as well as traps. Once again I simply ran out of time, but I'll be coming back to this in future builds for sure. 

Thank you also for your kind words on the atmosphere and style, this was something I really wanted to get right, so I'm feeling encouraged and stoked to keep going.

Best wishes and best of luck in your gamedev projects,

-Iain   

(+1)

Hey, I played your game following your #2 update and wanted to provide some further feedback and let you know about some bugs. 

Controls & UI

  • Walking continuously feels much smoother now—great improvement!
  • I was unable to click on the bomb to blow up a wall from the left side.  I also noticed after explosion (from the right side), the background image didn’t appear leaving a black square. 
  • It would be nice to review spells outside of battle, similar to stats and potions.
  • Adding the ability to click on the icon itself to close windows (in addition to the "X") would be a small quality of life improvement. 
  • The new Thralled Sage tips are excellent and really help players understand enemy strengths and weaknesses—great addition, or maybe I didn't read them properly the first time around!

Battle

  • Seeing enemy health is helpful, but I noticed enemies can end up with negative HP.
  • This meant when using the sap spell, I still received full health even when the enemy had less HP available.
  • Items make battles more dynamic, but they currently seem to have unlimited uses during fights.
  • The vortex spell’s description appears to match the mana sap spell—might be a small mix-up.
  • Some feedback for poison damage during battle would make it easier to track its effect.

Balance & Gameplay

  • The increased gold range is great but makes it easy to buy everything, reducing the impact of player choices.
  • Scaling the cost of stat increases based on current levels could counteract this. Maybe offering a choice of stat to increase too?
  • The lightning trap is currently always resistible due to starting with a toughness of 12.
  • Introducing randomized starting stats or class options could make builds more engaging and varied. 

I hope my feedback isn't too picky - I just really enjoyed playing it through again and I still think you've got the beginning of a great game here. Looking forward to seeing this develop further!

(+1)

Thanks for checking out my update, your feedback is very welcome - I was able to deal with a nasty bunch of bugs and oversights thanks to you spotting them! Starting stats or classes would be something I'd consider strongly when expanding the game further if that's the road I go down. It's also great to hear the new movement and sage tips are working nicely :)