Wow, this game was an emotional rollercoaster for me. When I saw that it's a roguelike I had my hopes up. Then I started it and immediately realized that it's realtime, not gridbased, and there is nothing to explore. In addition, after a few seconds an arrow shows where is the exit which you see right from the beginning anyways.
After a few failed attempts I decided to completely ignore the enemies and just run for the exits. Went pretty well. Then when I still died I noticed, that even though I didn't attack anyone I still had some kills.
Next time I sit still and waited for the enemies to act. The first wall stopped all of them. Then, one by one, the ranged enemies killed the melee ones. From that point on I just waited on every level for the enemies to kill each other, then dodged the survivors.
The second level type with the exploding enemies got me good. I needed time to figure out how to deal with them. Ultimately, the sit out worked here as well. I'm not sure how difficult would have been to add better pathfinding for the enemies. Even though their movement is not gridbased, an astar, especially with levels this small, could work pretty well. Without that the walls are more against the enemies than against the player.
The third level type felt almost the same. Wait until the "towers" kill everyone, then dodge them. Meantime I was able to collect some hearts too. Later I saw that there are different weapons, and other items too, but I never found them.
Then I finally found a gun. It was pure luck. First I thought the chest is just a dead enemy. From that point the game became easier. On level 16 I found the starting sword. It was funny. Too bad I didn't even know what I'm picking up, until I did so, and tried it out.
And finally, the last level. Pumping music. Bunch of enemies. Got one damage. Quickly ran into a corner. Hit fire, sprayed and prayed, and it worked. Than I just lined up with the king and executed him.
The end. Without the gun I had about 40 failed attempts. Usually reached level 12 without a single chest. Sometimes the whole first "episode" only melee enemies spawned, sometimes only ranged. Due to these, the whole game just felt unbalanced. Too random. Not "procedural" enough.
Afterall, I think the combat system has some room for improvement. Running through the point you want to stand just so you can turn back and face the enemy you want to attack is not the smoothes feeling during combat. The cooldown is an understandable addition, but results in more running, and awkward turning back. Maybe a shield could fix this. Or better than that, always facing the closest enemy automatically. Anyways, I never liked free movement on grid-based maps. Basically there is no point in it, just to let the player bump in the wall because he missed the corridor with a few pixels.
What I did like is the wide range of different enemies. I was trully impressed by the fleeing ranged attackers. The pattern following towers were fun too, not dangerous at all, but fun. I just don't understand that with so much focus on their behavior, how come that a single wall block became the nemesis of all of them.
The map generator also had it issues. Enemies buried in walls, stairs under exploding barrels, same-looking maps after each other.
And for me, the hardest enemy in the game was the art. I had to spend more time figuring out what is what than figuring out how to deal with any enemy. I just don't understand the artistic choice here. Diving deep into the 8 bit world is an impressive choice, but running wild with it so much, that the original, console-based rogue even with its map legends were more readable than a tile-based game was a surprise for me. The first rule is to have a well established contrast between wall and floor. Then some more between the map serving as the background, and the player, the enemies, and the items, serving as the foreground. I think you felt this issue. Maybe this is why the player got its animation in the beginning, and the arrow to show the end.
Don't get me wrong. I liked your game. I wouldn't finish it otherwise. But even though I spent almost an hour with it, I saw almost nothing from for example the items. I know that this is a key aspect of roguelikes, but those still offer you plenty of content for each run. Plenty of choices on each level. Yours only one after ten level and even then there is a chance you find the starting weapon.
The whole game felt more like an arena shooter, with the constraints of a roguelike, but without its advantages. In which you start with a sword, you can only aim by running around, and if you are extremely lucky, you get a gun, start shooting, and kill everyone easily.
I think you should shift towards one or the other.
Add mouse aiming, increase item drop, add upgrades, decrease the number of obstacles and make them circular, so the player won't stuck in them.
Or return to the grid-based movement, add auto-aim, maybe drop the real-time aspect and welcome the more tactical nature of the turn-based games. Implement astar for the enemies, FOV, exploration, a procedurally generated mazes, dungeons, and cellular caves, not just randomly dropped wall segments.
Both genres have plenty of features that could make your game more enjoyable. In its current form it's just a small showcase of both, with a not so well-designed tileset and spritesheet.
By now, I bet you guessed that I'm a big enthusiast of the roguelike genre. And I also have a small arena-addiction. All that I wrote is me trying to explain what I experienced and how could it be improved in my opinion. I won't mind if you ignore everything I wrote, but if you are interested in it, I ready to help. I'm even willing to team up in a later project.
Anyways, keep on gaming and making games. There is a lot of potential in your game, and I think you will be able to show it to the world in the future.
