Post by Newteyes in The Wizard comments

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The game seems nice, but is EXTREMELY stringent about how you should progress through a level in the early part of the game when you have little health, I had to restart the room after the spiders over and over because I'd misstep once, and I'd end up with a spider right next to me, where freezing would do nothing. It blocks one point of damage from that position, but with 6 health the effect stacks up over time fast.

I don't mean to be mean, I think the music and art is great, the game is fun to play even if it's annoying to misstep once and have to restart the level. If the art is part of a tileset, I'd like to know where it's from.

But playing the game is tedious and borders on being unfun due to how specific the way to complete each level is. I blame this mostly on being given such weak spells that have to be used perfectly, or else they don't do enough damage to an enemy to save yourself from dying.

dr.hackenstein4 years ago(+1)(-1)

I get your criticism, but I don't think the spells are at fault. It's not fun to replay the level each time you misstep. Unfortunately retrofitting checkpoints or an undo feature was too much work at the end. I recommend either playing the game on a lower difficulty or really thinking through every step like you would in a game of chess.

dr.hackenstein4 years ago

Oh and the sprites are by Oryx: https://www.oryxdesignlab.com/

Newteyes4 years ago

Yeah I guesed that, I'm a big fan of the Project Utumno Tileset that he and some other people worked on and, it's got every material known to man in it (every material known in dungeon crawl stone soup at least!)

dr.hackenstein4 years ago

That's a cool project, no doubt! But there's just something special about Oryx sprites (at least his 16bit and lo-fi stuff). I can't put it in words, but every time I look at his sprite sheets I get so inspired to make games with them!

Crabman4 years ago(+1)

If I may add my 2 cents: I don't actually disagree with you there. The first few levels still give you a bit of slack so you can familiarize yourself with the way it controls, but around the spiders and especially the graveyard level, the gloves come off, so to speak.

The game is very focused on strategy, and a particular approach to it at that, so after the first stage, using that strategy is mandatory to advance. I know that comparison is all sorts of tired, but it's a little like Dark Souls in that sense, there's a particular way you have to play or you will die. That includes a lot of trial and error until it finally clicks, which some people get a huge kick out of and some are left frustrated by.

Here's the good news though: Once it does click, you'll have a much easier time. You'll get more spells and upgrades, which opens up the options on how you can complete a level, and by the end, you'll probably breeze through, not because it got any easier, but because you mastered its way of thinking.

If that sounds fun to you, trying over and over until you have that satisfying "Aha!" moment, you'll probably have a good time. If it doesn't, you probably won't. And that's okay, it's a very particular kind of game, so of course it'll mostly appeal to a very particular kind of player.

Me, I love it. I mean, I should, I'm one of the developers, but I wasn't at all involved with the design, so I had to figure out what the heck Hackenstein was doing there myself. I do get a massive kick out of that though, but then, I also debug for fun, so what do I know :D

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