- player is now represented by the letter J
- movement between far away tiles is now instant
- level up now both increases the health cap and heals to full health if possible
Good
- you now level up only if the killed mob is of the same or higher level as you
Grinding low levels would have been fun and challenging higher than your level should still have a reward. Now that you don't have XP but discrete levelup or not is less fun.
- moving one tile costs 1 health (if overhealed)
- exploring one tile restores 3 health if not at full health, overheals by 1 otherwise
Good. But for some reason you lose HP while walking on explored tiles. Might be a bug?
- game now progresses through 5 depths
- every depth level is populated with mobs of the same level
Good, but see point about grindin easy enemies. Variation was good. I would expect levels look like in Desktop Dungeons. A lot of my feedback kind of assumes mechanics of that game.
- you now win the game by killing the Reaper in depth 5
Good
- combat spins reduced from 3 to 1
More spins means combat is resolved more quickly, I liked the multiple spins thing. Now it's just busytime replaying the spins.
- combat slot roll chance increased from 1/11 to 1/4
- mobs now gain damage the same way you do: through gambling:
Good
- - they get randomly assigned slots in the combat phase, numbers rolled in those slots add up to the enemy damage
Before this change I thought enemies would get their own roll-board, but this might be better. Although it's weird that sometimes enemies can get 3 tiles (or more?) of rolls initially when you get just one or vice-versa. Random isn't fun in this case.
I think the roll expansion mechanic could be improved. Right now 4 initial tiles are shared by you and the enemy and expanded ones are also shared randomly. I would expect that expanded tiles would be "owned" by the one who expanded to them and get rolls there.
Now that enemies share the same board, I think expansion trigger should not be filling lines, but should expand upon successful roll (or even better a special expansion symbol rather than a damage symbol) to adjacent free tiles and expanded tiles should be "owned" by the expander. This would open up strategy of choosing what kind of rolls you have - expansion or damage. And enemies could have their own "flavor" - "fast" enemies would expand a lot, while "slow" would have less expansion rolls, but more/higher damage rolls. This would also allow the player to build their own "deck" of rolls, or as you've mentioned earlier, items, which give different rolls and knowing what enemy you're gonna face would mean strategy of adapting your rolls.
For example you might wanna go for quickly expanding deck, but then you over-expand and instead of doing damage, you expand on the board, doing little damage, but also preventing enemy of doing it - because you now own all the tiles on the board.
Maybe there could be special "expansion" rolls which change the ownership of adjacent tiles to yours, allowing you to make the enemy "hit itself" and could be a strategy against certain heavy-hitting enemies.