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DISCLAIMER; While I try to fully complete games before rating & commenting them, I was unable to get past level 5 (out of 7) after many tries, and decided to write this review anyway.

First things first, I love the concept of this game both story and gameplay-wise. Doremy and Maribel working together is a new idea, and a roguelite card game definitely is a fun route to take.

The gameplay has a lot of potential to be fun and engaging with a sprinkle of luck needed. In particular, some of the cards can be extremely satisfying to pull off - I managed to take out six enemies in a row with Stampede once! Unfortunately, said gameplay failed to reach its potential fully because of the card categorizations and how the randomization works.

Even looking at the separate types, it's clear that the number of attack cards is significantly lower than movement cards. Not only that, most of the "special"/Dream Self cards lean towards either pushing you further in the randomization wheel (I get Sanae's card being that at least) or giving you even more movement cards. It's very easy to be pushed into an unfair losing state where you get only movement cards in multiple turns in succession and there are 5-6 enemies pushing you.

To alleviate this, I suggest making more attack/defensive-centric cards (like a more powerful Sheep card that tanks 2 hits), as well as ensuring that you always will have at least one attack card in your hand to escape troublesome situations (for example, having an attack card always appear after a set amount of turns without one, or after the screen gets filled with a lot of enemies). RNG still plays a role as is with these kinds of games, but you should always be given a chance to turn things around.

Finally, the biggest problem about the game: there are no checkpoints. With how long the game can (potentially) get (7 levels with increasing difficulties), I highly, highly recommend putting checkpoints after each level, or at least every 2-3 levels. It'd save a lot of time and motivate more people to actually finish the game.

Overall, the game provides an interesting concept that can be worked much, much more on. I hope to see your team improve on it!

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Thank you very much for your review! Creating an updated, post-jam version of this is absolutely something I'm interested in doing, I have a lot of plans for additions and changes but I don't yet know when (or how) I'm going to do that (right now I'm tied up trying to review other games from the jam before the deadline...)

I wouldn't worry much about not completing it, there isn't an epic ending you're missing out on just a very brutal final level.

However, no checkpoints is very much an intentional choice, as checkpoints would not be compatible with the gameplay formula - the whole thing revolves around getting random new cards to add to your deck at the end of each stage, and making the most out of what you have on a given run - with checkpoints, this wouldn't matter much anymore so you can always keep trying a stage until you get the right draws anyway. Going back to the start is kind of the point of a roguelike.

I'm not sure what you mean about dream cards giving you even more movement? Aya's should be the only one that does that.

But I am well aware that the game needs more balancing in areas - something that I have several plans to address. I also appreciate your point about having more defensive cards - unfortunately card design is limited quite a bit by the shoddy way I programmed this game, but I'm sure there are still possibilities I can come up with - for example, one card idea that was cut due to time restraints is a card that creates a decoy Maribel that enemies pursue instead.

Thank you for replying!

I'm still a bit iffy on no checkpoints but your explanation makes perfect sense! If you were to add more attack & defense cards (particularly the former as that is how you kill enemies) and make balancing changes, the game would be more fun and the gameplay formula would be received significantly better. You're definitely on the right track for the update!

(I guess I misremembered some of the Dream Self cards, haha. I remember always getting Movement cards from them so much, and barely any Attack cards...)