Post by Brushinobi in Behacked comments

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Hello there ! I tried the last version of the game a few times and I like it a lot, the curses make it more challenging and impossible to become immortal.

A few issues though :

- It would be nice to pause the game when applying a curse, so that players have the time to read its description and understand what is happening

- The early game still relies heavily on luck, because if you get enemies you can't kill before any useful skill you are doomed to die very quickly no matter how well you play (especially with rats that are very aggressive and reduce you max hp on top of that) . Unless you provide some kind of skill like "Inner Demon" by default to damage unreachable enemies it is bound to be very frustrating, and most players won't take the time to try 10 times or so just to get a good start.

- The "flood" curse is too powerful, especially since it is cumulative. On an unlucky game my first 2 curses were purple flood and red flood, and with some locked tiles on top of that I was completely stuck immediately (no possible match), and could just wait for my death... Even with only 1 flood curse you can quickly get completely stuck (no possible match) if you don't have any tile-shuffling skill yet.
-> A challenging game is fun, but an unfair one isn't.

- With the upgraded chaos skill, I got some useless skills too : for example you can have a reflect that deals 0 damage to the enemy that attacked you

- At some point I could get an upgraded stun trap (same color) does the enemy gets stunned for a longer period of time or is it useless too ?

anttihaavikko2 years ago

Glad you like it! I also feel like it's finally getting to a point "end game" wise where I wanted it. You can't get carried by some overly powerful combo anymore (I think) and the late enemies feel like big threats as they were intended.

It actually does pause the enemy timers for few seconds when curse is added. Of course it's not enough to read the description but you can always manually pause the game with esc to read the skill/curse tooltips and enemies too. I feel like halting the game and maybe requiring user interaction before continuing on curses might get annoying once you're familiar with them. It might be good to do so when encountering a new curse for the first time but not on repeats.

I don't think it's that luck based to get through the early game. Obviously the slimes are a joke and you have plenty of time to look for a way to dispose of them while they're on route to you. Kobolds are quick and a bit trickier but they can also easily be pacified by not allowing them to be on the diagonals with you. The bats aren't really threats at all, they're just there to be multiplier breakers. The rats are indeed super deadly and fast but also very weak as they don't dodge. And when they come from black squares, the source tile often becomes a brick which quite regularly might be a quick way to deal with them instantly. Well I guess the black slimes only spawn around the mid game where cockatrices are probably a bigger threat already. And pretty soon after that all the enemies introduced to the list are big threats.

Yeah flood is easily the most painful curse. I'm making it less likely than all the others. Doesn't fully fix the issue but makes it more manageable. Fixed the Stun trap repeating too, I guess I accidentally made it repeatable instead of making it repeatable with Entropy.

The Chaos orb skill is supposed to work like that. It's like a coin flip really, double or nothing. For the normally non 1 number skills it's a bigger range of course but still a coin flip, it's either going to result in better or worse version of the skill.

Thanks a lot for the (continuous) feedback! 👍

Brushinobi2 years ago (1 edit)

No worries, you made a great job on the game so it is a pleasure to help you polish it and balance it. ;-)

From a player's perspective, just pausing the timer instead of completely displaying the curse's effect is a bit of a pain in the ass though : I mean the game is already paused when picking skills, so I wouldn't really mind If there was a pause as well for curses (it would feel more consistent too). If the players already know its effect they can just close the popup immediately, which is less bothersome than having to check the skill list every time when they don't. Furthermore, it's especially troublesome with curses that depend on a color and make you check anyway (For example the flood curse already causes a big disadvantage, and having to check which color just make it more frustrating.) Also if at some point someone manage to survive for a very long time, they could theoretically have a very long skill list that goes off-screen and couldn't even check the curse's effect.

Well I do know very well how to deal with the different enemies (I wasn't a top player just thanks to overpowered combos, I still had to survive the early game to have the possibility to build the right synergies :-p), but I often find myself stuck in the early game in its current state :

- Sometimes there is no possible match on the whole board : not often "by default" but it still happened a few times and all it took was a few locked tiles that blocked the few possible matches I could have, and as soon as there is even a single flood curse it happens very easily (and if at some point you get 2 like me it's over almost immediately if it happens early...)

- Sometimes there is just no possible match between the enemy and my character, so I can just wait (or make "useless" matches) and prepare to die as they get closer, which is no fun either.

-> Out of 10 to 20 games I would say (I lost count because of the very short runs but it could be more), I could only pass the early game once or twice because I was very lucky on my skill choices, but on every other run I got stuck as explained before and lost very quickly even with careful skill picks because I had poor possibilities (either on the board, on the skill selection, or both).

There are 2 types of skills that are way too "vital", and necessary to survive and really enjoy the game :

- The most important ones are tile-shuffling skills and match-facilitating skills (such as wildcard), because they're the ones that can prevent you from getting stuck with no possibilities at all.

- After that, teleporting skills are very important too because they can prevent a single monster (that you sometimes don't have the possibility to kill) to hit you an infinite amount of time on the spot, also effectively ending the run.

=> In that sense I can assure you that the early game is more lucked-based and unbalanced than you think : if in the first few minutes you don't have the possibility to pick those you will die very quickly no matter how well you play, unless you are extremely lucky with the board.

anttihaavikko2 years ago

Yeah, I guess you're right about the curse pause thing. I think I've even been surprised by some color flood. Don't think it will hurt to see it fully and get to read it in peace while also getting a bit of a free breather from the action too.

Might be that our definition of "early game" is different. I've always considered the cockatrice spawn (possible) point mark the end of the beginning and I can get there almost 100% of the tries. You definition of early and end game is probably something completely different as you've easily proven to be better at the game than me. 😅 I've only seen those crazy board positions where all spawn spots are in use at the same time etc in screenshots and videos.

But of course it is still heavily RNG dependant. And yeah those skills are quite mandatory for you to make it far. That's why I like the daily mode where the RNG is exactly the same for everyone so the playing field is level. Hopefully the flood chance nerf will make it even a bit better.

Brushinobi2 years ago

Yes the curse pause thing would be really nice :-) in the same way, it would be cool to have a "skill reveal" screen when picking a skill affected by the memory loss curse. (there is no need to penalize the player twice for that either)

I guess the "early game" definition is indeed subjective. I usually die soon after the cockatrice spawn in my recent attempts. (The definition of "soon" is quite subjective too though :-p)

The flood chance nerf did make it slightly better :-)

The game already became much more difficult because of the locked tiles, run-killer enemies, curses, etc... but I figured the main "issue" is that since you added even more skills such as the bows, ESP, etc... that are interesting on the long run but not nearly as necessary the probability to get vital skills was lowered a lot and the RNG part became much more apparent and frustrating. In short, I feel like it is important to balance that back to make the game more fair and appealing again. I honestly don't know what the best solution would be, but I have a few ideas that could help :

- Have more choices when picking skills

- Increase the probability to get vital skills

- Being able to reroll skills once every level by default (just like the gambler's skill)

- Having some other skill by default (a teleport skill or inner demon for example)

- Leveling up faster in the beginning

- introduce the locked tiles with a curse instead of by default (will help a little with the board RNG instead of the skill RNG)

- introduce one of the colors with a curse (same principle, improve the match chance in the beginning to make early game more forgiving)

...

Have a nice day :-D

itch.io

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