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(1 edit) (+1)

Hey! First of all thank you so much, I'm so glad that my game is your favorite game of the jam.

I thought about it and I can address some issues the prevented your game from receiving the rating you wanted. (some of them may apply to my game as well)

First thing is that it takes some time to present all the the game's dynamics. As I said in my first comment, your game is a mixture of puzzle(/strategy), exploration and luck but it takes five or 10 minutes for the player to realize the puzzle aspect of the game so when players start your game and for the first minutes they are only engaged with the luck aspect of the game, they would assume that they wont get anything more than that and leave the game.

The luck aspect of the game is dominant to the other aspects. The problem with it is that at some point it becomes the only thing that the player is struggling with to progress further into the game and since it's out of player's control and they can't do much with lower number of moves, it wont be fun to play. You can weaken the luck aspect of the game and reduce its dominance over other aspects of the game, Maybe make a negative feedback loop for the player when they get a low number like giving some points and letting player do something with them when they have a specific amount of that points. You can also strengthen the puzzle and exploration aspect of the game to reduce luck's dominance and balance the three core dynamics. Maybe have different enemy types like having them move randomly but in an easy to predict patterns. Some of them may only move horizontally, some of them may only  move vertically, some of them may move diagonally, some of them may move like the horse in chess.

There are also some small issues with the exploration aspect of the game like having a more clear distinction between areas and making sure the player knows they are on the right path. I think instead of having a camera that follows the played all the time, it's better to have a zoomed out and fixed camera in each room and make it zoom in and follow the player when they are in hallways.

The last issue that I wanted to address is that the player has to wait so much when it's enemy turn and it's really annoying especially when there are no enemies on the screen that can hurt you or when there are no enemies on the screen at all.

I hope my comment is helpful :)

OK, yeah I agree, this is helpful so thanks for responding. I submitted my game to the post-jam jam (https://itch.io/jam/post-jam-jam-5) actually now so I already made some improvements -- zoomed out map because it's now fullscreen, enemy paths are more clear because their direction is telegraphed by their sprite, and to reduce luck, you collect upgrades like other dice so you can swap between them. It still doesn't fix the issue with the core mechanic not being revealed immediately -- I tried to fix this a little by not having the player have to roll the die before the first enemies appear, but it still seems challenging to emphasize strategy, especially when you don't get the second die before you've played the game for a bit. Then my solution to giving the player direction is adding a metal detector which is a collectible that when you push a button shows you the general direction of the next key, so that way players won't have no clue where to go next.

Oh also, you gave me an idea about how to fix the speed issue -- I'll have an enemy wait time decreaser be a collectible upgrade, so that way it becomes less of an issue as the game goes on.