I got spawn-camped in the first playthrough (RIP), but on my second try I got:
This is one of the most enjoyable and well-designed game in the jam! I really like the fact that your weapons are part of your HP. This way when an entity's HP is weakened so is their power. The step counter also made it so that the player has to plan their moves very carefully. Also a great feature is that it nicely prevents a power snowball because even when I felt super powerful all it took was a few enemies to wear me down.
A few suggestions I thought of:
- The blue gun with the 20 on it was probably the most broken item in the game. I always felt like I had a chance when I had that. Since all the items stayed in the same places I wonder if this would lead to a strategy where you just stay close to the OP weapons by repeated abusing the teleporters back and forth instead of having to spend previous move points. Maybe items could be randomized?
- I think this game would really benefit from melee weapons. The thing is the player is already forced to move very tactically throughout the game, so why not reward them by having a weapon that hits harder up close? This way it leads to "two-birds-with-one-stone" moves where the player gets closer to both an item and an enemy.
- Adding to my last point, I think it would also be interesting to add some evasion elements. Because if there's anything imperfect about the game so far, I would say that it lacks a good recovery/comeback mechanic. I already mentioned one time when I got spawn-camped, so if there was an evasion mechanic, it would help the player avoid strong enemies when they're still weak (you can make it so that evasion moves cost more move points so that it doesn't get abused).
- This is more of an UI thing and it probably wouldn't even be an issue without the 64x64 restriction, but when I really piled up on weapons/armor, it blocked out the step counter so I couldn't see how much game I had left :)