hark fellow orbdev, it is a good day for it is Demo Day, and it's time for feedback
I played through the first two levels using my previous warrior character. unfortunately for him, he has 70HP and only 11 mana, so I didn't get to see much of fireball. As before, I'll go through my experience in order and mention things I found interesting or broken
First thing's first, I went to the shop to sell some gear from before and buy some cool stuff since I noticed I had 20000+ gold to spend.
firstly, I bought a sword of +3 fire damage. very cool. as I was buying/manipulating the scroll bar on the buy item window, I clicked outside it accidentally which closed the buy menu outright. i thought that was kind of annoying, but I know people who want to be able to quickly leave shop windows by moving who'd disagree. either way, this was an accidental click as I was fiddling with the scrollbar, so I'd say consider having clicks outside the window not register or something since I can see how this would be an issue for many
secondly, I equipped the fire sword and swapped it for my old normal sword. I put it on just fine, but the voiceline of "can't use that" played either way. Strength requirement was met and the item was equipped and usable, but the character would complain every time I got the sword.
bought a book of fireball as well from the 40% priestess and i went on my way
in the dungeon, things went well. i glicked the goblins until they died and had no major issues with regards to combat. a swing/miss/hit sound would help, since there wasn't much feedback on what happened with my attack, but since I play these games often I wasn't confused and things went smoothly
I tried casting one fireball since I had 11 max mana and that was all I could. There was a goblin slowly approaching me that was about to get blasted the fuck away. fireball channeled, projectile spawned, but then it impacted one tile away from him? or it hit him but that's just where the impact animation plays? there wasn't anything between us to soak up the shot so i'm not sure what happened. he was still standing so I assumed it just didn't land, so i kept glicking them instead.
i cleared out the first dungeon quickly - it feels much smaller than the previous iterations. went up to the exit and was met with the single room bug, so I restarted.
cleared out the first floor again with no issues, then went up to floor 2. this time it spawned fine, and i also cleaned it up. didn't notice any differences in content, but it too felt small. i'd advise having levels much bigger than needed to allow for player experimentation, or some target dummies in town or such, to allow players to see any content they'd miss, especially if they end up rolling small dungeons. probably a moot point since I guess you can just restart the game and roll new dungeons, i guess
here's some miscellaneous points from during my playthrough that i wrote down:
>missing walls? some wall visuals just don't appear - shows as if they're not in view range when i'm right next to them? perhaps visual bug or dungeon generation issue
>can mouse over health values but can't force-show them so i can know how much health i have a all times. should be able to click them to force-show
>potions don't drop (often) ? didn't get a single drop. didn't need them since i was already leveled, but perhaps new players would get killed due to attrition if they don't go back to town to resupply
>inaccessible room? pic rel.
otherwise faced no issue. game quality improves with every DD, and I can't wait to play the next one
good work as always. my suggestions for next DD would be the following:
>movement in town should either be faster, or the layout should be positioned so that I don't need to spend time walking. since there's no visual stimuli like Tristram, the distances between points of interest are arbitrary. you can easily put the townsfolk 2 tiles from the cave entrance, or alternatively add some visual detail to give more immersion while walking. otherwise people who already moaned that walking in D1 towns was slow would go into shock while walking from the blacksmith to the priestess
>add ranged goblins to showcase your range targeting mechanic. also incentivizes using fireballs since they're not in melee range
>increase drop rates a bit, especially for magic items. things like this show elements of your game many people might not notice otherwise (ie: i didn't get a single magic item drop playing, but I know they exist since I can buy them). it helps maintain interest ("oh, magic items? i wonder what affixes there are. i'll keep playing to find another!"
this review is already too long so i'll cut it here
'til next time!