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Context: I have played FTL in the past, and completed all ships on Hard mode in Advanced edition, though with heavy abuse of pausing. I have also played a little bit of Wodopom previously.

What does "T-clicking" in the tutorial refer to?

For the player ship, the room symbols are difficult to make out from the background for me. In FTL, there is a single, clear to see, room symbol in each room (in FTL, there are also empty rooms without any system on it), for both the player ship and the enemy ship. See also the attached screenshot. In FTL, you can always see the room type of an enemy, I think, unless the enemy ship is cloaked. Could it make sense for you to similarly have a single, clear symbol in each room instead of many symbols that might be difficult to make out? I know you can hold shift or 'z' (which is nice) to see the room type, but it would still be nicer to see at a glance. If you implemented it as an algorithm, it might not require much work. But, an algorithm would also take time and be complex. In FTL, I supposed there is always a "center" tile for a system room to put the room type symbol in, and where a crewmate will never stand fully on top of the symbol, because the center is never a tile. That is not the case for Wodopom. Might that be the explanation for why the creators of FTL never added 1x1 or 1x3 tile rooms? (reverse engineering game design :) ). I do not know what the best approach would be here.


(continued, itch.io gave me an error when I tried to post the original comment).

Room symbols continued: When you use 'z' or shift to hover over a room type, it might be nice to add the room type symbol to the pop-up hover. Or, maybe have the symbols on the room become colorful and easy to make out? I also wonder: Might it make sense to "shift" the room symbols? Like, room symbols are not placed on the center of tiles, but always on the edges between tiles? That way, characters will never stand fully on top of the symbols, even if the room is full.


I tried holding 'shift' and 'z' over these parts of the UI:


But it did not show any tooltip/pop-up. It is mostly self-explanatory, though, especially for new players, it might be nice. Might not be worth implementing if it is bothersome to add a tooltip to those UI elements, however.

Is there any saving or loading at the moment? When I select a crew member on the left-most side of the screen, and the crew member is not the top one, the crew member jumps up the list. Once the crew member is at the top of the list, I can click the crew symbol again to see the inventory for that crew member. That feels a bit annoying, at least so far.

When I select a crew member on the left-most side of the screen, and the crew member is not the top one, the crew member jumps up the list. Once the crew member is at the top of the list, I can click the crew symbol again to see the inventory for that crew member. That feels a bit annoying, at least so far.

Nitpick: Possible, though minor (I think), bug: The body armor is currently in the helmet slot: 

Nitpick: I have a bit of trouble understanding the first line in the pop-up hover, namely what "Armor 2.1x" and "Armor 1.1x" means. I can hover over the items to see what they do, which is nice. I cannot hover over the skills yet, however, while in the inventory.

When an enemy is not at the enemy ship's helm, the enemy ship's jump engine still charges. In FTL, the jump meter does not charge unless the enemy is an in-game-AI ship, or has the pilot system upgrade. Would the same make sense for Wodopom?

Nitpick: Inventory: I can apparently put any item in any character equipment slot, as long as I first unequip it. I assume this has not been implemented yet.

I imagine the inventory is still under heavy development, but it looks nice so far.

Crew fights tend to happen very quickly. I think they are usually slower in FTL, and there is pausing.

The pirate hats are amazing :) .

Nitpick: When teleporting back, could it be useful to have returning crew land somewhere near the teleporter?

Nitpick: After visiting a shop, I think my current "trace" on the starmap disappeared.

Nitpick: The transition between tracks on the radio is somewhat abrupt.

Whoops, I lost one of my veteran attack crew after combat went very fast, I did not get to click "Teleport back" before he was dead. And his items are lost as well, it seems. Boarding is dangerous.

Does my own crew get healed by the enemy's healing room? It appears so.

I bought and equipped a blaster to my only remaining boarding crew member, and his attack almost doubled. I tried equipping a second body armor on him, and now his attack is even higher. He is a shield guy that I hired at a shop, and after I lost one of the starting 3 crew members, I have 3 crew members now, one pilot at the helm, one shield guy, and that boarder.

Oh god, some lightning-quick enemies boarded my ship and murdered my shield crew, even after I tried to run him around. The bunny with a knife murdered him. I guess I pay for being greedy and moving equipment away from my other crew members onto my main border, and I think paying for greed is good. At least my boarder and my pilot is still alive, but I have no shield charge guy now. The med-bay did not heal my crew nearly quickly enough - I should have upgraded it more than level 2, I think.

Nitpick: After I defeated an enemy ship, the boomerang projectiles from the enemy weapons are still circling around their ship.

Oh wait, I think my trace on the starmap returned after I "zoomed out".

My O2 system is blinking red, which is a nice feature. Though, the O2 is at 100%, and I do not understand why it is blinking red.

I got a crew as a reward! Up to 4 crew members.

Listening to the radio is nice.

Enemies are becoming stronger, my sole boarder with 98 kills by now got to less than a third health after killing the 4 or so enemy crew members.

My weapons systems and weapons are the same as in the start. I have upgraded shields, healing, and energy.

I got close to losing:

My sole boarder could not attack this enemy crew member or move to the free space, I think, and the weapons kept shooting. However, after some time (30+ seconds?), the enemy crew member moved elsewhere (maybe my sole rocket caused damage to the enemy ship?), and got killed by my boarder. In FTL, boarders that are in a room without crew but with a ship system, attack and damage that system, meaning that the defending crew have a reason to go to that ship system beyond just fighting, namely in order to defend the system and try to prevent it from being damaged.

For some reason, I cannot repair my ship at the shop, even though I have plenty of scrap.

While my ship is not invulnerable, I feel like I am exploiting the game. I am getting lots of scrap now, and went to a shop and hired a number of crew members. My sole boarder has 125 kills now.

I got boarded, and I think I tried to counter-board, but my crew might have been forcefully returned, or I miss-clicked, or something. One of my crew died, my engine crew member, but at this point I have many crew members, 7 after his death. I found a few combats ago a double-sword fire crew member, and am trying to train him up. I only had a bit of gear for him, but I found two items that gave him regeneration, and one of them seem to scale with my medbay, if I understand it correctly. And I have upgraded my medbay a lot, in order to heal more quickly after combat. So despite having very little combat experience, and mostly poor items and stats, he has actually survived boarding. Two boarding members now.

I think I will stop now. The gameplay is rather monotone now, and I think it is because I am abusing the system. Also, crew boarding seems to be able to kill any ship. In FTL, this was not generally the case for multiple (many as it turns out, now that I have listed a lot of them) different reasons:

  • Drone ships have no crew and have no oxygen, meaning only one rare type of crew member can survive there indefinitely.
  • The enemy flag ship will continue fighting, even when all its crew has died.
  • If the enemy has a highly upgraded health system, killing off enemy crew can be very difficult.
  • Random events can not always be handled by crew.
  • There can be defensive drones that can fight.
  • In FTL, the combat system allowed a maximum number of crew in a room, rooms are at most 4 tiles I believe, and not all crew went to a specific battle. Also, the weapon system continued to work even when there is no crew in it, and at most one crew member could contribute to the weapon system's effectiveness, at a maximum of +20% I think. Crew battle is also much slower. This means that even if you had 4 full-experience mantis, the enemy ship could still fire its weapons and do damage to your ship, depending on if you had cloaking, defensive drones (shooting down enemy missiles, projectiles, boarding drones, maybe hacking system).
  • Cloaking on an enemy ship prevents teleporting to the ship, maybe also teleporting back and rescuing crew.
  • Supershields on an enemy ship (always present on enemy Zoltan ships) meant that you had to shoot down the Zoltan shield first. And, if the enemy has a shield drone (or the enemy flag ship), regeneration of the supershield might mean that you cannot board or rescue your crew, making boarding dangerous. This means that, for Zoltan ships, you really need to be able to hit the enemy ship with attack drones or weapons (or have the special ship augment (FTL lets each ship have 3 augments) that enables you to teleport through supershields) to defeat Zoltan ships and other ships with supershields.
  • There is no crew equipment.
  • There are system effects, such as asteroid field, pulsar system, and too-close-to-sun. The pulsar is especially dangerous for boarding, since it might knock out your shields and teleporter, meaning you take a lot of damage and might be unable to board or teleport back crew.
  • Enemy mind control can making boarding more dangerous.
  • Enemy hacking can make boarding more dangerous, such as draining oxygen or making health systems cause damage instead of healing, or make clone systems not work.
  • There is a cool-down on the teleporter, meaning that rescuing crew is not instantly done, and deployment is not done instantly. Also, you have to target the specific room you teleport back from.
  • Enemy ships have door systems that can hinder movement.
  • FTL has visibility where you cannot always see all of an enemy's ship (or your own ship in a nebula!). For instance if your sensor system is damaged or not upgraded, or you are in a nebula, you may not see all that is going on the enemy ship. And enemy cloaking can hinder visibility.

I think your game is really fun and complex already, and I am impressed by all that you have implemented so far. I think there are a number of game design and game balance challenges, and after giving that large list before, I am beginning to be impressed by FTL's game design. It got a bit repetitive during the last part, in part due to me abusing the systems, and in part due to boarding possibly not being balanced and varied. I have not played through a lot of the game, simply because I barely used the weapons, so this does not try out a lot of what the game has to

Screenshots from the final ship and crew:





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That was an epic yarn, and your crew is storied. I love to see it. I'll add a lot of those things you mentioned in the anti-boarding list. 
Thank you for playing!

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after reading through the comment chain, if you never figured out
>What does "T-clicking" in the tutorial refer to?
you may be mildly upset to find that I meant to click the enemy ship while holding T, this sets the target for the teleporter. 

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I did indeed never figure it out, but I am not upset, instead I am laughing out loud :) .