Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(+1)

Very polished game with nice pen-and-paper aesthetics. Almost feels more like a tabletop game than a video game. Using the items you gather as a card deck during fights is a pretty neat idea. For my taste, it has a little too many different systems going on all at once, but I think that’s just a personal opinion.

I think my biggest gripe with the game right now is that drops are randomized. I could see this either as a complete roguelike or as a completely designed “campaign”, but considering that the game wants to be pretty hard and unforgiving (as far as I understand), the way it is right now just feels very RNG-dependent (not saying it necessarily is, but for a new player who has not yet figured out all the strategies, it definitely seems like that).

While I generally really dig how the UI works, it can feel a little cluttered at times. Also not entirely sure if I like time passing by itself, though I get the reasoning behind it.

Anyway, this may have sounded more negative than intended. I think this is a pretty cool start and I wonder where you’ll take it!

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback. Don't worry, I am all around happy with it. There is so many valuable stuff that gives me reason for some good, deep thinking.

When making decisions, I constantly have some of my favorite games in mind. There is this one in particular, where the world is designed, but the loot is random - it's The Long Dark. But many more factors in that game contribute to such a mix feeling "just right", and 9 Dayz is missing a lot of them.  It is indeed intended to be damn hard, but taking TLD as a success model, this game offers different play modes - from  something like "let's take a cozy walk in a snowy forest" to a never-ending  survival battle ala "oh my god, if I can't start a fire in the next 2 minutes, I am  done for sure. oh no! there is a pack of wolfs!" :-D

The cluttered UI... yes. I find no good solution for too many Cards piling up in certain places - game is removing them after a certain distance, and players have to re-discover them. But still - maybe I have to reduce the threshold  when a certain amount of Cards is exeeded. Removing the info icons and additional texts is something I want to avoid, that's  a personal preference and something I am missing in many games  and UIs in general.

And the numerous systems will probably even grow in numbers. Truth is, I am not good with designing  clever, neat, minimalistic game mechanics. To me this is the supreme discipline of game design only very few people master. The only way I can work around this lack of skill is by staying on the "real" side. Which means, at one point my game will also offer a fishing mechanic, cooking, luring etc. But all of  them will have this Card-based twist, which I hope will bring up some fresh, new variants of these  established mechanics.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. Really appriciate that!