Post by PeterRegg in Cauldron comments

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Congrats on being the first to beat it! (At least that I know of). I’m really glad you enjoyed it all the way through, and I appreciate all the feedback!

I know what you mean about not getting to utilize all the characters by the end of the game. My hope is to expand on the battling to add more types of enemies, especially ones that will require different strategies (like tanky guys that have a lot of armor, so Bleedy and BuffBuff would be effective, etc).

And no, bad apple wasn’t an intentional reference, but that’s funny it made you think of that!

And I agree about the apple game becoming the slowest towards the end of the game. Since you accumulate apples linearly, it ends up being a “how long can you survive” type of game, which can be tedious. I still think there’s some room for more upgrades in the apple game. Maybe a multiplier based on how many enemies you kill without getting hit, or maybe enemies will drop temporary power ups, etc.

One of the big questions I have with the game is where to take the mini games. Would you rather have more upgrades with the three main games? Or maybe even completely different mini games with new resources?

And yes, Freeze is definitely very strong. I’ll have to find a way to balance it. I’ll probably have to do a little bit of an overhaul if I end up adding a bunch of new enemies/bosses, so I’ll keep that in mind as I create them.

That’s good to know about Buffbuff. I’ll have to increase the character’s base speed to make sure they’re viable.

And thanks for calling out the window issue. I haven’t had the same problem, but I’ll keep an eye out and see if other people experience it. I’m planning to work on game resolutions and make sure full screen will work in the future.

Thanks again for the incredible feedback! You don’t know how excited I was to hear that someone finally beat it, so I really appreciate you taking the time to write all of this! And I’ll keep you updated with any future versions!

Svartsjuk1 year ago (5 edits)

The minigames can already get quite time consuming late-game and the infinite upgrades get prohibitively costly eventually, so i guess unlocking new minigames later on might be cool rather than making current ones longer.

I thought of a couple minor qol suggestions for the apple game though they dont solve the income difference:

- Make spacebar alone dash in the last direction you pressed. A lot of the time I try to press arrow and space same time but it registers space first so just faceplant into bullets. Also would let you dash in tighter spaces.

- Not have turrets be able to destroy the bad apples or at least not 1-shot.

I'm not sure about this one, maybe this was intentional to limit how long you can survive. The run- killer is usually not being able to replenish turrets cause existing ones destroy all the bad apples before they fall into dash range.

- Also there's no reward for beating any of the bosses and your income stops completely during boss fights, it feels even more punishing when you get a flyer just as the boss spawns. So maybe either a multiplier for each boss defeated or a lump sum apple bonus when the boss dies might be nice. (Early game I would intentionally leave when first boss spawned because it was such a huge time loss even if I could beat it).

Multiplier for kills in a row without getting hit and powerups sound awesome for sure!

I remember there used to be a few of those flash games where you launch a plane or a penguin or whatever with progressive upgrades. Maybe that might work as a minigame but with the witch on a broom. Though it looks like you already had some ideas, judging by some of the scenery, the axe seems to suggest a game to collect wood, and I see the same signs as on the current minigames next to the red tree and the ladder in the caves, so I'm guessing you don't really need suggestions for that.

Oh by the way, lategame when going for highscores in the digging game I remove the Super Special Potion upgrades as much as possible (still forced to get the first level to unlock multipliers), since most of the time they force you down making you miss multipliers that you could've reached otherwise and it can be hard to just avoid hitting them with bombs. Maybe some highscore hunters might find this tip useful. Similarly you want more red fish not less lategame in the fishing game so can set that upgrade back to lv 1. Don't think there's any trick like that for the apple game currently.

Looking forward to seeing future versions!

PeterRegg1 year ago

Thanks for these suggestions! They're really great. And sorry for the delayed response.

I know what you mean about the dash. I'm also thinking about making the dash multidirectional, including the dash waves. That should make hitting bad apples easier.

Yeah, not having the turrets destroy bad apples would be good. That should be easy enough. I might also try to find a way to stagger the turret shots so that they don't all shoot at once when a slime appears -- most shots get wasted that way.

I agree about the boss rewards. Maybe defeating them can multiply current apples by a certain amount. First boss is 1.25x, second boss 1.5x, etc. Then those rewards would still scale with current apple frequency upgrades.

I had come to a similar realization with the SSP in the digging game, so I feel like I was trying to avoid them late game because they'd make me drop down. Maybe I'll change them so they never destroy any dirt below you, and maybe I can make the upgrades cheaper to compensate for that change.

And that's interesting about the red fish! I hadn't thought about resetting that upgrade. I've been considering changing the whole red to gold upgrades, just because of how crazy it becomes. It's essentially the only way to get a really high score, so I might play around with some more powerups, or potentially making the game go EVEN DEEPER. If I do go deeper, I think I'll add upgrades that will act as checkpoints, so the hook can start at certain depths.

Thanks again for the feedback! It's definitely really helpful!

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