So ... I've managed to reach the final destination. Out of curiosity ... what happens if you hide? :) As promised, here is the map: https://ibb.co/ZWqSqFG . I've taken some notes regarding things that I liked and things that I would have done differently. Please note that they are not regarding the story - that, by the way, seems very familiar (in a 90's Final Fantasy Super Nintendo kind of way) to me.
So, this is my list:
- I really liked the "comparative damage" fighting system. As far as I understand it, there's a base damage (STR) that gets an additional bonus from (LUCK)?! The SKILL governs, well, the skills/abilities, I guess.
- We've already spoken about the waiting times and the unwanted key presses. If I'm not mistaking, you have programed the game in java. I'm not familiar with the language, but I can show you how this is avoided in python, if you wish, and maybe there's a similar way to sort things out in java.
- I've noticed that at some point I got to fight a ... :unknown: with 1 HP. Is that supposed to happen? I found it extremely funny, thinking about fighting "THE UNKNOWN"
- The potions have no "label", so I drank them without knowing what they did. I kind of figured it out, but it took me a while.
- The buy/sell options and the skill use ones are case sensitive and need to be imputed by hand. You have already figured out how to assign keys to the movement/directional/interaction menu, so I kind of wonder why you didn't use the same system here
- The text is not wrapped, so obviously there are spots where words are broken in the middle at the end of a line.
- Do the monsters "evolve" as you level up?
Overall, I think that the game is a really nice take on the old ZX Spectrum (and before) text adventures with the obvious addition of a combat system and a 90's flavoured story.
There are a few more things that I could add, but I won't do it here, because there are spoilers involved. I've started a subreddit named r/asciiadventures that you can join and we can continue this discussion there. Just start a thread about your game.
Cheers!