itch.io

This was incredible! I had so much fun solving the word searches and I’ve been recommending this to my friends.

In terms of order of solution: after getting to and solving 0, I solved 3 (which helped me understand the bottom-left numbers) and 2 (which helped me understand the format of the given words). Then I went in order from 4-11, used the information from 11 to help me with 1, and finally solved 12 (which felt like a lovely bonus lap!)

Fantastic! Thank you for making this game!

A couple thoughts:

• It would be nice if you didn't have to undo movements that didn't do anything - e.g. if nothing  is YOU and you press arrows for 5 turns before undoing, it takes 6 undoes to get back in action
• some inconsistent sprite layers: in the level where GRASS is stop, the FLAG sprite appears above half the walls and below the other half
• Is it intentional that, when you stack several YOUs into a square, if you walk them into a KILL only one dies? 

EDIT: for reference, I was playing the not-jam version

Seems fixed except they're grapically wrong the first turn you restart (they show what your last state was before the restart). After the first turn they correct themselves.

p.s. well done for all the fast bugfixing!

New bug with potions in the latest update. If you finish a room by drinking a potion, and then attempt to drink a potion as the first card in the next room, you'll waste it.

Worth noting that if you drink a potion, run, then drink a potion you don't waste it.

EDIT: another bug that's been in since the last version that I had forgotten (sorry!) to mention before. If you run Donsol via the itch program, when you close out of it the itch app crashes. Furthermore, if I try and run the game in Sandbox mode, it won't start at all!

Donsol seems to be the only game which causes this for me.

Curiously if you beat the game and hit restart, then you can quit it just fine from any point thereout. I guess that's extra incentive to win ;)

EDIT: Ok so this is *really* minor but:

- On the first turn, you get one card of each suit, right? For diamond, heart and spade, the picked card is one of A2-9, but for clove it's one of 2-9V. I've been poking around in the source code (for my own amusement) and discovered this looking at deck.js - I think the 26 should be a 25 (because you draw the diamond card before the clove).

- If you've just Entered Donsol, then pressing space will restart as opposed to running. However, if you press the 'Run' button in the top-left corner something weird happens that's neither running nor restarting:

• The message reads 'Escaped the room!'
• You are allowed to press Run or space again, as if you restarted
• The four cards are not guaranteed to be diamond-clove-heart-spade, it's just four random cards from the deck

If your shield breaks when you die, it doesn't display 'Broke!' like it normally does. This has caused me to go 'huh why did I die' a couple of times now.

On a similar note, if you die on the fourth card of a room it draws the next room. I guess that isn't a bug per se but it seems more sensible to stop the game before the draw - both since that's how you'd play the game in real life and otherwise it looks like the game is continuing.

The card called Empresss should probably have one less 's'.

The potion rule could be worded better. I didn't realise that wasting a potion still counted as using a potion, and used three potions in a row assuming that I would get the healing from #1 and #3.

This is less a bug and more a design thought, but I think the game could visually communicate the 'state of play' better. Yes, one can work out whether attacking an enemy will break your shield or kill you, or using a potion will make you waste it, but if there was some visual cue by/on the card (e.g. it was tinted slightly?) that would make it a lot clearer. Part of the appeal of Donsol's design is the minimality and it would be a shame to lose that, but I still think it's possible to retain that and communicate more visually.

If the streak system as described above is implemented (which I am completely in favour of!) then the health meter should read current/max so you don't forget what your max health is!

p.s. I found this game thanks to the RPS article, watched the tutorial vid and thought 'this looks like my sorta thing', so I bought it and have been enjoying in greatly since. Many thanks for making Donsol!