You're welcome, it's a fun game
Here's a bug I noticed: While wearing a magic protector with invisibility & deadly gas effects on being hit, it seems that the game crashes if I'm holding space to auto attack while it actives the gas effect
i had two crashes where the application went black but music continued to play -- and also some stuttering, i think twice, when first encountering enemies on a new load of the game. i read somewhere that the stuttering is a common Godot thing, though. one crash was when spamming the green mist skill while walking around and the other was while fighting the AoE boss. i upgraded to a pretty decent mid-range PC since i last gave feedback so i think it was actually the game this time
i held off on writing feedback since i get the feeling it'd be easy to dismiss the small issues i'd have complained about because i'm not the WoW-playing target audience and i'd waste our time writing it all out (why can't i stop charging a spell? i always think that escape opens the backpack, etc.)
though, having thought about it, i'd like to say that my biggest peeve is how much micromanaging goes into moving the team. if i were a WoW player on comms i would say "get out of the AoE!" and they would do it, but in HtD we all have to stop what we're doing and walk hand-in-hand to a different location, then i have to press another button to resume fighting (as i recall the game doesn't even visually tell you when you're switching modes, so i've left my team sitting idle while continuing to play before after forgetting to set them to attack)
i hope i don't offend you when i say that i think the game needs more time spent on graphics (UI, menus, text, overworld, enemy variance, hero visual identity -- i don't like how different heroes share models) than there is until nextfest/release and i dread seeing HtD get a poor reception just because it was rushed due to something arbitrary like the meta of joining a nextfest then releasing a month after
The aesthetic is great. I hope you balance healing versus how punishing/hard to identify boxes and serums are, ammo being very limited but not that useful, and the ease of getting a full kit & rescue crystal in the future since those make the game feel less about interacting with items and mechanics and more about grinding permanent upgrades for you and your knife and then just hitting enemies
there isn't much to comment on yet, but the music was good
i don't think you're going to be able to have your cake and eat it when it comes to making a game about doing cute things but it also lets you slap boobs and strip the girl down to her underwear. it seems like two different audiences are being conflated just because they both potentially like anime girl games
if this is a game about building a relationship with a virtual character then i think there needs to be more of a scenario instead of just an avatar you leave idle to unlock customization; it should be 'My Virtual Senpai' or 'My Virtual Co-worker' or something, and it should be implicit that -she- needs a friend because her mood/room/whatever else improves as you interact with her. just a thought
since last demo day i improved the UI & UX and added some new items
a full list of the changes are mentioned in this devlog
i didn't really get it. it's like Vampire Survivors, but i also have several fairly useless skills that i activate manually. i don't think it's an interesting variation of the formula. BUT i get the sense the game is supposed to be like Risk of Rain, and i didn't like RoR, so i might not be the audience for this
thanks for playing!
I still don't get the limit thing fully, I get less SP if I get a big combo going?
yeah, unless you add skills to your build for lowering Limit
Is SP used only for card draw?
it also charges skills and your weapon. some cyan skills add Draw SP that only applies to card draw, though
Player agency felt very low. The best move was always obvious, and I never felt in danger. I'm guessing the shop draft is meant to be the "real" game?
kinda. since it's an autobattler, how you play on the board affects when your skills/weapon activate
i don't know if you've played the higher difficulties, but Jack mode is meant to be something of a tutorial/casual mode
my interest petered out and i quit after i got the wood for the bridge then got through the mine to the wand hut, everywhere else i went i felt underpowered and it seemed like i was being asked to just charge in and die until i won instead of being able to retreat and heal when i needed it. maybe that’s Zelda 1-esque and i’m just a scrub, i dunno
thanks so much for playing and the kind words!
the game feels a bit overwhelming at first
if you mean by the amount you feel you have to read on the skills, then yeah, i think you're right. i'm always trying to simplify how the game explains the mechanics, so maybe it'll get better in time. that being said, the build you posted seems competently made
The game also grinds to a halt sometimes when both players are just looking for 1 card to progress
i intend for gray skills to benefit from this situation, but i feel the skill pool is still pretty small. hopefully in the future different builds will have more options to naturally build into so they don't feel like they're doing nothing when this happens
i suppose it's the point of the game, but raising the dead and being able to keep the ally to the next fight is totally broken in how much strength and utility it gives you. for some reason i had expected the game to play out like The Ouroboros King where you can build up allies through Slay The Spire-like events, which i think would have been more fun
the game plays out quite fast. that, plus the spell you're using being deselected when you run out of mana means it doesn't feel very strategic when you have to keep using spells to win
it was fun. there's a lot of potential here so i'm looking forward to seeing where it goes
since last demo day i added several bosses and simplified the tutorial among other things. a full list of the changes are in this devlog
⚠ PRESS SPACEBAR ON THE TITLE SCREEN TO ACTIVATE PLAYTEST MODE ⚠
The CTR is the worst of all my games. I though I had done a good job for my promo image, but I guess not. Thinking about re working the overal look to make it more appealing
i think you have the right idea with the pulsing effect, but maybe show some numbers that multiply to 72 and then cleared. it would be even better if you added flashier effects to the game & capsule. cool game, by the way
hey, thanks for the feedback, and i'm very grateful for the VOD! sorry that i wasn't there to see this live
R-Shield adds a shield every 6 SP as its use-effect. i'm a little undecided if it's too weak as it is in its C-rank state, but when it upgrades it adds shields quite a bit more often
i know what you mean when you say the game feels RNG. my aim is to make it feel like the different skills offset the inherent RNG of the draw in some way (by making it easier to pick up cards/do longer chains/gain bonuses when inactive) so players don't feel punished when they don't draw a card they need.
i think there is some kind of tutorialization that i'm missing for teaching players that not expanding into different "skill colors" will leave them with a weakness in the "skill color"'s related area
i think 'Draw SP' is kind of a clunky term too, but haven't figured out a better phrasing yet. currently the rogue character adds 'free draws', so calling them 'draws' would be confusing. 'draw points' probably wouldn't imply the link between gaining SP and getting Draw SP that i want
i'm glad you noticed the "left to right" concept even though its a minor part of the tutorial! it's not as big a part of the game yet as it could be, so i currently only mention it the one time in the tutorial
thanks for playing!
playtest mode extends the game past what the demo would allow, so you can fight one more boss and enter the infinitely looping postgame. you'll also be able to play as more characters than the demo once you have you've unlocked them
if, for whatever reason, you want to skip unlocking the characters and difficulties, just press 'U' on the title screen and it will say 'unlock all playtest' on the title screen
i wanted the game to be more like Super Monkey Ball, but as i understand you're going for something else. i do get the feeling that basing the gameplay on bumping and avoiding bumper enemies is the wrong direction to go, though
i think the game would be more interesting if you simplified each character to an 'on hit' and 'on stop (while on the board)' effect and lent more into a Peggle-style board & "clear the board before X" goal, instead of trying to make players do tricky shots
⚠ PRESS SPACEBAR ON THE TITLE SCREEN TO ACTIVATE PLAYTEST MODE ⚠
playtest mode is the “full” game in its current state
Changes since DD57:
cool game! i got pretty bad carpal tunnel from using arrow keys to move until i realized that you can use tab and enter, that was a little carpal tunnely too and i didn't have the excel muscle memory to navigate well like that, but it was somewhat manageable
i think the game is quite easy for someone with a fast typing speed, but the pressing issue is that it's quite bland and overly long on modes above the learner difficulty
there need to be more reasons to choose different paths instead of letting me just path like a snake with an optimal discover route (left, up two, right up two, etc). i noticed this wasn't always the case on the highest difficulty where there would be special types, which was a good change, i think the game needs more variety like that
i had to purposely play slowly and take damage to see what my health was, because not only was i not losing much but the effect wasn't pronounced
the poison effect was neat. i also like that the end makes you type the full name of Exceliber
i think the tutorial should play out even after you have defeated the enemy it is describing, i never found out what the fire type does because i beat it so fast
i was going for full completion, but...
receive this error when unlocking difficulty 12. it happens when i win on this run, but i haven't tried to replicate it on another run
another error, when using metronome. i'm sure i've used it in the DD57 build without crashes, but on this run (seed 2465309316, apparently) i picked it up before the final fight, then entering any fight would crash me
also,
you're welcome, good luck on the release! i really do play it because it's fun, despite how critical i might seem of the game. i wouldn't have complained so much about things you won't realistically be able to change before release if i knew it was coming out so soon
If timing the machine is a detriment, do you suggest to let it just automon it all the way?
well, maybe. if you were to add it i would suggest copying how digital slot machines have the option to spin manually by pressing the spin button or switching to an automatic mode by holding the button for a few seconds, then stopping automatic spinning on the next button press. the automon item might still be interesting/useful if you added this as an option because players will lose the option to spin manually if there ever was a case they wanted to. but if you have any doubts about it you should probably ignore me on this one since AFAIK i'm the only one saying this
thanks for playing, i'm glad you think so! especially since i still have some sfx/music/animation work to do. the game in its current state is still somewhat overbearing to learn at first, but hopefully i'll fix that in the future. i was actually thinking of releasing it on itch.io exclusively as a $2.99 game, i wonder if that's a strange decision...?