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

You're welcome! Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!

Sweet video, that was a close ending! Thanks for playing!

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

• i played up until around the third set and i didn't ever get close to losing on turns. i honestly thought every level felt the same
• the last version had more information about what each ball and block did that helped understand what was going on. i think you should bring that back
• there were way too many options in the equip menu, and equipping something takes a lot of redundant clicks
  • some of these are completely broken, i had a ring that prevented a hero from taking any damage
  • i couldn't find any interesting synergies. i thought a support ring would be good on a healer but it didn't seem to do anything

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

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it on board! I'd love to know if you played on King difficulty? I can understand the feeling of HP not mattering and the game going too long if you were playing on the easier difficulties.

• i totally missed this on the list even though i tend to check out roguelites in DD. i think the capsule didn't do much to tell me what the game actually is like
• the screen was so cluttered with UI that i played for a while not noticing that one of them was the tutorial
  • though i'm sure many players, especially streamers on DD, would forget/miss that the goal is to find the door, having a textbox onscreen at all times telling me to look for one just makes me more UI blind as i filter out the useless information
• enemies kept getting trapped behind walls, to the point that one of the three strong enemies was stuck at the gate while i walked around fighting everyone else. it was one of two gate guards that i just cheesed from behind a wall
• the indicator for when a strong enemy's swing is going to hit is covered by all the other effects in the game
• the combination of a mouse always onscreen, no mouse interaction during regular gameplay, and no keyboard interaction on the selection screen is odd

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

that's great to hear, i'm glad the tutorial how-to for playing solitaire was useful. thanks for playing!

• the way that the game implicitly directs you what to do in the early game is cool
• i think the menu would be better if it could be accessed with enter or spacebar
• i only realised i could drink my potion after spending a lot of time looking for somewhere to heal and then dying for the first time to poison
  • i had figured that the only way to heal was using the checkpoints
  • checkpoints are the only way i currently know how to restore potions and that has caused me to not take them to save for a refill in a way that the game feels it isn’t designed around
• the title taking so long to appear that you can skip through it is a strange choice
• i feel like the name "Yancy" doesn't do a zelda-like about crafting swords justice

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

thank you!

i'm glad to hear it! i think you're right about the speech bubbles, i'll try and make them transparent when hovered for the next version. thanks for the video, too!

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 ⚠

• playtest mode is the full game in its current state
• in playtest mode, press ‘U’ on the title screen to unlock all game modes and characters if it’s more convenient for your playtesting

Thanks for the bug report! I would assume so, since I caught a similar bug recently in a development build. Luckily, I'm about to release an update tomorrow that will fix it!

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

Solitaire Battle

I don't have any plans to release on Steam any time soon. I don't expect to sell the game for a high price when I release on itch.io, so hopefully it will still be affordable even when converted to Brazilian Real!

Wow, thank you so much! Do you compete to see who can win the fastest? I plan to add highscores in the future so that there will actually be records of your games to compete against

thanks for playing and for the stream! unfortunate that i missed it live

you did well getting as far as you did! the current music is a placeholder and definitely not a suitable battle theme, i plan to update it a bit closer to release

thanks so much for saying so! and thanks for the stream!

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

• the menu music and the visuals of level 2 are good and they feel authentic to the Dreamcast/GCN aesthetic
• the tutorial blends in so much i didn't see it for a long time
  • i'm not able to read a timed tutorial while crossing tricky paths without falling off
• rotating the camera manually feels inferior to the tried and true Monkey Ball camera
  • there's a bug where dying after having rotated the camera and then rotating it the same direction again rotates it twice
  • the camera is so zoomed out that i can't see the center of my ball so i won't even attempt to pass the very thin circle at the end(?) of level 1
• the level design isn't fun
  
  • the level design of level 0 is unintuitive, it seems like you want to jump down to the platform you're supposed to arrive at on full speed from another direction
    • another section gives you the push back power, but once you use the power or die you don't get it back and just have to run past the enemy in a straight line
  • level 1 is just the same circle and bumper enemy set piece over and over
  • i couldn't figure out how to pass the wall riding section of level 2 because i lose all momentum after the first wall
  • there must be a trick to fighting enemies because i can't see how to pass the sleeping enemies on level 3, they push me back more than them and i can't build the momentum to push them away without falling off
    • the floatiness of the player is unsatisfying, especially on the ramp of level 3 where i have to make adjustments in the air to land correctly while floating down instead of being launched like an actual ball
• fighting bumper enemies isn't fun
  • it isn't clear what gives me the push back ability, the green checkpoint? it doesn't give me a visual effect and the tutorial mentions it like it is always possible to push enemies back
    
    • the push back ability doesn't really do anything
  • the enemies sometimes spontaneously die when pushed back, probably because a small part of them is off the platform and they think they've fallen off the level
  • bumper enemies can follow you seemingly indefinitely if they're close to you as you leave their zone in a way that does not seem well designed or intended
• i have a 1680x1050 screen, so i can see behind your screen transitions. Unity games consistently have issues related to screen size like that for me

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

apparently you're supposed to jump? there was no indication so i just died

Vampire Survivors But Bad

• the lack of an ability to make a precise move makes the game less interesting, i think it would feel a lot better with mouse aim and scroll wheel for precise adjustments
• the characters don't seem to go as far as the indicator predicts, so my turns feel like the hero can get to the end of the board and that's it
  • this also makes bombs feel unavoidable since i don't bounce off of them
• dead characters turning into obstacles AND needing to be saved is annoying
• a combination of all the above complaints has lead me to feel softlocked on the board when i have only one left and cant aim a shot to kill the last enemy or save a hero
• for some reason it took me a while to intuit that all living characters are brought back on being out of ammo, it had felt like only one random one/all ones that moved that turn were returned to you
• enemies in the "rebound zone" are easily defeatable without doing anything interesting, since i heal for whatever they did when i get the character back. this isn't bad, but the levels seem to be designed as if there were a purpose to the nearby enemies
• the game seems to based around stats, but i didn't feel the difference in the heroes or enemies other than the active and passive hero abilities, or that the healer dies instantly
  • i don't understand what the hit ball/hero skills are doing, or even what their purpose in theory is. except for the heal on hit
• i didn't manage to set up anything interesting like in your capsule. my 'bullet' slows down quickly and then sits on the board until reloading, but when i do hit a hero they'd just bounce around without purpose
  • since the heroes are safest when 'held', i don't feel inclined to shoot them to leave them on the board when i can just make return shots

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

• you fight one boss battle more than the demo (for a total of three)
• you can play an endless postgame after the final boss
• you can unlock the three new characters who aren’t included in the demo
• on playtest mode, press ‘U’ on the title screen to unlock all game modes and characters if it’s more convenient for your playtesting

Changes since DD57:

• 3 new characters to battle (or play as, in the full version):
  • Skeleton – Heals self when the opponent is idle.
  • Beastman – Locks the opponent when attacking.
  • Witch – Can easily attack multiple times.
• 2 new bosses:
  • Banker – Steals your cash, places gold on the board that prevents you from attacking.
  • Black Knight – Gains STR/DEF if you pick up too many red/black cards.
• Several new skills:
  • Orange skills that activate when you pick up matching suits, boosting your STR temporarily.
  • 'Battery' skills that let you store more SP.
  • A few others...
• Further simplified equipment descriptions.
• More backgrounds for different zones.
• Bug fixes, rebalancing, etc.

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 don't think i would have had Piggy Bank just because i don't recall ever picking it up

it's probably the "start with free item" thing triggering when it shouldn't

that sounds about right, because i only started noticing it on later difficulties

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,

• horseshoe typo “item boxes offer 1 an additional choice”
• i got “softlock!” - seems like copycat gaining gold while i have greed will let me hit them on their turn, but when we both have greed they will attack me regardless of whose turn it is an infinite amount?
• i think malfunction cleaned the purple needle’s negative status effects immediately on his turn after i applied them to him on my first turn. but it may be that i'm not paying close enough attention to the time on the status effects and whether they normal expire at the start of the turn
• the joker that dissolves your symbols is horribly unfun
• i assume it isn't a bug that bosses add an additional item? there's no indication of it until i realize i suddenly have an item i don't remember picking up
• i don't really like the "curses", but ascension-style gameplay isn't really my thing
• my runs up to difficulty 8 or so were basically a flowchart of walking around the map, visiting the store, fighting any fights that were guaranteed damageless wins, then fighting the boss. i don't think i fought an enemy in the final zone a single time
  • my runs above that difficulty were the same except now rerolling at the start for item & symbol combos that were likely to win

mainly because i don't intend to do the necessary wishlist gathering and community building to guarantee 10 early positive reviews for a successful release on Steam, i suppose

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

i appreciate the feedback regardless, thanks for playing! i agree that the music needs to be more engaging, it's currently just royalty free music that i plan to replace in the future. i will probably replace it with something similar to what you described

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...?

glad to hear it, thanks for playing!

thank you!