itch.io

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!

i played and lost quite a lot (and got the HoS glitch on a run i thought would have won) but just won with a poison + poison ivy + healing/regenerating build. i was lucky the last boss was the joker because the manager would have made my symbols useless after one use, then cleansed the poison and made my whole run useless like he does to a lot of builds

the best moment i had was in another run where i had the automon, the generic poison symbol (cactus?), and lots of shields versus the chieftain and it was a drawn out fight to see who would out damage the other. i lost
OAB seems uniquely like the kind of game where you can lean into that sort of inactive, automatic gameplay and balance the fights around setting up a scaling build then letting it run to see if it outpaces the opponent. as i understand, fights in the game are designed to punish the player for staying in fights too long, but after that experience i think that might be the opposite of how fights should go. either way, i still really think that timing the slot machine is only a detriment to the game

i still feel that playing optimally means having foreknowledge of how enemies fight and whether you should fight them or not, which often means just avoiding fights altogether and walking around the board to collect health, cash, and shop, which is lame

in recent builds it seems like every color is more capable of doing nearly every thing, i notice that greens now can add block/retaliate when healing. in a way this makes the "why shouldn't i just use one color" problem worse, meanwhile if i were on a build that was built around retaliate i probably wouldn't be able to build into the kiwi (or whichever green symbol has it) because my whole board would probably be a different color

stolen wallet is a cool item. i'm not sure if i like the reversion to the shop sponge's reusability

in DD56 i purchased two discount artifacts, then the shop sponge's cost became a float with two decimal points. purchasing the sponge then turned my held money into a float with two decimal points. i'm unlikely to encounter the artifacts again to test this on the current version so i may as well report it now

i gave up at the part of the tutorial that was telling me to destroy all of my guild buildings then giving me red popups when i did. i didn't get a real sense of what i was doing or why i was being made to do it other than click and drag one thing to another thing because the tutorial asks it. i think you need to use tutorial arrows exclusively where you want the player to click instead of pointing at several elements to describe them all at once. maybe a more freeform tutorial that highlights the relevant menus and tells me what i need to move from menu to menu and why i'm doing it would be better for me

i like the theme of a game played through a PC interface, but maybe the gameplay isn't for me. i thought the largest and smallest texts looked quite bad, and i didn't see the point in asking the player to set up settings at the start of the game

i had a bug where older windows in the background would gain focus when trying to add slime to the crafting menu even though they were behind the crafting menu until i moved them out of the way

⚠ 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) and you can play an endless postgame after the final boss

here's what’s new since the last version:

• 3 new bosses
• a new infinite postgame with fights that continuously get harder until you lose
• new skills and artifacts + rebalancing of nearly all artifacts and some skills + some rebalancing to the difficulty modes
• more achievements
• bug fixes, polishing

is this SNKRX inspired? i'd have a lot more to say about this, but all of it would boil down to "you should have done it the way SNKRX did". if you've arrived at the same type of game through convergent evolution in game design you might be right not to just plainly copy SNKRX, but there's still a lot to improve that you couldn't take 1:1 from SNKRX

• i hate the pixel inconsistency/mixels. not just the text, but the way the characters move on subpixels
• there's no reason for the battle to not start until i press space
• movement is too slow
  • even if you don't bounce off of a wall, being able to continually walk into it mustn't be the best way the interaction between player and wall can be handled
• enemies take too many hits
  • even if that weren't the case, the first fight takes too long
• enemies predicting my movement/randomly shooting slow projectiles near me isn't very fun
  • being able to walk through them despite this is odd
• having different "skill trees" on one character but only being able to use one per battle isn't fun (i must be missing something because this seems like a very strange decision)
• losing a (very expensive) character on death isn't fun (early on, at least. i'm sure there are late-game reasons you would design it like this)

i spent like 10 minutes playing up to level 20 with no noticeable increase in difficulty until i stopped. for a long time i had assumed you were supposed to get to floor 100, so i was taking a lot of paths and getting nowhere. early on i had assumed experience was needed because later enemies would appear more often and would get more hits on you if you weren't leveled up

i think paths make death less likely to spawn? i remember something like that from an older version, but i would have assumed they did nothing if i hadn't seen something like that in an earlier version

i assume the idea is that the player has to manage their health with herbs so they can attack enemies to get experience, while keeping death away with paths, while keeping their lantern from going low, while keeping a spirit so they can reroll a difficult situation

the problem, in my limited experience, is that i managed to do that just by tediously grinding on scrolls and presumably could have continued to if i so wished. i also think that it would be a very flat difficulty curve where you manage your variables in the same way and avoiding touching death ad infinitum

delete didn't seem to work as a cancel button for me, i had to use escape

awesome game, good job. please finish this even if you get sued because the theme + gameplay is very streamable

the graphics are really good, and i think you should lean into the Runescape theme more with similar music, character art, and NPCs (depending on where you take the game) who speak to you with Runescape text

as i got better at the game i felt i gained a lot of control while jumping and the jump mechanics became very satisfying, but i think i still made mistakes often enough that it isn't too easy. i thought the mouse camera controls were fine

i like the castle forcing you to walk all the way to the gate if you get knocked out

i never had any issue with the spinning log. maybe if i were forced to walk on it instead of hopping across

the big mushrooms are extremely forgiving in stopping your horizontal momentum,  especially compared to the smaller ones. there were a few times where i would have gladly accepted being sent flying out of the castle just for how far to the side i touched the top of the mushroom. as i got higher up i noticed i was able to fall down to a section not so far below, and that i wasn't being shot out of the castle as often as the streamer i watched was, so that would be a welcome difficulty spike

i had thought that the hardest part of the big mushroom section was going to be that the platforms above bump my head and mess up my ability to time when i hit the mushroom, but that never happened

the gold on the last hammer section tricked me into getting knocked off because i wanted it more than i realized and tiptoed into the hammers path while thinking i was safe

i beat the game in ~14 minutes on my first try with all (? something like 9975) gold. here is my best out of the following 6 restarts

i listened to Autumn Voyage at 1.2x speed the whole time i was playing this

thanks! native mobile is unlikely, but web player doesn't seem totally impossible, i hadn't thought of using web for that kind of mobile support. never say never, but all i can say is we'll see...

nice new map art in the last zone, the waitress’ animations looked good too

i glitched on the fight against the joker. i had the automon artifact but the tutorial popup that talks about your reels showed up for no reason, so the fight continued automatically in the background. i had a yellow/greed build and apparently the joker did too because he hit me several times with the greed effect after the battle started and i died instantly before i could see why

the above makes me realize you should probably let the player choose when to advance to the death stats screen if that isn’t something that happens already when the game doesn’t glitch

i beat one level of space invaders after all my attempts over the past demo days and only got a symbol, which i think is terrible. i can’t tell what the enemies are dropping, i had assumed it was something that would be given to you when you beat a level

i have pretty much the same thoughts on the balance as the last few DDs. maybe i’ve played the same way too much for too long and formed my own stuffy meta of the game, but some parts feel uninteresting and are probably in need of a rebalance:

• i always avoid the waitress because enemies that add to your reels are too strong and she can really harm you no matter your build
• i avoid the copycat unless i have a gold generating build that doesn’t let her hurt me
• i always fight the high roller because it's an easy and low risk fight
• i always build into one color for obvious reasons
• i always take dissolves if they match the color of my build because they never have a disadvantage, counter the owner, take up virtually no space since they disappear after activating, and there are many synergies with dissolving

i also have some feedback left over from when i was playing the DD55 version that i didn’t get to test and confirm if there have been changes:

• if you have negative chips (from pot of gold), pickpocket will steal your negative chips and reset you to 0
• DJ adding crocus(? the purple/green plant that deals damage based on missing HP) and being able to activate it himself feels unfair because of his huge HP – he actually killed me like this in 1 or 2 turns as i was close to beating him
• syringe could probably afford to be more specific about what it does, even if it just says “applies multiple negative status effects to the enemy"

thanks for playing and the kind words! the response i've gotten from new players is pretty consistently one of confusion, so i think going forwards i'll try and tutorialize it so that players can understand the basic concepts and uses of skills instead of feeling like they have to read all of a sudden when they enter the shop

thanks for playing, i'm really glad you liked it! i think you're right about the tutorial and teaching new players the basics of the game, i'll be working on that before anything else

thanks for playing and the kind words! yeah, the shop seems to be a bit much for new players. i think i'll be using more detailed tutorials to make new players understand the game in simpler way from now on instead of expecting them to read the detailed descriptions that appear in the shop after just starting

thanks for playing and the kind words!

I'll list the two problems that came up:

these two might be the same problem, since i hadn't explained enough about the skills in the 0.8 version so that new players could understand what they can do to avoid that situation/get an advantage from being in that situation -- there are skills in the game that make it easier to pick up cards when stuck in a situation like that, and other skills that power you up when you take no actions for a turn

thanks for playing and much appreciated for the video! i'm still having trouble simplifying and communicating the mechanics to new players so it was really eye-opening and useful to see your experience. i had purposely trimmed down the tutorial to avoid overloading players, but i think i'll just have to expand the tutorialization to introduce players to the deeper mechanics of the game in a simpler way

thanks for the continued feedback!

the game is short since most of what is in the current version of the game will eventually become the demo of the full, longer game and i’ve heard bad things about people’s responses to “open development” games taking away content to make a demo on release. i hope to have a ending like Balatro with a definite end and then an increasingly hard infinite postgame once the game is complete

Red is junk.

did you find that lowering LIMIT wasn’t useful? 

I think it might be actually impossible to get any value out of the briefcase unless you pick it exactly on the final round of the run

i use it as a way to pivot out of a gold build if i’m unable to get gold artifacts for long-term power. it might actually be a bit underpowered, though, since the last time i used it reliably there were a lot less items in the shop pool, so i’ve buffed it slightly

Are you going to have more weapons besides the starting ones?

no, probably not. but i’ll add more starting weapons when i add more characters

phew! no apology needed, thanks for letting me know!

i'm very grateful to hear it! thank you for playing!

glad to hear you're still playing! that's pretty true now that i think about it, i realize that i play against Mimic the same way. i'll have to rework it

as for it being a final boss, i currently plan for the full game to go endless so i have it to appear as a second boss in the demo just to get feedback on whether the boss scaling is balanced

incidentally, i hope to push a patch early next week just to implement changes based on feedback i've gotten on the latest version before i get back into the content grind for the next full update. your feedback about cash gained on battle results not showing the base number well is one of the changes, so keep an eye out!

i got to the last fight on my first run! but the pillars that were supposed to be there weren't there maybe? i don't remember what it was like the last time i was there but i think that they were large targets you had to destroy. supposedly i still destroyed one, so maybe i just didn't notice them?

i agree that the wizards are too strong. i had thought i was just bad or had created a bad build when i was losing to them up until now, but now i think the only way to take them on is with a powerful long range weapon to kill them before they activate, theoretically maybe a shield, or maybe you need to play as the guy with the dash ability

i think logan would be more interesting if he could stay in his ability longer

i also mocked up a new capsule for you in about 15 minutes

it's obviously not usable as is for several reasons, but i mainly wanted to see if showing large numbers of moving enemies at a higher framerate than your current capsule's would be possible under 3MB. i think your current capsule needs a larger title, and the "flickering" on showing the art for one frame looks bad if you loop the gif. i almost added the main character from the art, but then it would have covered everything and... either way, none of this matters if you don't care about changing the capsule. if you wanted to make a similar capsule i'd suggest LICEcap

thanks for playing again and the kind words! i'm not sure if i'll put it on Steam, i don't forsee the game getting enough interest to guarantee 10 positive reviews in the first day (or week, or whatever the criteria was for a successful release)... so far i'm expecting that i'll end up releasing on itch.io only

incidentally, i would have played and reviewed Coin Pusher but my PC simply cannot run it. i did appreciate the Solitaire Battle reference

thanks for playing again and the kind words! i'm really glad to hear you think it feels somewhat finished

i plan to add more backgrounds for different zones but will probably keep them as simple as what's in the game now

as for the stuttering, it was a bug on a specific version of SDL that only occurred when too many USB slots were in use, bizarrely. i was lucky to have caught it...

thanks for playing again and the kind words!

I miss the top row bonus turns

i found it made the game too complicated when this was an ability everyone had. now brown skills apply this stun effect instead, there's even a brown artifact that lets you stack multiple stuns

Whenever I think I finally understand how damage works in this game I am proven wrong

it increases the likelihood that you'll deal the upper integer in damage the closer you get to it, so 3.1 will usually deal 3 DMG and 3.9 will usually deal 4 DMG. i now realize i mentioned this nowhere in the game, so it's something i should rectify