Thank you :)
Yeah the few people I’ve seen try don’t get it either 🙈.
Good thing you don’t have to to win :p
Ooooh nice! Thanks a lot. I really appreciate that you take the time to explore the mechanics and explain your train of thought. Very exciting and insightful :)
You’re right, I didn’t manage to put much content in it. Too much time went into the UI. Glad you find it pretty at least ^^’
I do not plan to continue it for now. The limited time frame of the 7DRL is important for me, otherwise I feel I could easily sink all my time in it. I’m a bit all or nothing.
Some ideas I had if you’re interested:
Too bad your streams are in the middle of night for me. Do you notify the devs before the stream? I actually am in the discord server (even though I’m not really active) and I could be ok to join you at 4a.m if it’s for my game :p
Thank you for the ideas :)
I didn’t think of adding passive perks to some triggers. Maybe I didn’t find it “elegant” enough. But for the ember, that makes sense. The alternative can be to give risky triggers a higher power value.
I totally agree that a ton of work can be done through level design. So that different builds can thrive in different regions/biomes/rooms. Maybe having information about the future regions or boss, so that you can adapt your build. Genes that can give you better access to these information…
One other thing that could be improved is that the enemies don’t really use their perks. And most of their build are totally useless. So they feel at the same time very samey, but also force the player to carefully look at their build to avoid being one-shot by a rare loop. I tried to introduce “species” (= enemies that share some genes), but it actually made the game boring ^^ so I don’t know.
Yes I can totally see easily activated genes as a high-value legendary gene ;)
Hey thanks for the commment :) Glad you had fun! It is great to read your experience :D
Ahah yeah, summons can lead to chaotic or completly stuck states ^^’
And you are right, terrain-related triggers (among others) are too rare to be useful. Since some others can easily be activated once per turn in any situation. So no reasons to choose them. Maybe the solution is to only make triggers hard to activate. Or add a power value that would be used by the effect part, to balance the rarity.
Maybe one day I will come back to it to make a new version :p
Oh wow. Very nice game. I feel the Cogmind inspiration and that’s a good thing (for me). I like the feeling of being safe when I have a token, but that accessing a terminal cause an alarm which invalidates it. I also like how different “world” brings different resources. And that each room has its use and its color.
I didn’t get to the late game, but there seem to be interesting stuff there, too. I will watch Kyzrati’s video :p
My favorite 7DRL of this year so far. Congrat!
(I played your game for judging. But the reviews were lost => here’s what I remember of mine)
Nice entry. Actually not a typing game (you need to type but the game doesn’t measure how good you are at it).
Gameplay-wise, I think the balance is a bit hard. I tried several time and died without even running out of any of my letters, I’d just throw the most powerful attacks and still die eventually. It seemed to me the enemies just hit too hard. At the very least, I did not figure out how to come prepared to face the level 3+ foes.
That said, I loved the concept. Using letters as resources is really interesting. I liked the process of infering which spell is the best, depending of the letters it needs. There are common letters and rare letters. Short words and long words. Words that need multiple of the same letters. 26 letters might be a lot to track, though ^^
The UI is very helping at that (remaining uses, proposals of known words => I just missed the auto-complete :p)
Also the fact that the basic commands are not the same between runs is a nice touch for replayability.
I also liked the humour.
Good job :)
(I played your game for judging. But the reviews were lost => here’s what I remember of mine)
Honestly a very fun game. I am impressed with the quality of the UI, it just works how I want it to. Good job on that.
I played both the jam and the updated versions. I’d say that I like all the changes you made. Especially:
These really targetted the complaint I had with the jam version: the very static gameplay (big shields and pew-pew-pew). Now this is less easy to stay in one place, and I have good (and fun!) reasons to move.
So great entry, and great design decisions for the update (in my opinion). Have a nice day :)
(I played your game for judging. But the reviews were lost => here’s what I remember of mine. )
Nice original entry. UI is readable and visually pleasing. I really liked the idea of two modes, with my actions in one having consequences in the other. On the other hand, the gameplay fell short in my opinion:
=> What if the spawning was inverted? The more found letters, the more monsters. But keeping the 6 tries limit. The difficulty would increase instead of decreasing and this could bring some interesting choices. => Another idea: having consumables that can be used in both mode. For example: a hint (Wordle) or healing (dungeon) My intent here is again to add interesting choices: When to use it? A hint is always hepful but maybe I will need it later to heal.
That are only some ideas. I hope this review is constructive and that it will be useful to you :)
Nice game! I think the optimal play is to have only two offensive elements (since they are basically the same, I just want to alternate between two of them). Maybe if they had different identities, the choice would have been harder. I only played 3 levels, maybe later there are differences.
I really like the Input system. It is so fast to execute the actions! The display is very simple yet very good at presenting all I need to know.
Good job :)
Oh OK. Yeah that’s why once a monster fleed from a gunshot. But it didn’t work with the others ^^
That are actually big and useful differences (at least regardingthe pistol and light).
Maybe having hints on what there are would make them easier to spot (I didn’t see it anywhere). Because for us, players, it is actually even more work than for you, since we also have to guess what are the possible types of monsters.
I managed to go out with the orb, with the strategy of speed running through the level until the north outer wall.
Note: you can see out of your fov thanks to the mouse :p
I like the idea. I didn’t really grasped the identification thing (and that is certainly why I didn’t really know why some of the things followed me, and others, not quite as much). I also found hard to see which cell is in my FoV (not enough contrast between the grey and the black).
The stamina management is interesting, too. The fact that I have to wait to resplenish it forces me to hide, instead of just running/walking/running.
Good work :)
It is true I didn’t quite understand everything, but I think it is really not far off being a success. Maybe with a bit more tips in the description to help understand the Power system (which seems to be important to be able to fight the spirits). I guess maybe the end is not implemented yet, I didn’t manage to get the 5 clues.
Anyway, the presentation is top notch. I want to play it just to see the graphics and animations :)
Thanks for the review :)
Yeah I really didn’t wanted to make another of those “match-3 minigame + X” games.
I also think the moments without timefreeze feel a bit bad and powerless. You’re right in that you can avoid them (I hope ^^) and that it is part of the challenge, but it can feel like a death by thousand cuts.
Glad you like it and I hope you had fun :)
I won! It is addictive :p
I settled on having lots of life gain and precise weakness cycles. Then, I tried to always have 3 colors in potions.
But I feel that with the wrong start, the game can’t be beaten (only minuses, or one color doesn’t have minuses). I rerolled quite some times.
(and I cheated a bit: when you pick a + or -, if you quit the level faster than the animation, the modification is not taken into account, it helped to avoid unwanted minuses).
Awesome work! On Pico-8, I am impressed.
Nice game. I like the planning mechanic, even though I it stopped just before becoming truly interesting (The curse of most 7DRL games ^^). The strategy to stay in a corner and TARATATATA works a bit to well :p I liked the boss fight, though, because I actually had to plan things.
Graphics and sounds are nice. Good work :)
Cute game.
I confirm it is nice to know which entities are weak, since Bretzel > Chips > Fries is much less logical (to me, at least) than Paper > Rock > Cissors.
I haven’t really felt like I was making impactful choices. It is a very tactical game and there is often only one good solution. It is nice to understand how to be good, but after that, I found the execution very automatic and arbitrary.
That said, I can see the you put love in the game :) The graphics, sounds and music are great.
Nice game :) I got to the end. It was far easier the moment I realized that the power-ups refresh at each hole ^^
The level generation primarly based on tile length works well. I also tried to kill the slime with the ball ._. The song is neat. The risk vs reward strategy of golf indeed mixes well with roguelike elements :)
Good job :)
Really well executed game :) I didn’t really get when the dice values go up or down, or what are the stars here for. But I really like the graphics. The sounds and music are also neat. The game has Broughlikes vibes while having a bit more flexibility than just moving: it is a sweet spot for me.
Good job :)
On web. Camera is hard to get right. I find it nice to have a wide view, to appreciate the ambiance and know where to go. But when I move or fight I really struggle to see what’s happening. I mean, I technically see, but, I don’t manage to be precise enough. I easily fall or miss an enemy’s attack.
Maybe two modes with one much more zoomed in for movement and fight, and the current one to look around?
The camera is very rude to me :( It is quite far away from the player and oftentimes behind a tower :/ It doesn’t go well with my playstyle of running rather than fighting.
I also got spawn-killed, once T.T
Good job anyway, it is quite a challenge to make a 3D game in one week. I don’t know how far I got, I had a shield, a sword and jumping boots (but died just after, trying to use them, it didn’t seem to work?). I really liked the style and the humor. And the fact that you chose Godot <3
That’s so hard T.T
I really love the concept, but the vim movement keys are a pain when you don’t know them. I code is VsCode with vim keys, but I only use half of it (and not the movement keys).
Maybe having a cheat sheet on the side. At least I had fun with Vimtutor :p
I think a link to your game could easily be showed in the vim manual as a way to learn vim keys :D
Some remarks:
Good job :) Really coherent design around a weird idea.
Thanks for the post :)
Totally, we would love to add environmental interactions.
Right now I was thinking of how to make each run feel distinct, not just chaotic and same-y. For example, adding species of Blops (generated each run), with similar DNA, to orient the player build (who better knows what he or she will find in the future).
But in testing, it causes the game to be much more repetitive. Maybe we should just add tons of genes. The different possible builds could be enough to make each run feel different. I don’t know ^^