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Good morning ^^ Thank you for your reply.

There this esoteric programming language, which is formatted like a letter to Princess Celestia. It's called FiM++ and was made back in 2012. But it's nothing for big projects.

About engine development - a couple people I talk with here and there may migrate from Unity to Godot. Since Godot is Open Source some Ponybro may contribute to the source code, because a feature is missing. By just using it and voicing wishes for the future also helps.

Unity says they want to democratize the developer market and frankly, they really do. Many devs are now looking for other engines and will contribute, iterate and improve the landscape for all of us. In the middle of this chaos it is good to see that we will help each other in direct and indirect ways.

Hi ^^

I just read the feedback. It's awesome. You are point on with the things you have said. You are right and there is not much I can add. So, thank you for helping recognizing issues.

Let's talk about your question about fast paced game: We are not aiming for a fast paced shooter. We are aiming for a shooter, which feels more like R-Type or Gradius from the 90s. We  want to prevent a bullet hell (which needs a lot of adjustment in later levels). Instead the goal is that the player finds the best way to defeat the monster. Level 1 an 2 are very easy to win the way you described: By sitting at the edge and chip away the monster. Later this strategy is still valid but more difficult to execute due to bullets, tiny monsters and monster movement. And since you found the boost mechanic very underwhelming, it is surely a good idea to take a look at both these things together.

One thing we want to do with the difficulty is that on higher difficulty levels the monsters are bigger. But since this takes a lot of effort and good tools to assist us with this, this important difficulty feature is not in yet. It is an intimidating part of the road map but we must add it eventually. You also mentioned that the high difficult comes with a lot of grinding, which is also an inherent problem with the crafting system. We already planned a big improvement for the crafting system and the spreadsheets for new crafting recipes are actually written these days.

Your questions about the health systems - no clue ^^ I never examined this until you mentioned it. One spontaneous idea: You surely noticed that the main character eats meat to heal. So maybe to also boost the Boost mechanic we will talk about life leech, because Poneh could bite a Stückli of squid sushi out of the monster when Boost is used on it.

About the controls: Base keyboard layout needs more improvements. The game plays much better with a controller and analog sticks right now, but keyboard and mouse have to work good too. I may be afraid that I won't do much about the keyboard movement, because I want the player to have maximum control and precision with the movement to dodge bullets and tentacle attacks. This leads to the robotic movement. I can surely add options to add some acceleration and deceleration and maybe that helps without taking away too much precision.

You also mentioned many issues with the game feedback to the player. It looks like that the damage feedback has to better point out how tentacles and body parts protect the parent part. I assume the tentacle-in-ground issue was level 4 with the red monster. There I screwed up the monster design, which leads extremely often to that situation. And better damage feedback should make that mechanic clearer.

Let me know if the points I talked about help to show where the game is going. I will also talk with the others about your feedback (including the points I didn't mention here). It's a really valuable post for us and it shows how we could make sure that different aspects of the game could work together to improve the game. I'm kinda hyped  to try a boost life leech.

Okay - Enjoy your Sunday and thank you very much.

Hi - Yes, I want to have a Spanish localization for the game. I planned to do the loca very late in development, because I haven't wrote all the English texts yet. And there is a lot of text to come and the current text will change massively - even in the demo.

I have to think how to get loca early on without creating that "I changed a line of text, now the loca must be updated"-problem. When I know that, I can contact you ^^ Otherwise I need to wait until... the game is almost done.

Dev Here ^^

Thanks for the nice words. You are right - the tutorial is lacking a clear indication that you throw crates. That is likely something that can properly addressed much later in the development. The plan is that the Waifus have tiny little quests for Poneh, which show the game mechanics. So one quest is to throw a container for the Confectionary Waifu to create whipped cream.

Stardust has a funny dynamic right now. At the first levels it's a bit low. You have enough during mid-game and may lack a bit during late-game. The Stardust is also one of the potential grind mechanics. Some people love grinding and some hate it. That's why there is at stardust factor setting so everybody can finely adjust the difficulty.

But the game still needs a money sink. The most likely time to get one implemented properly is when overhauling the crafting system. It's a bit bland right now and doesn't make good use of stardust and materials. It won't be the needed money sink, but it could make stardust more relevant without introducing too much grind.

Yep - that one is new to me. I wrote it into the tasklist for Troubleshoot Thursdays.

Thank you very much for reporting and it's great to hear that you enjoy the game.