itch.io

I really like the idea of fusing balatro with dungeon crawling! I also found the style, especially on the cards very charming. And the number of animated enemies was also impressive!

The movement and camera bob walking didn’t have me fully convinced though. The forward movement sideways bobbing felt like it was swaying a whole lot more than makes sense for a person or a blob. It was also a bit on the slow side.

But my main issue with the crawling bit was really that I could walk through walls and that walls and doors didn’t seem to be on consistent positions with respect to the grid / my positioning.

I think I ended on the second floor, I’m quite sure I had defeated all enemies and had nothing more to do.

With the card game, it was mostly a couple of UX questions that had me grappling about what the rules of the game actually were. Even if balatro doesn’t tell you if you have enough points and multipliers, it is critical that the player exactly understands the rules.

And it was a bit sad that I didn’t get to have 5 characters for much of the game, even after buying up to having something like ten in total, since that locked me out of most hands and thus most reasons to to discard and try to improve my hand.

I think though, if you had time to work out the kinks, that I could become disturbingly addicted to this type of game.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/-iR7d6o__O4

Really good game. I enjoyed the crawling with all its story and writing. It must have been fun coming up with all that. The art and music was very fancy. A bit dark at times, I was playing while still day outside and it was quite hard to see anything at times. The fights was an interesting genre fusion. There were loads of effects to go around, but I think I’d really would have liked some around the running and landing (dust or such from the floor) and the movement was a bit on the slower side so it felt like a bit of a walk when revisiting a particular level and getting around to all the enemies. In part it might also have been due to the fighting being relatively low risk, so there wasn’t much tension.

Overall though a very polished game with loads of polish on various details.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/nD-w7AZ70IU

Wow you had a bit of a struggle but finally got through it all. Very informative to watch and that manager really disrupts the game play, they must be changed somehow! For some reason, I don’t think you ever faced the toilet stalls and thus never opened them, which might have been a reason for one or two wrong decisions with what exit to take. But I completely understand why too, the risk of being cornered by the manager really makes you have to haste through each day. It’s funny to watch too, not exactly knowing what you are seeing and all of a sudden you just run to the fire exit and I have to guess what it was you saw.

Thank you so much for the videos. Got some very useful notes from them.

How nice that you overcame the initial reaction from what obviously must have been a memorable experience with the anomaly hunt game of last year. I also played that one and didn’t understand a thing. But since then I got to play a non-crawler professional anomaly hunt and after that I just had to make one myself too.

It sounds, with 20 minutes play time that you got the concept quire right out the box and didn’t spend much time being confused about how to play/what to do. Else it seems to usually take at least 10 more minutes of people trying to understand what to do.

Short but very well crafted game. Having a stressful timer with a movement that just gets more and more sluggish the greedier you become. That’s a very good tension! The camera and fx work was fenomenal!

I think I managed to gather something like 78 treasures including a chicken on my second dive/heist.

I think if anything, the game was so very short for the richness of the experience created that it felt a bit like I never was really given a chance to start experiencing it before I had to abandon the sub or drown. It would have been interesting to explore the tension you’ve created with chances to push your luck. If there were pockets where air drains slower, or other ways to give the player a bit more time and ways to manage risk while getting to explore a bit more. Perhaps the O2 doesn’t start to go down for the first couple of seconds, which kind of makes sense. Not sure really.

But what you’ve created with the sounds, the textures, effects it all is very nice!

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/5JoLcAo3zkA

It is kind of an open secret in the genre (I think) is that the very first day at least should be anomaly free, but I could honestly have made that perfectly clear because I don’t think that player doubt adds is the good doubt, in contrast to the doubt when you are on Friday and ask yourself if there really isn’t any anomaly anywhere and have you really looked everywhere. The problem in my game is of course that if you get caught by the manager and you then reload into a new Monday then there’s no telling what type it is.

I think, though, that it comes with the genre that the player in the beginning should feel uncertainty about the rules for the anomalies in the game. But I admit, it is a tough one, especially in a jam context where you sort of want to funnel the players into the main experience as fast as possible.

Anomalies work on a difficulty estimation so when you start out (or if you fail a lot at finding them) you are more likely to get the easier to spot ones.

Looking forward to watching a play-through!

Nice game, fun writing, and I enjoyed the simple battle mechanics tied to that xp / leveling system. It feels like it was a bit broken if you put your stats in the right box, but I also don’t think that is a big problem for a game jam entry like this one.

For me the chainsaw guys were the most dangerous opponents, the bosses on the other hand quite easy to deal with. It seems mostly because of ability to hit and dodge being more deciding than amount of damage dealt if hitting.

UX wise, there was some text I didn’t get to read because it disappeared to quickly. It was a fancy button solution there, but there should probably have been a way to recall last message.

All in all a very solid entry.

Playthrough with some more comments: https://youtu.be/_xCWEdzQyGA

I enjoyed playing this. Controls felt smooth, fun idea going around blowing things up with bombs. I needed two attempts for the boss, but once I formulated the hit and run strategy and placing a band of bombs while doing so, the fight didn’t take too long and didn’t seem too impossible. But trying like I did the first time it was very hard and a very protracted fight. It was also a bit easy to get hit multiple times which felt a bit over punishing.

The effects around picking up “coins” was a bit confusing in the beginning and made me think I was doing something wrong or need to watch out for some traps. This was also before I got a second heart, which means it wasn’t clear if health was going to be shown as a partially colored heart of that one heart or in an other way. The first times I noticed those flashes was also next to a wall crack and it sort of looked like they could be coming from the crack.

But after that pretty much everything was smooth sailing, well except for the first boss fail, but that’s entirely fair to have to retry.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/ajtO_JxHDX8

Yeah I kind of forgot about the EMPs and Energy Drinks until I had sort of overcome the base enemies which made them less interesting. I was planning to try them out just to do it but then I sort of forgot!

I’m the type that at the end of a Souls game I have so much consumables that I just hoard in case I need them more later though, so it might not be too much of a game design issue here as it might be a me problem. hehe

I love the vibe in this entry. Very cool graphics and style, and music fits perfectly! I played with the controller and it was generally a smooth experience.

My main issue was that it is way to easy to accidentally open up the inventory with just about any button and also have just about any button then be consume first item (aka health kit). I think it is more reasonable that you open and close inventory just with the north button in this case.

I sometimes also accidentally did bonus, unintentional moves due to how quick movement was and potentially too by the narrow, if any, dead zoning on the sticks.

Especially in the beginning it also felt more natural to click primary action rather than walking into things, but I did learn.

The fighting was fun and an interesting fusion. It took me a while to register the prompt that I could sneak up and bump into them to get a free hack round. But I’m kind of glad I did too, because since those didn’t have any danger, they got quite boring.

The rescue hacks were much more stressful, and also fun. It did get a whole lot easier with all the upgrades though.

At some point I got a bit lost, but in general since each level had clear zones with different textures, it wasn’t much of a problem.

Very very good entry indeed.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/5f-i39eLcSY

Very lovely entry, perfect style and audio combined with visual effects and very smooth experience crawling it.

I’d say though with that polish, I’d almost expected an even more grandiose final scene while escaping. Also perhaps some interaction with the chicken. “How did you get here” and some answer.

I did find a logical bug in the code which forced me to replay and also, not sure why stopped the O2 from depleting so I couldn’t try out how that was.

I think some short prompts for locked doors and their cards like “Blue keycard” “Blue door” would have been very good as well as well as a name for the suit thingy that you pick up in the first room.

But for a game jam, very good length, and very near perfect execution of a vision. Very well done!

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/leBzqELZHC8

yeah something to draw focus to the health-bar, if it flashed and then animated itself up or such thing would have been good to signal that.

Fantastic noir take on dungeon crawling. I love the style, the writing and voice acting. Having revolver action like that was also very cool. Animations perfect. It was however too hard for me. I tried two times and I got a bit further the second time, and I might have even tried a third but not being able to hold forward pressed sort of tipped the balance. It would have been awesome if there was some sort of difficulty setting, perhaps not to give me more health, but to increase the enemy reaction speeds.

The main menu could do with a little love too if you do a post jam update so the style matches the rest of your otherwise overly stylish game!

Great job.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/6XrgV1wFA-E

Short and simple crawler! Always nice nice with games that are as long as they need to be and don’t stretch their content.

One thing that did confuse me was that I put my lockpicking as close to zero as I could manage, yet only ever failed with one chest and I wonder what would have been appropriate solution to failing to open the doors that way. Since the game needed you to get through the doors.

Playthrough https://youtu.be/JwOK9XudfuM

While the game both starts and end rather abruptly, I did enjoy the dialogue and the incorporation of the justification for it being so limited into the story. That story was also really well written. Would have been really cool to see the game expanded slightly, even with the same story / premise. Mostly repeating the same cycle over and over.

Playthrough x2 here: https://youtu.be/8FttKGMeGh8

Ah I didn’t understand the pattern at all, I thought the sequence of highlights was the pattern! Silly me!

This is one stunning creation in basically all respects, music, art, writing and smooth experience playing it over all. Those battle start transitions. Wow.

I played on controller since it was available and there were a few things missing a bit. It was a bit too easy to do two moves when you just wanted one. And a few interactions didn’t have a controller solution like map travel. The equip/unequip with left right on d-pad or left stick was a bit problematic using the stick. You’ll see that in the video.

I also accidentally missed some of the story bit because disappeared from screen a bit quickly, especially when it coincided with me getting loot. It could also have been solved by me being able to re-trigger them by stepping on the same tile again.

Overall an extremely polished experience.

The playthrough with more comments in there (when youtube is through processing it): https://youtu.be/feZf859Kr1M

Hi! Very cute and nice looking game! I wish there was an easy mode though, I had absolutely no chance in the fight! But I suck at rhythm based game so it was perhaps kind of expected. I think one of my main banes where that there wasn’t a beat between each spell and I had no chance getting back to the first rune in time to click it. I discussed that and some ideas for how to improve it in the video.

Again though I really liked the style of the game a lot and if it was a bit easier and more comfortable (not mouse based), I would have liked to play much more of it.

https://youtu.be/0BRoT8o_gMg

That was a really solid entry with a whole lot of content. Honestly, and I know you wrote it, but for a game jam game it is too long. My recording of playing it is closer to 3h. As I say at the end of the video, if we forget that it’s for a jam, I think the length is fine for the content but it could have had an optional play the next chapter type of thing perhaps.

A little could have been helped too with some quality of life improvements to make fights work more seamlessly. Like if I select to do two attacks and have done them, I shouldn’t have to click to end my turn for that character.

But overall the game worked really well, very few bugs that I encountered and I enjoyed playing it, otherwise I wouldn’t have stuck with it until the end. I liked how the music switched to match the danger, or perceived danger. It was a bit of a pity there seemed to be no bonus for finding the hidden areas, and I think it could have been done really cool if you didn’t get the full map and you had to be observant during battles to get hints of where they were.

Really cool too that battles take place in the actual area you are in while playing.

Here’s the recording of me playing: https://youtu.be/wVhcoSgfqTg

It was so nice watching you play and how you were a bit afraid at first with it might becoming awkward for being confused and then having fun with what you encountered at the office. Thanks again for streaming it. And it makes me so very happy that you went back trying to find more / all the anomalies!

Maybe I should enhance the anomalies app so that once you’ve completed the game twice you can actually select which anomaly to load in…

With regards to the first three days being anomaly free, it is possibly but not likely and unfortunately that code is one of the pieces of code with lingering TODO:s. It’s a combination of simple rules and biased statistics. I’m 100 percent convinced though that it is essential that the player will start doubting themselves and so there can’t be any obvious rule like there can’t be more than two free days in a row, or anomaly days for that matter. But I think it’s very bad that the game can start with three days without any anomaly. My current plan is to have a list of weekplans designed based on what attempt/week number you are on and pick one at random each time you get sent back to or towards Monday.

Great point with the doors. That’s two systems that were designed very far apart (months). I don’t remember why, but I had the idea that you should not be allowed to open or close doors in general while moving. But the prompt appears as soon as the player crosses over the tile boundary. The door rule could have been when I was designing for thick-walled doors in center of tiles to not have collisions of player and closed doors. I should remove that though, of have it disabled here when that’s not a real problem. Great comment!

I think you were one of the few that found the minigame easy… could it be that your “DASHING strike” name hints at having played a lot of reaction and fast arcade styled games?

Thanks for your feedback and very glad you liked it.

The very first Monday should actually be always safe, and perhaps all ought to have been… I’ve only watched some and played Ten Bells myself. Very scary, self doubting thing.

I’m more and more thinking that I’ll remove the manager or make them an optional thing you can activate in the settings. The manager might also do better as a scary anomaly in an otherwise deserted office… Even if it adds tension it might do more harm by distracting from the core game loop.

I could also make the mini-game easier, but I’m a bit afraid if people learn it and it becomes trivial then the manager only becomes an annoying factor…

Very good entry! I had a lot of fun playing it. I really liked the graphics, both in the spaceship and in the Vampire Survivors battle. It was a bit afraid when the game started that there would be a 45 minutes real world countdown timer and it would just be getting more and more stressful the closer I got to the end.

For the crawling bit, I don’t have much to complain about, except that the hover prompt was very fickle. Each area was unique and easy to navigate even with the limited palette and limited number of assets in the world. There was also really good design in presenting the treasure on the first level and leading the player to discover the secret without actually giving it away entirely.

But I got the feeling the game was a bit evil that you could accidentally almost progress through the level locking previous sections, which made the treasure hunt just a little bit unfair.

The survivors game was neat. I was addicted to vampire survivors for a while. Two things though:

Clearer indication of how much longer until next upgrade since that’s the most important thing.

And on the last encounter I think I finished all monsters before it ended or at least I couldn’t find any, and that felt a bit wrong for the genre. There should always be more monsters.

But I’m not at all complaining. It was really fun playing.

Here’s the video: https://youtu.be/D0w-xwDhgpU

I think the setup, the general structure, is brilliant. It does remind me a bit of the books from last year but also very different. The graphics was really neat and I laughed when that guard did its jump animation. Very good one indeed.

The game does require you to focus up, and understanding what you are doing when building the story. But it also was quite forgiving. But for people with sometimes lacking attention, it would have been really good with a quest system or summary or such that allowed me to remember what I had committed to.

I think though, what mostly was lacking for me was the goal or a larger economy tied to how I did with the treasures. But that is probably not feasible within the jam scope. Now the final sum quite like a high-score which didn’t fit the game that well.

A bit could have been helped with having different outcomes depending on the amount and made it clear (without telling exactly what the others were) how well you did. Maybe the game did that, but it wasn’t obvious. Also a bit from not knowing what was a good amount or a bad one. Perhaps we could have seen a listing from a harbor newspaper with different boats and their costs, something like that, before starting.

Anyways very cool entry!

I really enjoyed the 2D in 3D solution to your graphics, like the plants and such. And there was quite a lot of content with the different areas to explore and dialogues and such. Must have been loads of work.

I found a couple of bugs while playing, and also got the developer console popping up a couple of times.

• Some stores don’t show how much money you have but show a string for where to grab that value presumably.
• The manager can’t be interacted with space because the door grabs you and then the game gets confused about which direction is forward.
• Some UI elements can accidentally stick and remain there while walking around. The wirebox specifically, but there might have been something more.

I recorded videos of me playing:

https://youtu.be/PFMpSA2p_ng

https://youtu.be/olouBxN_2yU

But in general a cool and ambitious entry, nice storytelling, both in text, environments, and having that TV in the beginning was very good.

Oh, I didn’t think of that scenario… thanks for explaining!

Yeah, I don’t know what exactly makes the game this performance heavy. It’s probably the shadows and lighting. I would guess there’s a lot of optimization I could do there. One thing for sure, that I fixed when building a secret web version was to use the same material on all the models. I need to learn what to do and not to do performance wise.

My crawler base is also overly complex for this task and it’s doing quite a lot of calculations it shouldn’t need to do…

I’m more and more thinking that I should have a [Liminal Space] mode where there’s simply no boss…

Honestly I never tested instant move, but it makes sense it would bug the boss since it only has smooth movement itself. I just didn’t realize my code would affect it too.

I’d be interested in hearing on discord what you liked the most and least. It’s funny though for your suggested “the manager waits for you in the elevator” sounds like a true horror experience. It’d be a good one though. Taking notes.

I’m not personally sure if I think the manager helps the feeling of the game. It does add some tension, but I can probably also feel a bit too unfair. The primary reason to add it was to stay well within the rules of the jam, because of how the day progression as a player stat with chose the right door as conflict resolution is a bit weak on its own.

I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t find any anomalies. Might it be that you never exited by either the elevator or the fire escape exit then? Some days simply have no anomalies. If you have a look around the office and not find any anomaly, you should leave through the elevator to get to the next day.

Also, I didn’t quite understand but was there a bug in the boss battle where you got stuck there after winning?

Glad you got upset by the game :)

As for the old Ludum Dare site I know Mike did have a copy of all that resided on the word press page, but weren’t all games hosted on 3rd party sites like itch, dropbox, mega and such? Maybe I’m not remembering things correctly, but I don’t have anything like that myself. So best guess would be attempting to contact Mike via bluesky

I liked the visual style and the premise seemed really cool, but the even though the game gave me information (very nicely done with the texts that popped up), I felt like I was missing a very key element: a reference point.

I had no clue what direction was continue forward and what direction was was go back. Neither was the delineation of what was the “room” and what was not very clear to me. I’m guessing that the S shaped corridor where there was a blood marking was the not-room but everything else was the room?

I think it would have been great if this part was visually very distinct from the room. Because there were hallway parts that still remained inside the room if that was the case.

It might also have been good to have stairs down versus stairs up as a way to indicate going forward or going back. Or if that connector hall had other visual elements that clearly gave it a forward direction and reverse direction.

I didn’t find anything out of place either, but I think that’s because I was a bit distracted when the game started and missed some prompts.

So since the movement isn’t super fast, after having played and thinking I kind of understand now how it should have been played, I think there might be a benefit och making the “room” a much smaller and concentrated area and giving the player the first anomaly more or less for free. Right next to the exit both lamps are dancing about so you should notice it and go the back-way.

For people like me. It would also be good if the game more or less didn’t allow me to leave the first room before they’d looked about. I know because I watched back how I played it, that there’s a prompt, but I really didn’t connect the dots and then I never really understood when I was reset either.

I think the game could really stress it when you end up back at the start.

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/cM6FiMBHrZw

Ah I didn’t notice that I managed to register some level up clicks at all I just clicked a bunch and it didn’t seem like anything happened :) Perhaps there could be a stronger visual effect too on those that you have leveled up in this session.

It might be that it was easier dancing about in fights with smooth transitions, but it was really hard with instant transitions (that I accidentally turned on and promptly forgot about, or was it enabled from start?)

My gamer brain is also very much “Why you show me text. This looks cool. I want to play and explore.” So I probably didn’t read it that well. If you are going to continue work on the game, I would urge some kind of effect on the portrait that nudges and reminds the player that they have unspent level up points.

Thanks for the feedback and the recorded playthrough! Very interesting to see how hard the attempt was for you and how you put everything on attack even when the characters were running low on health. I guess it never really was explained that increasing the lower two stats would give a boost to health or sanity. But it was kind of scary to see you running around with the small healthbars and just getting by for quite a while.

An obvious point is that there should be one of the tardigrades that gives you the ability to visit the healing place in one of the closest rooms from where the player spawns as you didn’t even encounter any of them from what I could see.

Thanks for playing and thanks for posting a video

You forced me to spell discombowluahte gaaah! Cool entry, interesting concept and all in all a nice game.

I loved the intro and the general tone of the game with rhymes and all. It was a fun concept of playing with spelling spells. But there were several things that were off with the fight.

The enemy-phase of the game was much much to slow. I found myself looking out of the window or just staring into the void while waiting for my turn again. I think a huge part of fun could have been making that cycle several times faster.

The options I got didn’t really give me much risk/reward either since most enemies would die from two fire balls or two blizzards I just used the one that felt easiest to type. That did change a little bit in the last level or so. But in general, I think there’s a need to force the player to adapt. Either by enemies being sensitive and resistant to certain spells or if there were combo effects.

Next thing with fighting that was really annoying with healing. Especially the “HEAL” spell. Having use my turn and get 4 point only to have 2 or 3 taken away made it a chore. There wasn’t much risk involved in the fighting either with the spell being that easy to type so I would have it heal something like 50% or more and recovery heal up to 100%.

Or… rework the whole fighting logic so that if I only use up say 40% of the time allotted to typing HEAL then I still have 60% action time left on my turn so I could hammer out a quick FIREBALL. In general such a mechanic, I think would elevate the game immensely. It feeds into the speed-typing core mechanic and gives a risk reward system for being fast.

Then as a somewhat minor thing that got a bit irritating was all the [ENTER] pressing. I think it was great that I didn’t have to select spell I wanted to cast but that it got selected based on the first letter typed. In similar fashion I think it ought to have cast right when I typed the last letter. I also think it should cast as soon as any combination of letters that filled up the slots were entered. I’d urge you to try removing enter from the game pretty much.

As for the movement, since my hand needed to be on the letters, I would have loved WASD bindings when moving around so that I didn’t have to press enter and then move my hand down to the keys. Please also consider adding strafing and backwards movement.

I think that was pretty much all for the complaints. :) The game was great though and I had fun playing it to the end. Movement was nice in my opinion, the levels were good, though I got lost a bit at some points. And I really liked the graphics too.

Btw there was a glitch on the final stairs it felt with something that looked like a missing background.

Great entry!

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/M1r0hukA3lQ

I don’t mind Jill! Or well, I did mind a bit when she talked over NPC:s and useful information. So a little tweak for her to fill the time between fights and useful talk when the player is just exploring or even better when lost, would have been great. If she could have commented on what the player was doing, like “Oh so you figured out how to open doors, congratulations to you” when the player did such etc. That would have been even better.

The idea of getting xp for walking about and 1xp for revisiting places I’d been was an interesting concept, but perhaps the 1xp and 10xp walking effects could have been toned down a bit.

I’m not sure I could level up, it sort of looked like I should have been able, but I couldn’t interact with the portraits. I also for a while didn’t understand that I needed to open them up (since I hadn’t needed to look at them before) to do that.

The movement was nice and camera and art and everything.

As for the combat, I’m not sure if I was meant to dance around the enemies but at least with instant movement I didn’t feel like I had much of a chance without being hit first.

I also feel like while moving about in the dungeon that at times I got teleported to other locations though I didn’t notice any teleporter. Perhaps this was as intended, but it was desorientering and about 7 minutes in I ended up where it felt like I had been before. In a small area with no apparent exits. I’m probably missing something, but it also felt like something was broken with the game there. So I gave up, and with no saves I felt like that would have to be it.

Which really is a pity, because the game looks great. Has a lot of cool stuff in it, it seems and it would have been fun to explore it some more.

Playthrough (didn’t get very far): https://youtu.be/6bD9ogJAQUc

I like the skeleton enemy art style a lot. And I must say I loved the optional very quick ending in the beginning.

I have to admit though that I was struggling while playing the game. Which was a pity, it seems interesting and the level designs thought through.

The controls both that they didn’t have any WASD mappings as far as I could see and the hold shift to strafe. It made it very hard navigating and with a lot of holes… well awkward at times.

The attack/defense reaction bar also was superfast. I wish there had been a setting to make it easier and/or given the player something when selecting the fail option.

I was also really confused about the multiple keys for one lock. I think the idea is fine, or even good, but I think I would have liked as many locks on the door as keys needed and some feedback of how many I had opened thus far. I was about to give up on the first door even though it said I needed multiple keys. I expected it to react in some way and not refuse my first key all together because it was too few.

The spacing out of instructions was very nice, but also a bit problematic that you had one shot of reading them and then they were gone. Now I wouldn’t have to go through them each time I entered the tile, so it would require some smart system.

The save system was one of these where it was so odd that it said Load when opening it that on my first run I didn’t dare use it. So being able to re-read that instruction would have been critical. Or preferably one key for saves and one for loads.

My first attempt crashed. I were at the fire traps and I didn’t feel like I should have been caught by them, but the game indicated that I were and then there popped up an error window and I had to restart.

On the second try I managed to save but when I got about as far as I had previously gotten I ended up in a fight were I didn’t feel like I got to select attack/defense option but ended up inside who to apply the non-action to. And whichever I selected nothing happened. And the game seemed to have locked me there with no recourse to continue. Something had seemed a bit off with not being able to equip keys before in the inventory so I’m guessing whatever was corrupting the game-state was sort of spreading.

Playthrough (as far as I got): https://youtu.be/rwrahdtRASY

thanks for the great feedback! I agree completely that the combat is in dire need of overhaul and balancing. I’ll consider both the amount of information given about the enemies and the choice that the player needs for the semi-auto battle to feel more interesting.

With regards to leveling up defensive stats, I think in part that was due to a balance breaking bug that made you more or less invincible which meant you didn’t need healing as much which in turn means that mental health didn’t go down too much. So with those things there was little need for investing in defensive stats. But it may also be that health should not scale so much with higher levels to keep the player needing to invest in it. That or the enemies needs to accelerate the damage they deal further in.

thanks for the great feedback!

The minimum requirement should, probably did, lower attacks with the weapon by something like 50%. And probably made it harder to hit (except if you activate the crit-tick) so it is very possible that as a whole it still was beneficial to equip a higher tier weapon without meeting the requirements.

And I agree that I really should have provided subtitles especially given amount of effects I had put on some of the sounds.

Thanks for the comments and for playing!

For party-size and difficulty. That got partially ruined by lack of balancing and that bug letting very tough characters heal during battle. It’s true that larger party spreads out gear, but non-participants also get partial XP from each battle. The second way it would have helped is to have more characters to cycle through battling in between visiting the healer-slugs.

You’re idea about swapping party members during fight is on my list of how to increase player agency during battle. I’ll also consider fleeing. Probably giving monsters an attack of opportunity each and then putting them in forced rest-mode for a second or two so that the player really has to run away from the room.

I’ll look into monster movement, my plan is to ease them between tiles too rather than teleporting and that in its own right probably will slow them down some.