itch.io

I have no strong recommendations about the analytics, it's a problem I've butted up against once in a while but I am not well versed in the options for rich logging, and without some detailed knowledge of your game's architecture I would probably just lead you astray. I tend to just review the relevant packages in NPM and see which one most closely aligns with my style and intent.

In the work I've done before I liked a paradigm called event-sourced architecture. I am not sure that it is relevant to your game, but the basic idea is that all user interactions and sources of random data are logged to a single table in a database with a timestamp, so you can rewind and replay events to reconstruct application state for testing / debugging. Although it is done for performance reasons too.

It's a bit of a watch and it is more targeted to large web applications, but if you are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JKjvY4etTY&t=1s

I would  suggest you try out "feature flags". For example, if I was working with the codebase right now, I might put the ability for wandering parties to attack garrisons behind a feature flag until garrison defense was implemented, maybe as a cookie or session storage item. I would also have a special development flag for 'turn everything on'. Then when the feature is complete, just delete the if-check that determines whether or not the feature should be available, and keep it on all the time. This would allow you to not have to manage testing and release branches and make it relatively easy for you to enter the test mode on most setups.

Although that particular example might be moot considering your upcoming release, in general it's a good way to keep features merged in to your main codebase and up to date, while keeping the rest of your app (game) well-oiled.

I am starting to feel like I am clogging up your page with comments, is there a way we can DM?

Edit: I just now realized I discombobulated some paragraphs here. The event sourcing stuff was in relation to analytics.

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't understand how to defend the garrisons. Even if I leave mercenaries in them, in just a few moments the attackers are way too powerful to be dealt with, and it seems like I have to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off just to keep the garrisons locked down.

Am I missing something about how to level the mercs in garrisons or something?

I guess I could rotate out mercenaries and train them in my party but I feel like that would be a losing battle too.

Edit:

Do you have any sort of analytics in the game to detect what is tripping people up?

The adventuring interface (overworld map?) is a bit confusing at times, it's difficult to tell when I'm waiting for an action to complete vs. needing to end my turn, which seems to cause me press "end turn" while I am actually just waiting for some minor action, which means I now waste 1.5 turns of AP.  It would be nice to have maybe a "status" indicator that told you if it was still your turn.

This game has a lot of potential IMO, if you make good money off of it I hope you invest in some story, for a sequel / game family.

The engine so far seems like it could be well suited to many different styles of old school turn based games.

It feels like Arcanum / Fallout 1 & 2 hybridized with older JRPGs and a Diablo 2 (and family) skill tree. If you haven't played the named games before it might be worth a dabble to see what you can glean from them.

Things I like:

• The radial action menus
• The skill trees, although some of the skills themselves could use more flair / distinctiveness
• The character classes - although I don't think they are made clear enough in the choice dialog, maybe let us peek at the talent tree / stats?
• The drawn art is cool, reminds me of some of my favorite late 90s / early 00s RPGs

Things I don't like:

• Can't use my herbalist to heal characters in the overworld map so I have to pick off the strongest enemies first and then heal my characters up until they are good enough to start the next battle, then I can get the last one
• Items rarely seem worth using (except to heal in the overworld map, and the free XP from some of them). And can't be sold, so I accumulate a huge list of items I won't use
• Items can't be used in the battles, so I tend to forget about them altogether
• Defend / wait  talents feel really risky given how fragile characters can be in the game, which makes me want to spend those points in less interactive talents.

Just my $0.02, don't let anyone tell you how to make your game.

I'm a developer myself (not games though), and I would suggest setting up some way that users can store the savegames to a disk, for two reasons:

• Trying out multiple character / party styles
• When a repeatable bug happens, now we can share the savegame back to you

I would suggest putting an export button somewhere in the config / settings / options dialog.

I haven't actually profiled it but the game behaves like there is a memory leak somewhere, after an hour or so everything grinds to a halt, refreshing the page / closing & reopening the tab fixes it (even on the same save game).

Around level 20 I keep getting swarmed with lvl 25 parties, am I doing it wrong?

Maybe I'm not leveling fast enough to outpace them?

Edit: also the parties spawn so rapidly it's impossible to move at some point.

Geomancers sometimes cause the game  to freeze when they summon an Earth Elemental

It's happened to me twice now

If I had instructions on how to save the save game for the dev I would do so.