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Thanks for playing! And I'm glad to hear -- "You have to unfold it inside your head" is the exact experience I wanted for the game. Cheers!

Hey! Thank you so much for playing and for the kind words. I also have some plans about where to take the mechanic -- different tile types, etc. Glad you liked it!

Hi - thank you so much for playing and thank you for your comments. All your points about the game are well made, especially the very clear need for a tutorial. I was surprised after I got the basic mechanics programmed how many tricky decisions there were to make about visibility, given that there isn't really a traditional "line of sight" with the structure of the maps.Your suggestion about Wraiths is a good addition to that. 

Monster generation is randomized per level according to static probabilities, plus new monsters spawn after a threshold of turns, which gets shorter and shorter.

And your screenshot is so painful to look at! I knew that the level generation algorithm was too loose, but thought that the tile swapping ability sort of "covers" for the majority of bad spawns...but that combination of tiles, blanks, and fire you got below is really punishing.

Oh! And double walls on tiles just signify "you've been here before" it's to help you figure out which paths you haven't taken if you're stuck navigating a tough level.

55 on level 10!

Awesome! I'm glad you enjoyed the game.  There should be a little baby version of a "you win" screen if you get the amulet, but it's not very celebratory, I admit.  And thanks again for the bug report. It made all the difference.

I had a great time with this. It's unfinished, but it also respects the player's time. Everything is has is crammed in to present itself. Very fun to play around in.

I love the lighting effects on this one -- the presentation is nice and clean, and there feels like just enough variety with the enemy design. There are clear and obvious differences between the three enemies I encountered, and the capital/lowercase to health symbolism was super clear.

I also really like the idea of the card mechanic defining your spells and special moves. However, during my playthroughs, I had a pretty bad experience actually using them. Because the maps are so large, and because movement costs power, I ended up burning through all my cards, most of them unused, long before I found the stairways or encountered all the relevant enemies. This, combined with the fact that many of the cards are pretty low impact, meant that I ended up paying WAY more attention to just moving around the map than I did using the cards. Honestly, I would LOVE to see what this game looks like if movement doesn't cost power. I think it would be a easy way to let the cards and their abilities shine.

Thanks for making it!

Hi - I think what I ran into was a interface issue. I was clicking on the sword to "activate" it, then hitting up on the arrow keys to walk into the monster, thus cancelling the sword usage (I think). The first time I used only mouse, which is what made the difference. I played (twice) again now using real controls and collected a few trinkets...though apparently there might be more that I'm missing. I tried a run where I kill everything, and another where I mostly avoided monsters...I suppose there might be some other dimension I'm not taking into account. Thanks for responding to my earlier comment!

joplick - thank you so much for playing the game, and for reporting these bugs!

I went back and checked the code and discovered the problem. There was a mistake in how I stored info for tiles with stairs on them, and the wraiths would become stuck there, infinitely looking for a path out. I also found another huge error with the tile swapping algorithm.

In addition, your experience of getting stuck made me add a reset button, so people can get out of deadends.

Thank you!

I love the way this game looks. I didn't understand the grey ghost images at first, but once I understood them it made it much easier to move strategically. This seems like the perfect scope for a seven day project, and also feels like it would be a great foundation for additional mechanics.

I had a lot of fun playing this. I like how scary the house got as the days proceeded. I was also very impressed by the number of jokes. :)

I'm not sure I fully understood the mechanics playing through this...the first time I played I killed a creature and got a sword. But then every subsequent time I couldn't defeat the first monster again...I seemed doomed to die.

I did like the pixel graphics in the dungeon map! 

I had a good time reading the narratives produced by this. Though, I found myself wishing that the computer-driven protagonist was getting "scored" some how...it would have been neat to see very successful and very tragic "players" juxtaposed, which would have been easier with some kind of measure of success/xp/points/treasure. But I thought this was a cool experiment.

It is crazy how much content and how many assets there are for this. I can only imagine from the description that most of this is taken from the larger project mentioned. It was fun to see a fully realized JRPG system in browser, but I didn't get too much into the gameplay.

One thing that might be worth considering, if this is the proof of concept for a larger game, is what is gained by having the visually wandering monsters, rather than the random invisible encounters. I found my self having little dancing and dodging contests to avoid the enemies, which doesn't feel like the kind of behavior you want to reward in a game like this. But who knows! 

Hi! I downloaded the game but couldn't seem to interact with any controls except toggling the sound on and off. Pressed space, arrow keys, tried clicking around...not sure if it's me or if there's an error!

Indeed. It seems like you really sliced off the perfect amount of scope for this challenge. :) And it sounds like you're super pumped to continue the development, which is super cool. Thanks for the response!

That makes sense -- scope is always a real killer during jams. Would you consider adding some type of "fuel" resource to your planet locations? that could be a nice analogue to a "hunger clock" you NEED to stay at each planet long enough to find enough fuel to leave...or you could push your luck to keep looking for valuables...if you're going to keep plugging away at this version, that is. Cheers!

This piece is really charming and has a ton of nice touches.  The visuals are nice and rich, with the combination of periods, quotations, and other characters in carefully chosen colors and shades creating a very nice tapestry of information.  I found the central mechanic un-intuitive at first...the fact that all the traps are called "traps" and aren't identified at the start left me feeling like I was just running around at random. But after more playing (and careful attention to the event read out at the bottom of the screen) a real logic emerges. 

The range of different effects that are generated by the traps is truly impressive. I was particularly taken by the splash of psychedelic color produced by one of them. And the first time my soul transferred into my clone was amazing. Though, I wasn't always clear what certain positive traps were doing, and which could be used multiple times...vitality, armor, and experience traps all left me feeling a little unsure of the systems they were impacting and how.

In two different games I ended up transforming into a T'itan, which seems to pretty radically jump your power level and ability to move through the levels. I did not discover if there's any way to return you to No'hanz' form.

I left the game with one big wish: that there was some means to get information about the different monsters - HP, attacks, special properties, other than just smacking into them. I think this would make it a lot more fun to make decisions about which you just bash into and which you strategize around.  Otherwise I had fun with this.

This game has a lot of charming touches in its opening moments. Starting with a big "in debt" tracker is hilarious. And going around your ship, opening lockers, and using your navigation computer is great fun. I do think there are some real balance issues -- my second play through I had a sword and armor that seemed to make me invincible to anything encountered on the first 2 planets -- I reached level 4 without really thinking about it.

The biggest issue for me is that the maps I played through felt both large and empty. I didn't ever discover any objects in the world besides doors and enemies. At the very least, it would be neat if you had to track down items to "unlock" future locations from your nav. computer, rather them simply add on automatically.

This is a great execution of a clear idea! I had a lot of fun playing it. Also, three thoughts while playing:

1) it would be a huge quality of life help if you could tell which "damage squares" were being generated by which enemies (maybe hovering, maybe color coding).

2) balance-wise, I think the exploding squid/clouds should be introduced later in the game. Each squid thing takes a whole turn to kill safely, and that's only if you're in the right position--meaning that having lots of them early can really stretch out how many turns the player is passing, just waiting for safe cards.

3) also, it felt non-intuitive to me that killing the last enemy on a level doesn't instantly end the round...leading me to a "feels bad" defeat at the hands of one of said exploding squid.

Also, small provocation -- there seems to be no reason to limit this mechanic to a tiny grid! I would totally use this "hand of chess pieces" mechanic to move around a big dungeon.

This game is cute! 

This basic mechanic would be really well-suited to the appearance of random point-granting tokens or pickups. That would give the player a risk-reward tension, not only avoiding the enemies, but trying to get prizes. There's a version of that game structure in roburky's Three Body Problem. Though, otherwise that game is completely different.

I had a fun time playing this!  Some of the mechanics are a bit inscrutable at first, but I really liked slowly figuring them out over multiple deaths. Haven't managed to kill what I assume is the "final boss" yet. The art is charming and completely coherent -- everything feels like it belongs. Though, at first, I didn't really notice the difference between floor tiles and the "void."

Also think I found a small bug -- I pressed Z to aim, but then pressed X to swap before shooting, and it jumped past the "reload" option. So I had infinite ammo for one rune.