Hey, it's A_Abel from reddit.
I played the game a little to see how it was but i feel kinda stuck.
The concept seems interesting and i like the randomized maps, but how are you supposed to progress? that's the confusing part to me about this game.
After the intro fight you start the game with 1 health and from then on fighting any battle is pretty much impossible.
Most barrels and chests don't have anything in them, i'm not sure if this is just me being unlucky or this is how the game works, but this feels a little annoying as you can open up a bunch of stuff only to be met with nothing.
I guess the only exception to that rule were the claws, but again, with 1 health i can't really do much in terms of combat so i just kept dying.
I did like that after a couple of deaths some new npcs appeared that could've been useful but i didn't progress far enough to interact with them(the only option was to sacrifice the claws for 25 essence, but that's about it).
I feel like the statues could maybe be made a bit more obvious that they are interactable? either some sparkles or the game encouraging you to spend your essence on some stats after you gained enough essence(kinda like a tutorial).
I also noticed that if i dodge the traps i take no damage despite the game telling me i took 30 or maybe it's just that you can't take damage if you are stuck at 1 health. The burning effect did apply however.
The traps could maybe be made a bit more obvious before you step on them as to not be completely unpredictable. Take this suggestion with a grain of salt as i don't understand how this mechanic is supposed to work.
One other thing that makes the game difficult is the enemies being as fast as the player, it doesn't help that the maps are small so it can be a tad bit difficult to dodge them.
There was this attempt i did after managing to escape from an enemy only for my path to be blocked by a pile of rocks that i couldn't even interact with.
Now for the combat, right off the bat the couple skills i've seen seem pretty basic, some damage, some healing and some defense buff.
Technically speaking the only thing that bothered me here is that the heavy blow and the sword skill felt pretty similar in what they do, with heavy blow being weaker than the sword skill and even the basic attack(that applies a DoT effect compared to the 2 skills i mentioned).
What i'm trying to say is that it will be cooler if skills had more interactions with one another(one skill bleeds the enemy, another one does something if enemy has bleed debuff or has been debuffed with bleeding 3 times, etc).
And the last thing is that animation seem to take a while to play and that kinda slows down the combat pace.
Despite me having complained about a lot of stuff, the game could be interesting if things get more polished as you keep working on it.
Good luck with your project!