Alrighty, I actually got around to playing it! :D I haven't the best skills at giving feedback, but after getting some very useful feedback recently I gotta try and pass the favor around right?
(Note: I skipped the tutorial, but for the most part I think I figured out everything)
The gameplay is very solid, and the animon passives and active attacks are promising from what I've seen. There are some concerns I have with how well certain animons scale, Difdagua and the starter dog seem loads stronger than say the fire fox or the little water dragon/lizard. If there are means to upgrade certain passives, or if some of them scale with level, I believe that would bring some balance. (The water dragon/lizard can revive dead animons if he gets hit, might be a bug?)
Bindshards should have a 100% chance to be in shops, I was looking to capture something new and left with a bunch of soda and coffee. It would be great to see your current capture chance as well. The red bindshard also did not appear in my inventory after I bought one.
The dice system is really neat overall, and makes the combat quite a different flavor than usual. Being able to partially charge a skill is great. I was only able to change one of my die's element, unsure if that's intentional, but judging from the screenshots... I might be a noob. I feel there should be more incentive to picking the dice upgrade over getting a new dice
The difficulty eased up after the first boss. Partially from the extra dice being quite powerful, and partially because of the insane damage the first boss can do compared to what's after him. Finding a heal skill is another large power boost. Currently, it looks a lot better to focus strengthening a single animon than trying to have multiple. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a thought.
I cleared the final area (Gorgon/Medusa thingy) with a silly double slap strat, using the starter dog's passive to reroll 1D4s and using double slap whenever it procced. I would get another reroll with each double, which may be a wee bit overpowered. The boss is also bugged, if it uses Parasite the game is softlocked (no animation plays, and no attack effect every occurs), so I am very grateful for the save system you have in place!
Very minor visual issue: the red hair trainer stands above their shadow lol
Now for some UI bugs/grievances. I once clicked the sticker album, and it prevented me from clicking or selecting anything else. During battles, there is some weird behavior with arrow keys which require some mouse intervention to fix, mostly experienced with the 4th attack slot (it is at least good there is a means to fix it as a player). During the Gorgon fight, I discovered you can click Party and Inventory during the enemy turn, could be related to the softlock bug but I figured it was worth mentioning.
Out of battle, clicking on nodes to select them can result in moving backwards or redoing a node. Additionally, I couldn't use the mouse to go to the next node.
Overall, fun game and I will 'watch your career with great interest!'
Wow, Jemaj, thank you for the thorough feedback and for playing for so long! That's really helpful!
Yes, the passives (quirks) aren't balanced at all yet. Most of them are just quickly thrown in to have something and find out which ones are cool. I haven't thought about scaling them with level region yet, but that might be good idea to make some of them more valid later. Brainka (the water dragon/lizard :D ) should not be able to revive dead animons and now you get the famous "I thought I fixed that?!" quote from me. I'll look into it, whoopsie!
Guaranteed bindshard sounds like a good idea and I'll look into what's wrong the improved one not being added. I'm planning to rework the capturing mechanic to incorporate dice rolling for it and instead a better chance it's a lower number you need to surpass. So that'll be the equivalent of showing the success rate.
Considering the changing of die types. You did play the version with the arrow icons on the dice and not the ring menu, right? Just to make sure it's not the older system. So you move left and right to select a die and up and down to change its type? And that only worked for one?
The difficulty curve is currently my biggest problem. It's exactly as you mention, getting more dice makes you a lot more powerful but another factor is also that since I reworked the battle system a lot of the later animons are not updated yet and have crappy techniques or still just two dice. I'm also thinking about making it so that you either get +1 die or that you can upgrade 2 dice, maybe that balances the choice a bit more. I'll also add more incentives for higher dice. For Minjaluna's passive you already need to roll two 6 to trigger. There need to be more of these things. Thank you for confirming my suspicion, though :)
Yeah, double slap is OP haha. I might have to restrict it by giving it heavy (so it exhausts after use) but on the other hand, I want players to find crazy infinite loops that are overpowered. That's the whole joy of roguelikes :D I will think on that.
Parasite, softlock. Noted, thank you.
Yeah, the mouse is the least tested input method right now and it has a lot of edge cases were it can interact cross-states when it shouldn't. Thank you for the pointers, I will check where the issues are. Considering the 4th technique not being selectable. Do you remember if you switched from an animon that had 3 techniques and then to one that had 4 techniques? Because that's an issue I know about and "I thought I fixed it?!" haha
Again, thank you so much for the feedback and I do hope you played the last version (0.0.10) which now reminds me that I should add that somehwere in the game so players can check.
Fun Game! I had a bug where if I used any menus before trying to select the next node, it wouldn't start the next nodes event on the map. Additionally some UI Bugs such as being able to click on the party button multiple times while on the map, and for some reason the sticker album exit button never left the top left.
However, with all that aside when I was playing the game I had a fun time!
Last critique, and admittedly I just have this with a lot of games in general, but making sure the volume on first start up is lower is always a nice thing for me cause games always jumpscare me on first start up.
Super excited to see where this goes keep up the amazing work!
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Alrighty, I actually got around to playing it! :D I haven't the best skills at giving feedback, but after getting some very useful feedback recently I gotta try and pass the favor around right?
(Note: I skipped the tutorial, but for the most part I think I figured out everything)
The gameplay is very solid, and the animon passives and active attacks are promising from what I've seen. There are some concerns I have with how well certain animons scale, Difdagua and the starter dog seem loads stronger than say the fire fox or the little water dragon/lizard. If there are means to upgrade certain passives, or if some of them scale with level, I believe that would bring some balance. (The water dragon/lizard can revive dead animons if he gets hit, might be a bug?)
Bindshards should have a 100% chance to be in shops, I was looking to capture something new and left with a bunch of soda and coffee. It would be great to see your current capture chance as well. The red bindshard also did not appear in my inventory after I bought one.
The dice system is really neat overall, and makes the combat quite a different flavor than usual. Being able to partially charge a skill is great. I was only able to change one of my die's element, unsure if that's intentional, but judging from the screenshots... I might be a noob. I feel there should be more incentive to picking the dice upgrade over getting a new dice
The difficulty eased up after the first boss. Partially from the extra dice being quite powerful, and partially because of the insane damage the first boss can do compared to what's after him. Finding a heal skill is another large power boost. Currently, it looks a lot better to focus strengthening a single animon than trying to have multiple. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a thought.
I cleared the final area (Gorgon/Medusa thingy) with a silly double slap strat, using the starter dog's passive to reroll 1D4s and using double slap whenever it procced. I would get another reroll with each double, which may be a wee bit overpowered. The boss is also bugged, if it uses Parasite the game is softlocked (no animation plays, and no attack effect every occurs), so I am very grateful for the save system you have in place!
Very minor visual issue: the red hair trainer stands above their shadow lol
Now for some UI bugs/grievances. I once clicked the sticker album, and it prevented me from clicking or selecting anything else. During battles, there is some weird behavior with arrow keys which require some mouse intervention to fix, mostly experienced with the 4th attack slot (it is at least good there is a means to fix it as a player). During the Gorgon fight, I discovered you can click Party and Inventory during the enemy turn, could be related to the softlock bug but I figured it was worth mentioning.
Out of battle, clicking on nodes to select them can result in moving backwards or redoing a node. Additionally, I couldn't use the mouse to go to the next node.
Overall, fun game and I will 'watch your career with great interest!'
Wow, Jemaj, thank you for the thorough feedback and for playing for so long! That's really helpful!
Yes, the passives (quirks) aren't balanced at all yet. Most of them are just quickly thrown in to have something and find out which ones are cool. I haven't thought about scaling them with level region yet, but that might be good idea to make some of them more valid later. Brainka (the water dragon/lizard :D ) should not be able to revive dead animons and now you get the famous "I thought I fixed that?!" quote from me. I'll look into it, whoopsie!
Guaranteed bindshard sounds like a good idea and I'll look into what's wrong the improved one not being added. I'm planning to rework the capturing mechanic to incorporate dice rolling for it and instead a better chance it's a lower number you need to surpass. So that'll be the equivalent of showing the success rate.
Considering the changing of die types. You did play the version with the arrow icons on the dice and not the ring menu, right? Just to make sure it's not the older system. So you move left and right to select a die and up and down to change its type? And that only worked for one?
The difficulty curve is currently my biggest problem. It's exactly as you mention, getting more dice makes you a lot more powerful but another factor is also that since I reworked the battle system a lot of the later animons are not updated yet and have crappy techniques or still just two dice. I'm also thinking about making it so that you either get +1 die or that you can upgrade 2 dice, maybe that balances the choice a bit more. I'll also add more incentives for higher dice. For Minjaluna's passive you already need to roll two 6 to trigger. There need to be more of these things. Thank you for confirming my suspicion, though :)
Yeah, double slap is OP haha. I might have to restrict it by giving it heavy (so it exhausts after use) but on the other hand, I want players to find crazy infinite loops that are overpowered. That's the whole joy of roguelikes :D
I will think on that.
Parasite, softlock. Noted, thank you.
Yeah, the mouse is the least tested input method right now and it has a lot of edge cases were it can interact cross-states when it shouldn't. Thank you for the pointers, I will check where the issues are. Considering the 4th technique not being selectable. Do you remember if you switched from an animon that had 3 techniques and then to one that had 4 techniques? Because that's an issue I know about and "I thought I fixed it?!" haha
Again, thank you so much for the feedback and I do hope you played the last version (0.0.10) which now reminds me that I should add that somehwere in the game so players can check.
Ah, I see the problem with the dice changing now. It doesn't work with the mouse yet. Good find, I'll fix that!
Fun Game! I had a bug where if I used any menus before trying to select the next node, it wouldn't start the next nodes event on the map. Additionally some UI Bugs such as being able to click on the party button multiple times while on the map, and for some reason the sticker album exit button never left the top left.
However, with all that aside when I was playing the game I had a fun time!
Last critique, and admittedly I just have this with a lot of games in general, but making sure the volume on first start up is lower is always a nice thing for me cause games always jumpscare me on first start up.
Super excited to see where this goes keep up the amazing work!
Thank you so much for playing and reporting bugs, much appreciated! I'll look into it. So it sounds like you played with the mouse, correct?
I think the volume starts on lower settings but I'll double check :)