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RoboZero161 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

With how tightly the game is designed, I can completely understand the lack of perceived polish. Getting to level 8 and seeing how deep it goes got my attention. From this thought, I think it's worth emphasizing how it seems a lot of players, including me till I took a break, were really exhausted before they got halfway through just so you can analyze why. 

0. Totally understand. With that logic you have to include at least one meme character! I think what's jarring is how distinctly robotic the other two look as our reference point, so at first it felt like a culture shoe in but later became intrigue after how beefy he felt. Hopefully that makes sense. 

Assuming the crit is interpreted perfectly by the player, the crit can feel good reinforcing the wheel spin. In fact, assuming every change you mentioned was added and the tutorial was flawless, I suspect there would still be some underlying issues. Particularly how it's really hard to track all the moves and in which order (lack of chunking? choose ability then select target), feeling a lack of agency over controlling the color wheel (exploiting enemy weaknesses?), and the pacing of how long a players turn compared to the enemy and how there's no incentive to observe them or change your plan because of them (you can know you'll lose health and get status). I swear, I really hope these aren't issues and I'm overreacting here. In my head, it may be worth experimenting making the enemies way scarier and even attacking at the same time, but making the wheels and damage across each consistent and giving way more ways to manipulate the wheel to obliterate them. I understand how this is a really dramatic change though, it's more a 'how would this feel?' question if you wanted to try it. 

>  When it comes to simply learning how to interact with basic rules of the game, every effort is worth it. 

With exploration, I'd like to say with how genuinely interesting the abilities are and knowing when to use them at what time, and how to control enemy damage, I think streamlining everything else and letting us explore them would be worth heading towards. This probably sounds contradictory, hmmmm. Brain fried. 

I hope I didn't come off too brash myself! It's a really cool game. Maybe the issue is me and my own expectations - I want to feel like I'm cleverly and slickly destroying these strange and scary foes. 

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DougVanny161 days ago(+1)

Not brash at all! The design needs to be questioned so it can be improved! 

Interestingly, originally I did want to make enemy attacks be a lot more impactful, since just one of them acts per attack. I ended up playing it safe though, due to simple lack of balance time, and also due to understanding that the dev will always play the game better than someone who played it without any prior experience, so I tried to reduce my risk and made the characters have more hp than originally intended

Also, regarding your worries, I do think that this system as it is would not fit a several hour long rpg without bigger changes. The jam theme did give me the opportunity to experiment with the idea and I had fun with that, but the game does have pacing issues, and I totally understand how exhausting it is, given that I didn't manage to finish it myself haha. Something that would have helped would be adding narrative elements between the battles, something that gives room for the player to rest, but then we're talking about turning this into a real rpg, which goes way beyond the scope of a jam

A change I would consider would be replacing the reward for completing a loop by something else, something that doesn't let the player turn go forever, so the dance between player and enemies feels more balanced, also so I have more room to think of defensive moves which would mean spinning the enemy wheel one time less, but that could enrich the strategy even further. The question though would be what is the new reward for making a loop, and the answer I don't quite know. Maybe it's damage, maybe it's a new resource, maybe it's bringing that enemy down and restore your turn so you can also bring all others down in a single turn and finish them off with an all out attack. There would be some more room for creativity here :)

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