Daxter250

Forum Fanatic
Sep 17, 2017
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hm, similar to yu-no, where you also restart the game with all found equipment.
 

GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
OK I'll try answer most comment.
First please take into account that this is still in developpement, to give you an idea, I've made 4 updates of this game including initial release, and I'm trying to add content/fix UI bit by bit everytime.


View attachment 3008132
not bad, but definitely could use some tweak on ui
the stop action button need more contrast
also the popup message when hovering the menu shouldn't on the top of history message

remind me of edge of tomorrow, with isekai vibe
best of luck on your game (y)

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I think I should be able to do something about the stop action, but I don't know yet how I'll deal with it.
Previously, hovering button tooltip was over your mouse, the problem is hovering button also change the image at the center and it was hiddent by the tooltip. I may try to find another solution, like get it over the mouse, but small enough and to the left, I'll think about it.
I think being stuck is the worse thing in the game. Got stuck where the main button does nothing, slime cost 33 (maximum mana is 0), cannot meditate because mana is full (0), maximum amount of cells reached (5), enough traps (2) for all your slimes (0). nothing I can do and time is stopped. Was just pushing away wave of villagers just after putting the 3 masks and see how far we can go, so I think I am at the beginning of the game. At least let us auto-gameover to see what we screwed up and try different things...

EDIT: Refresh the page seems to do the trick and give the gameover.
Seems a bit strange, you should always at least be able to reach a gameover, either by progression the story, or improving your dungeon. I'd like to have more info about how you reached that point because you shouldn't be forced to refresh to avoid softlock.
Is there a way to pause or cancel a action? Since at times you end up wasting time building or meditating which can lead to game over. A way to skip certain scenes in the future would be nice, since it gets old real fast mashing through scenes you've seen multiple times.
There is a way to stop actions on the right, might need to place the button elsewhere later, thisput here for now because it was the easier part of UI to edit, but I'll move it eventualy.
0.5 will add the ability to set a new "respawn point"after the content of 0.4, so you won't have to play all this tutorial/story section agains if you don't want to.
Game needs way faster actions. meditating for 2 minutes like a idle game that kills you when you idle too much is a serious issue.
I'll add soon 0.5 or 0.6 I'm not sure yet, new type of slave that will boost your magic skill.
Please note the game is in early stages and as usual in this kind of game, as you add new content, ealier content tend to become easier as update progress because you end up with more options to progress.
Seems like a fun concept. My man issue is it really doesn't feel like there's much you can do outside of just dying repeatedly. Like you meditate, you engrave, you make slimes and then just wait until you inevitably die. There aren't really any actions I take that I feel get me further into a run as much as it is that I just have bigger numbers from my last run. Perhaps some other maintainable upgrades between runs could help add some variety to it. Otherwise, this just turns into loading bar the game.
Well we're still kinda in the tutorial section. At 0.5 you'll have the ability to set a new spawn point, so when you die you won't have to redo everything, then I'll add ability expand your territory, an event section which allow you to do action that aren't as linear as the story section later the ability to interact with some character like Selenes to "train them".
The fibonacci sequence is a really bad scaling method for attacks. This game is interesting but the amount of times I'd have to redo the game after unlocking upgrades but before I'd have enough to actually move onto something else is insane. Probably like 50+ times of dying before I could make enough masks to find Selene. It feels like the "skill" stats aren't as useful as they should be. Sure I can feel the difference between 1, 3, and 7 magic skill well enough, but it still seems odd that I'm regenerating one mana a tic even if that tick is marginally faster over time. It might just be because I don't see what it affects but I don't seem to notice any benefit from Adaption or Construction. Even waiting til I have 5+ drones (doubling my skill) I don't seem to see a noticeable decrease in it. Creating buildings/engraving walls doesn't seem to be getting any faster. At first I thought the upgrades were going to help me through runs but that's not the case.

Additionally it would be nice to be able to choose if a trap is set. I might get further if I could build slimes/traps early on but not use them until my actual fighting skill is starting to become insufficient. By the time extra traps could save me they've all gone off one at a time grabbing people when I'd have no trouble doing so myself.

Edit: Oh and since you're saving the game anyway can you save what my chosen name is? I stopped bothering to change it after 5 or so deaths but it would feel nicer if I didn't need to.
I'll intend to change fibonacci, but no matter what it'll be a rather tough exponential, there are 2 reason to this :
-Kinda limit the spread in the player reaching end of content this way it is easier for me when I post an update to balance it, since most player will be around the same skill/part of the game.
-Preventing the player to reach a spot in which they grow faster than the waves, I'd like the new content I'll add to be meaningfull in the player's progression. By having enemy wave's exponential stronger than anything the player can do, it means that the player reaching higher wave counts probably mean they have to unlock new upgrade, new units etc. As the game progresses it will feel better and better I think.
There will be way to increase your magic skill later. For now around 7 in meditation/fighting should be enough to complete the story. edit : with a good build order, you might require more time if you do things in less optimized order.
Adaptation skill increase hunting, most of story actions and will be usefull also to anything related to stealth/diplomacy.
ConstructionSkill increase how fast you build thing, but note that most building have an increase time cost as you build them that will be explained later by your dungeon being limited in size/in shamble. Later you'll have the ability to "renovate" your dungeon to reduce the creeping cost.
I'll think about being able to set traps, not super high in my priority list to be honest, but I'll do it eventualy.
Edit: I forgot to answer your edit, Yeah you'll be able to save your name, you'll be able to set your respawn point later in 0.5, and if you decide to spawn at the end of 0.4 content you'll keep your name. I still want people to be able to change their name when they respawn from the begining as people might want to explore the other gender's content and may want to change their name accordingly.
 
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Rosen King

Engaged Member
May 29, 2019
2,105
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There will be way to increase your magic skill later. For now around 7 in meditation/fighting should be enough to complete the story.
Assuming that "complete the story" includes brainwashing Selene at the end, even 8 in those skills and 3.5 in the others isn't enough. I think the biggest two issues are engraving the wall and the big jump towards the next attack when you kidnap a human (which you'll need to do at least seven times).

Here's my build order, which I think is as efficient as you can get:

1. Stock up on five slimes and one trap
2. Get the first drone
3. Start meditating and get max mana up to 60
4. Upgrade the drone (necessary to get past enemy power of 13)
5. Start engraving the wall up to 70
6. Unlock Drain Will
7. Start raiding and enslaving humans until you have five of them (to increase construction speed)
8. By this point, your next fight will have a power of 21, which isn't feasible to beat
9. Start working on building your mana to 100 <--- You will die here
10. Unlock evil masks
11. Raid two more humans and give them masks (this will *not* give you enough power to beat the level 21 raid, so there's no point in doing it earlier)
12. Enslave Selene

Edit: I took a screenshot of what my screen looks like in the last seconds before death with what I think was the most optimal order. (Apart from the second cell, which I experimented with to see if I'd get more prisoners per raid.) I still haven't even unlocked the mask upgrade yet, let alone the two more raids that would be required to use them.

Edit 2: And then I forgot to post the screenshot.

Re Curse Death.png
 
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GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
I'm pretty sure I've beaten the game with 8ish. The key doing first things that won't be improved.
You can't increase meditate skill with army, so do all the 5 slime and upgrade and everything that cost mana first.
By the time you do that you should have a couple drone already.
 
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GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
Did someone manage scene where Selene is masked and fight her allies? Or does it send you to the pupetry path anyway? Someone got the problem and I don't have it in my version, maybe this is a bug I fixed but didn't uploaded yet?
 

Troqu

Well-Known Member
Aug 6, 2017
1,084
1,537
Did someone manage scene where Selene is masked and fight her allies? Or does it send you to the pupetry path anyway? Someone got the problem and I don't have it in my version, maybe this is a bug I fixed but didn't uploaded yet?
When I try the mask it gives two options to go meet with her. One is the guaranteed loss and the other sends you down the puppetry path.
 

GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
Oh I see, you should only see the option that send you to the loss, I'll fix that next version.
As long as content isn't locked I suppose I can wait next update to fix it.
 
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GLDCord

Member
Mar 22, 2020
106
44
Everytime you die, you restart from the begining

Naah I'm Out:BootyTime:
There where a lot of Flash player games that used this. At the start you pretty much can't beat the game but in deaths if your smart enough you might find the one thing that's broken and beat the game is like 10-15 minutes
 

wyldmage

Newbie
Jul 4, 2018
35
65
Yeah, the game has a cute idea, but it's basically garbage right now.

Initially you make good progress, but once you get to the stage where you have to drain will, it's just massively grindy. Play, die, play and get 5% further, die, play and get 10% further, die. Repeat 10 times until you have enough speed to get engrave wall, use it 4 times (along with base 60 max mana) and a cell and unlock drones adding to combat power (to help reach 13 power). Then you hunt the human down, use the ability and.....

You get absolutely nothing. Mindless slaves are garbage. I don't even know what Adaptation does, but .05 multiplier per mindless on my 3.00 base is not going to make any useful difference. And they slightly improve construction speed (by 1/4 as much as drones) too. Worthless.

But now I have a new goal that requires 5 mindless and 5 masked. Well, maybe masked let me make it past the 13 combat mark. But even with 10 drones (+ .5 to my combat multiplier), going from 13 to 21 means earning at least 6 combat skill. Which means about 12 resets or more. Each reset is 20 minutes of idle grinding.

IF the masked units add at least .5 to combat multiplier each, they MIGHT be enough to help make it one more combat cycle per revive. But they require 100 mana. Engraving is 5%. Sure, I can upgrade to 70 base mana now (for 68 mana), but the next upgrade takes 100 something, more than masked unlock anyways. Which means that I need to do 9 engraves in order to unlocked masks, THEN also generate another 500 mana to afford them.

I'd be idle grinding this game for half a fucking day. And I haven't even seen a single H-scene.

Yeah, sorry, but fuck that. You're wasting everyone's time by making them grind so damn much.
 

Axescream

New Member
Jan 19, 2020
1
0
I enjoyed the game so far. Thank you for your hard work.

I had to invest quite a bit of time due to bad pathing/rescourcemanagement. My winning attempt was much cleaner since I didnt focus too much on the slimes/ drones I did before.

I am looking forward whats gonna happen next.
 

GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
Yeah, the game has a cute idea, but it's basically garbage right now.

Initially you make good progress, but once you get to the stage where you have to drain will, it's just massively grindy. Play, die, play and get 5% further, die, play and get 10% further, die. Repeat 10 times until you have enough speed to get engrave wall, use it 4 times (along with base 60 max mana) and a cell and unlock drones adding to combat power (to help reach 13 power). Then you hunt the human down, use the ability and.....

You get absolutely nothing. Mindless slaves are garbage. I don't even know what Adaptation does, but .05 multiplier per mindless on my 3.00 base is not going to make any useful difference. And they slightly improve construction speed (by 1/4 as much as drones) too. Worthless.

But now I have a new goal that requires 5 mindless and 5 masked. Well, maybe masked let me make it past the 13 combat mark. But even with 10 drones (+ .5 to my combat multiplier), going from 13 to 21 means earning at least 6 combat skill. Which means about 12 resets or more. Each reset is 20 minutes of idle grinding.

IF the masked units add at least .5 to combat multiplier each, they MIGHT be enough to help make it one more combat cycle per revive. But they require 100 mana. Engraving is 5%. Sure, I can upgrade to 70 base mana now (for 68 mana), but the next upgrade takes 100 something, more than masked unlock anyways. Which means that I need to do 9 engraves in order to unlocked masks, THEN also generate another 500 mana to afford them.

I'd be idle grinding this game for half a fucking day. And I haven't even seen a single H-scene.

Yeah, sorry, but fuck that. You're wasting everyone's time by making them grind so damn much.
Thank you for you feedback, despite being harsh I still think it's valuable.
On one hand I think the game isn't that grindy if you have a good build order, on the other hand I think it's still too grindy for the time being. The main reason is the fact that for now there is usualy a single goal to achieve, having your dungeon/army big enough to do things, so having to grind to reach might feel underwhelming.
For the next update I'l reduce the grind a bit.
Once the ability to conquest, "train" your sidekick and achivements will be implemented, the fact that you'll have several goal at a given time will mean that you'll have more options to reduce boredom.

The game is still in its early stages, maybe I posted here too soon, maybe not, I'll try to improve it over time.
 
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NemoH

New Member
Jun 26, 2020
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Thank you for you feedback, despite being harsh I still think it's valuable.
On one hand I think the game isn't that grindy if you have a good build order, on the other hand I think it's still too grindy for the time being. The main reason is the fact that for now there is usualy a single goal to achieve, having your dungeon/army big enough to do things, so having to grind to reach might feel underwhelming.
For the next update I'l reduce the grind a bit.
Once the ability to conquest, "train" your sidekick and achivements will be implemented, the fact that you'll have several goal at a given time will mean that you'll have more options to reduce boredom.

The game is still in its early stages, maybe I posted here too soon, maybe not, I'll try to improve it over time.

I'm really excited to try this game despite the negative feedback. I also like that you're taking the feeback in stride and staying motivated. Keep your head up, I'm excited to play this game throughout each update! :))
 
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gguy123

New Member
Sep 30, 2018
9
2
I'm really looking forward to see how this grows.

I can't help but notice that this seems to be a custom set of code- if so, I'm looking forward to any improvements you make the UI. Javascript can be very versatile, so this could be made very customizable. Right now, the UI is developed with a very egalatarian mindset that makes it a little hard to read- for example, if you have a priority event, might I suggest adding a priority class that you can put on the tabs to communicate to the player they need to take a look at it?
 

DoranDuck

Member
May 10, 2017
247
202
outside of the heavy grinding, I find this to be promising, I do hope as well there will be a bit of toning down on the strength of attacks, having to restart nearly 20+ times with every 5-6 times being where you break a new threshold feels too much for me

Also, I feel that it might be better serve to have "Meditate" and "Stop Action" down here where the two red "lines" (sorry for my horrible art skills), since those actions would be the most used, or a system to move buttons down there 1697490439978.png
 

GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
I'm really looking forward to see how this grows.

I can't help but notice that this seems to be a custom set of code- if so, I'm looking forward to any improvements you make the UI. Javascript can be very versatile, so this could be made very customizable. Right now, the UI is developed with a very egalatarian mindset that makes it a little hard to read- for example, if you have a priority event, might I suggest adding a priority class that you can put on the tabs to communicate to the player they need to take a look at it?
I'm a bit new to javascript, but I have experiences in other languages and I also learned from my previous games (SRPG requires you to code in javascript if you don't want to make a fire emblem clone) so it shouldn't be too hard to learn enough to complete this kind of game.
I may do what you ask, or Simply maybe automatically select the tabs for the player. For now I'm more focused on adding a bit more content so we're in the area of the game the player has several goals to pursue to reduce the boredom of grinding.
outside of the heavy grinding, I find this to be promising, I do hope as well there will be a bit of toning down on the strength of attacks, having to restart nearly 20+ times with every 5-6 times being where you break a new threshold feels too much for me

Also, I feel that it might be better serve to have "Meditate" and "Stop Action" down here where the two red "lines" (sorry for my horrible art skills), since those actions would be the most used, or a system to move buttons down there View attachment 3011569
Yeah I planned to move the stop button no matter what, it was a quick addition because people asked for it a lot and I needed a quick solution.
I'm not sure I'll put them here, but for sure I'll consider it.
The grinding will also be reduced in 0.5 alongside the ability to restart directly at the end of 0.4 content, because spamming the tutorial/ first events again and again isn't fun.
 

Troqu

Well-Known Member
Aug 6, 2017
1,084
1,537
The game is still in its early stages, maybe I posted here too soon, maybe not, I'll try to improve it over time.
I don't think so. In spite of my criticisms this game has a lot of promise, and getting feedback now means you can make choices/changes with it in mind instead of it getting too far along and being too much of a pain to change. This is the kind of game where game feel needs to be constantly assessed from an outside perspective. If the only people who play it know the "proper/optimal" build order then you're leaving a huge swath of players who don't know that and can't figure it out in the lurch.
 

GratuitousLove

Member
Game Developer
Nov 17, 2022
286
255
If the only people who play it know the "proper/optimal" build order then you're leaving a huge swath of players who don't know that and can't figure it out in the lurch.
Yeah figured that out with the recent negative comments about the grind, I like to overthink things when I play video game but some ppl just want to chill, and when you think about it that way, the game design wasn't too good.
But I'm improving it already, next update it should be much better. I already made a good progress and by the end of the month I should the game in a much better state.
 
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AlexFenec

Newbie
Nov 20, 2022
66
66
Neat! I love Incremental Loop games.

I tried making one and shared it in the Dev section, but as is often the case new interests took over.
Feel free to check it out in my signature and steal any code you like!

While playing your game I encountered some minor bugs:
- In the very first cycle, I was not able to choose Girl
- One time I triggered the fatal attack with the +10 from hunting for Prisoners. The action reset and continued after the gameover into the next game, making me start with 22 progress and 1 prisoner. (Yeah Selene, this girl is with me. She's tied up because her arms spasm uncontrollably and the gag is so she doesn't bite her tongue. Don't worry about it)

Apart from that, the pacing feels off. It becomes very grindy and not rewarding after some time. This is because the experience for skills decreases while its value also decreases: goining from 400% to 401% speed at level 4 takes 4 times longer than 100% to 101% and gives 1/4 of the value.
If you are game to change the exp scaling system, I suggest the one used by Increlution:
- Each skill has 2 kind of progression, one permanent and one that resets at the beginning of each loop.
- The exp gain for each kind is increased by speed: doing a given action with a x2 speed bonus gives the same amount of experience, you can gain x2 the experience in the same time compared to without the bonus.
- The exp required for each level scales twice as fast as its speed increases: gaining enough levels to get x2 speed makes progression x4 as slow
- The two progressions of a skill multiply each other, resulting in a 1:1 speed:exp ratio if they were allowed to be farmed forever, but since one resets every loop it slows down slowly
- This system encourages focusing on as few skills as possible each run, so it's best when the story prevents you from farming a single skill (This is currently possible with Engravings I think?)

I might try it out later, for now I really need to go to sleep.

Good luck! I'm looking forward to how your game develops!
 

Shadowdragon

Newbie
May 6, 2017
20
33
Not bad for an opening, I'll keep an eye on this one.

My thoughts on how to make it a little easier, and how to add some lore would be to make new enemy types worth 10 than 100 and so on as the game progresses, and thus make the jump from 8 to 13 (instead making it 10) a little more manageable while also giving a reason why 20 to 30 people going into the forest and never returning not seem as huge a problem. I don't know how many people are supposed to live in the nearby town, but 20 plus people going missing all at once could get some major attention there, whereas some wandering swordsman/woman getting paid to go search for the dozen people missing over several days could be seen as them skipping out on the work or getting lost, which would then add reason to why villagers would go with them the next time. (I imagine that you'd make such a thing eventually, but maybe for the next one or two versions this might get implemented.)

My magic was halfway to 13 by the time I'd finished the game, with my fight having gotten just past 14. My adaptability and construction were only about 4.5 and 6 respectively though, which might have been why it took me past the 34 fight to win. Part of the reason my stats got so high was that I figured I'd just push the stats until I could get 10 drones by the 5 fight, then just meditate or engrave as much as needed to get 5 masked to beat the 34 fight, then make the 5 mindless after I had the 5 masked. Maybe add an increment increase to meditation where you get more mana per meditation at certain stat points? Maybe make the incremental increases faster or make them more effective? I don't know how exactly to make this easier, but if your opening is too hard it might discourage players who might find the mechanics fun. I'd say save the hard part for mid to end game, that's where the time already put in will make players try to find more effective ways to play, though making the start too easy would set expectations out of balance with your planned difficulty curve. (Maybe make an optimal route to the objectives, with enough wiggle room that some things could be done out of order if the player chooses that gives additional or different dialogue for doing things in that order.)

For the save points, I don't know how you intend to implement them, but if you give the player too many, that would probably be nigh impossible to balance, as some players would be willing to go back to their first save point just to make their whole run more optimal, whereas giving only one might be seen as frustrating for others who have not been too optimal with their playthroughs and end up playing 5 minutes of content over and over again because their one save point is right before they have an impossible fight or whatever might come next for their stats. I'm not saying don't do it; I think it would be an interesting mechanic for this type of game, but that you'll need to be careful with it's implementation, or else some people will just go back to the beginning every time they die and have an easy 30 plus minutes of gameplay where they don't have any problems meeting whatever objectives you make, and preparing everything they can for the next section. As an example, I'd meditate in the first section until I had 30 mana, strengthen the effect, fill back up to 30 mana, prep the scroll, then fill up to 30 again before I'd wait for the paladins to show up so I could immediately summon the slime. This was because at that point, I'd seen that there would be a lot of time lost if I just waited that could have been used to increase my mana, and that would reduce the time used in the start to summon the first slime, which meant I could focus on increasing my max mana until the cost outgrew the amount it gave (And by my final run, I could do all that and have a new slime for the trap before the first fight took place). It may not have been optimal all things considered, but it was what I thought would be most effective in the situation.
 
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