This was a nice find - and actually kept me awake way too late yesterday.
I'm blaming the lack of sleep for the presentation of the following mix of feedback/suggestions:
The start of the game, and the first 3 loops where super nice - really did capture the feeling of trying, going a bit further, failing, and reaching a bit further...
.. if we exclude the bug while trying to pick girl (can do boy > girl and apparently start the first run as girl so it's not that bad, but still a bug)
The gameplay part is decent too, it's adequately engaging and is promising on the game future!
... Until you reach the last two objective, that need a really lot of time to complete. Getting to the point you can MC your first villager is a significant leap in effort needed to clear the objective, and the last one is no better.
Staying stuck too long on the same objective / wave without clearing give a feeling of stagnation ; at a point I felt like I didn't really had much to do instead of failing run to start the next one with slightly better stats.
Having to redo all scenes, and the start part while enslaving the paladin don't really help either. Redoing the same talk bit become more of a chore after some runs ; it would be really nice to add either alternative choices when you reach specific points/trigger, or alternatively a "skip" button for already completed event.
Save point would be indeed nice to avoid redoing these (and be able to rewatch when wanted), but the gameplay bit to unlock theses will not be the most engaging new user's experience.
On the UI/UX/control/gameplay side of things:
- meditation feel like a thing you do when you don't have much else to do, I think it would be pretty great to put out of the summon tab and make it available everywhere
- I do really wish there was unit/upgrade that give passive mana regeneration, and/or have smarter worker that could do task too (as in: multiple action at the same time! time to put that poor Selene to work?)
- speaking of action bar... I assume the game chain action until you can't do these anymore. Which become a tad annoying when you wanted to build a single slime cell and got two because you where too busy on another tab. Suggestion here is: more control on how many time things are done ; or when they stop could be great!
- other point of frustration: loosing a bit of time here and there between swapping the action you do. Having action queue after the current one instead of replacing them would be, for me, *chief kiss* (that may be contrary to the kind of feeling/wanted dev may try ot achieve, but personally I think that would work great: I don't really look at that kind of game as trying to micromanage timings, but that may be the dev's target)
- being able to continue the previous action you did before getting interrupted by the human raid would be nice too (as in, not loosing part of the work. I'm half done scribbling on the walls, why can't I continue from there!) - that one is definitively up to taste tho.
- finally, I'm not personally fond of the hunt's implementation: the fact it makes the village more wary/aggressive is a nice idea, but the current implementation lean into precise timing optimization again (which is again a matter of taste). Having the wave's strength depend on the number of killed mob could be an alternative
I'm definitively in favor of having more variety of enemy, and most importantly stronger enemy (as in, instead of 13 villagers, 4 guards with a power of 3 and 1 villager may be a nicer flavor).
That would also heavily impact the strength of the slime trap: they would suddenly be worth way more battle point when you deploy these (and incidentally, make deploying slime a viable strategy to try to survive and push further in the wave - if that ever become relevant)
And to finish: image's name! Not all OS are case-incensitive, and booting the game on a linux result in some picture not being loaded (since the game try to load them with a caps). this is pretty minor, but may affect more user if the game is ever hosted on a server (I assume some may be case sensitive too)
And to sum that up, nice start, can't wait to see more of Selene! (I did hope she'll stay on the tsun side, but I assume she's brainwashed for good now. owell)
Ça sent la baguette par ici !
You can also blame me for having the double speed bug in my game that completely ruined the balance for your lack of sleep. of the game (will be fixed 0.5 and the game rebalanced accordingly).
My original plan was to allow the player to reincarnate at different checkpoint unlocked as the game progresses, but I think I'll just somehow add the ability to skip events/make shorter version of them. That was already planned with conquest (I had idea like if you have 100 fighting power you can launch the event to conquer the town, but with 1000ish you can just instantly capture without bothering strategy to justify this) but I think I should extend this principle to the tutorial. Will require a bit of work, but reincarnating mean saving every single progress the player has made which is work too, and probably less elegant.
Thank you and SlothOnMeth for the idea!
As I said the last 2 objective being super slow is probably linked to the double speed bug, I could complete them with 7/8 in meditation because I was permanently playing under double speed (since I spend most of my time coding instead of playing double speed time accumulated on my runs), and because notoriety bar wasn't affected by double speed my run were way too easy compared to most player.
UI/UX changes:
-Meditate will be moved out of the tab, as someone else already suggested, same with the stop action button.
-Action amount and queue is planned but this one might be a bit complex to implement, so I don't think it'll be in 0.5 as I have lots of things that are more important to do. Maybe 0.6
-Human raid interuption might be changed, but it's low priority for sure
-I like the fact that human raid lead to this kind of optimization, I feel like it makes sense, if you're about to get attacked anyway, make sens to make your move when that happens. It can be boring after a few times, but it isn't needed to complete the game, just make it a bit faster, and once you have 3 mindless slave in 0.5, you'll be able to "spend" them to guard your forest and remove the penalty.
My original plan was to add different ennemies when you conquer the village but reset enemy count to 1, this way, knowing when you'll capture the village will be important (For now it'll be good to capture them as late as possible, but I'll try to find ideas to get the player different advantage in capturing it early I'll see).
I'll try to investigate this case sensitive problem and think of a solution.
Thank you for your previous feedback it will really helps me improve the game.
Oof, yeah, that'll do it. I was about to ask whether there's some other stat affecting things that wasn't mentioned, like if increasing maximum mana increased meditation speed, because I literally can't think of anything that would improve my build order without completing the 21 strength wave (which shouldn't be possible at the recommended stats). Having the *entire game* be twice as efficient from the offscreen boost to it is ironically punishing for people giving the game their full attention. (Though "punishing" may be an understatement when the game is literally unwinnable.)
Hehe... I feel stupid, but for sure it'll be fixed 0.5 and the game rebalanced accordingly.
I would strongly advise you against making checkpoints.
You already have a much more elegant solution available which is to change how the starting events happen due to knowledge you gain from later in a playthrough. There aren't really meaningful choices in the starting sequence now but there easily could be many more.
Maybe building a mask will give you an additional choice when handling the three masks again in the very beginning of the game.
Maybe making the mindless slave will give you an additional option with the mind control spell in the beginning of the game.
Maybe the player can choose their game goals for that particular playthrough only.
Maybe the player can choose specific bonuses for that particular playthrough only.
This way the player has reason to want to go through the starting sequence again to see what has changed and to choose different options (like the gender option is now) instead of seeing it as a nuisance that they want to skip through. Of course some of it can be abbreviated later on, modified, replaced, etc.
Since restarting the game over and over again is part of the main gameplay loop it would greatly benefit from the storyline being frontloaded and densely tied into the beginning.
If the player can go through the beginning differently each time, seeing different story beats, gaining different bonuses and goals, there would no longer be one single optimal build order to mindlessly go through every time. If you manage to make the starting sequence more fleshed out it will exponentially increase replay value.
Putting loads more fap images into the game can't hurt either.
Yeah great suggestion, I mean I already did that, in some ways but I thought I would only limit remaking the tutorial events to add content, didn't think about possible skip. In 0.5 you unlock "rituals" that are permanent upgrades. My plan was to make an upgrade that allow you to select a checkpoint when you die, but instead I think it would be cool to give a ritual give you "mindless slave" at the start, use it on Selene, and order her to capture her allies, the good news is it could just "skip" the scenes until I rewrite them, this way this allow me to get a quick fix to the tutorial spam, without having to think of the elegant solutions immediatly.
Thank you for your feedback, not only it helps a lot, but also motivate me to work harder! *get back to coding*
