Alrighty, so I've read through the thread and replies from the creator. Here are some thoughts...
I play a lot of Rogue like games and think I'm fairly good at them, having played a lot of RTS in my life. I understand the mechanics and play style you're going for here with the zones. On a paper level, it's all there.
But there's a certain point as a dev you have to think about what's more valuable - making the game challenging, or making the game fun? The two aren't mutually exclusive, but there can sometimes be a clash here. As others have mentioned, there's a big risk/reward factor to this game, along with luck like in any roguelike game, and the idea is to play repeatedly to learn the best strategies. BUT, there's also a threshold where gameplay just ends up being tedious more than it is difficult. It's no longer challenging when the strategies have already been figured out, and you're just waiting/hoping to get the right hand on a run to maximize your chances of winning.
There should still ultimately be a balance in roguelike games between having some influence from luck, while the majority of it still being based on skill.
It also doesn't help that the rounds take a long time, once enemies stack up. As some have mentioned, it'd be great to have a speed up function. But as for solving this within the actual gameplay, it would also benefit to be able to kill enemies faster. Having both player and enemies able to kill each other faster mutually is ultimately more fun than both player and enemies having such low damage amounts, resulting in super slow and repetitive turns. After a few losses and reading from others, I've gotten the flow of things now but it's not necessarily fun, or exciting, or even rewarding to kill enemies after a point. It just feels repetitive, and not in a good way (obviously with roguelike games, repetition is part of the genre).
In the end, it's up to you how you want the game to be, of course, and you have to make a game that is fun to you. But in order for a game to succeed, you also want community feedback to be heard. It'd be cool to see more progression of the characters within a match. Typically in roguelike games, you have fast progressions whether from leveling up or finding items, and you don't really have that pacing here.
The UI could probably be improved later on to be cleaner and more clear as well.
The artwork is great though. Love the character designs. Would be great eventually to see animations as well instead of the static images. Excited to see this keep developing!
I play a lot of Rogue like games and think I'm fairly good at them, having played a lot of RTS in my life. I understand the mechanics and play style you're going for here with the zones. On a paper level, it's all there.
But there's a certain point as a dev you have to think about what's more valuable - making the game challenging, or making the game fun? The two aren't mutually exclusive, but there can sometimes be a clash here. As others have mentioned, there's a big risk/reward factor to this game, along with luck like in any roguelike game, and the idea is to play repeatedly to learn the best strategies. BUT, there's also a threshold where gameplay just ends up being tedious more than it is difficult. It's no longer challenging when the strategies have already been figured out, and you're just waiting/hoping to get the right hand on a run to maximize your chances of winning.
There should still ultimately be a balance in roguelike games between having some influence from luck, while the majority of it still being based on skill.
It also doesn't help that the rounds take a long time, once enemies stack up. As some have mentioned, it'd be great to have a speed up function. But as for solving this within the actual gameplay, it would also benefit to be able to kill enemies faster. Having both player and enemies able to kill each other faster mutually is ultimately more fun than both player and enemies having such low damage amounts, resulting in super slow and repetitive turns. After a few losses and reading from others, I've gotten the flow of things now but it's not necessarily fun, or exciting, or even rewarding to kill enemies after a point. It just feels repetitive, and not in a good way (obviously with roguelike games, repetition is part of the genre).
In the end, it's up to you how you want the game to be, of course, and you have to make a game that is fun to you. But in order for a game to succeed, you also want community feedback to be heard. It'd be cool to see more progression of the characters within a match. Typically in roguelike games, you have fast progressions whether from leveling up or finding items, and you don't really have that pacing here.
The UI could probably be improved later on to be cleaner and more clear as well.
The artwork is great though. Love the character designs. Would be great eventually to see animations as well instead of the static images. Excited to see this keep developing!
