Really liked the game, though it ended up crashing on the stair down of 0-12
Ended up with a decent hoard of potions, which was nice. Roughly 15 big potions, and pretty good gold-tier equipment. Thought I was going to be able to take down the wizard with no problem!
Further to the other comments, I wonder if there's room to further explore the gold mechanic?
- Returning to the shop requires going back up through the dungeon, which is really time-consuming and not worth the effort. This makes collecting gold somewhat redundant.
- Going from the town to the dungeon rerolls it, which punishes the player for returning to the surface
- The shop prices seem very steep given the lack of gold in the dungeons (50 gold for a ring/amulet?)
Some food for thought:
Should gold persist after death?
If so, what could it be spent on that would create a new run-death-run progression loop?
If you can make returning to the town more worthwhile, it's maybe worth borrowing the elevator-to-surface every x floors mechanic other roguelikes have employed. Again, what should persist between runs?
Maybe have shopkeepers rescuable from the dungeon, so that your town is more stocked on your next run?
I had originally planned on adding scrolls to the game, specifically a Scroll of Recall, for this exact purpose, but then I ran out of tokens in PICO-8 and was not able to do so. I realize the gold now is kind of pointless. I may at some point try to add it, but I will have to remove other features from the game, such as enemy types, to free up some tokens.
Hi there! Played for a bit and got to ~D:9 and figured I'd offer some feedback. Definitely awesome work here and this game had a lot to offer, thanks for making it!
What I liked:
Angband style floor refreshing, though it made it pretty easy to abuse getting the best possible gear for each floor. I ended up just bouncing back and forth between the gray and green dungeon themes until i had the best gear that green had to offer (the previous floors made it obvious that there wasn't too much variance in gear).
Sprites. Though the static sprites were kinda hard to tell what they were supposed to be, I loved the art overall and especially loved the animation of the player sprite and torches, just a nice touch.
UI. Having made pico8 games myself there's a lot to handle in roguelike UI design, and I think you did about as well as you could with the inventory management parts!
What I didn't like as much :)
As the other poster said, the healing was rough. Please either implement a menu option that allows the player to immediately rest to full or remove passive healing entirely. Your players can and will do everything possible to optimize so fighting that battle ends up just making your players miserable. If it's EVER possible to gain a "free" advantage, your players will do that so just decide now if you want to balance your game around the idea that every room will have the player at full health or not.
The game length is definitely overtuned. The amount of variety/content is not enough for 16 levels with how long it takes to complete a floor. You could easily cut it in half and double the XP enemies award or something in that vein.
Not sure if intentional, but the ability to reroll floors on every stair made it easy to abuse equipment. Given enough time the player can get the best possible gear on the first room of every new dungeon floor.
Thanks for checking it out! Getting the balance and pacing right has definitely been a struggle. The limitations of PICO-8 make it all the more difficult as well. I appreciate the feedback.
Very nice for a first pico-8 game, couldn't find any bugs, enjoyed the variety of gear and enemies along with the general simple yet consistent and effective aesthetic. Something that might be worth improving is that while I appreciate a true dungeon crawl experience being a bit grueling I was often concerned about my time, I found having to wait after almost every room to 'rest' to be too long, along with how long it would take to find the stairs to the next level. Considering there's 16 levels and it took me about 20 minutes to get to the third level, I don't think I'l be resetting my progress and playing again until the game's pacing is sped up by around twice of what it is now. Good job finishing your first pico-8 game! If you'd like to talk with my more about this I'm at twitter @illMadeCoder.
Thanks for the feedback. You do actually gain 1 HP per 20 turns so if you keep moving you will also heal. The rest mechanic was more so you can wait for enemies to come to you; the healing was more of a bonus and I didn't want it to be abused as it would make things a bit too easy. Thanks for checking it out!
Right, but even if you don't 'want it to be abused' it will be. The cost trade off of me spending 3 minutes resting or moving around randomly to heal vs the 20+ minutes it would take to get back to that point in the game if I hadn't done that is too obvious in one side of the scale.
Hi! Haven't played yet. In the old CASTLE OF THE WINDS, there was a similar mechanic where you could rest to full health, but every X turns new enemies would spawn at either staircase, and often get a free attack on you because you were sleeping or something. Thats could be some kind of clock that does'nt require to add more stuff.
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I like it alot
Really liked the game, though it ended up crashing on the stair down of 0-12
Ended up with a decent hoard of potions, which was nice. Roughly 15 big potions, and pretty good gold-tier equipment. Thought I was going to be able to take down the wizard with no problem!
Ah that's unfortunate. I haven't been able to make it crash for a while, I wonder what caused it. Thanks for checking it out.
Further to the other comments, I wonder if there's room to further explore the gold mechanic?
- Returning to the shop requires going back up through the dungeon, which is really time-consuming and not worth the effort. This makes collecting gold somewhat redundant.
- Going from the town to the dungeon rerolls it, which punishes the player for returning to the surface
- The shop prices seem very steep given the lack of gold in the dungeons (50 gold for a ring/amulet?)
Some food for thought:
Should gold persist after death?
If so, what could it be spent on that would create a new run-death-run progression loop?
If you can make returning to the town more worthwhile, it's maybe worth borrowing the elevator-to-surface every x floors mechanic other roguelikes have employed. Again, what should persist between runs?
Maybe have shopkeepers rescuable from the dungeon, so that your town is more stocked on your next run?
I had originally planned on adding scrolls to the game, specifically a Scroll of Recall, for this exact purpose, but then I ran out of tokens in PICO-8 and was not able to do so. I realize the gold now is kind of pointless. I may at some point try to add it, but I will have to remove other features from the game, such as enemy types, to free up some tokens.
Hi there! Played for a bit and got to ~D:9 and figured I'd offer some feedback. Definitely awesome work here and this game had a lot to offer, thanks for making it!
What I liked:
What I didn't like as much :)
Thanks again for the game!
Thanks for checking it out! Getting the balance and pacing right has definitely been a struggle. The limitations of PICO-8 make it all the more difficult as well. I appreciate the feedback.
Thanks for the feedback. You do actually gain 1 HP per 20 turns so if you keep moving you will also heal. The rest mechanic was more so you can wait for enemies to come to you; the healing was more of a bonus and I didn't want it to be abused as it would make things a bit too easy. Thanks for checking it out!
Right, but even if you don't 'want it to be abused' it will be. The cost trade off of me spending 3 minutes resting or moving around randomly to heal vs the 20+ minutes it would take to get back to that point in the game if I hadn't done that is too obvious in one side of the scale.
Oh yeah I definitely get that it will be abused and why. This is why so many RLs have a hunger clock haha.
Hi! Haven't played yet. In the old CASTLE OF THE WINDS, there was a similar mechanic where you could rest to full health, but every X turns new enemies would spawn at either staircase, and often get a free attack on you because you were sleeping or something. Thats could be some kind of clock that does'nt require to add more stuff.
Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Thanks!