Thank you all for the feedback. Most comments seem to be about the difficulty.
Before addressing the individual comments, let me just let me just state what I'm trying to do with this game and what I don't want to do:
I think this site has a strong bias towards Visual Novels - that's fine, my other game is also one - but there should also be room for games that are challenging, have true gameplay, are hard, and that take some time to get good at. I want this game to be hard, but fair. The idea is that good players can beat it consistently, but bad players can't.
In essence, you need a certain skill level to get by. You need to pick cards that synergize well to create powerful combos. You need to know your enemies to save your best cards for the harder ones. You need to know when to add cards, remove, upgrade, spend money, save it, which clothes store to go, etc. There's lots of decisions to make and all of them matter. Bad decisions will end your run.
I got through 2 or 3 levels very easily without really understanding the rules, but then very quickly got a top row of a Cock Blocker, a Cold Blood and a Toxic, which meant that I couldn't do anything, so I just got bored and stopped playing.
Good concept but needs a bit of balancing and work. You can easily get into a position where you can't win at all. And cock blocker can be given to characters far too powerful to be able to negate. Its too easy early on to have all the wrong cards to win.
Has any of you played any roguelike like Slay the Spire, Ring of Pain, Hades, Dead Cells, Faster than Light, etc? Did you win at the first try? Would the difficulty curve of those games be better if anyone could win the first time they play those games?
I can win the demo 90-95% of the time, so I disagree that it's too easy to have all the wrong cards. But, you need to make the right decisions, that's what makes this kind of games fun: some players can consistently reach the end of the game, while others can't pass the first levels. This means that there is skill involved.
This doesn't mean the difficulty curve is okay as it is. I'm just saying that I don't want the game to be so easy that anyone can beat it at the first try, wihtout even understanding the rules. It's okay to lose in that case. You should have to learn the mechanics, the cards, etc, and get good.
That being said, this is just the demo and the difficulty curve is adjusted to be somewhat of a challenge to reach the end of the demo. Once the game has all the levels, I'm make the beginning a bit easier. And will add more difficulties so that experienced players have a bigger challenge. It will be hard to balance all of this, but that's also the fun part of game design.
Be very careful about including cards etc that stop the player from being able to do things, as this can easily make the game tedious and frustrating very quickly.
There a multiple cards and equipment that can negate the effects. The update included new cards that specifically negate Cockblocker.
Not that I can't disagree. Its frustrating to lose a run due to no saving between the levels and you also have to be lucky with the shops to get equipment that compliments each other and your cards.
There also may be mechanics too unfair like the cockblocker. I think there are enough options to deal with it, but maybe those options are just inherently unfun. Maybe that effect should just be taken out of the game, I'm not sure.
The randomness can be punishing at times. On my first attempt I faced the Taunt rival with the Weaken activity at the start of a level. Hand management can also be a chore as you are forced to play cards to draw new ones; it would be much nicer if you could discard cards to try and find answers to your problem.
Yeah, I've had that same thought on my mind. Currently, there is a deck archetype that benefits from having cards in the discard pile. Being able to just discard any card would make that archetype broken. So, I've kept things like this for now.
But I may add new game modes in the future that allow for stuff like that - perhaps by adding a new girl that plays differently, the same way that Splay the Spire also has several hero's with different mechanics. Could be fun to try to come up with different game rules for new girls and see how that affects the gameplay.
I feel like the game could be more generous with its rewards. I enjoy the game, but not enough to grind to the end 15 times. I reached the end with Miriam twice and already feel like I need to become efficient if I want to complete the collection, instead of enjoying the game.
It's just the demo with the first levels, the rewards system are a bit wonky thanks to that. The plan is to have plenty of rewards that you keep earning by playing the game, similar to ring of pain: finish the game with a certain style card, or hand card, or in a new difficulty level, or in less than X turns, or.... we can think of fun challenges that just makes the player wanting to try different things and have fun doing it, while naturally unlocking the rewards and it never feeling like a chore.
That's not the case at this time with just this demo, but I hope it gets better in future updates.
Wow. This is incredible. Great gameplay and hot art.
But please give me an option to save the game mid way through a run
The game already saves automatically at the beginning of each level (there's an indication on the top left corner each time the autosave is triggered). You can quit and come back any time you want, just exit the game and then, when you come back, click on Continue.
There is just one save file though. If you start a new game, the old one gets erased.
Needs save game option, at least at the end of each level. It's annoying to start from level 1 each time we fail.
Like mentioned above: you can already do that. Click "ESC" on your keyboard, click on "Main Menu", click on "Continue" and you're back to the start of your last level. This might be less useful than you think because you're still with the same deck and clothes. Bad decisions compound over time, you may reach a level which is impossible to beat with the choices you made previously.
I didn't even bother to look at the hands.
Let me know if you find images with 6 fingers to fix them. I swear I can't tell anymore and miss basic shit. Can't even count until 5 properly anymore.
Is this game just about groping?
Working with ai makes you gain a hand and groping fetish. That's all this game is about, fucking hands.
