I am so sorry, but your game is just too hard. As of this review, nobody can even claim the "Beat the game with no deaths medal" yet.
It's frustrating because this is a fantastic challenging game with great sound direction and good design decisions like letting you demolish buildings while receiving 100% of the money back for them, but the whole thing was built around the player losing and trying again with more resources while at the same time offering an achievement for beating it with no losses.
I appreciate you patching the game too, but this is an insane measure of difficulty.
This is amazing, will it ever be possible to play without the UI?
The hide UI button is great for screenshots but playing without it would be splendid!
It's a pretty good roguelike, but I do have some complaints.
The plasma shot can move way too fast for a human being at the higher upgraded speed levels, the AI can use a speedy plasma shot to hit your planet in the blink of an eye.
I don't like the need to level up to get more starting money. while in theory a player could beat the campaign the first time, it's extremely unlikely vs playing again and again to get a larger starting bonus.
Missiles need to glow either red or blue to let players know if it's their missile or not., I wasted two shields before realizing the missile was reflected and flying on a wide arc away from my planet and towards the enemy. For a weapon so deadly it's easy to not actually see it since it lacks bright colors like every other projectile in the game has.
I like the idea of the railgun, but it's frustrating to fight the AI using one, it hits instantly and the AI has near instant reflexes vs the player. I found my guns getting shot before the enemy railgun was even fully on screen to act against it.
I need a target reticule to help me aim, it's extremely difficult to line up emp and reflector shots while the AI will have no problem hitting a moving target.
Overall, I love what this game sets out to do, and it's definitely one of the better roguelikes I've seen.
First of all thank you for taking the time to write all that down! I think you have found excellent "complaints" (let's call them "areas capable of improvement" ;-) ) for your feedback as I
think they are all valid points:
The plasma shot is fast, yes, but it also has a charge-up phase so you are able to prepare for the incoming shot. However you need to estimate where the shot will land when it is accelerating
which is challenging but you have all the time to think about it as the game pauses while you have the shield selected.
Regarding the starting money I agree with you: It should not be the point of the game having to level up first before you stand a chance at beating it. I think I might need to adjust the
amount the player get at level 0 after I have collected more feedback. I don't want to make it to easy either, it would be ideal if you die in the campaign because you made the wrong
decisions, but not because you did not get enough money to get the job done ;-)
I have little to say in defense for the thing you wrote about the missiles. You are absolutely right with this (especially the part of damage vs. visibility!), and I will definetly improve
this for future versions.
The AI is artifically slowed down at the moment to simulate "thinking time", if you watch closely you might notice that it is not using guns even if they would be available. But it definetly
has an advantage when it comes to selecting guns: A Gun is "selectable" as soon as it is visible on the screen, if there is a pixel you can click on, you can select it. Same goes for the AI,
unfortunately the AI is far better at "clicking on single pixels" than a human player. I might tone that down a bit to make it fairer for us poor human beings ;-)
Do you mean having a different mouse cursor for having a "target reticule"? That is a very good idea, it would also communicate "this Weapon will fire now if you click" to the player.
Thanks again for writing all this, it is hard getting feedback for your game, but if you get feedback with detailed explanations and even proposals on how to improve it is even more valuable.
I cannot promise that I will be able to fix all of these points for a future version of the game, but I will definetly consider all of them to make a good decision on what / how to improve.
Most players on the top 30 list have a win / loss ratio of 1.0, even after hundreds of games. While I do love how accessible and streamlined everything is, skill and planning are always overwhelmed by luck in this game.
Players need a way to force a refresh of the map, a different gem generation sequence to avoid combos just blindly being handed to the player or a way to predict which new gems will spawn in, because at the moment a win can simply be handed to you or the other player by random chance.
Also, I have played 11 games. Please give me some character customization options already. I have no idea why you decided to force players to play again and again just to unlock the chance to buy a hat. This is becoming a grindfest.
Is poker luck based? Maybe it is if you look at one game, but in long run, it's all about strategy/calculations. Anyway, the best player with almost 4800 games so far have skill ratio 2.3, thats not exactly average...
Thats why many people make living on playing poker and other people lost fortune.
4800 games is more than enough to deduce conclusions - if it would be purely luck based game, he should also have skill ratio around 1, not 2.3
About the customizations: If you played 11 games and think that is more than enough, why do you need to buy new armors if you do not plan to play anymore? All the customizations is available to anyone who create new character, but armors and weapons unlocks at level 9.
I like the secret alternate style of play you included by giving the player a free upgrade, reroll chance and +2 health by playing through levels without collecting coins. However it is WAY too hard to navigate the levels without accidentally collecting a coin.
I'm trying to beat 9 levels coinless and I will always end up running into sections where there is a coin located just below a drop, or in the way of a passageway. Level six onward I just collect coins normally because I'll scan the map before I start and realize I'm going to have to collect a coin to proceed.
That is intended to be extremely challenging. Think of it as every coin being a one hit kill. That being said, I tried to make it so the levels didn't spawn with coins in the way, but it doesn't always work. Keep trying though, only one person (other than me) has gotten the medal!
There are no clear choices I can make when it comes to staying alive. Give me a choice, I need some risk and reward mechanics or else it's just going to see pointless to do anything in your game.
I stop on a planet and lose 25 hull and fuel because why? Because this game was made for the Procedural Death Jam?
I'm sorry to tell this but you were right... It is random and hard because it was made for Procedural Death Jam xD
After each playthrough you get XP and level ups buff your starting stats. There is a point. You play the game, you learn the rules of it's cruel world and you're level-uping eventually. So on one hand we have some kind of tutorial and on the other hand you are closer to the happy end with the each playthrough (something like Rogue Legacy).
Plenty of things I liked, I liked how your fire rate increased as you took damage in Act 3, I liked the creativity and polish you put into a "simple" concept like a mouse avoider game.
But the thing I liked the most of all, was that there was no true "bad" ending.
You leave it up to the player to decide what the true consequences of his/her actions are and you don't just beat us over the head with if we got the "good ending" or not.
The first time I played through, I chose the contain ending because I didn't really feel like the Dr. would be the suicidal glory type. Lo' and behold, Mary and the organization kept up their end of the deal! If they would use the particle to do terrible things, you don't reveal, but I am glad I played your game and I enjoyed every bit of it.
NICE! You really picked out some cool details like the fire rate increase. It's very satisfying to find that someone truly enjoyed the story, so thanks!