Cute little game! I really like the ideas in hand here and the upgrade system is nice to play around with too. That said, it stunk to see the food resource almost immediately drop in value by mid-game - not to mention how difficult it is to even see the benefits of it past make some cute ladies fat. I also question why include negative stat upgrades in the pillar rooms to begin with? Maybe for more ambitious “lower this makes this higher” risk reward, but often times it would just keep me from trying out particular playstyles since the option I’d want to take would be negative.
The glitches are pretty bad too, hurts to see a good run end due to the game just crashing on loading another room. Or interacting with the pillar before it’s ready and not actually get an upgrade. Or - and this is less a glitch and more a complaint since I want to wrap this all together quickly and move back to the good things - diving into the door the same frame you defeat the last enemy and rob yourself the ability to loot.
I don’t think they’re deal breakers though. The gameplay loop is solid, the music and sound effect variety really helps with that too. I respect the ambition at work here and I hope it’s the start to exciting new ideas in the future!
it stunk to see the food resource almost immediately drop in value by mid-game - not to mention how difficult it is to even see the benefits of it past make some cute ladies fat.
I do think I left the food spawnrate a little high, yeah. You can press E to use food to heal/overheal, so the idea was you’d have to make a judgement call between ‘prolonging your current run’ and ‘feeding your goddesses to make yourself stronger on your next one.’
Feeding goddesses increases the benefits you gain from pylons. So feeding the goddess of damage means you’ll get a higher damage buff from pylons.
why include negative stat upgrades in the pillar rooms to begin with?
Some artifacts reward the player for certain playstyles, so the idea was to incentivize said playstyles. E.G the lone wolf charm gives you more damage whenever there aren’t any wisps on screen, so theoretically you’d want to reduce your Wisps’ lifespans in order to maximize the damage buff. Or the “Return to Sender” artifact makes your wisps explode at the end of their lifespan, so theoretically if you upgraded Wisp damage enough and reduced Wisp lifespan, you could kill a single enemy and then watch as the Wisps immediately take out every other enemy in the room.
The glitches are pretty bad too, hurts to see a good run end due to the game just crashing on loading another room. Or interacting with the pillar before it’s ready and not actually get an upgrade. Or - and this is less a glitch and more a complaint since I want to wrap this all together quickly and move back to the good things - diving into the door the same frame you defeat the last enemy and rob yourself the ability to loot.
I never actually ran into any of these glitches while playtesting, so I’m not sure what could be happening :o
I do know that picking up the Trial Pass artifact can ruin a run because the rooms won’t finish loading due to some enemy spawning bug, but other than that I’m not sure of any reason why the game would freeze or crash.
I’m not sure why pylons ‘deactivate before the room is over,’ because there’s no code that does that, and the code that is there only runs whenever the room is empty.
I tried to add a timer to the door, but I did notice that there have been some issues with it. I wanted to fix it but ran out of time
I’m glad you seemed to enjoy the rest though! Again, sorry for those issues :[
You NEED to make a confirm button for the upgrades that show up in the dungeon, every time I try to get close enough for the info on them to pop up it ends up taking it instead.
Something I wish I was able to incorporate, but due to time constraints and learning the new engine, I was unable to :[
Like I don’t actually know for sure what the little wisp things are, or how they help me
A more detailed intro/tutorial sequence was planned, but had to be cut :[ I’ve seen a few people get confused by the Wisps, which is unfortunate, so I’ll try to keep that in mind for future games!
Sometimes pots don’t shatter
Unfortunately a bug I’m still trying to fix :[ Gdevelop is wonky and I think I was stretching its limits a bit with this game, as it started falling apart at the seams near the end. As the game jam came to an end, I didn’t have much time to worry about fixing them.
I don’t like the gameplay loop
That’s okay! Everyone has their own tastes in games, and this was my first experience with making a roguelike :] that + the 14 (more like 7) day time limit meant I really had to work fast (and a little sloppily at times).
I’m sorry that you had a negative experience. I hope I can do better in the future!
I didn’t know this mechanic existed. Nothing in the game seems to mention this so I didn’t try, I do like that idea though. Some games include a “getting larger also leads to you being an easier target” in this year’s Jam so that may be a thought to do if you’re looking to avoid spamming food through runs with the current food spawn rate.
I think that Lone Wolf upped my damage pretty high even with wisps? I thought it was “higher damage but wisps no longer spawn” and since they were spawning anyways and I was getting damage, I just rolled with it lol. I think it’s a good idea to have that, but I feel like you’d need to do a fair amount of tweaking to get it to feel better. As it is, it never feels worth it.
This is DEFINITELY it. I did grab Trial Pass a couple times and those must have been the runs that ended abruptly. Mostly I grabbed it because my health was full and I wanted something out of those rooms lol. Not entirely sure about the pylon either. Maybe it tries to avoid immediate activation when the player is touching it to avoid some sort of soft lock or something? And then from there I guess it just locks up entirely. Worth experimenting with. Time definitely kills a lot of us, really hurt our own project in the end lol
I didn’t know this mechanic existed. Nothing in the game seems to mention this so I didn’t try, I do like that idea though.
It’s on the main menu. I was going to put a full tutorial in, but didn’t have time :[
some games include a “getting larger also leads to you being an easier target” in this year’s Jam so that may be a thought
Eating isn’t negative, but overhealing slows you down. I could also consider a speed buff at lower HP or something in a similar vain :]
I thought it was “higher damage but wisps no longer spawn” and since they were spawning anyways
Yeah, unfortunately during the panic of the last 24 hours (which is when I actually coded in the pylons and artifacts, arguably the two most important mechanics. oops!) I forgot to disable wisp spawns when you pick up that artifact. Oh well!
You did great with what you did so no worries <3
Thank you so much, that really means a lot to hear! I know negative feedback is expected, but seeing it still made me freak out a little eheh, so I’m glad you had a good time regardless! That’s what matters most to me :]
I’m unsure! The game should take you back to the main menu after buying the final upgrade, after which point you can reload your save to continue playing from where you left off, or you can clear your data to start over.
Unfortunately, if this isn’t working then I’m not sure how to fix it, as Gdevelop’s saving system is a clunky mess :[ I’m sorry!
Known issue when picking up the Trial Pass artifact due to the way it changes the enemy spawns. I forgot to change a line of code so it still expects the old system, thus the new system never triggers the room transition to end Just make sure to avoid picking it up. Apologies for the inconvenience!
Thank you so much for your feedback, I’m glad you had fun! That’s one of the most flattering things people can say ;w;
I’m not sure if you can find a way to open it up, but if you do then feel free to poke around! Just please don’t do anything malicious; e.g reuploading it as your own, adding malicious code to it and reposting it, etc.
I really really hope you can keep updating this game after the gain jam, I love this kind of games and now wit wg it’s even better!, you did a great job
I don’t have any plans currently to update it, since the code got messier and messier as the jam started to end and I frantically cobbled the rest of the code together lol, but I do have plans on making more roguelites in the future!
despite all the cons that I met when playing this game, it is one of the few games that I do not delete for curvature / fatal errors or after passing, I’m really glad that I downloaded it for the second time without expecting much from it “I’ve never been so wrong”
if many here have doubts whether to download it or not,
download at least for the fact that it is fast and quite working, maybe you can even go through the second time (the main thing is to download another archive, without saves, this game does not need them)
Well, if the first thing to mention, when you start playing, is when you enter the room, and the ghost is already shooting at you (but this is not a bug but a feature, as I think, which makes you always be attentive).
crooked save, in fact, the game on the first playthrough can be a bit difficult, but in reality it is fast and even unpretentious.
I read about some kind of artifact that breaks the game and does not allow the room to be generated, it happened a couple of times, and of course this is not good.
a common problem in small games like this is the depreciation of the currency, yes there is a trader but he was extremely rare on my way (I saw him several times).
That seems to be all I can remember.
and yes, either make the font readable enough for the translator, or make an image that will speak for itself, or 3, make a short text, not everyone knows English well here, this would be desirable for understanding.
Oh yeah, I ended up using a script with QuickBMS to peek around. I don’t reupload any games, I mostly just wanted to stare at the cute cat’s sprites tbh >///>
Just make sure to avoid picking it up. Apologies for the inconvenience!