I thought I would come and leave my thoughts since the dev is asking for feedback. My general feeling is that this game is developing well, but there are some things that stand out as a little bare. Below, I am going to intermix comments on the update on its own, and the game as a whole. I make a few suggestions which I do not think are particularly easy to implement, but I think would be beneficial; consider them being just me spitballing because I have no obligation to follow through on anything lol
The core gameplay loop did abruptly change with the Ravager, which I think was a good thing. In general, the previous version of the game felt very safe, in the sense that I could skip all heals and complete the whole game after getting a few upgrades, and I did not need to play differently ever. I could walk into every combat without swapping skills and annihilate everything I so desired with acceptable damage. This is a bit of a shame, since I would then never see the endings (which are the core fetish payoff in the game, imo) unless I decided to self-sabotage, which takes some of the fun out of it – I prefer that either bad luck or bad play forces me into a bad end. With the Ravager, and some of the reworked effects, I died due to sloppiness, which caught me off-guard. I like that! The Sovereign got a little scarier too due to rupture, and I find the Diabolist living long enough to get curses off more than once now. As an aside, though, the Ravager/Diabolist fight is probably harder than the Champion at this point, which makes selecting elite vs. minibosses odd in act II, since the miniboss is usually easier now… I think in terms of balancing, I would like to see the standard encounters stay at the same level of difficulty, and the Ravager/Diabolist should be the bar for minibosses, so I can still experience fear.
On a related note, I think the skill unlocking system needs some reconsideration. I think it is actually somewhat of a weak point for the game as-is. By this, I mean it allows me access to a single, consistent toolkit across all runs. Whenever I see an enemy that, say, dodges, I always can swap outmaneuver in on Aria, and I have a hard answer. I dislike that. If something like the Binding of Isaac gave me even a dim shadow of the access to my whole toolkit that Fataclysm does right now, it would be a strict downgrade, as it removes some of the more interesting decision-making I have to do in approaching combats. Analogously, I would like to see skills be something I randomly find within a run, capriciously, and I would like to see some that are variously better or worse than the ones in the game right now. I would imagine the base skills I start a run with would be less versatile in this hypothetical, so I would be incentivised to take any skill the game randomly awards me. Something like that, to spice up run variety, would be a big improvement for me, and this is just one proposal; I would be pretty happy with most things that add more variety or force different playstyles. As an added benefit, they may cause more losses, which is good when that is one of the main fetishistic payoffs in the current game. The equipment does currently offer some different playstyles at higher rarities, but I would just like to see more run variety. It could also mean you could have monkey’s paw events to offer the player a higher rarity skill or something like that, in exchange for a curse; more opporunities to incorporate risky decisions and the fetish stuff into gameplay.
The other front I would mention is the writing. Specifically, the Gourmand ending is very, very good. I think all of the endings are solid, though I have a definite preference for the second area endings, and the second place for me is the Soverign ending. I also think the characterization of everyone got better this update, and I would actually like to see more comments from them on inconsequential things for that reason. In a game like this, I think ocassionally having idle chatter between the characters on transitional screens could be nice, like how sometimes a character comments on entering combat, but instead for something more mundane, like a couple of sentences traded between characters on the environment, or something of that nature. It adds more characterization without forcing a whole new event just to communicate it.
A separate thing that I want to bring up (and it really is separate, I think these do different but related things!) is that I wish there was more kink stuff outside of the endings and character descriptions that involved the main party which last over a run. For an example, if I want to see something really juicy, the best stuff ends my run. For an example, in the Gourmand ending, the characters are corrupted, and then they aren’t. Maybe, you know, there could be a chance one of them keeps up that corrupted mindset on the next run, altering dialogue, and you either have to manually purge it, or it persists. Or, there could be events where there is a dramatic change to a character that does not end the run, but instead inflicts a curse, or something of that nature. None of these need to change visual assets, but they could change dialogue, or tint a photo or something to represent it without forcing you to regenerate images. I just like continuity, and the feeling that the characters have backslid somehow, or were changed, in a way that persists. It does not feel like persistence if it only happens in a “you lose” cutscene. The curses somewhat fill this niche, but none can happen early in the run without the Gourmand, so I often do not get to see them evolve.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I am curious to see where you take this. In case it did not come across above, I am positive about the project, and I hope my spitballing is productive in at least underscoring what I mean. Good luck on development!
Stuff like more dialogue to give characters and enemies more characterization will definitely be added in the future, but currently they’re not a super high priority. I imagine that the start of systems like that will probably start popping up a couple of updates down the road, though.