The village kobolds are back, bigger and better than ever before! Plunge the depths of a randomized dungeon to win a vacation that you oh-so-desperately deserve.
This is pretty cool, but there’s some janky bits, like picking stuff up and putting it down. Maybe just using spacebar to pick up and put down objects would work better?
Also, I feel like the spawn rate of enemies is way too high. It’s not that they’re hard to deal with, it’s just tedious because they keep piling up before you can kill them.
Spawn rate is a little high at times, and I’d also argue enemy health is too darn high (or at least scales too darn high when going down floors). Otherwise seems fairly neat.
Sound balancing is a bit off - e.g. footsteps are barely audible while the throw sound effect is fairly loud.
Dodging is a bit too cumbersome to be useful (which… I guess you are a bunch of portly draconics). Wailing away and pushing for stuns is more reliable.
Restaurant still feels like a bad trade vs. saving up for more vigor over time, though maybe once upgrades get expensive enough it’s more worth it?
The game is pretty good, but I think one thing it could have used was more numbers visible to the player, For example damage numbers or enemy health bars. Ironically enough it feels like a lot of flailing with no obvious feedback.
This was really long and grindy. I’m not entirely sure why I stuck through with it to the end…
The basic gameplay idea is neat. I liked sending my kobolds off with my items.
There was enough here that was interesting to me that I finished it, I guess.
I rambled my thoughts into some bullet points.
aesthetic:
I liked Kobold Village when I played it, but the models do not look great up close. It didn’t matter for Kobold Village, considering that had a much further camera, but the customization didn’t matter very much to me considering none of the settings made the models look all that great.
I wish the weight gain was better; the completely static bellies did nothing for me, and the weight gain wasn’t especially meaningful. The best detail is that your footsteps become stomps at 1,000lbs, which is good, but anything added here would be really appreciated by your target audience!
Maybe get some stock music next time.
gameplay:
I like the way that items are very visible before you go grab them. The visual presentation of the game is very clear and uncluttered, so it’s easy to understand what sort of obstacles are between me and an item, and that enables really basic strategy! A lot of games screw this part up, so I think it’s worth positively noting.
Finding keys is a crapshoot. I’d have the ghost spawn on me while I was just looking for keys, without even stopping to collect gold. The generation of the level can be truly evil, at which point one hopes for good luck from enemies. This could be fixed in a bunch of ways.
The scaling of enemies gets severe enough by the later floors that, without sufficient base stats and some luck, you’re absolutely gonna die, even if you don’t provoke an enemy. Giant enemies were already chasing me at the start of each and every floor.
The rooms that are filled with impassable, manually-pick-up-and-throw-out-of-the-way rocks are asinine. I don’t understand their purpose besides to waste the player’s time. Time is a resource in this game, but there’s little resource management to be had when you’re manually moving rocks in aimless exploration. If there’s anything in this game that I really just don’t like at all, it’s dealing with those rocks.
Also, I wish there was a floor counter. I found it difficult to keep track.
I wish there was a way to tell which kobold I was giving items or food to. I’d try to revive a downed kobold with a berry, and a 200-pound kobold would get it instead.
A timer would be nice.
I never bothered with dodging. Staggering enemies to prevent damage to my kobolds (so, going full force on attacking) seemed more important to me than my own health, and running past enemies is more productive than a backstep if all my kobolds are dead already.
I hope my comment doesn’t discourage you from making games and stuff. I clearly got some fun out of this game, considering I spent so long playing it as to see the end. I hope you’ll update the game. The game could end at floor, like, 6, instead of 10; or, there could be more things to see, like more enemy types, more room types, et cetera. I really couldn’t recommend this game as-is to anyone, but I think you’re onto something with it. Don’t let my overall negative tone fool you! You had me hooked!
For others, here’s what the ending screen looks like. After you win, the NPC tells you that there’s some sort of second quest, but I’m really, really not gonna do that. I’d share my save file if I knew where save files were saved.
Much smoother progression now. Felt a tad on the easy side this time, actually, though that was likely because I had already spent a while grinding my team up in the earlier version. Still had a dicey key situation once, but felt less of a roll of the dice.
Also, I’d like to say I really do appreciate giving us the ability to customise our Kobolds, it’s much easier to tell them apart when we can give them custom names and appearances.
