Thanks for the feedback. I think I've addressed most of your dislikes in previous replies, but still helpful to see them repeated. Quick strategy note: just because you can attack medium difficulty areas straight off doesn't mean you should. I don't think there's any balance issue there, the game is about resource management and getting rewards for cheaper fights is what you should want early on. I don't jump to higher difficulties until my notoriety skips unless I can't get the resources I need or am avoiding raid parties.

Random mana harvesting is... eh as a mechanic. Should be biased depending what spells you've chosen. Basing the player's access to actions based on RNG is bad design.

I do want to touch on this, though, because I really fundamentally disagree with you. In general, I believe video games and particularly strategy games over-emphasize player agency. I think it's much more interesting when games randomly limit the wide scope of actions a player can take and the player has to respond to that then when games give a player the ability to do whatever they want but with a random chance of failure. Randomly limiting player actions is much more common in board games then video games and I'd like to see some of that design jump back to video games. That was a core goal of this game and personally my favorite element of the design. It's fine that you don't like it and it won't be for everyone, but I think it's just silly to call such an intentional design decision "bad design". I feel it's the fundamental core of the design, and more of an aesthetic design choice then something you could call right or wrong.

However, I should add that originally I did bias the random mana gain based on what spells you purchased. It created far too strong a feedback loop. For instance, if you opportunistically bought a water mana spell because you happened to be high on water mana at the time, the bias made it more likely you would continue to be high on water mana, encouraging you to buy another spell from the same slot, which biased it even more, etc. It made opportunistic grabs of spells less viable and less common and ended up focusing play on mono-mana builds which are really not interesting. The game is intentionally quite short and because of the brevity, choosing a spell to try and balance out the mana gain for later turns just wasn't worth it. I think this is a good idea in theory but in practice ended up making the game a lot less fun and in particular less focused on short term decisions in response to the RNG which is where I think it's at its most enjoyable.

I don't think a text message would really be enough for most people. In my experience with the game so far, the more text you put between a player and understanding, the less likely they are to actually want to put in the effort to understand the game. I think this is a big problem with how exception-laden the spells are currently. I think it filters out a lot of people who might otherwise like the game. But I think the exception-laden spells part of the game is too essential to its identity to remove, whereas directly targeting the back row is more of a nice-to-have (but not worth it at the expense of understanding and simplicity).

I am in favor of icons for the special words. I tried to achieve something somewhat like that by coloring the words so glancing over them might give the idea of them quicker, but I agree, icons towards the top would be way better!

A bin for spells you don't care about is an interesting idea. I usually have a few spells I'm not terribly interested in. However, I think all the spells have a use and I usually end up using every spell by the end of the game. This might create a negative behavior of filtering out spells instead of looking for their ideal use case. I'm definitely going to keep thinking about it, though.

Pretty fun game, cool into for the Lich btw =)

Some things i've noticed:
I thinks it would be better to place the information if the spell is First Strike, Focus, ect on the spell itself (without the need to hover over it) maybe just an icon in the corner (not necessarily removing the hint).

After getting a new spell I clicked away and thought it would close that window, but i started walking towards the place where i ended up clicking

Also just as an idea - you could target people behind first row if you think that you will kill everyone on the closest row (before that spell would go), and if  you haven't the spell would not work (not spending any mana). That would not be very obvious to the player, but would allow for some combos (thout could potentially not work, so its a risk sometimes).

Thanks for the feedback! The spells list currently closes when you click on the tab, but that's a good point that it should disappear when you click outside it. Interesting idea about the targeting. I'm worried that doing that might be confusing for new players. They would think they could target anyone but then wouldn't understand why the targeting failed. It certainly would be cool if there was a better way to target back row attacks if the front row will be killed.

So, I just played the game twice. It is really fun and engaging.
The points that i found that could be improved:
- Places description are unclear, i'm still not sure what to expect. (inn, farms, huts, etc...)
- Mage specialization is not a recurrent choice.
(once i pick my specialty that's it, i cannot switch or mix in my skill tree).
- when fighting below level enemies, getting 2 waves of medium when you're supposed to play hard is very difficult
- marauding enemies make exploration difficult/annoying (there are spells for that, too, of course)

besides these (minor) questions the game is really good. the spells are good and the challenge feels balanced. this is remarkable for a rogue/procedural game.

thank you very much

Thanks for the suggestions! I agree, location descriptions could do more to give you a hint as to what's to come. As is, you sort of have to play a bunch and learn.

You may have missed that the spell trees are randomized. All the character archetypes pull from the same list but have a random spell list each time they play. So for instance the Lich should play differently over multiple sessions since you'll have new spell options.

Fighting a medium location with reinforcements is indeed really hard. If your notoriety is above the locations difficulty, you should move on. Locations are no longer worth the difficulty. This is intended to force the player to choose strategically which locations to visit (as you will have to leave some behind).

I couldn't get the download link to work.. 

You can try downloading my in progress build at this link if you're on windows. I'm going to try and get a itch.io website hooked up which will hopefully have better success with downloads for people. Sorry about that.

Nice job! That's a ton of spells! (I don't think I've unlocked that many in a game before.) Glad you enjoyed it!

The artifact bug (on the sorcerer's guild and when running out) is fixed in the build I'm working on. I also have a bunch of gameplay tweaks for the some of the other archetypes, so may be worth holding off on the Illusionist and the Archmage till then since I think that'll make them better balanced and more fun to play. Hoping to finish it up and get it out next weekend.

I wonder if adding the possible resource cost of a location to it's tooltip would be a good idea. After a few visits I usually remember which location had what but it seems like unnecessary trial and error.

I love this idea! The trial and error nature of location events is my least favorite part of the game at the moment. I had been considering adding an "escape" option to events that wouldn't finish them so you could come back later after seeing the costs. Your idea may be better. I won't get this into the next build, but I'm going to try it and see how it feels for a later build.

Realizing that I could target spells took some time so you might want to make that more obvious.
Also I assumed the consume soul for mana button would have healed me as a lich since I didn't notice any other way to do it at first.
I forgot to cast the magic dart a few times, maybe add some are you sure prompt if you try to end a turn without casting a free spell if the character has any.
The spell selection gets annoying once you have most of the spells, having icons for the spells might be nice.
I'd kind of like an option to speed up the combat animations and stuff.

These are all good points. I have some text appearing now when you can target your spells to make that a bit more obvious. I don't have a plan at present for how to do icons or anything to make spell selection easier, will think on it. Adding an animation speed-up option in the options menu doesn't sound hard. I'll consider it for a future build.

I've been playing this for a while. I would leave feedback, but there's nothing I can say that hasn't been said, and the game's really fun.

Seriously glad to hear you like it though.

I found a game-breaking glitch, though.
You know how when you have choices, and you can select one of the choices to get bonuses or fight encounters? When you choose one, the window goes down and disappears. However, you can still any choice buttons while that happens, so if I click a "get 2 souls" text twice, I get 4 souls instead of the intended 2. And, you can pretty much do this forever, since the window animation resets every time you click a choice. If you trigger an encounter twice, you will get 2 encounters at the same time, and they will be on top of each other. After a few turns of this double encounter the game will glitch, it will not let you choose any spell, but the battle screen will still be on the screen, and it will also be on top of the world map, so you can mouse over a grid, but not be able to go there. I would give footage, but my disk space is running out and to fully demonstrate the OPness of the glitch I need to go through a whole run, which is a long time. Try this glitch out, it's hilariously broken.

That is a pretty hilarious oversight on my part. I'll get that fixed in the next build, thanks for the report!

Thanks for the feedback! It's great to get a different perspective and hear that the tutorial helped at least a little. I'm not sure why the download wasn't working. When I tried it myself it seemed to work. Hopefully it was just a temporary issue.

The mouse is indeed what you use for targeting. While there's a line to your mouse you're in targeting mode. If you click on an enemy, that's who you'll target. I'll try and add some text ("Choose Target") to make that more clear.

I think there's a issue with discovery and first time play right now. You can't ever "leave" location events, which sucks since after the learning the cost of an action you may want to go get the materials and then return. It also creates a bigger burden of memorization on the cost of events then I want. Similarly, if you get in a hard battle without meaning to you have no recourse. I like your idea of paying to get out of battles. It's something I plan to try in the next scenario I'm working on, but I'm not sure it fits here.

It's interesting that you found some of the rules to feel arbitrary in a frustrating way (enemies always attack first, three different types of mana, no way to heal your teammates). Those frustrations make sense, especially if you feel like they don't have a purpose (I promise they do! But they're really for shaping the decision space and pacing of the game). I don't think I can address those in this game, however I'll keep it in mind when working on future games.

had a hard time even downloading the game. first try i got "504 Gateway Time-out The server didn't respond in time." ok... same on second and third try. trying for a forth time, did not make me happier. this was the link i was using: http://www.gamefront.com/files/files/24599571/ThereIsOnlyPowerPC.2.zip

Yikes! Try downloading it at my personal website: http://willswannack.com/thereisonlypower/ThereIsOnlyPower.zip

That's my "in progress" build so it's a bit further along but less tested. I'll look into that link breakage when I get some time. Sorry about that.

Those are great suggestions. I'm particularly fond of the two-step objective idea since it allows making the end-game harder but still allowing a feeling of skill growth for new players when they finish the first step.

I was playing the board game Mage Knight last night, which was one of the games I was originally trying to ape, and it deals with your "first strike" issue nearly identically to your suggestion: Enemies who are "fortified" (either as an ability on them or as an ability granted by their environment) can't be hit during the first strike phase unless the ability has the "siege" tag. I like your idea of a Wall enemy granting fortified so if you take it out you'd be able to first strike the next phase. I imagine implementing something like that will require a ton of balance changes, so it'll probably take me a while to get it in. But I agree that first-strike feels a bit too overpowered at the moment.

[difficulty levels]

Edit: same for difficulty levels! As I said, I found the high level of challenge one of the main reasons making this game compelling! If this had felt like it was due to my own choice (of a difficulty setting), it would probably have been a lot less captivating. In general, I'm very much for "one-single-difficulty-level" games. I'm not alone here: the vast majority of rogue-likes (e.g., well, "Rogue") don't have a difficulty level, for a reason.  See also Locomalito's "game philosophy" page for more arguments against difficulty levels.
Rather, my suggestion is to make a new campaign unlock afterward, and make that one more difficult.

I think I may agree with you here. I have "easy" difficulty in a local build and it sort of makes the game feel more like toybox then an objective-driven game. I may cut it before the next build goes out. I'm apprehensive, though, because players have found the game more challenging then I expected, and this build will make it harder (I'm shortening the notoriety per level to force more careful location picking). Not sure which way it'll end up, but I appreciate the discussion on it.

That's fair. I'm glad you think the game is so self-explanatory. I'm trying to make the tutorial not feel like the first thing you do. My hope is it'd be something someone would check out if they feel confused by the game. It's pretty short, just a few combat puzzles that focus on teaching concepts I noticed a bunch of people didn't understand in game.

The reason I think it's helpful is if you don't understand the mouse-over text, you can die really suddenly without comprehending why (I heard a few people having trouble with how "Ambush" worked, for instance). Worse, it's not possible to replay the encounter to see exactly what happened. The goal of the tutorial battles is to have battles players can play repeatedly until they really understand what that mouse-over text means. I'm trying to make them feel like puzzle battles rather than traditional explanation focused tutorials.

I am hoping to add a bunch of content later. Specifically, I'd like to add a new campaign. I like the level of complexity and balance of the current game, but I think a new random map with new classes, spells and locations would be a good way to expand things without ballooning the current game. It's going to take a long time, though. I'm a pretty slow developer.

Wow, thanks for the positive feedback! Great to hear you're enjoying it!

I agree on all your graphics complaints. The font may have been an issue and in retrospect I probably should have just stuck with Arial. All the art is from the open-source tileset at Tometik (http://pousse.rapiere.free.fr/tome/) and I didn't do it justice since the camera doesn't guarantee pixel precision. Definitely something I want to do better on next time.

I'm working on the next build now. It should be out in about two weeks. It'll have a ton of bug fixes, a tutorial, highscore boards (global and local) and an "easy" difficulty since I'm worried the challenge is distancing for some people. If you're interested, it'll get posted at indiedb here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/there-is-only-power  so you could just check there. Or you could follow me on twitter (@porousnapkin) since I'll post about it there.

I find this to be quite fun. I didn't notice you could mouse over grey squares to see what their output was for a long time, so I was just experimenting a taking notes, then referring to the programs available to see a solution (rather than thinking it out before going). Once I figured out the mouse-overs it became much easier, but still interesting to think through.

For me, level 4 was when I started to really enjoy it. I am a nerd who loves programming puzzles, though, so this is very much up my alley.

Level 8 was the first level that puzzled me and made me slow down. It was also very satisfying to complete.

Level 9 was less fun. I prefer levels focused on a small number of programs that have to be reused a bunch. Having four made the level seem too open-ended and easy.

You said in your original post that there were 11 levels, but after the 9th level the game said "That's it!" so you may have a bug there.

I really dislike mouse-over to get info on a grey block of moves. It feels discordant with the normal input of the rest of the game and definitely isn't obvious. I don't have a great solution for how to do it better, though. I guess you could use a key (like put a number on the grey blocks and tie that number to the output on the left of the game), but that doesn't sound great either. If you could figure out how to make this just keyboard driven, I think it would make a lot more sense.

I also share mirrorlink's confusion about which of my programs was selected. It took me at least 3 levels before I understood how my pressing numbers was affecting the game. Part of it is, as he said, that 2 looks like the selected one since it's filled in. I think this could be solved by doing more to sell what program is selected. Maybe put a yellow outline around the currently active program?  Maybe make program 2 a square and leave all the symbols empty?

EDIT: Forgot to say that if there had been more levels I would have played them. The difficulty was just right for me on the last few levels and I'd enjoy playing more that require that amount of thought.

I appreciate the feedback so far. I'd love it if I could get feedback on the latest build (either from previous players or new ones).

I attempted to address Quicksand-S's confusion with Slow abilities. Now you can choose abilities in any order and your turn doesn't execute until you hit the "Execute Turn" button. Some spells require "Focus" (instead of being slow) and you can only cast one spell with focus a turn. That keeps the gameplay restraints the same, but hopefully makes the process less confusing. Please tell me if this clears up action selection during combat or if anyone is still finding that confusing. Thanks!

The new build is up at the same website. Here's the link again.

alrighty the game overall is pretty fun, thanks to reading the last persons reply i could avoid the problem with the slow spells. i encountered what i believe to be a bug where after talking to the crazy guy twice and giving him three random mana he gave me the heal spell, so i open up combat spells and try to heal my dude in the world (i wasn't in combat) and the little targeting line appears and when i try to click my guy it doesn't resolve. other than that the game is good but,  the tabs for your party inventory and army are a bit superimposing, other than that i enjoyed it a lot and am still playing it trying to unlock everything. hopefully more content and building are planned, and maybe you could make different terrain make you move slower, like maybe a desert takes you two turns to walk through. All in all great potential.

Awesome! Thanks for the feedback, very glad to hear you liked it. I hope to expand it at some point. Different terrain would be cool (maybe with different buildings only available on certain terrain).

Combat spells like Heal are not supposed to be clickable while not in combat. They're intended to be greyed out in that state. Thanks for the bug report. I will look into what's going on there.

I just removed "Instantaneous" and am instead calling non-instantaneous actions "Slow". I think this will be better because in the opening spells, every spell will only have one designation ("First Strike" on two spells, "Slow" on the third). I added a message that appears in the center of the screen with a slight delay to combat that says "Slow - Turn Ended" that will hopefully help explain how it works. The intended goal is for the player to think out their turn in advance and choose spells appropriately, so I don't think I want to change how it works but rather focus on signaling how it works better.

It would be nice to have the option of using the same spell multiple times in a turn if I have the mana for it, or to cancel something that's already in my stack (although I guess I should just think harder before doing things).

EDIT: Clarifying
Not being able to choose the same spell twice is one of the incentives to seek out more spells because it allows you use more mana per turn (and use it more efficiently). Look for the Mad Hermit huts and Witch's huts to purchase some spells.

I got into a big battle and it was kind of cool to see all the spells flying back and forth quickly.

I also finally played with my speakers on. I like the music quite a lot. Is it from somewhere or did you record it yourself?

Glad you enjoyed a bigger battle. The music is from magnatune.com. You have to sign up for a monthly subscription, but if you do, they have a friendly policy on their music being used in non-commercial products. Their music selection is quite good.

I noticed the "Instantaneous" keyword, but the text made it seem like that one would just be cast before the enemy could react, not before I finished my turn. Maybe everything should show the "End Turn" button for more consistency. You'll just have it appear sooner if you try to cast a non-instantaneous spell.

I think another thing that threw me off was the stack of moves. That visual layout seemed to strongly suggest to me that I was preparing a combination of attacks/defenses for my character to use when I ended the turn.

I think you're confusing Instantaneous with First Strike. Instantaneous description is "Action does not end turn". First Strike is "Occurs before opponents act". I think I will remove the Instantaneous designation and replace it with a Slow designation on spells that do end your turn. Hopefully that will make more sense as an exception.

The stack of moves are all executed on that turn (as a long combo) so I think it's good they're suggesting that to you.

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. You can continue casting spells when you cast an "Instantaneous" spell. Casting any other spell (like Magic Dart) ends your turn.

I just messed with the pathing to try something similar to what you're saying. It actually isn't fun to have your character travel to the destination you click after a single click (because raid parties form as your notoriety builds up and they will intersect you without input if the game auto-travels). So instead, I changed it so your character travels towards your mouse (rather than along the path generated by the end point) while your mouse button is held down. Sort of like Diablo. Hopefully that alleviates your pathing issues.

[Feedback requested:]

There is Only Power is a quick strategy / roguelike. You’ll build a small army and find a slew of magical powers and artifacts in an effort to enslave a kingdom before its citizens overthrow you. The world and options you’re presented are randomized. You’ll play through light narrative elements forming a different story each time you play. Games take around 30 minutes to play and death is permanent.

Play it here!

Alternate mirror for Windows

Feedback requested:

• How many times did you play? If you played after your first death, what brought you back? If you didn't, why not?
• Any mechanics you found confusing?
• How do you feel about this ratio of story to combat?
• All other feedback is appreciated.