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[porousnapkin]

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.

[ActionGamemaster]

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. 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.

[porousnapkin]

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!

[Maunomau]

Fun game.
Beat it on 6th try even though on that run I was of the opinion that my spell selection sucked and stuff.

After unlocking all the cool guys I had to try them out but then I discovered that you can't close the artifact select screen if you already have all of the artifacts and I almost got to notoriety of whatever's above extreme.
I think I sold one at market but I couldn't even repick it or something(no idea which I sold thanks to only few artifacts being on screen).
Also I got the artifact select to bug out once before after beating the mages from guild.(at the time I could still cast mend on myself despite being at full health!)

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.
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.

[porousnapkin]

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.

[mathewji]

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

[porousnapkin]

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.

[mathewji]

Yes, I was able to download from 'in progress build'.. Thank-you, 

[nagual]

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

[Stals]

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).

[porousnapkin]

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).

[porousnapkin]

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.

[ActionGamemaster]

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.

Maybe, when you target an enemy from back row, you can make an announcement that says "This enemy is protected if you didn't do something about it this turn. I don't think it should be obvious like "this enemy is in a back row, so you can't attack it" because that would be too much text, and because something subtle would give a player a riddle that will let them figure out the game's main mechanic by themselves and feel cooler and more satisfied about it. That wouldn't be frustrating because the player already has something to do: killing the front row.
And while having icons for spells is great, I just need a garbage bin for all these unwanted spells, or a favorite spells list that would be displayed in battle first automatically, and to trigger the unfavorited spells, I would have to press a menu option or something. There's always spells that you really want, but you have to obtain 2 other spells to get it that I think are useless, and there's no other thing you can do with spells(the ones you spend to get actual spells) other than spells(actual spells). Speaking of spells, shouldn't you rename the spells you obtain into something like spell runes or spell cards? I like it the way it is, it really makes sense but, writing feedback or recommendations, or anything about the game will be confusing when you talk about spells.

[porousnapkin]

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.

[_bm]

I played for about two minutes. Very interesting.  

[Juju]

Played three games and the same army killed me every time: 1x monk, 1x cleric, 1x barbarian, 3x warrior (4HP, 3 attack).

At a stage in the game where I've got four spells, that's just plain unfair. The front row is capable of dealing, what, 17HP of damage and they get +1 block across the army and one unit is max healed every turn (which is invariably the barbarian)? Come on.

I quite happily took on medium-level stuff at the very start with very little difficulty so it would seem that the balance in tiers is way, way off. Not being able to target back-line units with your ranged attacks is inconsistent and actually limits player strategy. Enemies attacking first is pretty annoying and makes your starting summon completely useless way too soon.

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. Never rob the player of agency, a prime example being not being able to back out of situations is a constant obstacle between me and understanding the game. Not being able to revisit locations is bizarre. It feels very much like you've created the game flow from the perspective of you yourself, a person that intimately understands the mechanics. In general, the game is very poor at explaining mechanics and even worse at letting the player make mistakes and learn from them.

I think you get away with the MS Paint graphics through some great theming (instantly killing the two guys who summoned the lich? That's funny and sets the tone brilliantly). I'd like to hear more than "vaguely Middle Eastern music ripped from Medieval: Total War" but it's just about appropriate and creates a nice atmosphere. I think you can go further with the theming, you should add more detail to descriptions.

The game demands mastery. In order to make choices on what artefacts I want, which locations are good at what times, what kind of mana is useful, which enemies are the biggest threat &c. This means you need to get the player to play the game many, many times in order for them to make progress. Right now, I don't think you've got the polish in the game to achieve that... though having said that, I'm now going to go back and try and beat the snot out of the country because I hate paladins. I hate them so much.

[porousnapkin]

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.