Rarykos, thanks for playing!
I think you have a valid point there. I've focused on gameplay so much that maybe I overdid that a bit and should've paid more attention to the story / theme. Thanks for those suggestions!
This is a difficult problem, something I've been thinking about a lot playing storybooks.
Lone Wolf has the best story that I've seen but the worst mechanics! (It's not fun to play digitally or physically.. much better to watch a playthrough).
There's another storybook on Android that unlocks "cards" as you play. Each level is built from the deck of cards so you are seeing new encounters. Fun sense of progression + good world building but it didn't matter from a story perspective. I think they are close to something here if there were more conditionals. For example:
You encounter a Farmer. If you have already killed the rampaging Minotaur, they reward you. If you ran from the Minotaur, they shun you (or sabotage you). You could have a run where you encounter neither Minotaur or Farmer or only 1 and you wouldn't see those combinations. Having events done previously effect later events gives players a sense of agency. If it's done in a somewhat predictable way (deck building works GREAT here -- "I'm late in the game and still haven't seen the farmer so it's ok to run from the Minotaur") this could be cool, much cooler than random "oh I did X and Y happened", which is still cool.
Path of Adventure forgoes emergent story and does so in a good arcade way. Color coded highlights and fast textboxes let me play a couple games to get a feel for the world then speedread only the color coded for an arcade experience.
You have some of the better (maybe best, I remember liking the card game combat but don't remember it being as involved as Path) combat decisions. Having to calculate what to lose on a demon or try to kill with fists, spending low damage weapons to break on purpose against weaker enemies vs keeping their enchantment.
Advertising the reward for entering a side area gives players a lot of choice. I can decide if the item fits with my kit/build, weigh what I expect to lose in terms of items.
After a few plays it seems always going for it is optimal because of the treasure + experience but I didn't win in 6 games (made it to castle on game 2) so I think it's in a good spot that I can't tell if it's luck or strategy that carries you through.
I like the magic system spending money and spending doubling money, interesting decisions.
For what I don't like, just 2 things really. 1 is the ambiguity of difficulty+additional treasure in a side dungeon. If I want to get $ITEM, I would like to know if $ITEM is guarded by spiders, webs, demons, etc. Adding "flavor" text that hides mechanics would be cool. Like, seeing a trail of slime (ok it's a blob), seeing thin filaments (spiders) etc on the outside of an area or 1 room in would be great.
I don't like that your weapons can become useless and deal 0 damage. This was especially annoying fighting the Sorcerer guy and spending 2 elixirs to increase attack and still having no damage output available.
This ties into my previous criticism of "hm I'll go in here but ah crap, I'm spending all my weapons".
Ok that's my feedback. Good game, good job.
Question for you: How did you get 100k downloads? (Viral shares//forum posting//ads) How much do you earn from this game? Thank you.
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