Ask and ye shall receive, eh?
I would give ya feedback but I run OS X, and it would appear your .zip is intended for Windows
I realize now that I made absolutely no indication of this anywhere ever. Oops.
Your resolution / scaling seems not to be a strict multiple of the sprite's size. This makes stuff look a little wonky -- some pixels are bigger than others.
It's true, there is no set pixel "width" in the game (although all of them are square), mostly because matching the text pixels to the window and gauge pixels would mean I couldn't fit as much in. It does look a little bit weird, but I think it's probably fine as is.
Perhaps mark which nodes contain bosses, e.g. with a red border? Or maybe not -- perhaps make it optional so some bosses can be marked and some a surprise.
That's on my to-do list, I was thinking maybe marking the boss-inhabited nodes with a little skull after the name or something. Surprise bosses would always be possible, though.
Towns don't need the three bars; they could have a "town" graphic instead, or just nothing.
This is true, and only takes one 'if' statement. Noted.
It'd be nice if there were graphical cues when certain important things are happening:
- When I'm heavily damaged, my character could blink red.
- When I'm dead and waiting to revive, the screen could go greyscale and show a message. In particular, it should emphasize that it's not a game over, you're merely delayed.
More feedback to the player is always a good thing. Death will later be optionally fatal, so I haven't put in stuff related to that yet.
- When in a boss fight, the other nodes could turn red to indicate I'm locked in.
Probably should have warned people about that. Surprise.
Might it be possible to allow us to use outside graphics sheets?
Maybe. No promises though. If this happens, expect another couple lines in the campaign file or another file altogether.
I died a few times on the first boss which made me scared of areas where I thought there might be bosses. But then it turns out the first boss is the only boss
I was making money hand over fist in the first half of the game, for the second half I spent more money than I could make.
Yeah, I haven't quite smoothed out the scaling curves yet. Also, the volcano area has a decreased gold payout and an increased damage rate, so that might be a contributing factor. Bosses are pretty lucrative, so more of them might actually shift the balance as well.
Overall, it captures the addictive essence of rpgs very well, I would like to see a bit more choices while playing. Other than the "should I fight the boss now, or level up some more" choice at the beginning of the game, there where precious few times I felt like a choice I made was important. With the time limit it might help with that too.
The default game is very linear mostly because it was planned as the "introductory" stage, being the first. It also seems like it's going to be the only stage in the final competition version, so maybe more branches would have been a better thing, seeing as how that's kind of how it was planned.
Some possible ideas for adding gameplay:
* more choices of where to farm - most of the branch off points were between places with roughly equivalent leveling capabilities. It would be better if I constantly had to make a decision between potentially dangerous but lucrative, and more safe but slower
* letting you farm in places you have already cleared (maybe not every zone)
* equipment (this is an important aspect that's missing) - could be a simple "buy sword of zanzonia?" when entering a town that has it.
* potion management
* more bosses.
* Maybe random encounters when you walk around so you can never feel too safe! (could be a "boss" that randomly pops up in certain areas, but called "ambush" instead of boss).
1. Covered just above
2. Possibly, maybe only in designated areas at a half rate. I kind of like being able to control how much power is available to the player at a given time.
3. Intentionally left out for gameplay simplicity.
4. Intentionally left out as well, although the money vs. time problem would be interesting.
5. Yes.
6. The potential for cruelty with this is intriguing. "It's not rape, it's a boss fight you didn't know you wanted!"
All of that is probably a bit much for competition deadline, but some of it would be great, especially if you continue post deadline. I could see this going far, it's a much better meta-rpg than any others I've seen. I could even see actual stories working well in this format.
I cannot imagine why you would go to the trouble of adding story to a game with no environment, NPCs, or discernable geography. But noted all the same.
I wish I could offer you suggestions for improvement, but everything added would just detract from the intentional ultra-minimalism of the game! Well, sound effects and mood music depending on areas perhaps?
Music is prepared but not added because it would take 5 times longer to load the game on every. single. test run. Which I do as frequently as 2.5/min sometimes. Sound effects would be great, though. I'll probably spend an hour or two digging through the Pt.1 threads later looking for some.
In all, a very well done entry! Three mutant thumbs up!
I am honored that you would irradiate yourself for the sake of giving me a higher recommendation. Also, pics or it didn't happen.