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[SirNiko]

I'm not Reiss, but I'll provide some input. Reiss may have different ideas.

I like the idea of the pet taking hits first: it's the most valuable function the pet provides. Other methods would be to make the pet absorb a fraction of damage, or just make the pet attack only (it doesn't take hits). As it stands, I wouldn't change it, just my opinion.

I think you suggested before, making spell treasure rooms contain two spells, but you can only take one and not the other. This will allow you to increase the likelihood of finding new summon spells if you choose to 'specialize' that way. If the player is given a large volume of summon spells, there's no need for a 'release' feature on the summons. When you find a new spell you ditch the old and catch a better monster.

Another possibility is dumping the charm spell altogether, and make having a pet a permanent feature that occupies a different slot than spells. Kingdom of Loathing has taught me that adding a pet to your game increases the addiction factor by about 600%, so be careful about players suddenly wanting all future updates to be about the pet and nothing else.

-SirNiko

[Reiss]

I like the idea of pets taking damage first too -- it gives them more flavor than just acting as a % damage reducer.

The perma pet idea is nice, but freeing up another spell slot would make the charm/summon tabs a lot more valuable than the other ones, because the extra damage + mitigation provided by the pet would come "free," sort of like the sword/armor upgrades.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but it would have to get worked pretty well into the overall design...

The "flow of summon tabs" that you guys are talking about is an interesting idea.  Capturing a creature removes it from battle, so a summons-specialized character would have a lot of firepower, but infrequently, and the summoned creatures would provide enough damage mitigation of whatever sort (% reduction, summoned pet takes first hit, etc) and additional damage to survive the droughts between tabs.  Instead of a capture/release/capture again system, you'd just treat summon tabs as basically limited-use disposable items, or as some kind of gatherable resource.

[SirNiko]

The perma pet idea is nice, but freeing up another spell slot would make the charm/summon tabs a lot more valuable than the other ones, because the extra damage + mitigation provided by the pet would come "free," sort of like the sword/armor upgrades.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but it would have to get worked pretty well into the overall design...

The idea would be to eliminate the summon spell altogether (it does not exist any more) and instead give the player a pet slot that is filled separately. You'd have to change the mechanics so that there are other ways of getting pets (for example, grabbing eggs after combat, finding pets in some rooms as treasure, or just getting rid of pet 'death').

That last possibility would change the gameplay pretty sharply, so you wouldn't go that way without a good plan.

-SirNiko

[Loren Schmidt]

I do like the idea of having summons be a fairly large part of the game. In keeping with the game's simplicity, I think it would be preferable if they were a spell tab rather than an entirely new system. Also that way they are a tactical choice, rather than something every one of our characters has by default. Having them be a separate system is a totally valid idea, I'd just personally favor keeping the rules simpler if that makes sense.

I'm still not sure how to handle damage distribution- in addition to the current system, I like your suggestions of having it be split among all allies, or having allies not take damage. Both those systems are clean and easily predictable. On the topic of allies and health, I'm thinking of making it be possible to heal allies somehow. Perhaps that's not necessary, but if there's a good way to implement that then it might be interesting.

I experimentally added double spell drops tonight. They'll be in the upcoming release, so we can see how well they fit in. I'm not sure yet how the particulars should work... I want the system to be really clean and intuitive. I'm tentatively imagining that there's some kind of magic flame or light with two spell symbols cycling through it. Hitting the action button extinguishes the light, and gives us the spell tab of our choice.

I realize I should also do a proper spell swap UI that lets us select a spell slot if we pick up a tab when we have three already. I don't want to mess up the hot keys every time we pick up a new spell tab.

[rszrama]

This game rocks! After looking at your screenshot, I realized I could eat the mushrooms, so starting with the summon monster spell was a lot easier.  He makes a nice decoy in tough battles.

Anyways, definitely the most innovative Roguelike I've played in a while. Good job!

[Albert]

Love this game, I looking for an update where you change all of the messages to the real one.
Still can't understand why you don't use ads in your games and submit to flash game sites.

[JoeHonkie]

This is great.  I've been thinking of trying to do something similar, like a teeny tiny dungeon crawl you can just play really quickly.  Rad.

[Melly]

Pretty awesome stuff here. It was fun until I got stuck in a room with none of the arrows responding. I could still press the buttons, but with nothing in the room there wasn't anything I could do.

A very awesome effort for such a short time. Might get one of my votes.

[moonmagic]

I love this. I am a sucker for black and white games, but you've provided a good level of visual feedback for player actions. Actions feel satisfying and chunky. I love the single-target spell blast, particularly.

Can't wait for flavor text!

[Krystman]

Wow. It's close but I think I like this one the most so far. I love how you were able to condense and streamline everything down. Ingenious!

I also love the little effects like how the enemies melt down into individual pixel when you kill them. It makes the game feel very juicy.

I see that it is still unfinished. Please continue. I would pay money this. 

[Oddball]

Liked: Great lo-fi aesthetic coupled with simple gameplay. Easy to get into.

Disliked: Apart from the visuals the enemies seemed very similar.

Conclusion: Great for casual play and a bit of procrastination.

[dood77]

Hey, I found your game through this 1up article here: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3177782 and I LOVED it!!
I really look forward to future updates and refinements. A question about the name though, was it at all inspired by this: http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=22
? (Note, the game described in the link is not an actual game, merely a description of the mechanic.) The gameplay described doesn't really have much in common with your game, but the reason I actually clicked on the link to your game was the name I had read before...

If you aren't familiar with squidi's Three Hundred Game Mechanics project I highly recommend you take a look at it. It's absolutely brimming with game ideas and every one of them has the potential to be an amazing game.

[Anthony Flack]

This is a fantastically elegant design. So simple, but it works really well. I like it a lot.

[Hangedman]

If you aren't familiar with squidi's Three Hundred Game Mechanics project I highly recommend you take a look at it. It's absolutely brimming with game ideas and every one of them has the potential to be an amazing game.

There are a lot of interesting ideas, yeah... but almost every one has been done. They are original, but I'd be more worried about the author attempting to claim credit for every single possible game mechanic they could think up...

[Superjuden]

Summon Suggestions

You could make summons limited to a certain number of uses, after that you need to capture a new creature. This would fix the problem if you capture a low-level creature that eventually become useless.

You could the creatures powers up with the player character, so if you find a sword, your minions get +1 attack, if you find a shield they get +2 hp, that should make them more durable in the long run.

Spell suggestions

I've also noticed that if you have two tabs with the same spell, the game tends to get pretty easy so I'd suggest instead of having two individual spell tabs which can be used separately, you could perhaps use them as one spell with is more powerful. To if you have to heals you can't use them as 8+8, but rather when you use heal you get +14 hp, powerful enough for it to be useful but not enough to essentially give you infinite life in many battles. Or you could remove one spell tab and upgrade each spell every time you find a new copy of that spell. For example the magic missile which does 12x1 damage is quickly overpowered by your normal attack, and it becomes worthless, however if every time you found a new magic missle spell, it did a little bit extra damage it would probably always be more powerful than the normal attack.

Power-up + multi-missle is pretty broken also, right now it does enough damage to kills pretty much any foe in the game other than bosses and some at level 5. I'd suggest reducing the damage by just a few points to that you don't one-shot everything all the time or limit it to 3 target at the most.

If the heal had an party effect for your creatures too it would be awesome.

Enemy Suggestions

It probably wouldn't hurt if you gave some enemies a mutli-target attack. Right now there are creatures with sticks and versions of those without sticks, those with sticks deal +1 damage, you could however do a double stick version which does two strikes and each strike doing the same as if they had one stick but divided over two targets. So if the stickless does 1x3 damage, the single stick does 1x4 and the double stick could do 2x2. These double stick version would first strike your pets of course. This could also be an extra power-up found in the dungeon.

It would be bit fun if there were kamikaze enemies which blows up and deals party damage at turn three of combat, such an enemy would make target prioritizing a bit more complex and interesting in some battles since you'd sometimes have to choose between killing the bomb or taking the blast and kill the other creatures.

Giving bosses minions and powerful heal spells at higher levels would make them a bit more challenging, right now they just trade punches with you.

If you want the game to go on for longer you could take the diablo approch which is to simply take an enemy and put a different color on him to indicate his power level. So there could be three different kinds of rats, a blue, green and red, each being successively stronger in some way.

Lastly, I'd recommend changing the battle system so that there is an enemy front line which is the only line which can use melee attacks while those behind can use weaker ranged attacks. This would eliminate the problem where you sometimes get bombared with three lines of enemies which get first strike. Once the front line is killed, you then leave the back-up open to your attacks and you're open to their melee attacks. Of course not all foes should have this range attack, perhaps only those which also have a stick option should be able to use ranged attacks. THis change would of course change a great deal in the balance of the game if you just add this system.

Hope you'll find something useful from this. Your game is awesome btw.

[ejfarraro]

This was a lot of fun; just beat the 5 level dungeon.  Even when I considered myself overpowered (AoE spell + 2 heal spells), I still managed to cut it close a few times.

Looking forward to see how this develops.  It feels like a Rogue, but is more accessible.

[Banov]

Holy cow, this game is so cool!  

I love the streamlined RPG gameplay, the presentation and sounds are just perfect.  Watching your dungeon map fill up is very satisfying!  Can't wait to see where this goes next~

[plums]

Hi, another random visitor who came to say that I really like your game.

One idea I had that I think would solve some of your design issues is to make all the spells limited use. Healing abuse etc. would not be such a problem, plus it gives more purpose to finding more spells further down the dungeon, instead of just getting a good set of 3 and sticking with those the whole game.

Interface wise, having spell bubbles start full, with a level that gradually depletes as they are used, seems like a good idea.. A picture explains much better:



Here, the first spell has been used quite a lot, the second spell is nearly full, and the third hasn't been used at all. An "empty" bubble (such as the way spells are currently shown) should mean exactly one use left.

In any case, I hope you expand this into a full game, because it's lots of fun.

[Jotaf]

Dude, just wanted to congratulatate you on the awesome game! The way you streamlined movement and pretty much every mechanic is awesome. I only now realized how much time I usually spend in a RL just traveling from room to room and getting to objects. Also you kept the graphics and sound style of Star Guard which I love

[sylverone]

This game is really neat, and I've had some fun playing. I love the sounds and the way the enemies disintegrate when defeated.

Concerning summoning; I think a way to empty the spell is needed, maybe with a bit of restriction so that the player doesn't just get upgrade to new monsters whenever. How about this; while a monster is summoned, cast the summon spell again to banish you ally and reset the spell tab. The penalty is that you have to wait a period of time (maybe between 5 to 10 turns on the map?), and then you can capture a new monster again.

Also, plums' idea sounds promising.

I checked out all the online games on your site while I was there, and the "image tree" thing gave me an idea. The images that that thing produces are much like the ones in Tiny Crawl, so what if you made another game by tweaking Tiny Crawl so that different types of monsters are generated using that image generator. You could have the game automatically animate the creatures using the evolution feature of image tree, since many of the mutated pictures are quite similar to their parent. Maybe the monster population itself could evolve over time as well, with some influence by the player, so that neat sprites can be rewarded and kept in one's game.

Thanks for the game!