What good Indie games are made out
It is a clever, but simplistic puzzle, rogue like game. It is entertaining to manipulate enemies even if game ends up being too easy.
What Makes it Tick
Game promises a clever enemy manipulation and dynamic turn based combat system where you can plan ahead what you want to do. Game is best when you manage to use your opponents against each other. Flipping enemies, teleporting them next to each other in order to do damage to themselves. Things like that makes you smile!Combat system is also fair and interesting. You can pick your own action and then enemies do their action. Your turn always takes a priority. It feels fair, because you are always in control. Rules are fair and easy to understand with little practice. This makes me hate myself for messing up and not the game for screwing me up. When you get this feeling, you know game does something right!
Like playing Chess with only one column unlocked
The core problem with this game is that it is not very difficult. It is really trivial at the moment and you end up taking damage more due to not being bothered to care rather than being outplayed. It is also a fundamental problem as I can’t see the way how developer is going to fine tune the balance for it to still be fair without over-inflating enemies damage and health. The core design does not permit for much difficulty as there is one row with very limited move set. A player can quickly figure out the best solution and at that moment, game must either become unfair or create arbitrary challenges as it is had done in the demo.The best example I can give is of checkers and chess. When you can move your units just in one way, game is relatively simple. When there are different types of units which must support each other, then games explodes in difficulty as there are exponentially more important considerations to make. This game is like checkers. It has only one row to take care of and as such, it can be easily figured out and beaten by players IF developer maintains a fair playing book for you.
A bad kind of balancing is when a mob spawns, it can charge next turn at you with 6 damage and that is a basic kind of mob. Game then devolves into finding specific skills which help to mitigate the issue, stacking specific items like a shield. Gameplay becomes broken and this is why it is difficult to balance game such as this and it might not ever be balanced. Game tries to mitigate this with various arbitrary challenges like beating game without spending X amount of gold, beating in X amount of time, etc. While it makes game naturally more challenging, not all players (like myself) are interested in achievement hunting.
This results in a simple truth. There is no point in manipulating enemies in this game. It is just easier to outright kill them. To shift positions with them to dodge an attack becomes a standard move and the extent of combining moves. Gameplay does not require manipulation of your enemies to emerge victorious, because they are always far weaker than you. Even bosses are too weak and only serve as HP sponges.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about. Why should I ever be motivated to think about clever combinations then I can just…wipe my enemies instantly? While game wants to promote enemy manipulation, it does not work in practice. Fundamental problem is that game is too easy and it is more efficient to just kill your enemies. Going for combos is artificial challenge.
I had a warning flags, but Ninjas stole them all!
There are few things which had stuck out in this game. They are minor things which sometimes are frustrating.Unclear in-game descriptions
- In-game menu is not clear. When you got through the map, you can’t know what further events means without having already experienced them. This game has an impressive system where you press on “?” symbol and it highlights what each enemy and skill does. However, game could use more clarity between locations. For example, even after two hours of play I still do not know what kind is this shop. Why game has to come up with its intricate names when at the same time it tells you what shrine does in the most straightforward manner possible?
RNG nature - Ultimately, it is just another rogue-lite game where roll of a dice dictates your run. I had runs where I needed some enchantment, used every opportunity to get it, used all my gold in re-rolling outcomes, but I still could not influence game to give what I wanted for my build. As you unlock more things, influence which RNG has on a run increases and I would enjoy seeing more stability in gameplay. A player should be able to exert more influence on its runs. For example, with more options to choose to what kind of shop he is going, re-rolling upgrade temples, etc.
Technical Issues - Game needs to be congratulated for being technically competent enough to recognise my audio input by default. It is a bane of a lot of indie games as they just fail to account that someone might be using a sound card. However, this game does not have a frame cap. This results in unnecessary use of hardware and might even result in some lag when CPU is taxed at 100% and you are using multiple demanding applications.
The Promising Title
I thoroughly enjoyed playing this demo. However, I do not think that this is game which could hold my attention for long. It is too simplistic, there isn’t much room for deep mechanics. It is easy and the only difficulty is in form of arbitrary challenges which I have no interest in completing. It is a game which you probably are going to enjoy, but you will drop quickly without remembering why you stopped playing.Calicifer’s Reviews
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