I feel like this game is a weird combination of too easy and overly frustrating. I didn't buy anything from the blacksmith, took the Defense song from the Bard, and the Healing potion from the Alchemist, and then I killed all three bosses. Maximum javelin and attack stats mean you can just chip the bosses from far away and mostly safe. Still, I think is like a 3 or 4/5 game. I would have enjoyed it if I were allowed to keep playing in the same game after killing the third boss, so I could grind up for the rest of the gear and upgrades.
Final thought (having read some comments about sets), I think the sets are very well implemented. There were times when I would take a piece of equipment that was a stat downgrade in order to fill out a set. 2/4 Air and 3/4 or 4/4 Water, with my skill loadout allowing me to spam Berserk for high Agi, meant I melted enemies very quickly, especially whenever I picked up a Str potion. Kudos for the balance, it works really well.
That's EXACTLY the feeling I wanted the players to have while playing this game, and is the core reason this game has a time limit. In a normal RPG, you can just sit somewhere and farm til you have optimal equipment, and plenty of time to theorycraft or use a calculator. I wanted loot selection to be a skill the player had to master, so I wanted to throw tough decisions at the player while under pressure. You really identified some solid points there. There's a lot of tradeoffs to the equipment you choose, and it also depends on the fights you're about to encounter since stats/sets are dependent on what path you're going down.
I will point out (not sure if you intended this) that with high Int and/or the Advanced Shield resetting cooldowns, you can get Axe - Berserk going infinitely. And it doesn't go back down to zero when you re-apply it. By the final boss, Berserk had my Agility up to like 500%, and my Endurance up to over 900. I was just obliterating people by that point. Very, very interesting concept. 5/5 rating, and I hope you do another game soon.
Heh yep that is an intended combo. In the end I decided to lean towards the easy side of things because I wanted all kinds of players to be able to complete the game, and also to do it with their own build/strategy. Since it's a prototype, showing the concept was more important to me, but certainly in a full version I would crank up the difficulty to really test the player's ability. I'm sticking to a pretty tight schedule so I do hope to push another game out in ~1.5 months!
I really, really enjoyed this game. It started out at a 3/5, quickly went up to a 4/5, dipped back down to a 3/5 at at the end of where "act 2" would be, but by the time I finished, 5/5. It took a few tries to break into the endgame, but once I got Armory unlocked, and higher-tier starting gear, it only took a few more runs to beat the game. I would love for this concept to be implemented into a longer, larger game; perhaps multiple loops, each with a self-contained game almost identical to this, but each one you fully clear granting a bonus to all other loops. (1/2)
Thanks for the very thorough breakdown! This kind of stuff really helps me understand the players' thoughts and can improve my design skills. It's really interesting to hear about the ups and downs of your opinion on the game, especially since there feels like 3 distinct phases to the game. The early game can be awkward to some players cuz there's a lot of new concepts in play here, and by the end game (if they stuck around that long), they probably started figuring out how to create builds that work for them and have some mastery. Yea I'm really interested in having different maps with different challenges. I have not really figured out how to connect them all to some bigger system like you mentioned, but there's a lot of potential there.
My only, only complaint here is that the daily challenge doesn't have a full 24-hour window. I've missed a couple because the start and end times seem weird to me (I'm guessing it makes more sense in the dev's time zone), so sometimes I run late or early, and because it's not a 24-hour window, I just miss out even though it's still 'that day'. I love this game, though. I try to play the daily challenge every day.
Could use a sandbox mode where the Darkness never starts to show up at all, just to fiddle around with the unlocking of different building types. Other than that, a solid game. I beat the standard mode ages ago, and came back for the "Best of" quest badge.
Funny how the second-to-last boss is the hardest. It only took me like five minutes after reaching the final boss to have enough damage to one-tap him, rendering his ability useless.
If I click on the correct icon, I should never get the "wrong guess" penalty. Just because I don't have a relevant clue highlighted does not mean I'm guessing randomly. Especially when it's a "+" level and there are only two icons left in a square.
I got the first two badges for this game on Feb. 3, 2013. I finished the game yesterday. I'm going for the Hard badge now, and I have an important tip: Levels 11 and 12 are easier to beat on Diamond than the middle levels. Just start there, because clearing one of those on Diamon will give you 2 or 3 levels, which will enable you to max out your skill trees, which will make it easier to complete the annoying middle levels without letting a fairy even touch your children.
Rating 5/5 because I was basically glued to my screen from start to finish, but now that I've cleared everything (including the optional bonus boss three times), I'm a little disappointed that I only got upgrades for 4 out of my 6 spells. Cross and Sweep become a little underwhelming once the other spells get their upgrades. Other than that, this was a great little time sink and I would love to see a sequel, or even just another game with the same attitude.
A refreshingly good game, the likes of which I haven't seen for what feels like years. Eminently playable even without the Premium add-on, but the Premium add-on is a very reasonable 50 Kreds (I bought it). 5/5, and I'll be keeping an eye on this developer.
I would greatly enjoy a fully-fledged RPG with these characters in this universe. You have the knack for storytelling and characters, and that's most important.
 "Rogue Isles"){kind=icon}
 "Escape Game - Computer Office Escape"){kind=icon}
 "Loot Loop Loot"){kind=icon}
 "Four Color Theorem - Coloring Puzzle Game"){kind=icon}
 "Stop the Darkness"){kind=icon}
 "Dragon of Ecology"){kind=icon}
 "Gragyriss, Captor of Princesses"){kind=icon}
 "Trial of Temptation"){kind=icon}
 "The Final Earth 2"){kind=icon}
 "Where Are My Pets?"){kind=icon}
 "Demons vs Fairyland"){kind=icon}
 "Idle Intelligence"){kind=icon}
 "Lies of Astaroth"){kind=icon}
 "Guild Quest"){kind=icon}
 "Monster Clearer"){kind=icon}
 "The King of Towers"){kind=icon}
 "Stellar Squad"){kind=icon}
 "Home"){kind=icon}
That's EXACTLY the feeling I wanted the players to have while playing this game, and is the core reason this game has a time limit. In a normal RPG, you can just sit somewhere and farm til you have optimal equipment, and plenty of time to theorycraft or use a calculator. I wanted loot selection to be a skill the player had to master, so I wanted to throw tough decisions at the player while under pressure. You really identified some solid points there. There's a lot of tradeoffs to the equipment you choose, and it also depends on the fights you're about to encounter since stats/sets are dependent on what path you're going down.