This game is masterful game/level design. How you fit together the platforming with the different abilities was beautiful. Well done, I envy this level of creativity and execution.
Brilliant, polished Roguelike that solves the classic pains of historical Roguelikes (like elegantly removing tedious inventory management). Suggestions: Make cooldowns more visible, especially buffs. Make the cooldown number fill the icon so I can see from the corner of my eye. Also, show "Monsters Cleared" or something next to minimap when I kill all monsters. Sometimes I miss the "Alright, all clear" message and spend 10 minutes searching the map for a nonexistent monster. Just some small ideas for this 5/5 star game. Keep it up.
Controls are super polished. By the time you beat it, you really feel like you've developed a skill. Just went back and checked out Run 2 and it's impressive how far you've come. I recommend making a "Complete all levels" achievement.
The complaints about inventory space are ridiculous. Charging for something that *doesn't* cost any dev time is how they pay for things that *do* cost dev time.
Incredibly polished in every way. The guns, particularly the shotgun and nailgun have a fat, satisfying feel. Wayyy too easy, though. Also, in a sequel, you can add a lot of replayability by making skill-points scarce instead of unlocking everything on one play-through.
To beat 45, you just need to think differently. you need to realize you'll never out-produce him. instead, play offensively and use one of his labs to capture the two forts near him (they have 50-100 jellies). then, after he launches an attack, send in everything you have. everything. because once you capture the pirate, you get to jellyspam the crap out of him. make it slow and excruciating.
"Because % has eyes and nose and : has eyes only. As you can see this is optimization: 2 symbols %) instead of 3 :-) and optimization is a good friend of every dev!" -- But so is symbolism and abstraction. Years of heuristic learning and exposure makes ":)" perfectly sufficient and recognizable without a nose. In fact, some cultures only use ")".
The fastest way to lose interest in this game comes from the inability to relocate once you grow out of your pond. Most cities hardly make it past level 3. So the more effort you put into this game, the less cities there are to raid. I used my free relocate early on before I had a better concept of where I should move. I relocated in the middle of the highest levels in my country (level 7). But now I'm way above them. I didn't have the experience to realize that I should locate to a more populous, active country all together.
Solution: Provide a way to relocate that doesn't depend on gems. I know gems are how you monetize this game, but I'd wager that people will mainly get bored due to lack of activity around them. The only people likely to buy gems are people that haven't grown bored of the game. I'm too high of a level to raid anybody in my country, for example. It's a bit discouraging.
To win 2-5: Focus on your fleet, not turrets.
- Plop out some Fusion Cores off the bat.
- First, upgrade your existing Starbases to churn out Wolverines. They will keep the enemy in a dogfight away from your base.
- Then, get your Adv. Starbase to churn out Bombers which will go directly to their buildings, but your Wolverines should be doing well at this point.
- Use your energy excess to upgrade supply depots and fusion cores. If you need turrets, build Gauss Cannons (15metal, 200energy) since you'll have energy surplus but very little metal.
This game would be so fun if you could shoot through teammates. Instead, the game pretty much revolves around trying to not hit your own meatshield teammates rather than focusing on high-intensity combat. And the outcome of team deathmatch feels entirely out of your hands when you lose a first-to-10 even though you went 6-1.