Hey, I gave this a go today! It's a neat little game. I especially liked the way you framed the speedrunning angle—it's a clever touch with a lot of humor.
I expected the timer running during conversations and menus to bother me, but I hardly noticed. The music and visuals were stellar (the screenshots were the primary reason I picked up this game), and the overall loop seemed promising.
I do have some feedback on aspects that felt a little rough, though:
The camera movement felt jerky rather than smooth. I tried capping FPS, forcing VSync, and disabling G-Sync without any change. On the off chance you're using Godot, upping the physics tick rate would probably fix it.
I seemed unable to use a controller. This seems like the perfect controller game, so I'd love to be able to do that in future.
The font is charming but a little hard to read. It slowed me down significantly.
Some ability outcomes felt quite RNG-heavy. Bolt missed frequently and Blink was hardly reliable, which was frustrating given the difficulty and the short duration of most battles.
Not sure if this is intentional, but dying after buying an upgrade seemed like the most efficient way to progress. Healers are expensive!
Very minor, but the music seemed to change at 44 minutes, and later on, at 14 minutes. Were these changes off by a minute?
All that aside, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'll be sure to attempt another run soon.
1) I think what you're experiencing here is just that the player character's movement speed is 1.25 pixels per frame. The game display is pixel perfect so there's nothing that can really be fixed here.
2&3) I don't have any plans for an update for this game currently, but if I do I'll consider adding controller support + an alternate font.
4&5) All intentional! I think it's cool to have unintuitive strategies like that. Playing around the more unreliable or specialized abilities offered is part of the fun too.
6) Music changes happen at the end of the tracks' loops to keep the audio continuous, so while the main trigger is every 15 minutes, they won't necessarily 100% line up, especially if you pause the game.
i really love the style of this game: its colorful palette, its sense of humor, the music and sound design, the smooth, zippy text boxes and menus.. it looks and feels great. but i've been having a difficult time getting a foothold on the gameplay side. i've run out my timer twice now without feeling like i was coming even close to being able to survive the end, so i feel like i'm starting to know my way around the game okay. but i still haven't found any good strategies for shaving my time down, and i'm not sure where to look for them, either. the main thing that has worked out for me is to prioritize not dying, which means focusing on grinding and only exploring or taking risks once i've gotten as strong as i reasonably can for the area. this is especially true in the first world, where i feel especially dependent on gold to progress, but a poorly timed death can set me back as much as 5 minutes in cash losses. i can relax a little bit more in worlds 2 and 3, since by i have a bit more power to protect myself better cash rewards from battle - but it's hard to psych myself up for another attempt when i expect to spend the first 15 or 20 minutes on the same slow, disciplined grind as the last run.
the way accumulating and exploiting knowledge has taken a back seat to gruntwork in my own experience feels contrary to the spirit of the game as described, so i sense i'm missing something. it often feels like there's something better i could be doing, especially in the first world, but i'm having a hard time seeing it. do you have any advice for how to approach my next run? techniques to employ or things to pay extra attention to? i'm really curious to see what this play space looks like once i've mastered it, but i think i'll need some help getting there.
Something I probably didn't get across as well as I wanted to in the game descriptions is that it is supposed to feel totally hopeless and frustrating between the time investment per attempt, close to unfair difficulty of the bosses even if you're prepared, and opaqueness of ways to improve your strategy. I did this to tie into the story, make it feel more rewarding once you finally figure things out, and hopefully encourage people to share strategies rather than go it alone (unfortunately barely anyone has bought the game).
That said I'll try to give some advice. For the earlygame, my recommended target to be on pace for winning the game is to reach level 4 within 15 minutes, ideally 12 or less. Midbosses or higher tier enemies are the most EXP efficient, so it's best to use your resources in ways that target them. Gold efficiency in this part is definitely tricky... slimes are safe but give terrible gold drops, while the tougher enemies give solid amounts but you can only snipe a couple with spells before needing an MP refill. Because of this, saving up gold is really slow, so you'll only ever afford any of the big purchases when you get a big influx of cash (your starting gold, overworld rewards, reselling your gear). You'll just have to make those sources count. Other than that, you can also save on healer fees by loading up on cheap items (usually health potions) and taking a death to make the duke heal you instead.
ahh, i respect the vision. i'm a big fan of rpgs that use despair, frustration, fatigue etc. to convey their themes (ff2, fire emblem 5, arguably 7th saga...) so i feel a bit silly for not coming to that conclusion on my own. it makes a ton of sense for a game where you've been allotted 1 hour to prepare yourself for an unjust deathmatch
thanks for the guidance. it sounds to me like the thing i need to do to is to get better at grinding toward the midboss battles. i'm thinking that as i keep making attempts and get familiar with different bosses' stats/resistances/spells, it'll be easier to scout the boss out, go "ah, i know what i need to beat this guy (or the next best thing)" and grind just until i can achieve that, so i can move on sooner. i'll give it a few more tries and report back with the results!
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Hey, I gave this a go today! It's a neat little game. I especially liked the way you framed the speedrunning angle—it's a clever touch with a lot of humor.
I expected the timer running during conversations and menus to bother me, but I hardly noticed. The music and visuals were stellar (the screenshots were the primary reason I picked up this game), and the overall loop seemed promising.
I do have some feedback on aspects that felt a little rough, though:
All that aside, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'll be sure to attempt another run soon.
Thank you for playing!
Regarding your points:
1) I think what you're experiencing here is just that the player character's movement speed is 1.25 pixels per frame. The game display is pixel perfect so there's nothing that can really be fixed here.
2&3) I don't have any plans for an update for this game currently, but if I do I'll consider adding controller support + an alternate font.
4&5) All intentional! I think it's cool to have unintuitive strategies like that. Playing around the more unreliable or specialized abilities offered is part of the fun too.
6) Music changes happen at the end of the tracks' loops to keep the audio continuous, so while the main trigger is every 15 minutes, they won't necessarily 100% line up, especially if you pause the game.
i really love the style of this game: its colorful palette, its sense of humor, the music and sound design, the smooth, zippy text boxes and menus.. it looks and feels great. but i've been having a difficult time getting a foothold on the gameplay side. i've run out my timer twice now without feeling like i was coming even close to being able to survive the end, so i feel like i'm starting to know my way around the game okay. but i still haven't found any good strategies for shaving my time down, and i'm not sure where to look for them, either. the main thing that has worked out for me is to prioritize not dying, which means focusing on grinding and only exploring or taking risks once i've gotten as strong as i reasonably can for the area. this is especially true in the first world, where i feel especially dependent on gold to progress, but a poorly timed death can set me back as much as 5 minutes in cash losses. i can relax a little bit more in worlds 2 and 3, since by i have a bit more power to protect myself better cash rewards from battle - but it's hard to psych myself up for another attempt when i expect to spend the first 15 or 20 minutes on the same slow, disciplined grind as the last run.
the way accumulating and exploiting knowledge has taken a back seat to gruntwork in my own experience feels contrary to the spirit of the game as described, so i sense i'm missing something. it often feels like there's something better i could be doing, especially in the first world, but i'm having a hard time seeing it. do you have any advice for how to approach my next run? techniques to employ or things to pay extra attention to? i'm really curious to see what this play space looks like once i've mastered it, but i think i'll need some help getting there.
Thank you so much for playing!
Something I probably didn't get across as well as I wanted to in the game descriptions is that it is supposed to feel totally hopeless and frustrating between the time investment per attempt, close to unfair difficulty of the bosses even if you're prepared, and opaqueness of ways to improve your strategy. I did this to tie into the story, make it feel more rewarding once you finally figure things out, and hopefully encourage people to share strategies rather than go it alone (unfortunately barely anyone has bought the game).
That said I'll try to give some advice. For the earlygame, my recommended target to be on pace for winning the game is to reach level 4 within 15 minutes, ideally 12 or less. Midbosses or higher tier enemies are the most EXP efficient, so it's best to use your resources in ways that target them. Gold efficiency in this part is definitely tricky... slimes are safe but give terrible gold drops, while the tougher enemies give solid amounts but you can only snipe a couple with spells before needing an MP refill. Because of this, saving up gold is really slow, so you'll only ever afford any of the big purchases when you get a big influx of cash (your starting gold, overworld rewards, reselling your gear). You'll just have to make those sources count. Other than that, you can also save on healer fees by loading up on cheap items (usually health potions) and taking a death to make the duke heal you instead.
ahh, i respect the vision. i'm a big fan of rpgs that use despair, frustration, fatigue etc. to convey their themes (ff2, fire emblem 5, arguably 7th saga...) so i feel a bit silly for not coming to that conclusion on my own. it makes a ton of sense for a game where you've been allotted 1 hour to prepare yourself for an unjust deathmatch
thanks for the guidance. it sounds to me like the thing i need to do to is to get better at grinding toward the midboss battles. i'm thinking that as i keep making attempts and get familiar with different bosses' stats/resistances/spells, it'll be easier to scout the boss out, go "ah, i know what i need to beat this guy (or the next best thing)" and grind just until i can achieve that, so i can move on sooner. i'll give it a few more tries and report back with the results!