An interesting concept, and it feels like a polished game!

A bit late feedback, previous comments already mention most of the stuff I could say, but I guess I will still repeat what caught my eye:

- It looks and feels like a mobile game. I downloaded the demo from steam, so the mobile look was a bit unexpected. And when playing on PC, there is so much unused space on the screen, the map could be much bigger...

- There was a bit of tutorial introducing the player to the fight, which was nice. I wish there was also more tutorial later on explaining bioms, changes to them, faction points, and so on

- I am also not quite clear on what the consumable cards are (are they used once and that's it? If you don't use them and instead use the weapon to draw new cards, do you still have them?)

- I wish there was a way to look at your current deck and maybe add/remove cards to/from it? Like, put more powerful consumable cards before a difficult fight, remove them before a simple encounter.

- I didn't quite understand how to judge the difficulty of encounters... 

- In some cards some of the text is cut off

- Couldn't find a way to exit the game 

Overall, it feels like a nice game already, and clearly a lot of effort was put into it. Good luck with future development!

Hello! Dev from Emblems here (Tonic). Sorry for the delay on this feedback... Unfortunately, I know nothing about streaming, so there's no video to go along with this! But I played Worldseekers a few days ago and had fun with it 🙂 The music is really great, and infinitely listenable, which I think is important for a looping game like this. The animations are also nice and smooth, when clicking on things and moving from one screen to another! I really like the idea of a GPS-based deckbuilder, so I'm happy to see this kind of experiment being developed.

I don't play card roguelikes so I don't know if this is normal, but I also really liked the system of the "weapon" in the battles! How it has a different strength/limitations based on when you use it, and that it refreshes your deck when you do (whether your hand is empty or not). Maybe you have this later on, but I think it could be neat to include different styles of weapons that work differently that the player could choose to switch to! Or like a "fire" version of the same sword but it's red, and does elemental damage or something.

Overall, I think other commenters below have given most of the criticism I have toward the game; namely, that it's a bit difficult to understand all the systems we're working with, and how they interact! Not only in battle, but in the menus and world screens as well. Things like Treasure nodes and Faction points were never explained to my knowledge, and I wondered whether/how the colors of the map node outlines indicated what difficulty they were, and such.

But the art is a bigger weakness, in my opinion. Aside from the inconsistency in styles (some images are realistic and some are cartoonish), the changing "expressions" for human characters like Auntie were extremely jarring in that their whole entire faces changed in strange ways. I do really like the concept for your game, so I hate that the art is giving it a worse impression that it deserves! If there's not an artist on your team/you're unable to bring one on, I'd recommend looking into some asset packs on https://cubebrush.co/ ! There's a ton of great stuff there, and it would really reflect the passion in your ideas much better if the art was more cohesive ⚔️

A few other quality of life things I noticed!

-the enemy timer circle covers up the sprites of taller enemies (like the ghost-knight in the Cracked Earth biome)

-there are no resolutions listed in the Settings drop-down + debug screen is still present?

-I was unable to find the exit button once in the Settings menu

-there's also no "exit game" button anywhere that I could find?

-the "victory" emblem image is fairly blurry

-many of the map texts have a faint, black square around them (we've had this happen to us, and usually it's related to "glow" settings on the font, if that helps!)

-on dialogue screens, is there a way to show all the choices at once, without needing to scroll down?

-the italics made the prose a bit difficult to read

-many of the card descriptions have text that exceeds the available space, and gets cut off without a scroll bar to see the rest

-the gear select screen at the end of battles doesn't reset to the leftmost option every time, so you have to drag it over to see all the options

All in all though, I think it's a really fun idea! I'd love to see the systems clarified a bit more, and the art sorted out! I will be keeping an eye on this project!! 😎

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

From the moment I started this up, I could tell the sort of game this was. Not about it being a deckbuilder or about it using GPS, but that its eventual form would be that of a microtransaction  heavy game, possibly with gacha elements. I'm not going to judge for these elements, I can just see them.

With that said, I had an issue with this game. Namely, I understood HOW to play but I never felt like I understood how everything worked together. In short, I didn't understand how the systems combined. I didn't understand how each stat worked, I didn't understand how playing cards increased the damage of my sword, I didn't understand why cards just disappeared from my deck. Nothing made sense.

The reason I point this all out is because without a fundamental understand of the game's mechanics, a player can't get "good" at the game. Instead of reinforcing an understanding of how to play and how things work, the game just keeps pushing forward and introduces new terms without any real depth to them.

I also had an issue with how mismatched the artwork in this game is. The player avatar doesn't bear any similar style to the artwork for Odeon who doesn't bear any similar style to the artwork for Auntie who doesn't bear any similar style to the artwork used for Arlette who doesn't bear any similar style to the artwork used for those random dudes who said they'd become the Grandmaster, etc etc. This lack of consistent style makes me think two things: either this is all asset use or it's made using AI. Both are problems but where the former is just an issue of consistency, the latter is just a problem that would get the game judged unfairly. A lack of consistency just makes the game feel cheaply made, like the visuals didn't matter.

I also found moving around the map to be strange. I was playing this on PC, and trying to turn the camera on the map was a struggle due to other interactions the mouse did. When I move around, I'd constantly get moments of "Oh hey, you moved your spirit too far from your body."

Then there are the bugs I encountered. In several events, I'd get to what I think was the last piece of dialogue only for the game to just go "OKAY WE'RE LEAVING THIS BYEEEEE!" before I could even read what was said. This happened multiple times and I don't know why. I also had an issue where Auntie was supposed to have given me 6 Fire Arrows, but I never got them. Maybe there's an explanation as to why, but for the life of me I couldn't figure it out.

Overall, this became a bit of an annoying experience as I never felt like I understood anything that was going on nor was being warned properly at times. For example, I went into the vault to try and get some stuff, and was floored when the second monster was prepped to do something like 50 damage to me when enemies before that point had only been doing, like, 7. On the world map, there's a warning if you're vastly underleveled for that stage but not in the vault?

There's stuff here to like, but there's also a LOT of room for improvement in a bunch of different areas. I hope to see this game get better over time.

As soon as I saw the phrase "GPS Deckbuilder", I knew I had to try this one out. The game left me a bit overwhelmed in the beginning, as while the tutorial for the gameplay was well done, the main hub with the tabs had little upfront explanation.

The main question I raise to you is this: who is your game for?

I, as a "hardcore" gamer (i.e. someone who plays games on Steam and never touches mobile games), enjoyed the unique take on card battling with the sword mechanic and can tell that there is deep strategy here, and I enjoyed the story cutscenes that seemingly cropped up out of nowhere and can tell you had fun with the character dialogue. But it seems the full game will have microtransactions/timers/ads, which a player like me would have no patience for.

A mobile gamer would be the opposite; tolerant of the typical mobile game monetization methods, but impatient with any battling beyond a certain level of complexity, and impatient with a deeply involved storyline and lore.

The game tries to appeal to two very different audiences, and doesn't end up fully satisfying either one.

Even the core theme is stuck between two conflicting sides: a high tech, abstract, modern theme (GPS) and a traditional, medieval fantasy theme. While I'm not sure what style would be best for the enemies, weapons, characters, etc., I do think something more sci-fi and/or abstract would give the game a stronger presentation/appeal.

Here are two possible directions to take your game:

1) It seems you have an eye for rich storytelling and engaging battle mechanics. If you're not married to the GPS theme, I would suggest you remove it and instead make this an open world deckbuilding RPG, keeping the deckbuilding, combat, and story, and remove the microtransactions and instead charge a premium price for the full release and put it on Steam (or other online storefronts for PC games)

2) If you want to keep the GPS theme and keep the monetization model, you should deeply consider whether or not a casual audience would enjoy the deckbuilding, combat, and involved story. I'm not saying they won't, but you should seek out mobile game fans specifically and have them try out your game. Unfortunately, most people on itch aren't super into mobile games, myself included, so if that's your target audience we won't be able to help very much.

Other notes:

-Some UX elements are confusing. It took me several minutes to figure out how to leave the reward page because I didn't see the button for picking up loot.

-When I tried to explore on the GPS map, the game stopped me and said "you can't stray too far from your spirit". Huh? If I was playing on an actual mobile device would I just have to stay in a designated area in order to play? What if I was out and about and I returned to my house, would the game no longer let me play?

-It seems I can't directly add cards into my deck, as they are tied to equipment. I understand this is to make the game easily accessible for casuals, but I was disappointed that I didn't have full control over what cards (and how many of each type) I could add to my deck.

Again, I actually enjoyed the game. But this isn't a game I would play a full release of because I don't enjoy mobile game monetization methods.

This is a really polished and ambitious game. With lots of art, lots of content, and good music, it really feels like a complete game.

My first session was a bit confused, and the fact that it really looks like a phone game, built for a touch screen, with a UI that isn't fully intuitive on the PC,  probably didn't help matters. Neither did the fact that I don't have much experience with card games/deck builders. A bit more introduction would probably be a good thing... and having that extend into the initial battles to teach the ropes would be icing on the tutorial cake. 

I ended up really enjoying my time with the game though... gaining new cards and gear, playing them in battle, solving quests for the dear Auntie, and so on and so forth. I don't have much bad to say really, but a few nits maybe:

• I got a quest about transforming biomes, but had a hard time telling which biome was which, could be made clearer
• I got "[..] too far from your real body [...]" many times, and I assume that's related to the games nature as a mobile/ar-style game, but... I didn't understand what it was and what the consequences were.
• There was a fair bit of lingo I'm not familiar with and that I didn't find an explanation for... things like "consumable cards"... those are lost if you lose in combat, but... which cards are consumable?
• The game occasionally tried to squeeze more information into a small space than what would be legible.
• "Disencorage" should be spelled differently

Hugely ambitious game, impressive stuff.