Thanks for checking it out!

The post jam build will be increasing the base time slightly, to help incentivize gathering more resources and maximizing time spent in a run, I was worried about how long runs felt, and it definitely sounds like there's a consensus that they were a little too short without all the time upgrades bought, but thankfully that's literally a 2 second fix!

The upgrade tree will be expanding soon, for better or worse, so it'll take a little more grinding to fill out the tree, but thankfully I worked out a solution with this build that removes the need to reset saves after a patch, which is a game changer (no pun intended), and I think it will really help player retention if they want to return later.

Thanks for leaving some feedback, and we'll get working on it!

Thanks for playing!

Already looking at some more options to help improve the grinding a bit, with a higher difficulty option that will give some better rewards.

I'm interested in looking into something like multiple scythes, or piercing, but I'm concerned it'll break the system a little too much at the current stage, but I'll definitely keep brainstorming and see if I can find a good middle ground, since more upgrade options are always good.

As far as enemies, I'd like to work on getting a couple more in with some different attack patterns - I've got a small idea for one, but I'd like to try to get one more in, too , though I don't really have any ideas jumping out at me at this point in time, so I've got to think on it a bit more.

Thanks for the feedback, always useful!

Thanks for checking it out!

I'm actually kind of excited for some post jam support myself, too - won't be a whole lot, but I don't normally return to jam projects, due to various personal reasons or reasons from the team. But most everything is already in place for the first post-jam build, and it didn't require any more work from the rest of the team, which is nice, and there are some more upgrades on the way with it! Second build, however, may be a different story...

As far as the melee enemies go, what were some struggles they were giving you? Off the top of my head, I could see that it could be hard to tell when they were going to attack, which could make fighting them feel a little unfair. But I'm more than willing to hear your thoughts, and see if I can get it fixed!

Thanks for taking the time to play, and the team and I appreciate the support!

Thanks for playing!

One of the games that I was taking inspiration from for the incremental mechanics, Astro Prospector, had shorter time based runs, and I thought trying to combine that with the extraction elements would make for a unique approach to blending the two genres. Plus it meant you weren't crazy committed to sitting down and playing, if you started a run. I tried to trim the mechanics that I felt were pretty punishing from other extraction shooters out, to make it easier to design, and a little more "friendly" to new players, though its not like this game had a steep learning curve. Regardless, the idea of mixing the genres was a little bit out there, but I wanted to try something a little whacky this time around.

And I'm glad you enjoyed the boss fight! I wanted something to work towards with the upgrade tree, since I felt there wouldn't be much incentive to really play past the first 5 minutes otherwise, so though a boss fight doesn't really suit an extraction game for the most part, I still wanted to try to get it in. At that point, my goal was to include something that would incorporate the rest of the mechanics of the gameplay loop, to help prevent the fight from feeling like it was tacked on at the last minute and kinda forgotten about (though with the balancing, it may still come off like that, but that's on my end from tweaking numbers too harshly), so incorporating the time and charging mechanics was a given. After that I decided to try another new idea with the bullet hell mechanics, and leaning into that, I wanted to give some leeway to both myself as the fight designer, and you all as the players, by using the time as health for the fight, and having it replenish. Helps to cover up some of the "rough around the edges" design choices, and can let the player be more aggressive since there's no actual form of health recovery outside of the boss fight.

But thanks for taking the time to play all the way through, and letting us know what did and didn't work!

Thank you!

Balance is definitely still a work in progress - Ideally I'd like the early game to not feel like too much of a slog, hopefully I can nail the numbers down to get things feeling good...

But there's definitely at least one more update in the pipeline, and I'm open to more feedback from players and the team as far as requests on what content to add!

Thanks for checking it out!

Thanks David!

I'll talk to the team on the abilities to get their input. Honestly I mostly implemented them as a gate to prevent the player from just taking on the boss right out of the gate, but maybe just removing them in favor of some more stat upgrades, and letting the player attempt that challenge whenever would be a better shift...

And I'll look at increasing the base time some more, since that seems to be coming up as an issue.  Likewise on the tutorial - I honestly had no guard in place for the player just outright killing the test enemies before even seeing them, developer brain moment, I guess lol.

But thanks for the feedback, we'll definitely get on incorporating this into the next build!

Thanks for checking it out!

Genuinely think the music does so much to carry the rest of the game, Mechpie did such a good job, I don’t think the game would play the same without his hard work!

Likewise, R’s got a knack for adding flair here and there that I normally put off till the end, and subsequently overlook as a result. Glad that he was willing to work on another project with me for this jam - He pulled through with the voice clips for Calli and Kronii during gameplay and in the menus, really helps add some character and to break up what’s otherwise a relatively serious game!

I’ll make sure to relay your compliments, in case they don’t see it!

Thanks for playing!

Glad this hit a chord with you, to be honest I hadn't really considered how it evokes flash games until this very comment, but I can totally see that! Used to love playing on AG myself, too!

I had mentioned it in a previous comment, but I was concerned about the upgrade scaling, since I wanted to preserve the feeling of power progression that a lot of these games have, while still requiring some initial investment to be able to fight Kronii. I think that was where the main hump came in, since I balanced her with the player having a decent amount of upgrades in mind (and as a result she's been a little too tough for what I envisioned a tester or player would need to complete, with respect to their time).

But I've tweaked her a little bit for the first post jam build, and I think she feels a little more fair if you aren't geared to the teeth. But thanks for taking the time to invest into the tree and get to the point where you could just walk over her, that's the affect I was going for if the player had a full arsenal.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for checking it out!

I wanted to lean into a simpler gameplay loop and system this time (my team's entry for HoloJam 6 was nearly too much to handle, so I wanted to dial it back a bit hehe). 

But we worked with a new musician this jam, and couldn't have been happier with the end result, he did such a great job on the tracks, and whipping up the SFX for most everything in the game (now I just need to see what I can get him to cook up for the post jam content :wink:)!

I've brought it up in a couple replies now, but in the next build I have added a delay to some of Kronii's more difficult attacks to make them easier to handle, but I may also reduce her bullet speed across the board slightly to help with those and the non-delayed attacks.

I've also reworked the boss fight mechanics a bit to prevent the player from just standing on a single point and charging it repeatedly - slowing the player down was my original solution to that, but it sounds like it didn't really land, so I had to tweak some more central aspects of the fight, but I think that change is for the better (though I guess I'll find out when I can upload and get players' feedback...).

I definitely do think the boss fight has been one of the harder aspects to manage, between incorporating the main gimmick and balancing in general, but thankfully I can rely on everyone playing to provide insight and different perspectives to help me come up with potential fixes!

Thanks for taking the time to play, and for the helpful feedback!

Thanks for playing!

I've also been seeing some feedback that the bone and gear balancing was skewed a bit, so I've adjusted some prices to balance it out a bit more (unfortunately that doesn't affect anyone who's already bought the upgrades, but that's how it goes, I suppose)

As far as the shield goes, do you mean the time bubble ability (the one that you activate with spacebar or the bottom face button)? I can look into that, I didn't really test edge cases during the boss fight, so it might be linked to that. 

Thanks for taking the time to play and leaving some feedback!

Thanks for playing!

I had originally had the idea for multiple maps, but that didn't pan out and I didn't want to try to bite off too much for the content of the Jam. But the team and I are actively looking into adding a couple more for post jam content, so it's not falling on deaf ears!

Coupling with that, I actually programmed the enemies to work like the player - they have their own stat modifiers for health, attack damage, and move speed. But I couldn't find a good way to tie it into the gameplay loop without taking away from the power fantasy of the player character too much. However, as a middle ground, I'm leaning toward reincorporating it with the new maps, to where they will add stats onto enemy modifiers, making them more difficult on higher level map choices, to give the player the option to interact with tougher content if they choose. I still need to make some more tweaks to get this working in a way that rewards the player (looking into that currently), but it's in the pipeline!

Balancing upgrade costs was a tough one on this project, in all honesty. I did want to keep that progression through the tree like other incremental games have while scaling the amounts, but I think it was really only something I could have ironed in with more playtesting, which was a little lacking on the tail end of the project. I was going to reduce the soul costs for the active upgrades, since those are required, but with the version 1.0 change, I updated it so you always have a set number of souls that spawn on the map, and it was over half the amount required to purchase 1 of the upgrades, so if you find a decent amount of them in one run, you're already making progress, and the original idea was that it was intended for some upgrades to take multiple runs to get. (Plus its already pretty easy to cheese the timer and max out your loot from a run, and I didn't want to encourage that any further with the current state the game is in - maybe I can look the other way if harder stages and more upgrades are implemented, since at least then you'll be risking more to meet higher cost requirements)

On Kronii, I've been looking into her boss fight some more to balance out those attacks that don't feel fair, adding a slight delay between when they spawn and when they start moving, to help give the player enough time to react and avoid them. I originally wanted this fight to be tough, since you don't lose health, and you gain back a big chunk of time when charging a portal, but it might have turned out a bit too difficult without all the upgrades. And hopefully with those updates, I can really lean into the bullet hell mechanics more and go crazy with her projectile count.

And I'm definitely considering getting more upgrades in - I've overhauled the save system for this post jam build, and managed to figure out how to prevent needing to delete save data when the game is updated, so the team and I can go crazy and add or adjust upgrades however we like, and it should apply retroactively, and not require you to reset, so now the worst part is figuring out what I can translate to work with how the upgrade system is built, but I really like your suggestions, and will definitely be trying to incorporate whatever I can that works in the coming update(s?)

Thanks for taking the time to play, and leaving such detailed feedback, it's really helpful!

Thanks for checking it out!

Unfortunately enemies were a bit of an issue on this one - on the first build the enemies did basically nothing, and weren't much of a threat at all, so I scaled them up a bit in the early game, to still give the player the opportunity to feel that power level increase after buying upgrades, but it seems like I've been getting some split opinions on that after the 1.0 drop, so I'll definitely have to hit the drawing board and see what I can do to preserve that threat early while still making it fair - might just be as simple as reducing their health, in all honesty.

I've been working on a handful of tweaks for the boss fight, which primarily includes delays on attacks like the circular shot and the spread shot, to make them easier to handle, but unfortunately it wasn't something I was able to get in before the grace period ended, such is life. But it'll be up in the post jam build (just waiting to send it at this point, lol)

And I can definitely give the tutorial a once over - I originally had it so the indicator would point towards the next objective -> loot chest, pick that up, then melee enemy,  defeat them,  then ranged enemy, etc. but I took it out before submitting

To be honest I don't completely remember why, but I should be able to tack it back on, and that could be a helpful hint on where to go.

I also updated the menu to make it more clear that the tutorial is mandatory, instead of just leaving the start button on the main menu.

Thanks for sticking with it though, really appreciate the feedback, and I'll try to incorporate some alleviations into the build!

Thanks for playing!

I can see where you're coming from on that. I would have loved to have multiple maps, but I didn't want to try to plan too much for the jam, and overwork our artist on the project. The easiest middle ground on that was randomizing the spawns on each run to try to keep things interesting, but it doesn't always land, unfortunately.  Maybe I could have made some variants of the map and with tweaks to grant more rewards and cut down on the grinding a bit more, but grinding does come with the genres I was pulling from for inspiration, so it's not entirely unavoidable. Such is life.

And that's also part of the reason why we unlocked the boss a little bit early - so you wouldn't have to grind all the skills unless you wanted to!

But still, thanks for taking the time to play and the feedback is helpful!

Thanks for taking the time to check it out! When originally planning, I hadn't given too much thought to the gameplay loop, so I'm glad that it turned out well and players seem to enjoy it!

As someone who doesn't play extraction games, I wanted to find a good balance between taking the mechanics that still make them feel unique, without making the game feel too punishing for losing, especially since you start off relatively weak, but still wanted to preserve that ramping power feeling that incremental and upgrade focused games give.

Appreciate the feedback and glad you enjoyed!