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A jam submission

Your party died again (Demo)View game page

Party Based RPG Incremental Action
Submitted by Branno — 2 days, 15 hours before the deadline
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Your party died again (Demo)'s itch.io page

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Comments

Absolute slop but somewhat addictive regardless. I bet players will love it.

Shame it's incremental by design as there could be an interesting build variety like with sacrificing defense for rage meter.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2767018332

Love the progression, each run felt like progress. Huge kudos for that!
Character animations are peak. Very addictive.

Looking forward for the full game!

Submitted (4 edits)

I must've forgotten to write a comment, but I played this last demo and finished it. The game is fun this time too. I'd probably play more if the demo was longer.

  • I like sort of hands off tutorial during first runs.
  • Priest's heal icon should become disabled when she can't cast it.
  • High-yield priest currency (redish orbs) and hunter currency (spiky red orbs) might be too similar. After I defeated the 2nd boss, I looted some red orbs and unlocked ranger. When I went to his upgrade page, I saw that ranger uses red orbs as currency, but I had 0 despite picking up some red orbs. Now I understand it was probably higher-yield priest currency, but initially I thought there was some error and ranger currency was not registered because they're both circle shaped and have similar color.
  • Visuals vary in quality and could be better. For example in screenshot with snake people, snake guys looks noticeably better than the heroes. Maybe it just newer assets. Also some sprites have outlines and some don't.
  • Icons sometimes go crazy when you mouse them over. Most of the times they wiggle normally, but sometimes they rotate super fast.


    The game is fine, I played some incremental games in the past and this one is quite enjoyable, but there's something I don't like and it's that the enemies don't have animations. It doesn't looks good because the main characters HAVE animations while the enemies don't, it doesn't looks cohesive

    Enemies need to react visually  in some way, right now they are just png images while the main characters have actual animations and players on Steam are gonna be fast on notice that detail and that's the difference between having a wishlist or not.

    In summary, I belief you have a good incremental game but it need visual consistency, the players see the main characters being animated, their mind expect the enemies to have it too.  

    Really adictive

    Submitted

    I'll be really harsh (even more than i usually am) so feel free to skip my post. Also this was the first incremental i ever played, so my feedback could be full of shit.

    I played till you unlock the healer; health potion is the last thing i unlocked.

    Random stuff i noted

    - i really want options to kill the volume, since it's only on browser my only solution is to mute the tab

    - you can pick up coins after you died, while in the gameover screen

    - coins/gems have a low chance to roll outside the screen; dunno if this is something to keep you engaged, or if it's somethingoutside your design. I personally like it because it keeps you engaged and it could lead to a later 'magnet' powerup for it.


    Overall thoughts

    i'll be very negative and harsh since i've been leaving you feedback since platform gun days. Imo you need to take this bitter pill: art is important. 

    You know this on some level because healed sold "well". I feel you, i'm not an artist myself, but art is what will make a random player sit on a chair and try your game.

    Even if your design is great, this art is a full debuff that turns away people. and since you already made a steampage + trailer i know this level of polish could be almost final.

    So we are talking: enemies without anims; one tile per dungeon biome (for what i see from your screens); not even torches are animated. 

    beyond that, heralds has not even a style.  Surface had that b/w of classic rogues going for it. what heralds have? it seems all placeholder stuff; even the title is just something typed.

    I don't play incrementals, but i know there are lots of them out there, even one that uses the skin of "heroes goin into a dungeon". So this is not an out-there idea, a super new experimental thing that needs to be tested. Incremental is a genre that exists and it has a playerbase.

    You talk about novelty in your videos. What's the novelty of this game? if i didn't know this game was from you, i would never click a steampage with this art.

    Of course i'm talking from a pile of shit. you have three relases (one mildly successful), i still have to reach my first release. So as said in the beginning, be free to not consider my words at all.

    Overall imo your game design is very good. i like to play your games. but when you don't care about "appeal" of your art, you really hurt yourself and your "product".

    >in b4 this game sells a million copies in one weekend.

    Developer(+1)

    Totally fair criticism. It's hard to know what is placeholder and what isn't so I'd rather you just treat it like a released product. Also who really cares about credentials for feedback. I'm making my game for gamers, not game developers.

    I think i'm on track to solve a lot of what you have brought up so hopefully next demo day will be better. (I got an artist who has a lot of work to do).

    On the novelty part, I'm hoping to showcase a little more of that in future projects. Sometimes you need to just stick with your less than original idea from January. It seems hypercritical at the moment but I do intend to innovate on the genre over the next 2 years. Will see how it goes, I've already had to scrap one of my 'novel' ideas after a week of development.

    Submitted

    GL dude, u have a great attitude.

    Developer

    Thanks for reporting the memory leak. It is now fixed.

    Submitted

    Not really a guy to play incrementals tbh but i enjoyed playing through this demo for sure. not much useful feedback to give though. it's good

    Submitted

    Pretty nice incremental game!
    First dungeon had a nice flow, swamp dungeon was getting a bit boring. I quit before i could kill the boss. The abilities are quite nice and make the player think about the right timing to use them. The deterministic levels make it seem a bit like a souls like run, where you memorize each wave and time your abilities accordingly. Someone else commented that seeing more in the skill trees would be nice and i agree. I thought i must unlock a new party member at some point, but i didnt find any upgrade nodes for that. Maybe i just went down the wrong path and made the game way harder for myself.

    The party has some nice sprite animations that the enemies are missing. I think that and some more detail in the level backgrounds (animated torches for instance) would push the game a long way.

    In game notes:

    • Everything is still so loud, music options please
      • Especially level start from the map, holy crap
    • The start is still *very* slow. A game speed option would not be missed.
    • Possibly make the pickup sounds a little less echo-y? It’s a little odd
    • I like the new upgrade menus
    • Music variety would help a lot, I’m already tired of the main theme.
    • I wouldn’t mind something to spice up runs. Like some random stuff in the background
      • Or something like a flying item that shows up randomly. Something I could choose to attack for some gems/gold, or left go
      • IDK maybe just something to make repeated runs a little less samey
    • There is some kind of memory leak. I left the game running (phone call) and it had taken up an extra 2GB, and was laggy in browser
    • I see we rescued an archer, but an animation or something would be cool

    After play notes:

    This is a solid demo, and I would have played more given the chance. I’d definitely like to be able to speed up the gameplay, and think the visuals and sounds could use some more polish, but I think this has some real potential. There's certainly improvements from the first demo.

    Developer

    Thanks for the feedback.

    Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

    Very fun game. It was quite addictive. 

    I honestly don't have much major feedback, the art style might be a little too simplistic but I also think it is part of the charm. 

    One thing I did notice was that when I used that sword ability on the wizard orc while he was casting the fireball that he throws at you, it disappears mid way through since I believe it is a child of the enemy entity.  It might be intended but it looks a little rough since it vanishes immediately.

    Good job nonetheless.

    Developer(+1)

    Fair. I may just spawn it on another node and reduce the damage to 1 or even 0 if the caster dies. Solves your problem while rewarding the player for killing a monster.