Thanks for playing! True, it is a bit overwhelming right now, I will probably make the starting slots 2 or 3 and then make it possible to unlock more. There are passive improvements but they are a bit rarer, you usually get them from beating bosses or more difficult enemies
tetris is always good. I like this spin into a rogue, i dunno if there are other games like this; I know about peglin, imo you can take some inspiration from it.
i like that there are already a lot of monsters with special skills that makes every encounter different. Speed as an enemy skill is simple but genius
imo this could be a commercial success(depending on competitors, marketing, polish), gj.
Random notes
- both Z and space didn't work on gameplay, but space works to quickstart an encounter
- since you move with arrows, plese add arrow move for menus
- on the pause menu, you should have a "resume" button, not a "back" button to unpause
- moreover, resume should be the first option on top, not return to start screen; return to start should be last option, with an additional "are u sure?" etc etc,. same for quit.
- on the slect room screen, add something that makes you notice that:
1 - this map is an interactable
2 - something that at a glance makes you see where You is (maybe a border animation on the You tile itself)
- you can stuck pieces to the side of the tetris board. If this is intended for normal play, i beg u to reconsider. Imo add it as a BIG malus, or a skill for a boss/elite enemy. This bug disappeared when iu restarted the application, in both cases i choosed the warrior pg
- on victory screen, add a "choose" above the three choices thast pop up
- more on map screen, you need to let players know that they can move back into empty spaces
- i like the boss (ghost with swipe) a lot. sadly i didnt beat it
Thanks for the detailed feedback! Haven't heard about peglin, I'll check it out.
Yes, the game still needs a lot of polish, especially with the UI.
Sticking pieces to the side of the board only happens with one specific enemy with the magnet skill. I guess there also is one upgrade for the warrior that lets you rotate pieces even when there's no room. At first I thought it would be really strong but it can sometimes screw you over if you rotate something right next to the end of the screen so it's probably going to get scrapped or at least changed in the future.
Z and space are both for the ninja character and for some upgrades/blessings. Should be explained better in the future.
I'm really addicted to this game. I've been playing it since the last two jams and I have to say that I always end up rage quitting, just to keep trying it some minutes later lol. Maybe I'm playing it wrong but I'll tell you my experience with your game:
I don't use the items most of the time for three reasons:
Most of the time I challenge myself to fight without them.
I'm saving them to use them with the boss.
Even when I want to use them, there's not enough time to check the items that I have or where they are.
I've been trying to use them more consciously but I'm still losing lol.
Also, when choosing one of three rewards, they don't always show the description of the item.
Thanks for playing! Learning to use the items liberally is definitely a big part of the learning curve, even I tend to hoard them a bit. However, I think it's wrong to hoard them because the rewards shower you with a lot of items and I always end up with more than I can use. Also, the only thing you can spend gold on right now is more items. Eventually I'll do some kind of tutorial that explains how all the items are used and when to use them and hopefully that helps.
I think in the first floor you can survive without using any items and build them up but my design philosophy is that you have to be using them to survive the more difficult fights.
The stopwatch is a cheap item that you can use to pause fights and even rearrange your inventory. Again, not really explained atm so you kinda have to just know about it.
Who are the most rage inducing enemies?
Thanks again, I still have a lot to work on. I hope you check it out again in the future
I think I'll try with spells now. Another reason for me saving items is loss aversion, that cognitive bias heavily influence how I play lol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
Who are the most rage inducing enemies?
I played it some more and it's not a particular enemy, is because when there's almost no space left, there's no time to move to left/right because of the delay, and the rest of the pieces just get stacked almost immediately.
I noticed that you are using the classic style of Tetris, without the 'ground slide' from modern entries, that is as soon as a piece touches the ground it stays there, that took me some time to get used to, nothing wrong with that but I wanted to mention it just in case.
In the end though, I barely used the powerups that you are given, I mostly played Tetris normally and mostly did alright like that.
Thanks for playing! Some of those mechanics exists for the ninja character or as upgrades. The ninja is supposed to be the character for the tetris pros with all the unique mechanics from there while the others have to rely on different tools.
Ideally you should be able to do well even if you ignore the items and skills if you're a tetris god but the enemies get really tough eventually so I can't guarantee it. There's no shame in using the items regularly, you get a lot of them.
Some great ideas and mechanics in there, it needs a more cohesive art style (by pushing it into pixel art with a set color palette or fully hand drawn) and remappable controls. Could also have some classes that benefit players that go for back-to-back tetrises, t-spins or combos. Best of luck with development!
Thanks for the feedback! The art is still mostly temporary, it needs a lot of tweaking. I'll add remappable controls soon, I just want to iron out some of the mechanics first. And those are some good ideas, I was already thinking about including some kind of a combo skill
If I alt-tab out, I cannot tab back. There is also a 50-50 chance that the game starts tabbed out. Maybe there is some problem with GMS2's full screen mode.
Otherwise, pretty clever. I fought the cutest ghost ever at darksouls bossmusic. It's ability to randomly rearrange the placed pieces, was more of a helpful boon than an issue. The transformer randomly changing my pieces was far more painful. Found no bugs, and it seems to be able to go for a while.
Comments
I like the tetris spin of the roguelike gendra. A bit overwhelmed with all the options and possible items though...
I didn't play too much, but it seems most rewards are items you can activate while playing, and you can have up to 10?
I think that's too many options... Especially if you're not really a big tetris player (like me). Having just 2 or 3 would be easier to handle.
Also, maybe I haven't played enough, but item rewards that gives passive improvement or effect is I think one of the appeal of roguelikes.
Thanks for playing! True, it is a bit overwhelming right now, I will probably make the starting slots 2 or 3 and then make it possible to unlock more. There are passive improvements but they are a bit rarer, you usually get them from beating bosses or more difficult enemies
Overall thoughts
tetris is always good. I like this spin into a rogue, i dunno if there are other games like this; I know about peglin, imo you can take some inspiration from it.
i like that there are already a lot of monsters with special skills that makes every encounter different. Speed as an enemy skill is simple but genius
imo this could be a commercial success(depending on competitors, marketing, polish), gj.
Random notes
- both Z and space didn't work on gameplay, but space works to quickstart an encounter
- since you move with arrows, plese add arrow move for menus
- on the pause menu, you should have a "resume" button, not a "back" button to unpause
- moreover, resume should be the first option on top, not return to start screen; return to start should be last option, with an additional "are u sure?" etc etc,. same for quit.
- on the slect room screen, add something that makes you notice that:
1 - this map is an interactable
2 - something that at a glance makes you see where You is (maybe a border animation on the You tile itself)
- you can stuck pieces to the side of the tetris board. If this is intended for normal play, i beg u to reconsider. Imo add it as a BIG malus, or a skill for a boss/elite enemy. This bug disappeared when iu restarted the application, in both cases i choosed the warrior pg
- on victory screen, add a "choose" above the three choices thast pop up
- more on map screen, you need to let players know that they can move back into empty spaces
- i like the boss (ghost with swipe) a lot. sadly i didnt beat it
Thanks for the detailed feedback! Haven't heard about peglin, I'll check it out.
Yes, the game still needs a lot of polish, especially with the UI.
Sticking pieces to the side of the board only happens with one specific enemy with the magnet skill. I guess there also is one upgrade for the warrior that lets you rotate pieces even when there's no room. At first I thought it would be really strong but it can sometimes screw you over if you rotate something right next to the end of the screen so it's probably going to get scrapped or at least changed in the future.
Z and space are both for the ninja character and for some upgrades/blessings. Should be explained better in the future.
I'm really addicted to this game. I've been playing it since the last two jams and I have to say that I always end up rage quitting, just to keep trying it some minutes later lol. Maybe I'm playing it wrong but I'll tell you my experience with your game:
I don't use the items most of the time for three reasons:
I've been trying to use them more consciously but I'm still losing lol.
Also, when choosing one of three rewards, they don't always show the description of the item.
Thanks for playing! Learning to use the items liberally is definitely a big part of the learning curve, even I tend to hoard them a bit. However, I think it's wrong to hoard them because the rewards shower you with a lot of items and I always end up with more than I can use. Also, the only thing you can spend gold on right now is more items. Eventually I'll do some kind of tutorial that explains how all the items are used and when to use them and hopefully that helps.
I think in the first floor you can survive without using any items and build them up but my design philosophy is that you have to be using them to survive the more difficult fights.
The stopwatch is a cheap item that you can use to pause fights and even rearrange your inventory. Again, not really explained atm so you kinda have to just know about it.
Who are the most rage inducing enemies?
Thanks again, I still have a lot to work on. I hope you check it out again in the future
I think I'll try with spells now. Another reason for me saving items is loss aversion, that cognitive bias heavily influence how I play lol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
I played it some more and it's not a particular enemy, is because when there's almost no space left, there's no time to move to left/right because of the delay, and the rest of the pieces just get stacked almost immediately.
You really can't go wrong with Tetris.
I noticed that you are using the classic style of Tetris, without the 'ground slide' from modern entries, that is as soon as a piece touches the ground it stays there, that took me some time to get used to, nothing wrong with that but I wanted to mention it just in case.
In the end though, I barely used the powerups that you are given, I mostly played Tetris normally and mostly did alright like that.
Good work!
Thanks for playing! Some of those mechanics exists for the ninja character or as upgrades. The ninja is supposed to be the character for the tetris pros with all the unique mechanics from there while the others have to rely on different tools.
Ideally you should be able to do well even if you ignore the items and skills if you're a tetris god but the enemies get really tough eventually so I can't guarantee it. There's no shame in using the items regularly, you get a lot of them.
Some great ideas and mechanics in there, it needs a more cohesive art style (by pushing it into pixel art with a set color palette or fully hand drawn) and remappable controls. Could also have some classes that benefit players that go for back-to-back tetrises, t-spins or combos. Best of luck with development!
Thanks for the feedback! The art is still mostly temporary, it needs a lot of tweaking. I'll add remappable controls soon, I just want to iron out some of the mechanics first. And those are some good ideas, I was already thinking about including some kind of a combo skill
If I alt-tab out, I cannot tab back. There is also a 50-50 chance that the game starts tabbed out. Maybe there is some problem with GMS2's full screen mode.
Otherwise, pretty clever. I fought the cutest ghost ever at darksouls bossmusic. It's ability to randomly rearrange the placed pieces, was more of a helpful boon than an issue. The transformer randomly changing my pieces was far more painful. Found no bugs, and it seems to be able to go for a while.
Thanks for playing! What operating system are you using? I don't have any issues with alt-tabbing on my end.
Windows 11 Home 25H2 apparently
New since last month:
- Expanded the reward system, characters can now gain unique class-specific skills
- Dungeon layout visual change and you can now move to any revealed tile
- UI changes and the first attempt at designing characters (only Ninja so far)
- Rare and legendary enemies have new unique modifiers
- New character: Zealot - spellcaster who generates mana and casts spells (everyone else doesn't have mana anymore)