A great little game that overstayed its welcome :). The start was pretty strong, I liked how after most of the first few runs I always had something I could spend my money on. By the end I was doing 4-5 runs in the background without looking at the screen (luckily the controller A button still worked even if I couldn't see the game :D) between any interesting choices. This could have probably been improved if either combat was noticeably faster (even at the beginning it felt a bit slow to me, though I don't generally play this kind of game) and/or there were more, smaller upgrades to spend on (at the risk of each upgrade not feeling like a noticeable improvement). That being said, still very nice and impressively balanced for a jam game, nice job! I liked the different areas and monsters and visuals, they were all good (though maybe a little parallax on the backgrounds would have been cool). Music was nice. All felt very Gameboy.
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Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback!
I actually don't mind having to do a couple of runs before reaching a bigger upgrade, as long as that upgrade feels genuinely game-changing when you get it. Things like Mend or Camp Recovery were meant to work exactly like that.
I'm a bit less convinced by the idea of adding lots of smaller upgrades, because I think there's a risk of making each individual choice feel less meaningful. That said, I definitely understand the pacing issue you’re describing.
I originally planned some active abilities during combat to give the player something to do between upgrades, but that was one of the things I had to cut to finish the game in time.
Thanks for sticking with it and for the thoughtful feedback!
Yep, that's fair. Mend and Camp Recovery did feel big when I got them.
Oh, one related thing I thought of while I was playing, but forgot to write... there was a weird balance where quite a few of the survivability upgrades hurt my gold-per-minute - I found that if I got slightly more HP or armor, I'd now kill the same number of enemies, but take longer to die against the next room's worth, so I had to be very careful when buying those or it would feel like a step backwards (until, of course, I could afford enough to beat the boss). Not terrible (as it made me think about my upgrades more), just felt a little weird. Not sure I have any suggestion there, except maybe a single "abort run" action you could trigger when you know you've lost.
Active abilities, of course, would make everything more engaging, but I understand the scope of a jam game =).
That's actually a really good point, and something I hadn't considered.
You can end up clearly being stronger and surviving longer, but if it's still not enough to beat the next enemy, that extra progress doesn't really give you anything and the run just takes longer.
An abort run option would solve that pretty cleanly, and it should also be very simple to implement. Really good suggestion, thanks!