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A really nice retro-style 3D dungeon crawler. The combat system is quite unique, and once you get used to it, it becomes very engaging.
Thank you! Good to hear you enjoyed our combat system, we were inspired by Pragmata’s combat mechanics, but in the end it also became a bit like Snake.
I absolute love dungeon crawler games! And this one surprisingly blew me away with its combat mechanics. I have never seen anything like it, even though I have played a dozen games from the Dungeon Crawler Jam every year since 2021.
Please do not take this as criticism, just a few ideas on what could be improved:
1. At first I could not get used to camera rotation being on A/D while strafing is on Q/E. Usually people do the opposite, keeping movement on WASD. Which is actually how your combat mechanic works, making the confusion feel even more.
2. The slimes spawning on tiles I already visited got a bit repetitive. Maybe if there were more enemy types it would feel different, but after 10 minutes I was just like "aaah, here they go again". 😂
But overall, the game is absolutely excellent! Especially liked the door maze location. Well done! ❤️
Thanks for the compliments and suggestions!
We modeled the controls after the classic FPS style, but now that you mention it, that may not be how the crawlers of old (and new) play on PC. The last crawlers we played ourselves were on console with controllers, so that might be a bias and an oversight on our part! But, fixable with a control-style toggle in a future options screen.
Regarding your second suggestion, I am just happy we were able to keep your attention for 10 minutes ;) But something like a -50% modifier on the spawn rate of explored tiles should make backtracking less tedious.
And Piromaan did the level design, so he’ll be happy to hear you liked his classic Wizardry-tribute door maze.
Great job on this one! The pixel dungeon look and the 6x6 token board make a really unique combination, and the "break the chain, lose your gain" risk fits the jam theme nicely. The short encounter tutorial made the rules easy to pick up. One suggestion: the combat log and HUD text are quite small, and an early clash with a tiny chain does 0 damage with little feedback, so a bit more visual feedback there would help new players. Nice work!
Thank you for the feedback and constructive suggestions! We were thinking of implementing a visual combat log beneath the timer instead of a written log. All sorts of information in the periphery of the screen does tend to get lost.
I’m personally interested in this kind of game, and I think you’ve taken a really good approach! It’s well-balanced, has nice colors and a great art style, and the rules are clear.
I’d suggest adding a sound slider, or at least some background music. Right now, after a period of silence, the sound effects can feel a bit too loud.
And again, I want to say something about the colors and style – I’m not usually a big fan of pixel fonts because they can be hard to read on larger screens, but you did it really well here!
Thank you for the kind words! And we’re going to keep working on the game, with a proper options screen with sound and such as a high priority. And glad you thought the font was readable. We made our own with Fontstruct, so that we could insert icons representing the game mechanics in it. Really handy (and free) tool, I can recommend it.
Oh wow! Making your own font is such an awesome achievement! Super excited to hear about the game updates! 🤩
I like the art style. I wish this game has a mini-map.
Thank you for the compliment! And you and me both on the mini-map-issue! It’s one of the things that didn’t make it due to time constraints, we’ll get on it after the jam.
I'll admit I had some preconceptions about first-person 3D dungeon crawlers, but this one won me over. Movement is quick, there's no motion sickness, and while getting a little lost is kind of part of the genre, whenever I was about to go down, a conveniently placed healing item always seemed to show up, so I never felt like I was being overwhelmed. A manual save option would be a nice addition, though.
Glad to hear we were able to change your mind on first person dungeon crawlers, thank you for the compliments! And we’re planning to expand on the game after the jam, so expect QoL-features such as saving and maps then!