Did analytics make my reverse roguelike indie game better? | Devlog 2

[@LandonDevelops]

Second time's the charm! I accidentally uploaded the wrong video file like an idiot and then immediately flew off to New York for a week so I couldn't reupload immediately. Sorry for the weirdness!

[@AlexWilkinsonYYC]

It's all good. Life's too short to beat yourself up. Maybe I missed if you did this, but you might want a north star metric like "time user plays game", which is then broken down by "if they pick X class" or "if they survive X long". That helps avoid the "measure everything and then try to draw insights randomly" tar pit.

[@LandonDevelops]

@@AlexWilkinsonYYC That's a good idea! I'll have to try to implement that in the next build, thanks!

[@kilthrall]

Hey so I tried the game since I love roguelikes and tycoons, and while I wanna say I like where the game is going, I feel like the concept itself is fine, but there are some things that are both confusing and annoying. I know this might get fixed later and maybe u already got this same feedback, but it never hurts to say my opinion I hope. I'm not gonna comment on the amount of content because it's clearly a very early alpha version, but there is something in the design that I feel like u really need to figure out, and that's the fact that the dungeon HAS to be linear. This is an issue in 2 levels imo. One problem is with the randomly generated potions. I had a situation where 2 of them spawned next to each other and there was no way of grabbing them because the only one that I could get access to was the right-most one for some reason. I also had a situation where a potion was right next to the exit, so I just connected my dungeon to that and hit start, but I lost because I didn't notice that the potion room was NOT connected to the exit for some reason. The other issue that I feel like exists is that making it a whole corridor limits your options way too much. Even if u had 100 different rooms, if you can only lay them in a line, there won't be much to do. Therefore, it would be nice to maybe have branching paths and maybe have something like artifacts that could give the hero information on what path is the fastest one, or where is the treasure or stuff like that. Another option would be to make the heroes have personalities, so if they are a completionist they don't leave until the whole dungeon is explored and stuff like that. Regarding the hunger system, I don't feel like its a bad idea, but I really feel like an option of either adding areas like the potions but for food, or some other way of regaining hunger are needed. I also feel like since traps only take 1 hp and don't really risk losing time like puzzles, they are WAY too op, but that's basically what u mentioned in the video. As a potential balancing solution, maybe make monsters drop more gold and puzzles have potential for healing could be an option? As a last feedback, I am not sure if I imagined, but I think my hero went over max hp with the potions, since I saw him getting hit and not losing any hp on the bar, but I might have seen that wrongly so take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, I hope u continue the project and I already subscribed to keep up with ur work. Have a great day! On a side note, loading screens are ungodly long for such a simple game, u should probably take a look at that at some point, although it might be a browser issue.

[@LandonDevelops]

Thanks for such detailed feedback! I agree with everything you said. The issues you ran into with the chambers not connecting correctly was a bug, I've fixed it now. I like that you mentioned the personalities thing, that's actually something I've been thinking about myself. I'm not sure if I'll implement branching paths in the dungeons because that adds an extra layer of complexity but maybe I'll try it out and see how it feels. I'll take a look at the loading thing, I know the first loading screen takes a long time and I think that's just a browser/build thing.

[@LoftiestAutumn]

looks cool! sorry I didn't watch the first video so if this comment is repetitive I apologize. I think the time for the hero to complete the dungeon way too long, from just the one video you showed it took about twice the time for the hero to run through the dungeon as it did for you to setup the tiles, and I don't think you setup the tiles very quickly. Right now this is wandering a bit into idle game territory but without the automation I feel like that could get kind of tiresome. Games like Loophero require quite a bit of constant management to offset this issue, and games like super auto pets have a way for the player to skip through the summery phase.

[@LandonDevelops]

It's not repetitive, I think you're the first person to say something about that! 🙂 It's definitely something that's been on my mind but I haven't thought up a solution for it yet. I've considered having the option to just fast forward time or maybe adding some sort of interaction during the dungeon phase but I'm not sure yet.

[@LoftiestAutumn]

@@LandonDevelopsAwesome, it's worth trying a few things. I'm looking forward to the next Dev update!

[@LandonDevelops]

Thank you!

[@denkkab1366]

Can you summarize what the hunger system is supposed to achieve? Maybe condensing the idea and goal of the system into one or two sentences will help you with thinking on how to improve it

[@LandonDevelops]

It's really just another way to lose because puzzles don't take health away they just take time so if you didn't have a time limit to complete the dungeon, the puzzles wouldn't be a hindrance.

[@denkkab1366]

@@LandonDevelops Ok! Why not use simply a timer then? Right now it looks a bit arbitrary, at least based on the video I had no idea how much hunger one puzzle would spend

[@LandonDevelops]

Yeah the hunger meet is just a timer, the different chambers don't consume variable hunger. I think it would probably be better to do something where the meter is consumed by actions rather than just continuously ticking down

[@denkkab1366]

@@LandonDevelops that sounds good to me. Also it might help if the hunger bar also showed a value like 50/50 etc, and then maybe the puzzles could also show like a floating text "-10" for the hunger effect. Then the player had a much better understanding how to deal with it

[@LandonDevelops]

@@denkkab1366 That's exactly what I was thinking 🙂