Not sure I understand this game? There's very little agency.
Opening a door vs not opening a door seems to make no difference - you still encounter endless enemies and chests. There's no actual direction to go because every action results in two buttons to decide what to do (open door or not, open chest or not, pray at fountain or not, engage enemy or flee). So a door is basically a pause at best.
Same goes for opening a chest, except that not opening a chest means you are guaranteed to get nothing. So there's no downside to opening it because the end result is another random event regardless of whether you do or not.
There's so much money dropping that there's never a reason NOT to pray at a shrine.
Eventually I just started mashing the leftmost button, picking the most increased stat on level up, and the game basically played itself.
If you open more doors you are progressing faster and the enemies get harder, but also drop better loot.
But I see where you are coming from. I was thinking about adding Skills to the game to give it more depth, but that might not solve the missing agency issue.
Edit: Maybe a timer like: You only have 60 minutes left in the dungeon would help. So it forces you to skip some events to get deeper for better loot fast. I guess doing events like opening a chest should take more time than skipping it.
Ah ok, I misunderstood what the doors did. I'd assumed that there were floors because the shrine messages talked about blessings lasting for the current floor.
I think it would help the agency if you had the ability to walk around to rooms of your choice (n-w-s-e and the like). Maybe have the ability to listen at doors to help guess as to what might be inside the next room...
Also, if you can go back to rooms you've already cleared, you can rest up and heal your wounds or whatever.
You could also make it so that after awhile, rooms you had cleared are no longer clear anymore as wandering monsters have arrived - or maybe there's a small chance that a monster arrived right as soon as you left the room. Probably easiest to just calculate a small chance of repop of cleared rooms after every player move.
When you flee, you are panicking and go in a random direction (or maybe you fail to flee). So fleeing could bring you back to an already cleared room, or run you into another room with an even worse monster...
Perhaps some "elite" monsters can sometimes follow you when you flee? So then you have to keep fleeing until they (maybe) give up the chase...
You could also add an ability for a "knight" class called "retreat", whereby you can choose the direction you flee (with a low but random chance that you panic)...
I didn't see any way to level up your companion, or any special abilities other than attacking along with you. Giving them abilities that they use semi-randomly might help add a new dynamic to the game. Maybe some companions are clumsy, or they are usually powerful allies but sometimes play tricks on you. Or they abandon you if you panic, and you must go find them.
You could add stamina dynamics. For example: a knight has heavy equipment, so he tires a lot and must rest. A rogue, on the other hand, is light on his feet and can go long distances without rest.
Not sure I understand this game? There's very little agency.
Opening a door vs not opening a door seems to make no difference - you still encounter endless enemies and chests. There's no actual direction to go because every action results in two buttons to decide what to do (open door or not, open chest or not, pray at fountain or not, engage enemy or flee). So a door is basically a pause at best.
Same goes for opening a chest, except that not opening a chest means you are guaranteed to get nothing. So there's no downside to opening it because the end result is another random event regardless of whether you do or not.
There's so much money dropping that there's never a reason NOT to pray at a shrine.
Eventually I just started mashing the leftmost button, picking the most increased stat on level up, and the game basically played itself.
Thank you for trying it out.
Shrine blessings are getting expensive very fast.
If you open more doors you are progressing faster and the enemies get harder, but also drop better loot.
But I see where you are coming from. I was thinking about adding Skills to the game to give it more depth, but that might not solve the missing agency issue.
Edit: Maybe a timer like: You only have 60 minutes left in the dungeon would help. So it forces you to skip some events to get deeper for better loot fast. I guess doing events like opening a chest should take more time than skipping it.
Ah ok, I misunderstood what the doors did. I'd assumed that there were floors because the shrine messages talked about blessings lasting for the current floor.
I think it would help the agency if you had the ability to walk around to rooms of your choice (n-w-s-e and the like). Maybe have the ability to listen at doors to help guess as to what might be inside the next room...
Also, if you can go back to rooms you've already cleared, you can rest up and heal your wounds or whatever.
You could also make it so that after awhile, rooms you had cleared are no longer clear anymore as wandering monsters have arrived - or maybe there's a small chance that a monster arrived right as soon as you left the room. Probably easiest to just calculate a small chance of repop of cleared rooms after every player move.
When you flee, you are panicking and go in a random direction (or maybe you fail to flee). So fleeing could bring you back to an already cleared room, or run you into another room with an even worse monster...
Perhaps some "elite" monsters can sometimes follow you when you flee? So then you have to keep fleeing until they (maybe) give up the chase...
You could also add an ability for a "knight" class called "retreat", whereby you can choose the direction you flee (with a low but random chance that you panic)...
I didn't see any way to level up your companion, or any special abilities other than attacking along with you. Giving them abilities that they use semi-randomly might help add a new dynamic to the game. Maybe some companions are clumsy, or they are usually powerful allies but sometimes play tricks on you. Or they abandon you if you panic, and you must go find them.
You could add stamina dynamics. For example: a knight has heavy equipment, so he tires a lot and must rest. A rogue, on the other hand, is light on his feet and can go long distances without rest.
Wow thank you for your suggestions. I will try to implement some of them.
Highlights:
- nerfed CRIT DMG (equipment and level up stats)
- buffed passive HP and DEF gained per level up
- added a new passive which increases the aspd cap
- added a new passive which raises your crit chance earned by items
- buffed Aegis Thorns passive
*Full Changelog*: https://github.com/Werkstattl/quick-dungeon-crawler-rpg-od/c...