DarkBazaar

Really well executed roguelite. If this is only an early build I can't wait to see what else the developers will do with the game! The Discord is a great hub for the game, the developers are active and listen to feedback. Me + friends have wishlisted!!

The gameplay loop is intuitive, but understanding the nuance of getting to the higher levels takes a few playthroughs. Once more lucky charms/magazines etc are added to flesh the game out a little it will be competing with *insert your favourite gambling themed roguelite here*

11/10!

Hello there ! 

Just discovered your game through a reel on instagram and i kinda honestly love it, we see the huge inspiration from clover pit, but having some contracts and stuff to get rid of that aspect of clover pit is well designed, but a bit poor.I will do my best to give a clear and useful opinion as a 2nd year student in video game. (also excuse my poor dialect, i'm not a native english speaker)

During my first game i wasn't able to succeed second debt as the gap is really huge if you don't have enough understanding in the game, making it really hard to accept trying another time. The contract were a bit blury in my head, wasn't really understand what i was doing except rolling weapons. Also having to take a contract first before buying cases is a good point, but unlocking more contract slots shouldn't be a debt upgrade passive only, as because the player won't take others things.

Through my second game, i managed to survive 11 days. By reaching debt level 7, it was near impossible to succeed, the fact that even with a good setup that helped me to skip the entire debt level 6 and having 150k left after the pay day, i only made 288k out of 474k needed to finish the debt i had. The thing is, contract are unbalanced, the one i seeked to help me wouldn't even spawn or wasn't near impossible, of course the reroll is usefull but diamonds are way too rare to spend a lot in it.

Having random contract that ask 8 melees for 50k and a way more difficult one who ask for specific 3x AR and/or 3x Rifle but only for a spare 15k

Also Magazines should be maybe reworked, the fact that you can only have More drop chance of a certain weapon type, or more value for a certain type, I would have prefer maybe more miscellaneous stuff like in clover pit, to make each game a bit more fun and chaotic (only my POV, the system work as it is rn) and not only desk items that are miscellaneous and are somehow a bit weird or only usefull when you own them since the beginning of the game (like the brace knuckles for exemple), also when rerolling the shop, it doesn't shuffle all items, some items stay there (or is it maybe i got the same items after rerolling ?)

Another point is for the Unboarding section, saddly the game isn't well filled with Lore or anything near a possible ending or knowing why are we here and stuff, Also the fact that we are in a realllllllly huge basement but, we sadly can't move ourself except to look a bit left and right or to open cases, I think the walls of the basements could be exploited to make more onboarding, more suspense, more mystery about this place.

At first when i launched the pc, i thought someone was hacking the pc, or something evil will comunicate with me through the potato pc, it's whats the "hack" effect does when text became a bit blury and stuff, maybe sometimes the pc could turn off and restart by printing a message or something like that, addind a bit of narrative design into the game to help in the immersion could maybe work well !


Holy i wrote a damn lot, I hope it will be clear enough for you and helpful ! Will be there to try the next update you will offer us during this playtest!

Good luck indies devs !
(I've also joined the discord right after sending this text :D )

Cool!

I thought I write a comment that I tried the demo that was available today, but I feel like the debt of about $5,000 is too big of an amount to pass even the first cycle. Basically, it forced me to have to take the biggest contracts that pay out $1,000 or more in the first 2 days of the cycle just to even reach that amount, and considering you have to spend that much money on crates, and the amount of money you need to spend on creates increases as you level it up, I can't even get pass the first cycle that's only 2 days long. Plus, if you get bad luck on the rolls on days 1-2 where your contracts want this and the game decides its give you too much of another weapon type, you aren't beating the game.

In my experience, on one run I did, I took the buff that makes SMSs have a 50% chance to pop up on just the first crate, and also took 2 contracts that require SMSs to complete. Unfortunately, the game gave me too many pistols, and their sale amounts won't have been enough to pay off the debt of over $5,000 to said boss. For the first cycle, the debt should be half the amount ($2,500) so the player can get going for the rest for the first 2 days of it and can afford some upgrades to help with the run, rather that struggle to pay off a debt, and the crates should not be doubling in price after upgrading them one level since this happens after buying the first crate 5 times. Who is going to be able to afford a crate for $700 on day 2 when I still need to get through the first debt to begin with.

That's my 2 cents on the topic, and I hope that someone will read this one day and think of how to improve the onboarding experience for new runs on the first 1-2 cycles so players are going through hit or miss on a debt that's too hard to pay off on the first battle/cycle.