Fantastic Game, however I have a few issues with it
RNG: RNG leans FAR too heavy in this game imho, between the crates themselves with 3-4 different weapons, their rarities and the "premium" shop, the contract system itself is flawed, there is multiple times where you can just get completely bricked because you simply did not get any contracts you built into and even *if* you did get those contracts there is no real guarantee to get the weapons you need, ESPECIALLY on such a short deadline of what is usually 8 crates meaning 24 total possible weapons, also the weapon rarity system is incredibly flawed imo, especially in the later days, it is nearly impossible to raise your weapon rarity chance to something reasonable so you can literally be bricked because the contracts forced greens and blues but you only got whites for example (especially when contract refreshing costs diamonds)
Deadlines: They are far too short and punishing at the moment, 2 days is extremely limiting with only 4 crates a day, this barely gives you any time to scale and ramp up your build, let alone account for bad RNG with the weapons you got. Not only that but what on earth did you scale these things with? Did you scale them logarithmically or something because they increase by tenfold each day to the point where making it past a week is already difficult, let along two weeks
Contracts: Oh boy these are not good, the point of a roguelike is to build into a specific "Build" or "Strategy", the way the contracts are designed is that they can either be insanely focused like 4 copies of a specific rarity of a specific weapon (terrible because it's RNG for both typing AND rarity) or they'll ask you to look for 3 different guns from 2 different crates which completely screws with your crate XP which makes the guns completely worthless since you haven't bought anything that scales with those weapons, it doesn't help that eventually the rarity scaling will outscale you which makes getting past a certain stage a nightmare.
Premium Shop: The shop that needs the special "Diamond" currency gained by finishing deadlines, needs more items and more things to build with, at the moment most of them are pretty uninteresting and take far too long to get to be useful (Pope is terrible for example, costs too much and only saves a dying run for 2 more days), the only interesting items you can get cost far too much for most runs until you've already solidified your build and so most runs you just pick up the more uninteresting ones that don't really do anything interesting, magazines are the worst offenders because they either increase your odds of one specific weapon showing up, or just increasing it's sell value which is kinda whatever
Overall I do like the vibes of the game a lot, but it's balancing absolutely needs some help because it is in dire straits right now. Other than these complaints the only thing I would change is speeding up the PC screen when submitting contracts and make "Return to PC" and "Sell Gun" different keybinds so you don't accidentally sell a gun while trying to leave
- First of all: Really love the concept, looks a little like Cloverpit, maybe it was a ''Inspired-by''. I like how percentages work in this game, making RNG truly fun. Even though sometimes RNG acts too much like a ''Coincidence'', more like: i get Assault Rifle magazines and regular Rifle magazines because the contracts i had needed them the most, and it did appear the most as ''wanted'' so to say, basically thinking by myself that it would make the contracts that i get the next day easier... just to find out that there's literally no contract asking for AR's and Rifles, and then i would be like ''Hmm okay, that's fine, i just get bad rolls and income this day and get better contracts the last day to pay the debt.'' To find out nobody wants rifles and Assault Rifles but Heavies and Snipers, SMG etc.
-- Not an issue necessarily, but when that happens a couple times, you start to question RNG of course.
- Further more i do know this game is in it's early states, but immediately noticed how heavily the debt scales, by the time i reached the 80K debt i could've already said GG's as i was still dealing with the previous debt, because u only get 1 day to pay a little, and the second day has to be paid, or well... yea... Game Over! In where i feel like the ''rewarding'' part is a little lacking.
- Example: Debt has to be paid with the same currency you have to buy crates with... meaning if i pay off the debt and go to next multiplier, I'm lacking extremely in the early game, also gaining 4 Diamonds if debt is paid in day 1... isn't rewarding, you just skip 1 day of extra progress to get 4 diamonds, on a catalog that isn't game changing and purely based on luck rather than decision making...
- I don't wanna come over as too harsh because i truly love to see the progress of the game, surely. It has great ''dopamine'' feeding potential, which was something i was hoping for... Getting rewarded in a way it feels like you did something good and game changing.
- I think if you add meta progression into the game, it'll make the scaling debt more understandable. Just couldn't get past the 80K mark (playing for 5 hours long with different approaches). Overall great game!
-Tip: maybe add a purchasable boost (or something else) to make the appearance(s) for certain [weapo] contracts to appear more often. Like the catalog [Magazines] can increase spins of a certain weapon type, maybe apply this to appearances for the contracts as well, Almost like a ''Bless & Banish'' feature most rogues have.
--- 7/10 (could've been an easy 9) ---
** TL/DR: RNG goes heavy, sometimes so much it gets frustrating rather than the ''reward'' feeling i may wanna create. Really well executed game, hope to see more in the future!
Thank you so much for giving such detailed feedback! You have no idea how valuable feedback like this is to us!
The RNG and progression will get better, even though we are trying to hit something that is playable, we are not spending much time fine tuning the balancing at this stage. I fully agree with your feedback on the scaling and progression and the RNG of contracts, you need more control as a player.
Meta progression is being added write now and will come with the next update to the game.
Can't wait to hear what you think of future updates!
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*
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 )
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.
Of course we read it! We are eager to hear what you think about the game so thank you so much for leaving your detailed thoughts. I agree, it is a bit too hard in the beginning now. Before it was top easy, then we made it more difficult. Maybe a bit too much 😄
Did you use your rerolls in the first round?
Again, really appreciate the feedback and we update the game weekly from the feedback we get. The best way to stay in contact with us is in the discord: https://discord.gg/VVcFajXAZv
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Fantastic Game, however I have a few issues with it
RNG: RNG leans FAR too heavy in this game imho, between the crates themselves with 3-4 different weapons, their rarities and the "premium" shop, the contract system itself is flawed, there is multiple times where you can just get completely bricked because you simply did not get any contracts you built into and even *if* you did get those contracts there is no real guarantee to get the weapons you need, ESPECIALLY on such a short deadline of what is usually 8 crates meaning 24 total possible weapons, also the weapon rarity system is incredibly flawed imo, especially in the later days, it is nearly impossible to raise your weapon rarity chance to something reasonable so you can literally be bricked because the contracts forced greens and blues but you only got whites for example (especially when contract refreshing costs diamonds)
Deadlines: They are far too short and punishing at the moment, 2 days is extremely limiting with only 4 crates a day, this barely gives you any time to scale and ramp up your build, let alone account for bad RNG with the weapons you got. Not only that but what on earth did you scale these things with? Did you scale them logarithmically or something because they increase by tenfold each day to the point where making it past a week is already difficult, let along two weeks
Contracts: Oh boy these are not good, the point of a roguelike is to build into a specific "Build" or "Strategy", the way the contracts are designed is that they can either be insanely focused like 4 copies of a specific rarity of a specific weapon (terrible because it's RNG for both typing AND rarity) or they'll ask you to look for 3 different guns from 2 different crates which completely screws with your crate XP which makes the guns completely worthless since you haven't bought anything that scales with those weapons, it doesn't help that eventually the rarity scaling will outscale you which makes getting past a certain stage a nightmare.
Premium Shop: The shop that needs the special "Diamond" currency gained by finishing deadlines, needs more items and more things to build with, at the moment most of them are pretty uninteresting and take far too long to get to be useful (Pope is terrible for example, costs too much and only saves a dying run for 2 more days), the only interesting items you can get cost far too much for most runs until you've already solidified your build and so most runs you just pick up the more uninteresting ones that don't really do anything interesting, magazines are the worst offenders because they either increase your odds of one specific weapon showing up, or just increasing it's sell value which is kinda whatever
Overall I do like the vibes of the game a lot, but it's balancing absolutely needs some help because it is in dire straits right now. Other than these complaints the only thing I would change is speeding up the PC screen when submitting contracts and make "Return to PC" and "Sell Gun" different keybinds so you don't accidentally sell a gun while trying to leave
**(TL/DR) < Scroll all the way down
- First of all: Really love the concept, looks a little like Cloverpit, maybe it was a ''Inspired-by''. I like how percentages work in this game, making RNG truly fun. Even though sometimes RNG acts too much like a ''Coincidence'', more like: i get Assault Rifle magazines and regular Rifle magazines because the contracts i had needed them the most, and it did appear the most as ''wanted'' so to say, basically thinking by myself that it would make the contracts that i get the next day easier... just to find out that there's literally no contract asking for AR's and Rifles, and then i would be like ''Hmm okay, that's fine, i just get bad rolls and income this day and get better contracts the last day to pay the debt.'' To find out nobody wants rifles and Assault Rifles but Heavies and Snipers, SMG etc.
-- Not an issue necessarily, but when that happens a couple times, you start to question RNG of course.
- Further more i do know this game is in it's early states, but immediately noticed how heavily the debt scales, by the time i reached the 80K debt i could've already said GG's as i was still dealing with the previous debt, because u only get 1 day to pay a little, and the second day has to be paid, or well... yea... Game Over! In where i feel like the ''rewarding'' part is a little lacking.
- Example: Debt has to be paid with the same currency you have to buy crates with... meaning if i pay off the debt and go to next multiplier, I'm lacking extremely in the early game, also gaining 4 Diamonds if debt is paid in day 1... isn't rewarding, you just skip 1 day of extra progress to get 4 diamonds, on a catalog that isn't game changing and purely based on luck rather than decision making...
- I don't wanna come over as too harsh because i truly love to see the progress of the game, surely. It has great ''dopamine'' feeding potential, which was something i was hoping for... Getting rewarded in a way it feels like you did something good and game changing.
- I think if you add meta progression into the game, it'll make the scaling debt more understandable. Just couldn't get past the 80K mark (playing for 5 hours long with different approaches). Overall great game!
-Tip: maybe add a purchasable boost (or something else) to make the appearance(s) for certain [weapo] contracts to appear more often. Like the catalog [Magazines] can increase spins of a certain weapon type, maybe apply this to appearances for the contracts as well, Almost like a ''Bless & Banish'' feature most rogues have.
--- 7/10 (could've been an easy 9) ---
** TL/DR: RNG goes heavy, sometimes so much it gets frustrating rather than the ''reward'' feeling i may wanna create. Really well executed game, hope to see more in the future!
Thank you so much for giving such detailed feedback! You have no idea how valuable feedback like this is to us!
The RNG and progression will get better, even though we are trying to hit something that is playable, we are not spending much time fine tuning the balancing at this stage. I fully agree with your feedback on the scaling and progression and the RNG of contracts, you need more control as a player.
Meta progression is being added write now and will come with the next update to the game.
Can't wait to hear what you think of future updates!
Thanks again!
/Niels, KeyQuest Studio
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!
Wow thank you so much for the kind words!! We will do our best to live up to this 😄❤️
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 )
Thank you so much for your detailed feedback on the game, we really appreciate that! We are taking it all into consideration!
Cool!
Thank you!! :D
Hey, would you like to check out my game: Decked Out: Infinity by Jandj? It would mean the world to get an opinion from a fellow game developer!
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.
Of course we read it! We are eager to hear what you think about the game so thank you so much for leaving your detailed thoughts. I agree, it is a bit too hard in the beginning now. Before it was top easy, then we made it more difficult. Maybe a bit too much 😄
Did you use your rerolls in the first round?
Again, really appreciate the feedback and we update the game weekly from the feedback we get. The best way to stay in contact with us is in the discord: https://discord.gg/VVcFajXAZv
Oh wait I see you already joined 😄
The new update is live and we fixed the difficulty issue early game :D