For now I'd say it's fun, but lacking a bit in balance. I absolutely suck at brotatolikes. But find this one easy, so it's probably undertuned as far as difficulty is concerned. The power and availability of HP and regen items, makes you just literally not care if you get hit. Then the relatively strong armor on top and you're just too tanky for anything to feasibly ever kill you.
Life steal has similar issues too. There's also the standard issue with knockback in these kinds of games. The lack of any enemy resistance/diminishing returns, means it's way too easy to get enough knockback that enemies cannot touch you anymore. Ranged attacks are too few and far between to worry about with the current levels of sustain. Meaning you can just Stand Still and Kill way too realiably.
Edit: Lategame with 6x Wands I'm getting so much screen shake it's triggering simulation sickness. It was due to having Pierce + Bounce. The screen shake from my projectiles bouncing off the edge of the map.
thanks for your feedback, it will help for the game balancing! For now I try to avoid diminishing returns by design to make sure each feature and stat is super easy to understand because I dislike when roguelike gets too opaque, I prefer that the player fully and easily undestand each of its choices, but yeah that involves a good balance to find!
In future updates, Life Steal will become harder to get, Knockback will be capped at lower maximum applied values.
Regarding the overall difficulty, the full version has 3 extra level of difficulties, and based on some feedbacks i have from beta testers, the balance between the 5 difficulty modes seem to be close to what i'm aiming for (minus some issues like you pointed out, and of course some balancing required on specific builds and items)
There is already an option to disable screenshakes ;)
Edit: Would you be interested to join the beta-test of the full game? If so please join the Discord and ping me in DM ;)
I did notice that you could turn off screen shake entirely. But admittedly a lot of the visceral feel of the combat goes away when you fully disable the screen shake. But when you have too many Leeroy/knockback projectiles/bouncing projectiles. It just reaches the point where simulation sickness sets in. Wish there was something like an intensity setting, or a way for it to cap out at how often a screen shake can get triggered.
I agree on the opaque thing. But I was more thinking something akin to how CC Diminishing Returns works in WoW. Where 1st hit = full value, 2nd hit within 10s = half value, 3rd hit = 1/4 value. Then 10s of immunity before it resets. That way you still get knockback when you pick knockback. But you can't just perma nail enemies against the wall.
Edit: Also there's a wording issue (or a bug) with how multiple pentagrams work. If you have adept pentagram and the item pentagram the wording is "when you stand inside a pentagram" But the item one gives the 20% damage ONLY and the adept one gives the adept bonuses ONLY. The wording would mean that both pentagrams should give adept bonus AND 20% damage bonus.
Edit2: I'd suggest reformatting Grimorius tooltip so that the -10% armor is above the "on level up"portion. The indentation difference between the +1% speed and -10% armor is small enough that I read it as losing 10% armor on every level up.
Very cool in it's current state. I love how much it really emphasises movement like how some active abilities need to be grabbed from around the arena to do them
That said, I think enemy projectiles could honestly stand out more. I could hardly see them at times in all the chaos.
Still, I think this is a pretty solid base right now, and as always, you have a beautiful visual style, though I feel like the game suffers a little from how busy it can get. Great stuff so far though
Thanks Bad Piggy! Really glad you’re enjoying the mechanics. I appreciate the feedback on projectile visibility and how busy things can get. I’ll definitely look into ways to improve those aspects. Really grateful for the kind words and thoughtful feedback!
Hey thanks a lot! Yes this game is a Brotato-like with many twists and new innovative mechanics, such as: - Equippable Boss Patterns (active skills you can trigger by picking orbs on the map) - Minion Summoning - Growing Plant Minions with a watercan - Amount and Size stats - Physics-Based Weapons – like chained spikeballs - Kickable stuff (you can even play soccer with your minions or other co-op players) - Playable character merge feature (get the effect of 2 different characters or more at the same time) - Dozens and dozens of unique effects (turning enemies into Sheep, or Golden Statues, or both?) I'm aiming for something like The Binding of Isaac meets Brotato — a deep, replayable experience full of chaotic synergies and wild builds that feel totally unique each run, with all the "being a boss fantasy and humor" deeply included in the mechanics and content :)
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For now I'd say it's fun, but lacking a bit in balance. I absolutely suck at brotatolikes. But find this one easy, so it's probably undertuned as far as difficulty is concerned. The power and availability of HP and regen items, makes you just literally not care if you get hit. Then the relatively strong armor on top and you're just too tanky for anything to feasibly ever kill you.
Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like tanky builds might be a bit too forgiving right now, i'll do some balancing changes
Life steal has similar issues too. There's also the standard issue with knockback in these kinds of games. The lack of any enemy resistance/diminishing returns, means it's way too easy to get enough knockback that enemies cannot touch you anymore. Ranged attacks are too few and far between to worry about with the current levels of sustain. Meaning you can just Stand Still and Kill way too realiably.
Edit: Lategame with 6x Wands I'm getting so much screen shake it's triggering simulation sickness. It was due to having Pierce + Bounce. The screen shake from my projectiles bouncing off the edge of the map.
thanks for your feedback, it will help for the game balancing!
For now I try to avoid diminishing returns by design to make sure each feature and stat is super easy to understand because I dislike when roguelike gets too opaque, I prefer that the player fully and easily undestand each of its choices, but yeah that involves a good balance to find!
In future updates, Life Steal will become harder to get, Knockback will be capped at lower maximum applied values.
Regarding the overall difficulty, the full version has 3 extra level of difficulties, and based on some feedbacks i have from beta testers, the balance between the 5 difficulty modes seem to be close to what i'm aiming for (minus some issues like you pointed out, and of course some balancing required on specific builds and items)
There is already an option to disable screenshakes ;)
Edit: Would you be interested to join the beta-test of the full game? If so please join the Discord and ping me in DM ;)
I did notice that you could turn off screen shake entirely. But admittedly a lot of the visceral feel of the combat goes away when you fully disable the screen shake. But when you have too many Leeroy/knockback projectiles/bouncing projectiles. It just reaches the point where simulation sickness sets in. Wish there was something like an intensity setting, or a way for it to cap out at how often a screen shake can get triggered.
I agree on the opaque thing. But I was more thinking something akin to how CC Diminishing Returns works in WoW. Where 1st hit = full value, 2nd hit within 10s = half value, 3rd hit = 1/4 value. Then 10s of immunity before it resets. That way you still get knockback when you pick knockback. But you can't just perma nail enemies against the wall.
Edit: Also there's a wording issue (or a bug) with how multiple pentagrams work. If you have adept pentagram and the item pentagram the wording is "when you stand inside a pentagram" But the item one gives the 20% damage ONLY and the adept one gives the adept bonuses ONLY. The wording would mean that both pentagrams should give adept bonus AND 20% damage bonus.
Edit2: I'd suggest reformatting Grimorius tooltip so that the -10% armor is above the "on level up"portion. The indentation difference between the +1% speed and -10% armor is small enough that I read it as losing 10% armor on every level up.
Thanks a lot for the interesting insights!
I nerfed HP, Lifesteal and Knockback using various techniques in the last update, along with many other changes.
Just tested Pentagram/Adept and it works as expected: the 2 effects stack correctly as the wording implied
I reformatted Grimorius tooltip as you suggested ;)
Very cool in it's current state. I love how much it really emphasises movement like how some active abilities need to be grabbed from around the arena to do them
That said, I think enemy projectiles could honestly stand out more. I could hardly see them at times in all the chaos.
Still, I think this is a pretty solid base right now, and as always, you have a beautiful visual style, though I feel like the game suffers a little from how busy it can get. Great stuff so far though
Thanks Bad Piggy! Really glad you’re enjoying the mechanics. I appreciate the feedback on projectile visibility and how busy things can get. I’ll definitely look into ways to improve those aspects. Really grateful for the kind words and thoughtful feedback!
A copy of the brotato), but still fun.
Hey thanks a lot! Yes this game is a Brotato-like with many twists and new innovative mechanics, such as:
- Equippable Boss Patterns (active skills you can trigger by picking orbs on the map)
- Minion Summoning
- Growing Plant Minions with a watercan
- Amount and Size stats
- Physics-Based Weapons – like chained spikeballs
- Kickable stuff (you can even play soccer with your minions or other co-op players)
- Playable character merge feature (get the effect of 2 different characters or more at the same time)
- Dozens and dozens of unique effects (turning enemies into Sheep, or Golden Statues, or both?)
I'm aiming for something like The Binding of Isaac meets Brotato — a deep, replayable experience full of chaotic synergies and wild builds that feel totally unique each run, with all the "being a boss fantasy and humor" deeply included in the mechanics and content :)