Thank you 🫶 (also, what's next)

Hey everyone 👋

I just wanted to post a quick thank you to everyone who has tried out my game. I especially appreciated anyone who has given me feedback on it. Obviously being an alpha I know there is a lot of work left, and it really helps when I hear what people think need to be addressed first.

I had some time off after releasing and had a chance to rest and recover, and would like to get back into things this week. I won’t be working at the same pace I was before, but I do have some clear goals that I would like to set.

Most of the feedback was as I expected, mostly around UI and UX. Given that the focus of this release was to have the base mechanics testable, I very much expected this.

With this in mind, I need to update my Trello board for what will be the Beta release later this year (date TBD).

Most likely I will start on fixing animations, since I believe this will be critical once we start expanding on the skills and move sets. And maybe start adding some effects as well. Something I really wanted to add but never got around to was some camera shenanigans. Zooming in when attacking and taking damage, maybe rotating around the battle field if you don’t act for a while, things that make it feel more alive and drive the action home a bit more.

I will also be doing a complete overhaul of the UI. This version, while better than my original, is still very much in the “make it work” phase, and I have a lot of ideas and inspiration from other mobile turn based battlers on how to improve things. I would also really like to figure out what the best practice is for multiple resolutions and aspects ratios, how to size and space elements properly.

I might actually do the UI first… fonts where something that came up and UI size as well, it might be more useful to adjust than the animations… Will see.

Also quite important, now that I know the mechanics are mostly solid and seemed to be the least commented on bit, I want to expand on the gameplay loop next. The idea I have is for ten floors of ten waves each, and skills won’t upgrade and unlock after every wave as it does know; that was very much for testing. So new skills, new levelling mechanic, maybe some story bits thrown in to start making it feel more like a game.

As part of the levelling mechanic I will introduce the d8 and d10 as well. The main issue with the d6 is that there is only one configurable skill, but this is intentional to make you start weaker and then grow into more power. I might not add this immediately when working on the rest of the gameplay loop, but I do want this in for the next major release.

So probably before that, but after the gameplay loop updates, I want to add a proper tutorial. I’ll look into how to add a walkthrough explanation the first time you play, and then also add a tutorial/help section to the menu so you can go back and look at things. I think this will help especially later as we add more mechanics likes buffs and debuffs and weakness and resistance.

And that would very likely be it for the Beta updates. I’m taking this project one day at a time, so obviously plans can change, and I’ll need to consult my existing Trello tasks to see how things align with what I originally planned, but I’m keen on seeing where I can take this.

Again, thanks to everyone who tried it out, and please share if you think others will enjoy it.

It is free after all.