It has potential to be good, and has elements I liked, but the elements I hated, overcome the current good in the game. Specifically: 1) Talents often are generated that you have no hope of ever getting, but you have 3 redos before you are stuck with talents that may not be useful to you. At one point, I had accumulated 14 talent points, but none of the available ones I had the requirements for or gave a benefit that didn't help my build.
2) The talents list off requirements for them that sometimes isn't clear on how to meet them. Like Hunting or Mining. I don't know how to get them in the current demo. Clearly I'm missing paths or not buying RP related things.
3) There is no listing of other "skills". Like Social. So its impossible to know what my skill is until the talent or such allows me to take it.
4) I don't like that you often have to exit out of a dungeon raid midway to visit a new location. So you waste "days" doing so. As you can't choose a new raid, once at the score screen.
5) Its not always clear what my actions are levelling up. Like I use my click power as farmer. Is it giving XP towards intelligence or wisdom? Or is it just giving it to a skill? Or is it doing nothing.
6) There is labels in the UI with no explanation. Like what the heck is Guardian Spirit, as the farmer? In the jobs you have 0/12 energy, and then jobs take energy. But they don't tell you how much energy, so you have to guess. And how to get more energy? I see I can lose max energy by being older.
7) The game doesn't do a good job and states if you auto-retire on death or you have to retire before death to retain your prestige points. And its not safe to assume as some games like Progress Knight do auto-retire, and other games causes you to lose everything if you die that run or suffer huge penalties.
8) Finally, the biggest negative is the prestige system. I thought I was going to get a lot of unlocks by having 126 points accumulated. I could only afford 2 prestige unlocks, one at 40 and one at 80. These didn't really make the next playthrough feel faster, and so I lost interest and uninstalled it.
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Now it could simply be that I'm not your target audience and they might be fine with the above stuff. But for me looking for a neat indie idler + active gameplay loop, it didn't click for me for the above issues. If I'm not the target audience that is fine; hope you find your audience. But if those are things you are willing to address/change, then the game might be for me.
I really appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts!
1) The talents that become available depend on what you train. That said, there is a limited number of them in the demo, but the requirements should be reasonable to attain. If you don't have the requirements and the talent is something you would want, it's meant to act as a goal, otherwise you can dismiss them. But in the future the chance for talents to show will be more skewed to ones you have the requirements for. Also, dismissals will more heavily lower the chance to see that particular talent again.
2) All those things are trainable in the demo early on. There is a hunting job unlock from the first forest node and a mining job unlock from the first caves node. When you hover job unlocks in the chronicle the tooltip will display which stat and skill it trains.
3) Are you saying you couldn't see your Social lvl? It should be listed in the Training tab. What resolution were you playing with?
4) There will be a way to queue up your next location.
5) I can understand it being unclear for combat. The click power is training Piety. I have to be careful because tooltips can become too bloated if I share every little bit of information like "Trains XYZ". But if you hover Guardian Spirit, under the name you will see the tag "Piety". As for XP, in combat you will only ever gain attribute XP to the attribute you selected in the Focus menu.
6) Other than what you mentioned, which labels were unclear to you? You can hover Guardian Spirit in the combat UI for more info, and there is a little tutorial for active abilities. What was confusing about it? Jobs do tell you how much energy they take. It's to the right of their name when you hover them in the list.
7) There is no penalty to retire. But I guess you were worried that there was one? You can do it early if you are done with that run, otherwise you can keep on until your character dies from old age. Either way you take the legacy + heirlooms onwards.
8) I'll keep your feedback in mind. The meta-progression isn't finished, most likely it gets reworked significantly. But it will likely stay on the lighter side power scaling wise, because:
One of the main sources of replayability is meant to be experiencing new origins like starting as a Street Rat beggar, or a Prisoner and having to escape
Your deeds in prior lives make things easier for your future lives
You can get heirlooms from things you do in the life and not just from the legacy shop
Thanks for the reply. Some comments: 1) Well I kept getting talents that required 2-3 points, but the requirements were way beyond what I had available. Or I didn't understand what the requirement was and thus how to get to them. And the reason I had issue with the dismissal system is that I dismissed the same talent 3 times in a row, and then finally it gave me a new talent. Really bad luck I know, but still. It shouldn't consume a dismissal action, if you get the same talent back.
2) Ahhh, well, I didn't go into the forest or the cave. That would explain that. But, why did I get talents for those activities when I didn't go into them?
3) Nope. Couldn't see my social level. Or wasn't looking in the right space. Was running standard maximized screen, on my 1920x1080 monitor. I could read the text of other things.
4) Good to know.
5) Ahh but therein is the issue. I didn't know where Guardian Spirit was, and thus could hover over it. I just say the name mentioned in other tooltips and was confused on why I didn't have Guardian Spirit somewhere I could look at it.
If you only get xp for the thing you focus on, what is the xp you get at the end of a raid? Is that for character xp?
6) Most of the little tutorials pop up, when I'm trying to understand something else, and then click out of them. Then realize that was dumb, but as I was already struggling to learn something else, I didn't want to overload my brain... because once its overloaded, I often ragequit. But then there was no way to get the tooltip back, so a lot of my struggle is because of that. My main issue otherwise, was finding things to hover over to provide a tooltip.
7) No, my concern was there a penalty if you let your character die.
8) I'm fine for it being lighter on the power scaling, as long as it helps you to bypass the early game faster each time you take a metaprogression. The issue is I didn't feel my options really helped in that regard. 800 gold felt like a pittance and the others for +10% xp didn't seem to get me past the early game that much faster.
How do deeds in prior lives affect future ones, when there isn't a time loop? I'm confused. I did try out a different starter life as the librarian, but from my 30 minutes playing them before getting bored, didn't seem like any of the things I did made any difference.
Not sure what you mean by legacy shop. I also only found one heirloom, a ring buried in my farm, and only because I got a talent that gave 2 dreams.
Fun game as a whole, certainly looks like there'll be a lot more in the future. That said, it does look like the talents (or whatever that last tab is called) needs a bit of work. It keeps getting clogged up with not only useless stuff, like blade skills on a mage, but stuff that I literally don't meet the pre-requisites for. Not being able to select any more for the rest of that run because all you've got for options are things you can't select just doesn't make sense imho.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the caster paths offer. Looks like those aren't in the demo right now, or at least aren't completed. Still, it was fun so far as I was able to find out.
The things that give meta progression that were already gained in a previous run should either be clearly marked as such, unavailable, or give a different bonus (eg large donation, dream, etc)
Good game! Well-executed take on the reincarnation-cycle jobs-idle game, especially with the auto-playing horde survivor on the side. Nicely done.
Bug report: Cooldowns aren't tracked when you lose and regain an ability and cooldowns on new abilities start fully-cooled and fire immediately. This means that you can win any encounter by repeatedly unequipping and re-equipping the cooking pot to spam fireballs. Or, well, you could if it didn't lag the game out horribly.
Honestly the coolest idea I've seen in a while, exploring the different paths is really addicting. But for an idea like this to work there needs to be a ton more content. I'm talking 5x the amount that's already there, minimum. And also sometimes the screen freezes when I use an ability on the right hand side. using firefox browser
Very pagan idea of having actions in one life affect your other lives with Hamingja through honorable deeds being passed to offspring, despite the cross and "guardian spirit"suggesting otherwise.
Also, I expected the tooltips to be on the icons instead of the text.
Hmm, can you describe how that happened? That way I can look into the bug. Assuming you are early on, you can pick "Early Retire" to start that run over by going into the save menu at the bottom-right.
this game is pretty cool and I recommend it especially since I didn't expect to like the game as a completionist yet unlocked multiple heirlooms and still wanna continue. it's not entertaining in the sense you'll fall off your chair and jump through the screen, but it definitely did hook me considering the time I spent.
what I actually did:
spent like an hour and 30 minutes playing as an archer build and unlocked 3 heirlooms within that one life and bought 3 more with the leftover cash I had in the afterlife shop (not called the afterlife shop but I forgot).
pros:
1, the game itself is fun.
2, unique concept.
3, didn't play that far into my second run but from what I can tell, you do indeed make an impact on future lives.
4, lore is pretty interesting. I liked the dialogue with the dwarf guy living in the abandoned mine.
cons:
1, confusing terminology/mechanics.
what exactly is piety? what's a "focus"? what's "unforeseen" on a node? why does my bow say "muscles icon = weak, wind and eyes icon = strong"? what's the dreamcore rainbow with an eye on currency supposed to be?
I think the point of all these names not being standard to make the game seem more unique but some of it doesn't really make any sense especially when it's not fully explained.
there's multiple solutions:
you could replace the names with generic ones.
you could replace names with unique but more intuitive ones.
you could expand the tutorial.
you could add an encyclopedia that explains what every word means. for example, one page explains how items work and describes the "icon + strong/weak thing." another page defines what "piety" is. maybe you wouldn't even have everything unlocked at once and it could unlock as you see stuff and it permanently progresses across characters. you gain your first bit of the dreamcore currency and it unlocks the page for that for example.
2, UI is hard to read.
I think the game is going for an art style where everything uses a small amount of colors which I have no opinion on but one of the things this effects is the UI. when I was playing, I was stuck at the section with fighting the test dummies because I didn't realize I was meant to click on the "proven farmhand" node and had to watch a playthrough by a british guy playing to figure out the issue. basically, the proven farmhand node, for some reason, doesn't have a red outline, and the yellow exclamation mark is green for some reason (again, tutorial issue) which blends in with the icon for the node and looks like a check mark for completed when you're looking at the screen with your eyes more then 1mm off the surface.
more major ideas:
1, make the game mobile compatible. this game seems like it would feel pretty nice to play on mobile. sure, you wouldn't be able to help your character fight npcs while managing unlocks and routines but you could just pause and switch tabs at the bottom of the screen. portrait mode optimally. this would help the game grow too.
2, solve the naming issue from options I previously mentioned.
more minor ideas:
1, add some easter eggs. maybe it'd be cool if you got a really bad 1% xp boost permanent heirloom if you started a new character and immediately retired at young age.
2, maybe make combat more interactive at the start.
not sure about this.
3, make dialogue for npcs change so that each time you talk to someone, that person doesn't say the same thing again.
4, character customization maybe.
how the game works is that each storyline is it's own unique character you can control but I think it'd be nice if you could customize your own character and choose a preset storyline instead (issues such as gender and name could even be solved with stored booleans and tables of data). I doubt many others care but I'd like that because it's more entertaining to make dumb characters yet, it doesn't matter that much.
conclusion:
I spent way too long writing this. good game.
(I know this is hard to read but idk how to improve it)
Thank you for taking the time to write all this out! Appreciate the feedback. I read all of it, and I can understand some of the concerns you raised.
UI is hard to read
A few people have gotten confused by quest nodes, so I did an update to hopefully make things a bit clearer. I also updated the green exclamation mark to have a stronger outline. It will remain green (at least for now) since yellow is used to indicate new nodes.
Confusing terminology/mechanics
"Focus" - I updated the Proven Farmhand quest to say "Unlock Attribute Training" rather than "Unlock Focus". That should clarify what you are getting exactly. But for the encounter UI, "Focus" seems the most appropriate word since it's about the stat you are focusing on.
"Foreseen" - Means that you are able to see a node ahead of time. I can't think of a better word.
"Piety" - This is just your "Holy" skill. Hovering it in the Training tab gives more detail.
Wonder (the rainbow currency) - It's meant to be dreamy, so you have the right idea. It's a bit abstract so there isn't more to say about what it is. It's only spent on dreams right now, but it will be used for more in the future.
Stat icons on item tooltips - This seems to be a point of confusion for many, so I did what I could to address it in the recent update. This info is used to denote attribute scaling. For example: some weapons gain a stronger benefit from Strength, others a stronger benefit from Dexterity, and so on.
Other
"Maybe make combat more interactive at the start" - What would you want here? You already begin with one active ability you can use to speed up combat.
Mobile - If it does well on Steam it may be considered.
Character customization - This may happen at some point but it's not a priority right now.
I may end up adding some kind of small Encyclopedia as you suggest, we'll see.
thanks for responding. I played the update a little and I think the UI makes quite a bit more sense now. (though, it's probably better to see a new player comment on this since a new player would lack the context I already had.)
when I said combat should be more interactive at the start it was mainly just a side idea I had because of the fact early game might shake some players off due to being more passive but it doesn't really matter that much. at the time I just put it in and didn't have any ideas on how it could theoretically be implemented.
however, I did figure out two ways to make combat more interactive just now but neither of them seem super good to me:
1, piety shields.
maybe there could be a cooldown ability where you can summon a shield to block hits or parry them from a certain direction.
2, select targets.
choose what the character locks onto. might work best on ranged builds.
misc stuff:
I also still really think the encyclopedia is a good idea since it fixes most issues.
maybe have some text during the tutorial tell you about the pause button in the bottom right. from what I remember, the tutorial doesn't tell you this and some people might end up never seeing it and wasting their run.
hi! on my first playthrough as isla the scholar, it was impossible to progress past the first stage of archive depths because some glitch made that level have high level enemies. on my second playthrough as isla the enemies were normal and i was able to progress without trouble.
i think it might've been the enemies i was fighting at the end of my previous playthrough as the farmhand and they somehow carried over? apologies for not knowing the names of the enemies-- on my first playthrough as isla, i was fighting lots of red impish creatures, big rocky creatures, and small purply creatures. they were high hp and damage to the point that isla died of old age before i ever beat the first archives depths level. when i replayed, isla's first level just had slime creatures that were very easy to beat.
Fun game! Having the weapon descriptions be a bit more verbose would be appreciated though (ie does per: great mean that perception scales damage by a lot, or that perception has more of an effect than it otherwise would (ie scales crit by more than normal), or that you train perception faster with this weapon?) The differing origins making up for the relatively minor meta-progression is also nice.
This is really fun! I read more of the flavor text than I usually do and was a bit disappointed upon seeing "coming soon!" So well done!
I absolutley missed the bottom panel until I came here to write a comment. I was going to suggest telling the player how much life they had left. In the beginning, I did want to know how improving the str/ speed of attack works. I couldn't figure out if STR had any effect on magic or not. (probably not). How much speed am I adding per level would be helpful.
I played this for a good hour. Much longer than most. Great job.
I like the concept but its hard to figure out what i should be focusing on without the proper info, how much attack speed do i gain if i focus on dex? how much crit from perception? how much damage from strength? are the weapon bonuses to exp additive or multiplicitive? is it better to use a sword when im training strength or just stick with bow if im an archer build? Felt like i hit a wall pretty quickly, and the reward for my prestige points or legend points or whatever felt very small, im gonna redo the same thing but now with 10% more exp? i dunno, anyways i do like the overall concept and this seems like a pretty solid begining idea but i hope it gets smoothed out for a more rewarding experience
That's understandable. I plan to break down those details in tooltips eventually. The gains from those stats vary based on the weapon you have equipped so it's something I'll show in the Gear tab.
Generally, you shouldn't swap weapons early on, so I adjusted the first trader to stop selling the weapon you aren't using. If you have some Valor, it can help you catch up train another physical weapon, but it's probably still not optimal in the demo at least.
For meta-progression, it's going to change/develop a lot. I agree it's not super rewarding right now.
I really like what I've seen here, but the intro chapter (and even that with missing bits) ultimately isn't enough to judge how good this will be, because it will hinge more on the writing of the different paths than the mechanics (which seem solid) and I can't really judge the resource management well with the demo stopping at the point where the paths split up and it becomes important. Still, worth keeping an eye on.
When you say "where the paths split up", do you mean the woodlands and inn? The demo lets you go quite a bit beyond that, but how far a player gets in one life can vary a lot depending on playstyle.
No, I found that I could do most of Forest/Deep Forest, Lost Temple, Church and Mine in one life, but I assume that if I wanted to actually visit a major new location like the elven lands or the underground city I'd have to make careful choices which events to actually do and have enough lifespan left to finish one of those. That's the resource management I meant I couldn't really judge because the demo ends before it becomes relevant.
That said, I quite liked the whole thing about different characters having different lifepaths and skillsets, so if there end up enough of those paths and the writing keeps holding up I think this will be really good.
Ah okay. Well, in the full game it's likely some origins will start in later regions like Valenthar. But yeah, otherwise you would need to manage your time. However:
There might be the possibility of building permanent shortcuts in the world, like a path through the woods
There may be ways to increase your life span
Meta-progression would significantly increase your overall strength so you progress through tier 1 regions faster
It's really cool to see someone play the game firsthand. Gives me a perspective I can't always get from written feedback.
For your lore tab suggestion, I do plan to add a Journal tab. It would probably be unlocked in the 2nd or 3rd life so as not to overwhelm people. Overall, I've been thinking about ways to make things a little less overwhelming.
The suggestion for more reactivity around your accomplishments is good, and I'll see what I can do to expand on it. There's actually a bit of that in place. For example, if you remember Bess talking about the missing caravans, that’s something you can eventually resolve, and people will react to it while the world permanently changes.
Finished two lives and I think I've done almost everything that's currently allowed... Also the mage has significantly fewer options to explore than the farmer. But even after just the first life I bought out everything in the meta shop except the expensive elixir thingy
I don't really know what to think. The life of the character felt too short to do anything. I hardly felt like I did anything. Completed two "lifes" and it didn't really feel rewarding. Just felt cutoff.
Thanks for the feedback. I plan on some changes to the aging system. It'd help to know a little more about experience. Do you play more idle or active? What adjustment would make it feel like you could do enough?
I usually like Idle games they are pretty fun. I just really wanted a longer life span because it just was too short to complete anything. Also, I hardly could understand what I was supposed to be doing but generally, the game felt like it was over just as soon as I started gaining momentum. I like the idea of completing different paths through different play throughs, but each life should be able to fullfil a path. Maybe if milestones aged you rather than just a timer. So when you're playing different character can take different paths either to completion or to avoid an early demise.
Really enjoying it on browser, though some weird audio crunches whenever i scroll. Would really like to see a version of this on macOS. I know it can be fiddly to do but would be really appreciated. :') great laptop-type game with a wonderful premise
Fun game, I did find though that if I close out and reopen the game most everything is saved but seemingly not certain quest progress, such as the getting stronger quest resetting to 0 completions of the training area.
Very cool start, I'd love to see more. Though the one problem I found is that sometimes on the talent page, it's possible to double click a banish, and end up with two overlapping new talent options. This sounds like it would be useful, but since one covers the other, it's more like you just lose access to that talent, so...
Looks like this will be a fantastic game! Overall style, storytelling, and game loop is pretty fun. I managed to find the cultists in the temple, but it took a fair amount of planning. I like the idea of having a finite lifespan (but also heirlooms + some saved progress) to see how far you can get. Good luck with everything.
had a glitch where i: finish first life, go to wishlist before restarting, cant fullscren the game because it takers up my whole screen and itch wont let me interact, reload, lose all my feats and get reset to right before i reset.
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It has potential to be good, and has elements I liked, but the elements I hated, overcome the current good in the game. Specifically:
1) Talents often are generated that you have no hope of ever getting, but you have 3 redos before you are stuck with talents that may not be useful to you. At one point, I had accumulated 14 talent points, but none of the available ones I had the requirements for or gave a benefit that didn't help my build.
2) The talents list off requirements for them that sometimes isn't clear on how to meet them. Like Hunting or Mining. I don't know how to get them in the current demo. Clearly I'm missing paths or not buying RP related things.
3) There is no listing of other "skills". Like Social. So its impossible to know what my skill is until the talent or such allows me to take it.
4) I don't like that you often have to exit out of a dungeon raid midway to visit a new location. So you waste "days" doing so. As you can't choose a new raid, once at the score screen.
5) Its not always clear what my actions are levelling up. Like I use my click power as farmer. Is it giving XP towards intelligence or wisdom? Or is it just giving it to a skill? Or is it doing nothing.
6) There is labels in the UI with no explanation. Like what the heck is Guardian Spirit, as the farmer? In the jobs you have 0/12 energy, and then jobs take energy. But they don't tell you how much energy, so you have to guess. And how to get more energy? I see I can lose max energy by being older.
7) The game doesn't do a good job and states if you auto-retire on death or you have to retire before death to retain your prestige points. And its not safe to assume as some games like Progress Knight do auto-retire, and other games causes you to lose everything if you die that run or suffer huge penalties.
8) Finally, the biggest negative is the prestige system. I thought I was going to get a lot of unlocks by having 126 points accumulated. I could only afford 2 prestige unlocks, one at 40 and one at 80. These didn't really make the next playthrough feel faster, and so I lost interest and uninstalled it.
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Now it could simply be that I'm not your target audience and they might be fine with the above stuff. But for me looking for a neat indie idler + active gameplay loop, it didn't click for me for the above issues. If I'm not the target audience that is fine; hope you find your audience. But if those are things you are willing to address/change, then the game might be for me.
I really appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts!
1) The talents that become available depend on what you train. That said, there is a limited number of them in the demo, but the requirements should be reasonable to attain. If you don't have the requirements and the talent is something you would want, it's meant to act as a goal, otherwise you can dismiss them. But in the future the chance for talents to show will be more skewed to ones you have the requirements for. Also, dismissals will more heavily lower the chance to see that particular talent again.
2) All those things are trainable in the demo early on. There is a hunting job unlock from the first forest node and a mining job unlock from the first caves node. When you hover job unlocks in the chronicle the tooltip will display which stat and skill it trains.
3) Are you saying you couldn't see your Social lvl? It should be listed in the Training tab. What resolution were you playing with?
4) There will be a way to queue up your next location.
5) I can understand it being unclear for combat. The click power is training Piety. I have to be careful because tooltips can become too bloated if I share every little bit of information like "Trains XYZ". But if you hover Guardian Spirit, under the name you will see the tag "Piety". As for XP, in combat you will only ever gain attribute XP to the attribute you selected in the Focus menu.
6) Other than what you mentioned, which labels were unclear to you? You can hover Guardian Spirit in the combat UI for more info, and there is a little tutorial for active abilities. What was confusing about it? Jobs do tell you how much energy they take. It's to the right of their name when you hover them in the list.
7) There is no penalty to retire. But I guess you were worried that there was one? You can do it early if you are done with that run, otherwise you can keep on until your character dies from old age. Either way you take the legacy + heirlooms onwards.
8) I'll keep your feedback in mind. The meta-progression isn't finished, most likely it gets reworked significantly. But it will likely stay on the lighter side power scaling wise, because:
Thanks for the reply. Some comments:
1) Well I kept getting talents that required 2-3 points, but the requirements were way beyond what I had available. Or I didn't understand what the requirement was and thus how to get to them. And the reason I had issue with the dismissal system is that I dismissed the same talent 3 times in a row, and then finally it gave me a new talent. Really bad luck I know, but still. It shouldn't consume a dismissal action, if you get the same talent back.
2) Ahhh, well, I didn't go into the forest or the cave. That would explain that. But, why did I get talents for those activities when I didn't go into them?
3) Nope. Couldn't see my social level. Or wasn't looking in the right space. Was running standard maximized screen, on my 1920x1080 monitor. I could read the text of other things.
4) Good to know.
5) Ahh but therein is the issue. I didn't know where Guardian Spirit was, and thus could hover over it. I just say the name mentioned in other tooltips and was confused on why I didn't have Guardian Spirit somewhere I could look at it.
If you only get xp for the thing you focus on, what is the xp you get at the end of a raid? Is that for character xp?
6) Most of the little tutorials pop up, when I'm trying to understand something else, and then click out of them. Then realize that was dumb, but as I was already struggling to learn something else, I didn't want to overload my brain... because once its overloaded, I often ragequit. But then there was no way to get the tooltip back, so a lot of my struggle is because of that. My main issue otherwise, was finding things to hover over to provide a tooltip.
7) No, my concern was there a penalty if you let your character die.
8) I'm fine for it being lighter on the power scaling, as long as it helps you to bypass the early game faster each time you take a metaprogression. The issue is I didn't feel my options really helped in that regard. 800 gold felt like a pittance and the others for +10% xp didn't seem to get me past the early game that much faster.
How do deeds in prior lives affect future ones, when there isn't a time loop? I'm confused. I did try out a different starter life as the librarian, but from my 30 minutes playing them before getting bored, didn't seem like any of the things I did made any difference.
Not sure what you mean by legacy shop. I also only found one heirloom, a ring buried in my farm, and only because I got a talent that gave 2 dreams.
Fun game as a whole, certainly looks like there'll be a lot more in the future. That said, it does look like the talents (or whatever that last tab is called) needs a bit of work. It keeps getting clogged up with not only useless stuff, like blade skills on a mage, but stuff that I literally don't meet the pre-requisites for. Not being able to select any more for the rest of that run because all you've got for options are things you can't select just doesn't make sense imho.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the caster paths offer. Looks like those aren't in the demo right now, or at least aren't completed. Still, it was fun so far as I was able to find out.
The things that give meta progression that were already gained in a previous run should either be clearly marked as such, unavailable, or give a different bonus (eg large donation, dream, etc)
Yup I agree. Haven't gotten around to it yet but in a future update that will be resolved.
Well game bro
Good game! Well-executed take on the reincarnation-cycle jobs-idle game, especially with the auto-playing horde survivor on the side. Nicely done.
Bug report: Cooldowns aren't tracked when you lose and regain an ability and cooldowns on new abilities start fully-cooled and fire immediately. This means that you can win any encounter by repeatedly unequipping and re-equipping the cooking pot to spam fireballs. Or, well, you could if it didn't lag the game out horribly.
Thanks for the bug report!
This is exactly the kind of game I was looking for... can't wait for the full game!
Really enjoy it but it would nice if the character could settle down and have a familt
thats not really what the game is about
Should be more clearly marked as a demo. I played it for a good while and enjoyed it, but I wasn't looking for a demo.
most games on itch are demos, it should be expecte
Honestly the coolest idea I've seen in a while, exploring the different paths is really addicting. But for an idea like this to work there needs to be a ton more content. I'm talking 5x the amount that's already there, minimum. And also sometimes the screen freezes when I use an ability on the right hand side. using firefox browser
Quite a cool game and replayable value is good!
Very pagan idea of having actions in one life affect your other lives with Hamingja through honorable deeds being passed to offspring, despite the cross and "guardian spirit"suggesting otherwise.
Also, I expected the tooltips to be on the icons instead of the text.
This is good! Looking forward for more
Loving the game! But I was playing as the scholar and used all my resolve points with no way of getting more making me stuck, is there a fix to this?
Hmm, can you describe how that happened? That way I can look into the bug. Assuming you are early on, you can pick "Early Retire" to start that run over by going into the save menu at the bottom-right.
After I completed the depths, I never unlocked finding what you seek, I only discovered that you were supposed unlock it on my next run.
this game is pretty cool and I recommend it especially since I didn't expect to like the game as a completionist yet unlocked multiple heirlooms and still wanna continue. it's not entertaining in the sense you'll fall off your chair and jump through the screen, but it definitely did hook me considering the time I spent.
what I actually did:
spent like an hour and 30 minutes playing as an archer build and unlocked 3 heirlooms within that one life and bought 3 more with the leftover cash I had in the afterlife shop (not called the afterlife shop but I forgot).
pros:
1, the game itself is fun.
2, unique concept.
3, didn't play that far into my second run but from what I can tell, you do indeed make an impact on future lives.
4, lore is pretty interesting. I liked the dialogue with the dwarf guy living in the abandoned mine.
cons:
1, confusing terminology/mechanics.
what exactly is piety? what's a "focus"? what's "unforeseen" on a node? why does my bow say "muscles icon = weak, wind and eyes icon = strong"? what's the dreamcore rainbow with an eye on currency supposed to be?
I think the point of all these names not being standard to make the game seem more unique but some of it doesn't really make any sense especially when it's not fully explained.
there's multiple solutions:
you could replace the names with generic ones.
you could replace names with unique but more intuitive ones.
you could expand the tutorial.
you could add an encyclopedia that explains what every word means. for example, one page explains how items work and describes the "icon + strong/weak thing." another page defines what "piety" is. maybe you wouldn't even have everything unlocked at once and it could unlock as you see stuff and it permanently progresses across characters. you gain your first bit of the dreamcore currency and it unlocks the page for that for example.
2, UI is hard to read.
I think the game is going for an art style where everything uses a small amount of colors which I have no opinion on but one of the things this effects is the UI. when I was playing, I was stuck at the section with fighting the test dummies because I didn't realize I was meant to click on the "proven farmhand" node and had to watch a playthrough by a british guy playing to figure out the issue. basically, the proven farmhand node, for some reason, doesn't have a red outline, and the yellow exclamation mark is green for some reason (again, tutorial issue) which blends in with the icon for the node and looks like a check mark for completed when you're looking at the screen with your eyes more then 1mm off the surface.
more major ideas:
1, make the game mobile compatible. this game seems like it would feel pretty nice to play on mobile. sure, you wouldn't be able to help your character fight npcs while managing unlocks and routines but you could just pause and switch tabs at the bottom of the screen. portrait mode optimally. this would help the game grow too.
2, solve the naming issue from options I previously mentioned.
more minor ideas:
1, add some easter eggs. maybe it'd be cool if you got a really bad 1% xp boost permanent heirloom if you started a new character and immediately retired at young age.
2, maybe make combat more interactive at the start.
not sure about this.
3, make dialogue for npcs change so that each time you talk to someone, that person doesn't say the same thing again.
4, character customization maybe.
how the game works is that each storyline is it's own unique character you can control but I think it'd be nice if you could customize your own character and choose a preset storyline instead (issues such as gender and name could even be solved with stored booleans and tables of data). I doubt many others care but I'd like that because it's more entertaining to make dumb characters yet, it doesn't matter that much.
conclusion:
I spent way too long writing this. good game.
(I know this is hard to read but idk how to improve it)
Thank you for taking the time to write all this out! Appreciate the feedback. I read all of it, and I can understand some of the concerns you raised.
UI is hard to read
Confusing terminology/mechanics
Other
I may end up adding some kind of small Encyclopedia as you suggest, we'll see.
thanks for responding. I played the update a little and I think the UI makes quite a bit more sense now. (though, it's probably better to see a new player comment on this since a new player would lack the context I already had.)
when I said combat should be more interactive at the start it was mainly just a side idea I had because of the fact early game might shake some players off due to being more passive but it doesn't really matter that much. at the time I just put it in and didn't have any ideas on how it could theoretically be implemented.
however, I did figure out two ways to make combat more interactive just now but neither of them seem super good to me:
1, piety shields.
maybe there could be a cooldown ability where you can summon a shield to block hits or parry them from a certain direction.
2, select targets.
choose what the character locks onto. might work best on ranged builds.
misc stuff:
I also still really think the encyclopedia is a good idea since it fixes most issues.
maybe have some text during the tutorial tell you about the pause button in the bottom right. from what I remember, the tutorial doesn't tell you this and some people might end up never seeing it and wasting their run.
Great game. I'd love to buy it here, or on GoG. Not gonna buy from Steam though
Thanks, and noted. I'll consider selling it here also.
this is absolute peak, i'm not even sure there is any feedback to give I just wish there was more content in the demo lol
Thanks ❤️
The demo will get a bit more content and some new mechanics
hi! on my first playthrough as isla the scholar, it was impossible to progress past the first stage of archive depths because some glitch made that level have high level enemies. on my second playthrough as isla the enemies were normal and i was able to progress without trouble.
Hmm that's very strange. Was it the same kind of enemies in both runs? Were they really high HP or damage?
i think it might've been the enemies i was fighting at the end of my previous playthrough as the farmhand and they somehow carried over? apologies for not knowing the names of the enemies-- on my first playthrough as isla, i was fighting lots of red impish creatures, big rocky creatures, and small purply creatures. they were high hp and damage to the point that isla died of old age before i ever beat the first archives depths level. when i replayed, isla's first level just had slime creatures that were very easy to beat.
Thanks for the info. I'm not sure how that could happen but I will investigate it.
Fun game! Having the weapon descriptions be a bit more verbose would be appreciated though (ie does per: great mean that perception scales damage by a lot, or that perception has more of an effect than it otherwise would (ie scales crit by more than normal), or that you train perception faster with this weapon?)
The differing origins making up for the relatively minor meta-progression is also nice.
Thanks! That means perception has more of an effect than it otherwise would. I do plan to make it clearer.
Love this! Played both origins. The concept is so interesting, and the demo is so well done. Can't wait to see how the full game looks!
also there is currently no way to import a save
Adding this in the next update.
YAYY thanks
Added in v0.13.9!
uum don't see it yet. the import button
It's on the desktop version, since the intended purpose was to let you migrate from web to desktop.
I'm assuming that the save button menu is the bed
only
hard reset
early retire
download save
save now
those are the only things showing up. hope this bug report helpe
love i
This is awesome, can't wait til there's more content
Does dexterity affect staff attacks?
It does not. For the staff INT and PER are the main stats you want. WIS helps too but not as much as the other two.
This is really fun! I read more of the flavor text than I usually do and was a bit disappointed upon seeing "coming soon!" So well done!
I absolutley missed the bottom panel until I came here to write a comment. I was going to suggest telling the player how much life they had left. In the beginning, I did want to know how improving the str/ speed of attack works. I couldn't figure out if STR had any effect on magic or not. (probably not).
How much speed am I adding per level would be helpful.
I played this for a good hour. Much longer than most. Great job.
I LOVE IT<3 do you have a release date in mind?
Thank you!! Aiming to release late this year.
I like the concept but its hard to figure out what i should be focusing on without the proper info, how much attack speed do i gain if i focus on dex? how much crit from perception? how much damage from strength? are the weapon bonuses to exp additive or multiplicitive? is it better to use a sword when im training strength or just stick with bow if im an archer build? Felt like i hit a wall pretty quickly, and the reward for my prestige points or legend points or whatever felt very small, im gonna redo the same thing but now with 10% more exp? i dunno, anyways i do like the overall concept and this seems like a pretty solid begining idea but i hope it gets smoothed out for a more rewarding experience
That's understandable. I plan to break down those details in tooltips eventually. The gains from those stats vary based on the weapon you have equipped so it's something I'll show in the Gear tab.
Generally, you shouldn't swap weapons early on, so I adjusted the first trader to stop selling the weapon you aren't using. If you have some Valor, it can help you catch up train another physical weapon, but it's probably still not optimal in the demo at least.
For meta-progression, it's going to change/develop a lot. I agree it's not super rewarding right now.
I really like what I've seen here, but the intro chapter (and even that with missing bits) ultimately isn't enough to judge how good this will be, because it will hinge more on the writing of the different paths than the mechanics (which seem solid) and I can't really judge the resource management well with the demo stopping at the point where the paths split up and it becomes important. Still, worth keeping an eye on.
When you say "where the paths split up", do you mean the woodlands and inn? The demo lets you go quite a bit beyond that, but how far a player gets in one life can vary a lot depending on playstyle.
No, I found that I could do most of Forest/Deep Forest, Lost Temple, Church and Mine in one life, but I assume that if I wanted to actually visit a major new location like the elven lands or the underground city I'd have to make careful choices which events to actually do and have enough lifespan left to finish one of those. That's the resource management I meant I couldn't really judge because the demo ends before it becomes relevant.
That said, I quite liked the whole thing about different characters having different lifepaths and skillsets, so if there end up enough of those paths and the writing keeps holding up I think this will be really good.
Ah okay. Well, in the full game it's likely some origins will start in later regions like Valenthar. But yeah, otherwise you would need to manage your time. However:
Some gameplay, a smattering of critique ;)
Thanks for playing :)
It's really cool to see someone play the game firsthand. Gives me a perspective I can't always get from written feedback.For your lore tab suggestion, I do plan to add a Journal tab. It would probably be unlocked in the 2nd or 3rd life so as not to overwhelm people. Overall, I've been thinking about ways to make things a little less overwhelming.
The suggestion for more reactivity around your accomplishments is good, and I'll see what I can do to expand on it. There's actually a bit of that in place. For example, if you remember Bess talking about the missing caravans, that’s something you can eventually resolve, and people will react to it while the world permanently changes.
Finished two lives and I think I've done almost everything that's currently allowed... Also the mage has significantly fewer options to explore than the farmer. But even after just the first life I bought out everything in the meta shop except the expensive elixir thingy
This was also my experience with the game. That said, I'm pretty excited to see what else the finished game will have in store!
I don't really know what to think. The life of the character felt too short to do anything. I hardly felt like I did anything. Completed two "lifes" and it didn't really feel rewarding. Just felt cutoff.
Thanks for the feedback. I plan on some changes to the aging system. It'd help to know a little more about experience. Do you play more idle or active? What adjustment would make it feel like you could do enough?
I usually like Idle games they are pretty fun. I just really wanted a longer life span because it just was too short to complete anything. Also, I hardly could understand what I was supposed to be doing but generally, the game felt like it was over just as soon as I started gaining momentum. I like the idea of completing different paths through different play throughs, but each life should be able to fullfil a path. Maybe if milestones aged you rather than just a timer. So when you're playing different character can take different paths either to completion or to avoid an early demise.
Really enjoying it on browser, though some weird audio crunches whenever i scroll. Would really like to see a version of this on macOS. I know it can be fiddly to do but would be really appreciated. :') great laptop-type game with a wonderful premise
Glad you're enjoying it! I do plan on a mac version at some point, I'll have to look into what Apple requires.
Just fyi, the default scaling mode is unreadable on a high-dpi monitor, way too small. "Fit to Window" is fine.
Fun game, I did find though that if I close out and reopen the game most everything is saved but seemingly not certain quest progress, such as the getting stronger quest resetting to 0 completions of the training area.
I refreshed the page by accident and now I can't go back to the forest (even after unlocking the deep woods (post refresh)
Just pushed an update that should fix this. If you reload the page again the forest locations should be there.
Will address this in a future update.
Very cool start, I'd love to see more. Though the one problem I found is that sometimes on the talent page, it's possible to double click a banish, and end up with two overlapping new talent options. This sounds like it would be useful, but since one covers the other, it's more like you just lose access to that talent, so...
Incredibly fun, can't wait to see more
I like the idea !
You can download your save , but where could you import it ?
Will add an import button soon!
Added in v0.13.9!
Looks like this will be a fantastic game! Overall style, storytelling, and game loop is pretty fun. I managed to find the cultists in the temple, but it took a fair amount of planning. I like the idea of having a finite lifespan (but also heirlooms + some saved progress) to see how far you can get. Good luck with everything.
Extremely nice game.. Good balance on leveling/ grinding. Well done.
Literally, the only complaint I have is that there isn't more. This is amazing.
had a glitch where i: finish first life, go to wishlist before restarting, cant fullscren the game because it takers up my whole screen and itch wont let me interact, reload, lose all my feats and get reset to right before i reset.
Oof sorry that happened. Thanks for letting me know, I'll look into the issue and get it fixed as soon as I can.