I see really big potential in this game, and I had some fun with my friends when we played this, but there are a handful of issues that I can see and some ideas I have to fix them. This game -- in it's current state, at least -- is lacking a handful of things.
Critiques:
- This might just be connection issues due to my friends being across the pond, but I noticed some optimization errors. My gaming laptop experienced bad framerate and difficulty running a background tab like discord along with this game. I included the specs of my PC to check if other people had the same issue.
- Rounds take a very long time to complete, and there is very little pressure to fight. In fact, if you're playing with friends, you might feel bad about ambushing them in the process of smithing.
- Beyond the player-based combat, there isn't much to do with your time once you've smithed a weapon. Only having one inventory slot makes it so you can't search for better materials when you already have a weapon, and only a set number of slimes and resources on the map means that eventually you run out of things to do while you wait for your friends to finish up their weapons.
- Your old, less-durable and broken weapons don't serve much of a purpose, and there isn't a reliable way to find alloys beyond being the first to a tower.
- What... what do slime balls do? Mushrooms don't have much of a use beyond temporary buffs either.
- If you're caught off-guard without a weapon, you can't do much except run away. The hammer doesn't do much (if any) damage, and it's essentially a death sentence.
- The pointed edge of some weapons don't seem to matter as much as they should.
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Solutions:
- Lowering the polygons of some items and possibly finding a way to cull things that aren't in view of the player would do wonders for the framerate and smoothness of the game.
- Some kind of backpack, bag of holding, or another way to store multiple items. This could be locked behind certain monster drops, or maybe some new kind of quest system where turning in certain items gives you rewards that help your battle against the other smiths.
- Weapons don't break entirely when they lose all durability. They just drop as a new "broken (tin, bronze, etc.) weapon" item that can be used in the scrapping system below.
- A scrapping system where you can smelt down old weapons and use them to make new ones. This could potentially be a use for the towers beyond just holding items, as these scrapper structures could spawn inside of them. You can scrap an item into scrap of the metal type you put in (i.e. Tin Scrap, Tungsten Scrap, Bronze Scrap, etc.). This scrap would be slightly weaker than the ore versions of the same metal, but still worth using if your weapon breaks.
- An alloy forge that always spawns in one specific area on each map. There is only one alloy forge, meaning it's a point of interest and smiths will fight over it's usage. You can mix different metal there to create alloys, letting you craft stronger weapons overall.
- Bounty boards as a way to reward players who quickly make weapons instead of taking time and searching the whole map for materials. These boards typically have two quest types, item and kill. Item quests require gathering certain items (or smithing them), and kill quests require you to kill monsters or other smiths.
- Cauldrons could add a way for monster-based materials like slime or foraging mushrooms to be effective. Mix together mushrooms, monster parts, and maybe even ores to craft potions and meals that have wacky, powerful effects that are stronger than just shoveling mushrooms into your face. This might require shortening the effects of normal mushrooms, but it would certainly add more content.
- Some kind of shove attack if you're caught without a weapon. It doesn't deal any damage (maybe just 1 or 2), but allows smiths to push enemies away and gives them a chance to run for cover.
- More monster types! This would work very well for a singleplayer/co-op mode where you have to fight through dungeons while scrapping together whatever weapons you can, although more dangers in pvp matches would also work well. There could be classic rpg monsters like skeletons, goblins, constructs, etc., but making up your own could work too.
- Some kind of time limit or way to add pressure to the rounds. Some kind of barrier closing off certain areas, forges powering down and restricting access to smithing, monsters becoming more frequent on the outskirts of the map to push players into the center, etc.
- The point of a weapon SHOULD MATTER!!!! Maybe adding some kind of a charge attack for every weapon would make combat even more interesting, and sometimes the charge attack would use the point of the weapon (for sword, short sword, and spear).
- Game options for the host! Turning on and off features, map selection, setting how many lives the smiths have, maybe even down to the stamina regen, max health, max stamina, etc. and some way for players to check what game rules have changed before they jump into a public lobby.
Overall, this game has MASSIVE potential to grow into something bigger. This might just be a smaller project to mess around and have fun (much like Dani's projects), but honestly this could become a fully fleshed-out game very easily.
