Litha and the Sunhouse

It's very close to being a decent rogue-lite, but I feel the devs are not fully utilizing what they created, it's almost like it has the right ingredients without the experience to put it together. Let me give you an example of what I mean. To me meta-progression and challenge come together, that is the whole point, you get more progression because the challenge should increase as you make progress and get better, except in this game, there is no way to get more challenge until like 10 hours into the game after you did 90% of the hub content. So I am like okay, I just beat the game 20 times, I did 90% of the side quests, and now you going to give me a little boost in challenge? That should have happened 8 hours ago when I had my honeymoon with the game, and not when I fully optimized my strategy and barely care for a few debuffs. So I beat the game for the first time maybe 60 minutes in on my third run, kinda easy, so where is the run modifier I ask. Well, the game has a hub where you can bring the characters from the run that will do various things, so far pretty normal. But how do you increase the difficulty I ask myself, assuming it will be one of the characters that I saved. It was not the first character you see, it was not the second, it was not the third, not the 4th, not the 5th, not the 6th, it was the 7th or 8th MF character I found that told me to bring debuffed items, 10+ hours into the game after 20+ runs the game gives me the first difficulty modifier. Essentially the game asks you to equip debuff items and bring them to stage 4, and you can carry 1 or several, and I assume there will be a bonus boss at the end, I am still working on it. The animation is the best part of the game for me, I am partially guilty for encouraging devs to take their first game Tsumi and make it bigger, and they did, it has the same style of animation with many cute power ups, and yet it feels a bit slower and not as snappy as I wanted. Which brings me into another issues I have with the game, there are a lot of cool looking abilities, but many of them are just too slow to be fun, or just not worth replacing your fast basic attack with. You see you can stunlock enemies as long as you hitting them, and your first ability is very good at that, but when you replace it with a slower ability that does more damage, that ability does not make up for the fact that you may not be able to stunlock as well anymore. Sometimes a fun ability is better than logical game design, which is something I think this devs are struggling with. Why so many abilities in this game are so freaking slow or have such abrupt cooldowns, I literally would rather use my first ability than half of the upgrades in this game, because it's faster than most of them and can stunlock better. There are 4 stages in this game, a run usually takes me 30 minutes, give or take. The hub content is probably at least 10 hours of unlocks. Basically each run you have to save a specific character, and after you save one, the next run you can find a new character. This is not a math heavy game, most of what you unlock are options that are added to your starting loudout or new items in circulation. Very vanilla dungeon crawler rogue-lite, the chances are you played something very similar. [h1] Pros: [/h1] (+) The animation is my favorite part of the game, kinda gives me the Saturday morning cartoon vibes, not many games that look like that, not in this genre. (+) There are a lot of creative abilities and you will unlock many more as you play, as well as some interesting gimmicks with the synergy, however the application and how they impact the overall run strategy, that is something that needs improvements. (+) The risk & reward elements are kinda there, I would say the game is trying to be strategic, but it does not always work out that way because it's a very easy game to begin with, I find myself overthinking how much I really need to beat it, honestly you could run in naked if you extra careful. (+) Hub unlocks are about 10+ hours, mostly adding things into circulation and such, some starting bonuses as well. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] - The whole 'challenge the player' with new run mods needs to come online earlier in the game, I am not saying you have to move the debuff collector into the first run, but whatever you decide to do, giving bad modifier 10+hours into the game is not a way to do it. If I already beat the first run 60 minutes in, you need to challenge me, instead of making me do same difficulty for side quests. No challenge, not interested. To me a good version of a run modifier is taking existing enemies and bosses and making them look a bit different, color swap if you have to, but give them thicker bullet hell attacks and new patterns, maybe unique elite modifiers. What you doing with simple item debuffs, very low-key not really exciting difficulty content. What makes a modified run exciting? When something changes. Where is that in your game? - Something that was really missing for me this game is just not having enough run length to enjoy the overpowered build, the difficulty of the game does not match the things you can do with the items. So you have this potential crazy synergy that really isn't required because the game never gets intense enough for it to matter. - There are a lot of cool abilities in this game that don't feel like a good replacement than what you start with, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think if you have an ability that has 2-3 attacks, it should hold those charges until all of them are used and replace all of them after a certain amount of time, instead of expecting you to use all of them before it goes on cooldown automatically. Otherwise you often keep getting attack gaps. - I don't like the huge damage gap between base damage and critical attacks, I would say increase base damage and lower critical damage, otherwise you find these cool weapons that do 4/4/4/4 and then randomly do 30 or something and overkill the target or underkill the target. - The boss fights were a bit too hollow, too easy to abuse gaps. I think the "King Leoric" (skeleton) is a better one cuz it's not as easy to just stand in safe areas, I would use the same mentality for all of them. You could probably go a little harder on bullet-hell elements. Some small things: - could use a sound effect for the character falling into gaps, and for enemies falling into gaps - you sure you don't want to use that forest animation from the store page as the main menu artwork? That looks so nice compared to what you did, I don't get it. - Sometimes items get stuck in walls when you kill enemies, as well as the enemy summons - you know in some rogue-lites, when you unlock an item for the first time, it gives that item to the player to try, just food for thought - you can add map teleports when not in combat, for waypoints I mean [b] Overall Thoughts: 6/10 [/b] There are a lot of cool animations and abilities in this game that I often overlook because of the poor frames and long cooldowns, some strong looking abilities often do little damage as well, like I said, try to have fun with the skills instead of making half of them slow and limiting, half the time I replace my basic ability and the skill is worse than what I had, where is fun in that? Not having a difficulty mod until so many hours into the game makes no sense to me, they are usually given after the first completion. Replay value comes from "good difficulty modifiers that change enemies, change their attacks and patterns", improve on the bullet hell element with new difficulty mods. Otherwise very pretty rogue-lite, has some nice ideas, but not all that great right now, needs work. [code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]

Glad to see this game finally come out. I've been playing it for a while now, even before its release, and I can tell you that it was a hella fun ride. The game is pretty challenging, but fair, and once you get used to how things work, you can expect to progress further and further into the game with each and every new attempt. Seeing yourself improve over time is always a pleasant experience, and I feel like this game has a decent learning curve that allows you to achieve that. I hope you will enjoy learning how to deal with some of its trickiest stages and enemies as much as I did. You'll also find out that completing different quests and challenges is not that simple and takes a certain degree of skill and time invested, so getting every achievement unlocked won't be that easy. It would be a crime to not mention the art, which is beautiful and... comfy? Not sure how to describe it, but it's definitelly what makes the game stand out the most for me, I simply love it. I think it's worth mentioning that I've also played the game on Steam Deck, and was pretty satisfied with its performance, even though it doesn't look like it's officially supported. If you're into dungeoncrawling rogue-lites, there's a high chance that you will find this game to be worth your while, give it a shot.

Obviously, I only have a few hours into the game, but I will tell you that first impressions are usually very important to me. This games first impression to me is that the developers cared a lot about the art and the quality of the product, it shows and I really appreciate that. So far, I’ve only done a few runs, but as far as being a rougelike It seems to have everything you need. Loot, keys, item drops, shops, etc. So far, I’m impressed and I’m enjoying it. I’m not sure about is meta-progression, It seems that every starts brand new and I’m not sure if anything carries over. If that matters to you, keep that in mind. The amount of different enemies and animations and art are very impressive and I am impressed with the Dave have been able to do it in the first few hours. You can tell they care a lot about this game and I bet they’ll be attentive for making updates and improvements. If the game is on sale, I say buy it and see where it goes, you can’t go wrong with under $15.

You can do keyboard bindings, but not controller bindings?! Dash is set to B by default, unlike every other game in the world having it A. The first 2 bosses were 0 challenge, and there is 0 weight to the attacks. Very boring combat.

*chef's kiss* one of the most charming games I've ever played, with a surprising amount of run variety in store already!

Very interesting atmosphere and art, mediocre gameplay. The game obviously looks great, with a unique, hand-drawn artstyle, but actually playing the game is rather dull. The combat is serviceable at best, lacking the oomph to make fighting viscerally satisfying, and moment-to-moment play is hampered further by an excessive amount of backtracking. Walking around is slow, and you'll be walking to and from rooms A LOT. There are teleporters, but they're too sparse to aid the pacing. This game desperately needs a "run faster out of combat" option like Enter the Gungeon (which also happens to be the most comparable game in terms of level generation) has. The other primary issue is that every passive item I picked up was simply +X stats. I believe roguelites live or die by the quality of their items, and "number go up" is the absolute least interesting way to design items. Items need to DO something; they need to change how the game feels and how you approach siutations. There are spells and abilities you can pick up, but that's not enough; plenty of roguelites out there have both interesting skills and interesting items, like Ember Knights. You need both to make a game replayable and fun. Beyond these bigger issues, there are also some smaller annoyances, like a lack of rebindable controls. I really hate to be negative, as I enjoy supporting small developers, and it's clear a lot of love went into Litha and the Sunhouse. I can't deny, though, that I just don't think the game is fun. Combat isn't particularly exciting; exploration isn't particularly exciting; getting loot isn't particularly exciting. The game has personality, but that's not enough to overcome flaws in the core gameplay. There is a litany of excellent indie roguelites (and indie games of any genre, for that matter) out there for $15; go play one of those instead.

it's a very cute and charming game, you can easily feel how much devs cared about making this game with all the funny enemies and the heartwarming artstyle. It's kind of like a mix of isaac and classic rpgs, can definitely recommend if you want to try something new, artistic and home baked with love.

It's a really cute and honestly fun game. I'm not a big fan of rogue-type games, so I wasn't sure if I would actually enjoy this one, but I've been having a good time with it. I really like the art and the animations of the different abilities, and the environments are very nice. Sound design is pretty decent. Again, it's not a genre I play so I can't really compare it to anything, but the difficulty is honestly perfect for me. There is a good variety of enemies with different mechanics that will encourage you to keep using different abilities without being frustrating. It's not like some crazy hardcore game but if you're looking for a bit of a challenge it's a lot of fun. Considering that it was made by only two people, I found it very polished and smooth overall. I will say I did encounter one bug, which was the game freezing when I tried to change my keybinds (specifically the Dash bind). This happened both in the starting area and while in combat. Luckily the binds were saved when I opened the game up again, so it wasn't an issue once I figured out the ones I wanted, but I thought I'd mention it.