Mana Spark

This has potential to become a fantastic game but its very underbaked. I get a lot of the comments are positive, but it's just not there yet in terms of content, fluidity and some of the unpolished elements like the item shop etc.

Liked it a lot. Feels good to become skilled at it.

It sparked my mana, would recommend. Also some partial spoilers and things to mention - Mana Spark is decent for its price and incredible on sale. Why? - it is now long, interesting, and challenging enough to warrant enough gameplay for what you pay - it is fun to exploit the systems of the game (some items interact with the games mechanics in exploitable ways that are fun for a player like myself) - the starting character remaining still for a second when they fire means you have to be careful with how you play (but a mention that your character has strong bolts but remains still when firing is warranted so the player doesn't feel cheated when they take hits in those moments) Some things I'd really like improved that would greatly improve the gameplay (minor spoilers) - the charge shot skill is sadly useless as you can just fire twice in the time it takes to charge up a 2x damage shot (which means stunning an enemy twice and being able to reposition between shots which is far far better) I would fix this by changing the charge up time from 2 seconds to 1.5 or even 1.3 seconds and increasing the rune price of the skill. Difficult games require players to make intelligent decisions and the right decision should be how you use a skill rather than not using it at all if a game is well designed. - I would nerf the clever stone ram, as I found it led to me winning exchanges I should have lost. After taking a hit I can kill three of the petrified enemies and repeat whenever I get hit (essentially making me impossible to kill). I would fix this by changing the flawless kills requirement from 3 to at least 5, especially considering plenty of enemies (goblats, bats, spiders, etc.) are essentially free kills. Elsewise, a better slightly more complex fix might be to change the item to only count unpetrified kills "Clever Stone Ram, grants a petrified stone for every three unpetrified enemies killed". It is also very fun to be overpowered and the idea behind the item is awesome, I always love seeing it in the peculiar rooms, so it may be alright to have one op item though I still think it would be even with a nerf. Enemy AI. Having the enemies fight together intelligently is great. Some enemies on their own can still become useless because of their behaviour. The electricky guy that runs away usually gets stuck in a corner, and is trivial to fight when that happens. A good quick fix would be to make the projectiles it shoots impossible to shoot down so a player can't just repeatedly shoot in the same direction and win. It should also reuse its electric circle power periodically rather than just once. Elite enemies in challenge rooms (besides the elite guard shield lad person) I felt were very easy to exploit with fast attacks, giving them some stagger immunity could be a good idea in general. Asides from mechanics, the story of the game is quite solid and the ideas behind how its presented are serviceable. Despite this, the actual writing itself felt a little poor and characterless. For example, a character might say "I need 2 cactuses to unlock the cactus farm" in this game instead of "If i just had a couple cactuses I could easily restart my uncle's cactus farm!" whilst the latter is not going to win me any awards it's clear that there is much more emotion and characterisation being conveyed than there is in the former example, and I really love the idea and presentation of the mana spark world. Quicker ones - the hit stop can make the game feel sluggish when hitting enemies very fast, an option to turn it off or halve it would be appreciated - i really like the monster meat design and am just now getting it's a reference to Don't Starve :D, giving the player heaps of long term advantage in plenty of health but also lots of early risk by damaging is a quintessential idea in roguelikes (not a criticim obviously, just thought I'd say that). Overall i really like this game and it's well worth getting on sale. The art is good, the challenge is fun, the randomness make each run a bit unique. For the joy alone of bullseyeing a skeleton between its eyes even though 90% of its body is covered by its shield (i don't know if this was intended but it is very funny) why not give it a try?