Fantastic core of the game and considering that it is made by a team of 4 people a really amazing job. The game makes you really feel like Necromancer, balancing life and death, summonning units, healing and killing enemies with spells. Definitelly good pick for any summoner or healers players from other games, that want to see what it would look like if their character was not a support but main character.
Still, while I really enjoyed the game and give it a thumb up, in it's current state it is unpolished diamond. As I said in the first sentece - fantastic core. But frankly speaking nothing else is there. The dev team was developing fights and floor progression for quite a while, then at some update slapped a boss at the end... and called it ready. From their notes I take that apart from some balancing, they don't really envision much more for this game and this is a damn shame. Because this game has potential, but without story and some more meangful progression system implemented into the game, it gives me zero incentive to rerun it. At 8 hours mark, I leveled enough to start with few spells that are really good to use, and gave me enough tools to beat it. Then I played a bit more to unlock hard more and checked it... just to see it just upped HP and DMG of enemies (or maybe just HP?) and now rather than checking if my strategy works or not, I am 90% of the time dodging enemy archers that shot at me from the other side of the map while my minions are slowly grinding other enemies. Nothing really became harder, just longer and more annoying.
Personally I think the game really deserves taking a step back and rethinking few elements and since this is still alpha run, maybe the devs could still look into it:
- Events and story
You start in menu, after playing you jump into map. We have small cutscene at beginnig of the game, and small one after the boss. These are fine. But... what is with the events? Two walls of the texts where good 3/4 or even more is the same... always? Few repetitions of same message since you are scared people did not read the previous one??? And even if you pay attention it boils down to few lines describing "fleeting feeling that you are on verge of rememering something but only few details of that"??? Maybe you have some grand vision for the story here but it is not really getting across and the events texts become annoying because of how much of that is basically made to be skipped... so you are making people skip the whole thing with this construction. Seriously, I am a bookoholic reading one novel / new tome each week and you made me skip the story here... any more
Please, don't be afraid to take inspiration from more succesful title. Maybe create some camp with NPC your character can interact? Like a camp of your fallen comrades whose souls you are carrying to battle? Or ones you find while you do the runs? Make few of them have some functions, like accessing your skill tree or list of spells, while rest be purely story-focused. Then make the events on the map actually be about these stories and not your vague-memories-thingy etc. If you want to still implement them, it would work way better as a "glimpses of the past" you unlock by some of your actual actions or maybe just after each death give these few lines.
- Progression between runs
Leveling is fine. Buuut... unlocking everything by leveling is boring. And you also "give too much". People will always say that they want more and more stuff, so they are not noticing it, but your design is mixing too much stuff that you unlock on the run of the map and stuff you unlock between the runs. Set a clear boundary - some stuff is part of random things players will encounter, some are elements that their create their builds before they jump into the map. For example, Hades does it with weapons and boons. Weapons create players build, while boons are buffs they gather each run, that support that build. You could do the same with your spells.
Right now you both get some spells at start, get some on the map, get some enchantmens on the map and get levels on the map. Everythign is on the map. Why? Set a clear line, for example make the spells something players decide before the run. This way they would be acting more consciously, more with intention. I would also rethink if all current enchantments should be found on the map. Few of them leans heavily into creation of very specific builds but also it's hard to work towards them since you don't know if you will get it or not. Things like "Arrogance" or "Protector Gambit" - if you have no great offensive spell and good levels into your Greater Minions Protector Gambit is great pick... but you will never pick it without any spells for healing army or resurecting minions, since that would just cripple half of your abilities. Or "Purity of Flesh" with any Barrier spells and so on. Maybe reworking them as items you collect during runs then in next ones you can equip them would be better? Because having them at start would make you more aware toward what you should build with your runs.
On the note of intention, think also what makes people want to repeat the runs in other games. We are by design "Gatherers", "Collectors","Hunters". Think about this while design the game. You want your players to have some incentive to rerun it and looking for "ingredients" you lack is perfect way of doing it. Maybe spells are only unlocked if you gather enough "runes" or "incantations fragments" of certain type? Maybe having more minions require gathering materials to strenghen power of your staff? Don't give people too much stuff automatically, rather have them intentionally unlock what they want - this way you not only make them want to rerun map for stuff they want, you also create reason to clearly experiment with new finds on next runs, not just go in randomly and maybe randomly get to build. Randomness is good for not having the runs be stale and similar, but a bit of intentional pre-planning is also really powerful tool for making the players care about their playstyle.
Overall, polish your diamond devs. If you need more hands for the project, you already have community of people here - don't be afraid to ask.
