Dev of Lone Fungus here - Looking for feedback towards some upcoming changes!

[BASTI]

I'd like to hear the communities thoughts on these two changes I'm planning!

Fast Travel

Hey I've heard plenty of people think the game lacks fast-travel points. I realize some of the teleportation upgrades the game has are a bit hidden and hard to get. My solution is to turn some of the Silver-Shrines into Gold-Shrines. Or perhaps just add new Shrines in locations that don't have them.

I'd love to hear suggestions to where you think the game needs Shrine changes!

Another thing

I'm thinking of putting the in-game inventory INTO the pause menu. That way it would free up a button (the Select Button) to where the Swap Spell button could be. I've heard some have issues with the current bind and I'm aware the game has a flaw of having too many button inputs. Some of that is too late to change, but this is an improvement I did think of. Would like to hear what people think about that.

The PRO of that would be :
You can bind stuff to that button
The game will be paused while you are in the inventory

The CON would be :
You won't be able to open inventory and swap equipped spells during boss fights, figured not too many do that anyway, it's a worth change to do.
The Map is two clicks away instead of one, unless you use the portable map button (Right Thumbstick)

Thanks everyone for the feedback, happy to improve the game post-release like that and make the experience better for everyone :)! Keep the feedback coming!

[Brigon]

I think I'd rather not have map take two clicks instead of one, that said I do fall foul of the left stick swapping my spells regularly when I don't intend to. Is Dpad being used for anything?

[BASTI]

A solution would be to have hold 'Start' open the map. Or somehow implement the Pause menu into the inventory, so pressing Start opens the Inventory/Map and another click opens the Pause Menu.

Yeah Dpad is used for movement 😅

[wildfire393]

A few more fast travel points would definitely be nice. I've only got the "teleport from silver shrines" upgrade of the teleport upgrades and even with that it feels like I often have to travel 5ish screens to get to/from an area I want to check.

The Map/Inventory being part of the start menu would be a good improvement IMO. Seems odd that there's basically two different pause menus, and the start menu is significantly less useful (but I end up bringing it up first an awful lot). Adding the start menu options as another tab on the inventory would be a net positive, especially if it turns select into spell swap (it does not feel good on the L stick press).

If I could make one more suggestion, having some additional pin colors/symbols would be nice too. There's a lot of different kinds of gates I run into and not sufficient pins to cover all of them, so I end up having to overload a few pin colors and it's hard to remember what's what.

[erwinanfire]

Yes, more fast travel points or just make all silvers open to fast travel. An exclamation point or something as a guide to the area you should be exploring next would be great. The ability to zoom into the map and maybe some icon showing you grabbed the item there would be great too. Changing accessibility options during the game would be helpful. Overall great game. Excited to try your next game and hopefully a sequel.

[Jack]

Underground could do with more save/fast travel spots, long sections between them

[Kips]

Originally posted by erwinanfire:

Yes, more fast travel points or just make all silvers open to fast travel.

Doubling up on this one. I know there's an item that lets you teleport to Silver Shrines (which I still haven't found...) and one that lets you teleport FROM Silver Shrines, but I feel like both should just be the same upgrade since it's kinda clunky otherwise.

Edit: Having now beaten the game... I kinda see why you can't just swap the two items. I do think the process in getting the Iron Key should be made a bit more obvious though; I basically had to go through the entire Color Caverns trying to find the room it was talking about, as I forgot where that one boss fight was. I ended up finding it while I was looking up how to get some stuff at the very, VERY end of the game. Maybe get rid of the hidden wall part entirely, or change it so there's a cross-gate in front of it?

[seblav]

Fast travel : agree, even with the later ability, the map is so big, that it is still hard to navigate rapidly the map.

Button remapping : I don't think changing one button will solve the main issue here, however, if the menu is mixed with the inventory then, simply add a tab for the "settings, quit" menu and keep the inventory that way.

One way I think would help to solve the "too many button inputs" is to add a enable / disable abilities option. That way the abilities mainly used for parkour and astral gates can be turned off reducing the number of button used.

[eytanzweig]

As a parent of young kids, I have to say that the inability to pause during boss fights is pretty annoying - I've lost more than once just because I was interrupted and there was no way to pause it. Maybe add "allow pause during boss fights" as a custom difficulty option (though that won't help existing games).

(Otherwise, still just starting the game but very much enjoying it so far)

[BASTI]

Originally posted by eytanzweig:

As a parent of young kids, I have to say that the inability to pause during boss fights is pretty annoying - I've lost more than once just because I was interrupted and there was no way to pause it. Maybe add "allow pause during boss fights" as a custom difficulty option (though that won't help existing games).

(Otherwise, still just starting the game but very much enjoying it so far)

Yeah sorry the reason you can't pause during boss fights is actually cause there were some exploits you could do in bosses by pausing. It's one of the bugs/flaws that I did not manage to fix before launch since there are so many bosses.

I can see myself fixing those at some point and removing the pause limitation in boss fights.

[Shadowman621]

One thing the game could use is explaining alternate uses for the spells. I can't even begin to tell how long I was stuck trying to figure out what to do when the answer was to use a spell to get past an obstacle. A simple written description or even some rooms in the "learn" area could be really useful.

[Insanitys Muse]

Originally posted by BASTI:

Originally posted by eytanzweig:

As a parent of young kids, I have to say that the inability to pause during boss fights is pretty annoying - I've lost more than once just because I was interrupted and there was no way to pause it. Maybe add "allow pause during boss fights" as a custom difficulty option (though that won't help existing games).

(Otherwise, still just starting the game but very much enjoying it so far)

Yeah sorry the reason you can't pause during boss fights is actually cause there were some exploits you could do in bosses by pausing. It's one of the bugs/flaws that I did not manage to fix before launch since there are so many bosses.

I can see myself fixing those at some point and removing the pause limitation in boss fights.

If they're game breaking bugs I could see this requiring disabling pause, but why would anyone ever care if other people are exploiting boss fights in a game like this? Would rather have key accessibility features always available (pause being the most basic, mundane one) than concern myself with how other people are playing their single-player game.

Related, that goes for the difficulty / QoL options in general - I absolutely could not care less if people can abuse them, toggle them on the fly, etc., so long as they are available. QoL shouldn't be hidden behind difficulty settings when there's nothing PvP about the game at all.

The only way letting other players customize their experience to their own abilities and tastes has on me is letting more people experience the game. That seems like a no-brainer win/win.

For my own case, once I can update the map on the fly and not have to worry about not being able to pause, I'll probably pick it up again. Not a fan of gated fast-travel either though, I've never encountered a game where that improved the experience for me. Hell, I can't think of a game I would have enjoyed less if EVERY ROOM was a fast travel room, I hate when games think running through a room that may as well be empty is a fun use of my time. Being able to go through them fast doesn't beat not needing to go through them at all. But, I play 50+ different games a year, so games respecting my time is important to me, so it being customizable would be OK.

[BASTI]

Originally posted by Insanitys Muse:

Originally posted by BASTI:

Yeah sorry the reason you can't pause during boss fights is actually cause there were some exploits you could do in bosses by pausing. It's one of the bugs/flaws that I did not manage to fix before launch since there are so many bosses.

I can see myself fixing those at some point and removing the pause limitation in boss fights.

If they're game breaking bugs I could see this requiring disabling pause, but why would anyone ever care if other people are exploiting boss fights in a game like this? Would rather have key accessibility features always available (pause being the most basic, mundane one) than concern myself with how other people are playing their single-player game.

Related, that goes for the difficulty / QoL options in general - I absolutely could not care less if people can abuse them, toggle them on the fly, etc., so long as they are available. QoL shouldn't be hidden behind difficulty settings when there's nothing PvP about the game at all.

The only way letting other players customize their experience to their own abilities and tastes has on me is letting more people experience the game. That seems like a no-brainer win/win.

For my own case, once I can update the map on the fly and not have to worry about not being able to pause, I'll probably pick it up again. Not a fan of gated fast-travel either though, I've never encountered a game where that improved the experience for me. Hell, I can't think of a game I would have enjoyed less if EVERY ROOM was a fast travel room, I hate when games think running through a room that may as well be empty is a fun use of my time. Being able to go through them fast doesn't beat not needing to go through them at all. But, I play 50+ different games a year, so games respecting my time is important to me, so it being customizable would be OK.

It seems like a no-brainer but on the other side of the argument I've got players complaining there is too much assist features and hand-holding. (Some people view achievements kinda like a pvp game type thingy) So I'm here as a designer stuck in the middle of trying to find the best compromise to make as many people as happy as possible.

I'll be listening to what lots of people say and trying to find the best solutions to make the game as good as possible. Thanks for sharing your feedback!

[#yolo #swag #fierce #wow]

I prefer the keybinds the way they are.

The number of shrines I think is *mostly* good. There are a couple areas that could use a few more. However, I agree that while teleporting from silver shrines is all well and good, I would really like to be able to teleport to them as well. The map often does not make it clear to me where I can go -- I see the exits I haven't taken, but don't remember what I need to get to them, and sometimes I go in a room and it's on the map but it's not clear to me that I haven't done everything in it -- and having to slowboat my way everywhere is very time-consuming.

[franplants]

After playing a bit more, I agree that more golden shrines in certain areas would be nice--for example, Mechanical Fort. I've found only 1 gold and 1 silver shrine there so far?? And it looks like I've uncovered a decent chunk of the map for that area. I've been having to do a lot of going back and forth and running back to bosses each time I die, lol.

Also, a map-related question: I can't remember what caused the % explored to start showing up for the Deep Grotto biome, but I don't have that same % showing up yet for the other areas I've reached (Caverns, Fort). Should that % be showing up for every area, or am I missing something?

[darkly77]

I don't mind that the pause menu is separate from the inventory, otherwise it's one extra tab that you need to move through, and it would be a tab that you rarely ever really need to use.

For the map, it would be cool if it showed a bit quicker, atm there's a brief fade effect. I realised today that you can click the right stick to show a map instantly, which is great but the back button on a controller is a bit easier to use.

For the shrines, could the "teleport to silver shines" ability come sooner in the game? It's definitely something I'd love to have; like others have said, most of the time'd want to use it you just end up needing to teleport to a gold shrine instead, then passing the silver shrine you would have used. I think it would make the game feel a lot more fluid.