My humble feedback after binging for 7 hours straight

[BigBootyLatinaEnjoyer]

Hey everyone,

I literally downloaded this game today after watching 2 minutes of gameplay on youtube by youtuber Splattercatgaming (feel like credit is due otherwise I would've never found out about this game). Didn't expect much before downloading but my oh my was I pleasantly surprised. Sank around 7 hours straight, pretty much minmaxing 2 builds already and completely destroying all 14 floors.

I'm not going to name "the good" or "the bad". Just going to point out all the things I liked and disliked one by one.

1. the combat feels nice and fluid. can feel a bit slow though due to character's movement speed, especially in the beginning, but it does pick up a bit once you unlock skip portals and such.
2. the game looks nice graphically. the whole cartoonish style fits the tone of the game in my opinion.
3. sound design is also pretty good. not very "explosive" but skills sound and feel impactful which is what matters.
4. controls are okay but it took me at least an hour before i found the right set up. i know you can move with WASD now but having movement and basic attack on left mouse by default feels bad. i found it best putting your main skill on right click is the way to go.
5. the whole relic system, skill point system, gear system is pretty good so far. though, most relics i found were only good for scrap, as I felt that unique relics were the only ones worth using.
6. i felt like having mana was pointless after 2-3h of gameplay because there are only a couple skills that actually cost a lot of mana to use. I bet this will change when the game comes out since we only have a limited amount of skills to play with right now.
7. bosses didn't feel super challenging even as a fresh character. i only died once to a boss and it was the floor 14 boss. after that i just kept ramping up in power and found the right setup, and just kept wiping the whole game with ease. so i guess either the game is supposed to be relatively easy to play or it needs a slight difficulty buff.
8. I wish the room layout was randomized as opposed to being pretty much the same all the time. what is randomized are the chests and if you have a skip portal unlocked then that might appear sometimes. sometimes a floor starts from a different angle but it's practically the same.

I'm probably missing something but right now that is all i can think of. If I remember something I will update this.

All in all, a good start, fun game. Looking forward to the full release. Also, I was pleasantly surprised that the game is made by Brazilians (I assume since voice acting is in Portuguese). As someone who is currently learning Portuguese it was very nice to see. I knew the language sounded familiar when I first heard voice actors speak kkkk. Wishlisted and looking forward to see what you guys cook up here. Boa sorte!

[PalmitoDaColina]

Thanks for the feedback and for the time invested on our game, seriously :)
Here are some thoughts on a few specific points:

WASD: This was something we added while the demo was running. but you can trust that we’ll keep improving it a lot (especially the basic attack part— I 100% agree with what you said).

Relics: Uniques are definitely special. They’re the only relics with blessings tied to their unique affix (like increasing the damage of the grenade from the Molten Relic, for example).
Rare Relics on their own are less impactful, but they have a feature we haven’t explained yet: you can equip multiple identical rares and stack their special affix power. With some upgrades and stacking a few, you can really boost your build’s power.
We’ll keep working on the relicsso the drops in each biome feel more meaningful for everyone

Mana: You’re totally right about mana. With some upgrades, mana cost stops being an issue. This is one of our balance priorities right now.

Bosses: Our goal is to provide a loop between difficulty spikes, with bigger (but fair) challenge, followed by moments where you’re overpowerd and destroy everything.
This loop will repeat with each new challenge, ensuring the progression doesn’t feel flat or linear. In the early floors, bosses are intentionally easier. As you go deeper into the dungeon, the acts, and especially in the endgame, the difficulty will increase.
Even if the start is easier, experient players can always optimize their builds and push ahead to beat advanced challenges in fewer runs, while more casual players will progress at a slower, steady pace.

Floor Design: Since Hell Clock focuses more on skill expression, build optimization, and quickly taking down enemies, the floors are intentionally simpler.
That said, I totally agree that repetition can make the experience feel more tedious. We already have some features planned to improve this (besides the Red Portal). Randomization is also something our system already supports and will be more noticeable in later floors. But we can definitely make the start feel better in future polish updates.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to comment on a few things since you were so interested in providing feedback. By the way, here in Brazil, it’s pretty common to find people (in this gaming/pop culture niche) who learned English by playing video games. I hope HellClock helps you practice your Portuguese! :D

[BigBootyLatinaEnjoyer]

Hey,

Thanks for the reply. The thing about relics to me is that I never felt like I wanted to use 4 blue relics that only give me stats instead of using a couple unique ones that give me stats AND a buff to a skill. So that's why every relic that wasn't unique felt underwhelming to use. I think receiving unique relics should be less common because they give A LOT of power and can drastically change the way you play a skill.

Also, I like the trinket system and the fact that you gain so much power from them. But I am still uncertain if I would prefer it to be something players could fiddle with (choose which ones to use or something like that), or just keep it the way it is.

Another thing, on relic selection screen after defeating a boss, I wish we could press ALT while hovering a relic to see the range of rolls. Because many times I get to choose relics that I have already gotten but I am just not sure if the rolls are better than the ones I've already got. Also, speaking of rolls, I do like that items have rolls, which makes it more interesting to grind for the same items in order to get max roll and stuff.

Moreover, Conviction as a mechanic seems busted. I assume you guys took inspiration from Last Epoch because that was the last game I had played where such mechanic was used. I just feel way too strong and tanky with it. But maybe it is the intention.

Lastly, I've not experienced any technical issues with the game apart from Exclusive fullscreen not working properly, as every time I would come back from the dungeon, if the game was set to exclusive fullscreen and at 144hz the game would just reset itself to 50hz for some reason. Fullscreen windowed works fine. Speaking of performance, is this game capped at 80fps because it wouldn't move past or below that mark at all? A bit odd.

I think this about covers most of the stuff I wanted to give feedback about. There's probably others things I could think of but I think I mentioned the most important ones already.

[Jen]

Originally posted by BigBootyLatinaEnjoyer:

Hey,

Thanks for the reply. The thing about relics to me is that I never felt like I wanted to use 4 blue relics that only give me stats instead of using a couple unique ones that give me stats AND a buff to a skill. So that's why every relic that wasn't unique felt underwhelming to use. I think receiving unique relics should be less common because they give A LOT of power and can drastically change the way you play a skill.

Also, I like the trinket system and the fact that you gain so much power from them. But I am still uncertain if I would prefer it to be something players could fiddle with (choose which ones to use or something like that), or just keep it the way it is.

Another thing, on relic selection screen after defeating a boss, I wish we could press ALT while hovering a relic to see the range of rolls. Because many times I get to choose relics that I have already gotten but I am just not sure if the rolls are better than the ones I've already got. Also, speaking of rolls, I do like that items have rolls, which makes it more interesting to grind for the same items in order to get max roll and stuff.

Moreover, Conviction as a mechanic seems busted. I assume you guys took inspiration from Last Epoch because that was the last game I had played where such mechanic was used. I just feel way too strong and tanky with it. But maybe it is the intention.

Lastly, I've not experienced any technical issues with the game apart from Exclusive fullscreen not working properly, as every time I would come back from the dungeon, if the game was set to exclusive fullscreen and at 144hz the game would just reset itself to 50hz for some reason. Fullscreen windowed works fine. Speaking of performance, is this game capped at 80fps because it wouldn't move past or below that mark at all? A bit odd.

I think this about covers most of the stuff I wanted to give feedback about. There's probably others things I could think of but I think I mentioned the most important ones already.

the hz bug has been known for a while