Feedback after finishing the true final boss.

[mabel]

Wildfrost may be my favorite game of 2023 for a variety of reasons, so while the devs are committed to collecting feedback for post-release adjustments, I've been putting a lot of effort into compiling my thoughts on the game, including both positive and negative feedback that I've seen in discussions/reviews, in hopes that it could be helpful to them. I recognize that this is a lot of work and new tasks immediately following an incredible release and really don't want for that effort to go unappreciated.

I'm organizing this post into two major categories: (1) QoL/Player-Facing Systems and (2) Gameplay/Balance, because these are the things that I think warrant the most consideration.

Before getting to them, I do want to make a mention of general presentation and game feel, because I don't want it to be missed in the heaps of gameplay-related feedback: Wildfrost has SO MUCH aesthetic appeal--I cannot stress enough how much...pure joy bursts from every screen in this game, and I really hope Gaziter, Paul Zimmermann, and everyone who worked on the game's animations and presentation are able to recognize how adored their efforts are. You deserve to be SO proud of yourselves for the way this game looks. The style and game feel are masterful, and so full of loving touches. Before the game came out, I thought, "God, this makes me miss Adventure Time," but I'd really like for every artist that worked on the game to know that Wildfrost easily surpasses its inspirations, and has a unique and delightful style entirely of its own.

(1) Quality of Life / Player-Facing Systems
With that said: the visual style is all more than there, but considering Wildfrost's stated intention being a hardcore strategy game, its visual functionality leaves a lot to be desired.

- Clarity & Visual Indicators
The most common piece of feedback is, for a good reason, that the game could benefit enormously from better visual indication of turn-end consequences; attacks being made, damage totals being received, etc. Obviously, it would be a great learning tool cementing the clarity of some mechanics, especially Aimless, which trips up a lot of new players missing the last part of the tooltip (and is frankly easy to forget about amidst many other necessary calculations per turn. I'm still all over the place keeping it in mind during the cats floor in Act 2.)

A comprehensive prediction system accounting for different targeting systems and statuses might be difficult to implement at this point in development, but even something as simple as seeing arrows indicating incoming and outgoing attacks on a card would make the game much smoother to play. In repeat runs, I spend a lot of time staring at harder screens calculating, and when every single fight is like this, it gets pretty draining, and it's a lot of total time spent per run trying to hold little details in my head. Simple visual indicators would massively reduce that mental load and be a great tool for exploring options quickly, which seems like a fair ask for a game that can and will end your run for missing small details.

This issue has often come up for me outside of combat, as well, specifically indicating the consequences of equipping charms. I excitedly placed a Frostbite Charm on Yeti Mask just to see that it uselessly applies the Frost to the unit being sacrificed instead of to the row being Snowed. It would be really nice to see what an item is going to look like after being equipped with a charm while hovering it, considering the consequence is huge and irreversible. (There is probably also something to be said here about the existence of trap interactions like this. I've started avoiding a lot of cuter cards and going with the same safe ones with promising charm interactions and been having more success because of it, which feels really dissonant with what's exciting about charm-based upgrades in the first place.)

- Agency
Agency feels like a really mixed bag in Wildfrost, impressively high in some areas and confusingly low in others. The general control of combat and freedom to adjust your full board's positioning, the usefulness of Recalling to absorb and clear statuses, the mobility of Crowns, customization options offered by charms, are all huge pluses here.

That's what makes it feel especially off in places where the game denies it from you. You can save your companions from destroying themselves on Teeth and Smackback by recalling them if need-be, but not your leader--I've often had silly interactions of Snowing my own leader repeatedly in the first part of the final boss to avoid this, where I think just having an option to reset their countdown by dragging them to Recall would feel a lot more sensible (and lessen the game's somewhat extreme demand for Snow.) It's not like there's no counter-play to these mechanics otherwise, but considering how frequently occurring and deadly both keywords can be, something feels off about the biggest threat on the board often being the leader's inevitable trigger.

There's also occasionally moments where you want to keep all the cards you have in hand for next turn, but you can't pass a move and have to either play something or redraw. This and the previous idea are little things, but because the game's difficulty is very tight and demanding, there are times where the absence of these things can make it feel like the strictness of the game's rules are just as adversarial to you as the thing that's actually trying to kill you.

Outside of combat, I have mixed feelings about the game's meta-progression. I don't mind doing quests for unlocks, but the combination of having to do them one-by-one per building, and how out-of-your-way some of them require you to go while managing that with surviving the game's at-times very harsh difficulty demands, I'm finding myself tempted to just go throw a bunch of runs to unlock stuff and see more of the game's art and play with new stuff. It doesn't feel too great to come back from a successful run to be like, oh, I made one pip of progress because I didn't go out of my way to use Shrooms or to add Scraps to things. I think it'd be kinda nice, and generally satisfying if more quests were available at a time, and the extent of their conditions were a little more naturalistic, as I'd rather unlocks occur frequently over regular play than be time-consuming gates to pursue individually.

I wonder if the intent of the highly specific quest conditions and the inflexible leader selection is to encourage players to try a different thing out every run; it sort of feels that way. I don't think it works in the game's favor. There's already a lot of feedback about the uneven generation of leaders--I think it's a fairly cute system, but as-is it ends up depriving the player of choices more than it contributes any sense of surprise or replayability. Something as simple as a reroll, letting you choose a faction then select one of three leaders from it, and/or just better balancing the randomized leader outputs would more or less fully remediate this.

To be clear, I think the random leader generation is cool and quite flavorful, creating a pretty strong sense of run-to-run personalization up there with being able to rename every card in my deck. But sometimes you do just get thoroughly unexciting options right off the bat, or the game just hands you something you don't want for a faction you're enjoying, which is more often than not detrimental to the one-more-run experience the game is otherwise probably close to having for a lot of people.

(2) Gameplay / Balance
Most of the thought I've put into feedback has been on these topics. Responses are very polarized here, with positive reviews gushing about how well designed and balanced the game is, and negative reviews convinced that a lot feels off about it. Both sides have points worth listening to.

I'm of the opinion that the game is very well designed and balanced VERY tightly--maybe too tightly for its own good. Every run gives me a lopsided feeling that maybe 80% of my success is due to very precise gameplay decisions, and 20% is due to any features unique to the run (companions, charms, item drafts, node choices, etc.) As I have played more of the game, the gap between these things has widened rather than evened. So, why is that?

There's one common point across negative reviews that I think isn't completely accurate, but is indicative of a real underlying issue--a lot of people are saying that by the time enemy encounters scale up to be cruelly difficult, the player hasn't been presented many choices to appropriately prepare. I think that the underlying problem is this: most encounters in Act 1 and Act 2 actually feel balanced around that, in a way that I think is very impressive and also maybe not ultimately good for the game.

I don't get the sense that my run has taken on a unique identity until far into Act 2, if it does at all, and a lot of new players express struggling to get that far. The difficulty spike of Act 2 is very real, and I have this very strong sense each time that what I'm being asked for every run is pinpoint-precise decision making. That is to say, I have to make the absolute most of the precious few things I've drafted so far (which at this point is like, ~3 companions and 2-3 items, a charm or two alongside that on a good day) and otherwise, I never really feel divorced from my starter deck.

Some may disagree with me here, but I think that I'm speaking to something fairly universal when I say that you're often hitting act 2-3 still relying on Tar Blades, still using the same starting countdown tool, still using the same Snow tools, and leaning as much as you can on the extra few things you've picked up. The mid-game bosses of Wildfrost feel to me like they aren't asking for a varied approach as much as they are asking me for near-perfect play, and while that's something I enjoy and find exciting, I can see why many players find it frustrating and unfun.

This is a complex issue, and one that I'm still thinking about a lot as I continue to play. I think that there is definitely a nuanced combination of factors in Wildfrost that give the game a weaker sense of deck-identity than it could have, placing significantly more focus into technical mastery of navigating combat with starter-deck tools and whatever-you-have (and the lack of visual indicators in combat as mentioned before may be what fully alienates some players.) Maybe this is intentional--the extremely precise play the game requires certainly implies that it is. But I think I could agree, even if I'm being kind of vague here for lack of a solid suggestion, that especially early into runs, the game would feel more exciting if a bit more power came from the number of opportunities to draft and address every different part of your setup, and allowed you to take on a stronger sense of deck identity by the time bosses start demanding extreme precision or specific approaches from the player.

To wrap up on balance, I think the game, for what it mainly seems to be trying to be: a hardcore strategy game demanding of precise calculations and thinking ahead, is very well designed and balanced. But in terms of what else it is trying to be: a deckbuilder with exciting run variation, that invites you to try again and adequately equip you with tools to differentiate your approach, I can fully agree that there's much room for improvement here.

- Snow
The final point I'd like to make is something specific to my experience after completing the game and preparing to dive in for more. I've actually kind of started to feel that the game's demanding difficulty has one positive of creating a very rewarding strategic game when you first read and try to solve the very terrifying texts some bosses have, but there's a negative there, too, that is tangential to the previous point.

I kind of feel like after a certain point, every encounter asks you for the same solution: Snow. I'm not even sure I could say that I'm exaggerating when I say that Snow feels like it's the answer to everything in the game.

An enemy with high ATK but a long countdown like Bigfoot and Winter Worm? Snow its already high countdown to buy time and deal with it when convenient.
An enemy with low ATK/threatening attack trigger but a short countdown like Makoko? Snow it, it won't start getting that quick value for way longer than it usually takes.
Smackback or any other reactive text? Snow literally turns them off.
Your own leader about to destroy herself on Teeth? Not like you can recall or delay her attack. Except with Snow.
A boss that's resistant to Snow, but if it acts you die, so you need to buy a turn for your team? Yeah, it's still Snow.

There are many encounters that go from terrifying to completely trivial (Warthogs) when you have copious access to Snow, especially in AoE forms. I've kind of at this point ceased to draft around cute synergies instead looking for the most debilitating rotation of Snow and Frost the game will give me every run (usually any combination of Frost Bell + on-hit Snow charms + Snoffel + Noomin charms/biscuits) and the lategame goes from potentially migraine-inducing to being less challenging than surviving to get there because most fights are made up of large amounts of tanky enemies where buying as much time as possible to set up and disabling troublesome reactions is the solution, every time.

I like Snow, it's a fun and well-designed mechanic and it makes sense that it's as common as it is, but after so many runs of doing this, I kind of feel like it'd be nice if certain other avenues of counterplay like Ink weren't faction-specific, because as-is, I feel like a lot of my runs end up being play as precisely as I can, and draft around any source of AoE Snow/Frost/action economy via Noomins that I can, and those things are so universally effective at solving problems that a lot of combat difficulty goes out the window, not because of something unique to my run or faction, but because the whole enemy board dies before anything acts or reacts.

It's a bit much in comparison to many other mechanics in the game that are more (if sometimes too) conditional. I'd like to see a more even distribution in terms of what other mechanics are supposed to be good against, because it's very hard to beat the tempo-efficiency of delaying enemy turns, sometimes with other rewards attached to doing so, like with Yuki and the snow-punching clunker.

That's all I have to say, even though I think there is room for conversation about the design/balance of other archetypes (especially for support-reliant cards/companions like Vesta that are just unclickable if you don't already have something for them, rather than being exciting entryways to the mechanic when offered) but frankly, I am afraid to scroll up to see how long this post is already.

My hopes here are to be able to offer valuable feedback that takes all kinds of players into consideration, as the game's polarizing difficulty is in some places creating a likewise polarized response that isn't always constructive. But you understand better than I do that game design is very complex and nuanced, and I didn't want to oversimplify any of these points because I think they may matter a lot to many players, both who enjoy the game as it currently is, and who want to but find themselves struggling, alike.

Above all else, thank you for this game, it is an absolute treasure to the genre, and in my eyes, a close-to-perfect entry in it. The amount of love you've put into it is visible in every inch of it, and the purpose of this feedback is to not spare any effort in expressing that it is recognized and appreciated. I hope that you're proud of this game, because you really deserve to be, and I'm very confident that it's not far away at all from maintaining all of its appeal to every kind of player drawn to its innumerable positives.

[Nogan]

Just commenting because I think this is a great post about game design.

[enri]

I could feel the love from this post.
I would have to say too. thank you for developing Wildfrost. I enjoy this game.

Originally posted by mabel:

I don't get the sense that my run has taken on a unique identity until far into Act 2, if it does at all, and a lot of new players express struggling to get that far. The difficulty spike of Act 2 is very real, and I have this very strong sense each time that what I'm being asked for every run is pinpoint-precise decision making. That is to say, I have to make the absolute most of the precious few things I've drafted so far (which at this point is like, ~3 companions and 2-3 items, a charm or two alongside that on a good day) and otherwise, I never really feel divorced from my starter deck.

Please regard what I write from now on as a foolish talk.

Remove 1 or 2 cards from current starter deck for make as an incomplete deck.
1) After choosing a tribe, choose a hero from among the three.
2) Pick 1 or 2 out of some cards related to a hero's ability. Only weaker heroes can pick stronger cards unconditionally. Strong heroes are forced to pick weak cards.
3) Players may go back to 1) and compare other hero picks if they don't like a card.
With such a start, I think this problem can be avoided.

I think it's a more enjoyable experience to pick weaker heroes and give them the advantage of getting stronger cards than balancing to get rid of weaker heroes.
But I think this idea is definitely a hassle for development.

(*) I used google translation, so it may be a strange sentence.

[Jeshrack]

Well thought out and well articulated!

Your thoughts on snow are similar to mine. I've accepted that snow is the only viable way to win this game, but since every faction gets access to snow cards, it's not too much of a dampener on my playstyle.

I can still build a shoom or an overburn deck and have snow alongside it.

I would love to see alternative means become more viable though. Variability is the lifeblood of deckbuilders and roguelites alike.


I only just got to the true boss on my last run, and it obliterated me instantly. I didn't realized "unmovable" applied to my cards as well as enemy cards.

Honestly, being able to move my units around from turn to turn at will is a major part of the strategy of this game, so seeing that turned off was a disappointment.

I'll eventually win that fight, but at first glance it looks like it might be a fun-killer.

I didn't much for the Heart fight in Slay the Spire either. The end-bosses of these games tend to be so finely tuned that only one solution exists unless your wildly overpowered when you get there.

Gripes aside, I'm very excited for how this game might develop in the future.

As you mentioned, the aesthetics are truly exceptional! Despite my frustration with some of the more RNG focused elements (random charms on monsters being the big perpetrator here), I constantly find myself going back and playing again due to the sheer joy of how the game feels to play.

[mabel]

I like Snow a lot, yeah, it's decision intensive and a healthy play pattern. It feels to me like it might have been intended as mainly a base-faction thing originally, then ended up being a balanceable enough tool to make universally common as an out to targeted enemy countdowns and reactions. It just also happens to end up feeling very pushed compared to other problem solving tools--not that Ink and Frost are bad by any means, I use them extensively, but it is kinda funny that no matter what faction I play, I'm prone to snap picking Snoffel and Snowcakes when I see them, because they really are good in every fight.

And yeah, the true final boss's gimmick is really terrifying and oppressive, though I honestly like the fight. I do think it's messed up that the Jailer's effect applies during crown deployment, but at least for a fight trying to be the hardest in the game, it does demand you to be able to deal with many things at once--enough sustained damage for Jailer without the lane being picked apart by the snow-resistant Lancer, with enough health/stalling resources left to hold off the heat coming from the other side. It does a good job of being a tricky fight even when you are playing with an insanely developed endgame comp, which is how it should feel. But maybe it'd be nice if the Jailer could be disabled temporarily in some way other than something faction-specific like Ink, for the reasons you stated: it sucks to play against.

I did throw a bunch of runs to finish unlocking items since writing this up and...Krono leaves me kind of speechless. It feels like a congratulatory reward but it's also one that kind of feels like it gives up on item balance, though it's fun to use for how well it enables every single thing in the game. I am very excited for future updates, but I kind of find myself thinking now that I hope this item is quarantined to an easier difficulty mode or something because it does kind of single-handedly derail the challenge of the game whenever offered.

[AncientSpark]

With regards to Snow being the answer to everything, I don't really see it as a problem in that respect exactly. The main thing to consider is that, without a mana system, this game's action economy IS the mana system and Snow is essentially a manipulation of said mana system-like. In other words, it's creating a vital resource; it's not really an archetypical status effect in the same was that, say, Shroom or Overburn is.

We don't really complain that almost every card game roguelike requires card draw in their decks to be functional, for example. We just know that the game would be unplayable without card draw being a possibility in every archetype. We also don't complain that decks are unviable if they don't have enough mana to operate. Snow is similar.

Where Snow has an issue is that Snow doesn't have "interesting variants". Almost every snow card is just "apply snow", with very few build-arounds or conditions to get more or less snow. For example, there's no interplay between Snow and other status effects and very few "apply more Snow in X condition". When your sole Snow buildarounds or Snow w/drawback effects are simply "Sacrifice to apply Snow" and "Snow equal to damage" with no other synergy, then yes, this will cause the omnipresent Snow to feel samey.

Consider, for example, a card like "Snow 99 all enemies. Remove snow and trigger all enemies when you play 3 cards or redraw". Setting whether this is balanced aside, this is obviously a powerful effect, but I don't know if you could viably play it in every deck because you would be taking an entire enemy army burst all at once without row swapping when the Snow is removed. That's the kind of effects I'm talking about in making Snow feel less samey.

(Unfortunately, this is counterbalanced by the fact that the game has such limited card acquisition that there just can't be that many nichey, but interesting effects or else the card pool becomes too diluted to work).

[Cheeseyx]

I think a big factor in the balance feel is that there are a wide variety of good builds possible if you get lucky with charms, but if you play towards a particular deck that would actually be good, it usually doesn't pan out and you're left with a few half-synergies. It *feels bad* to know your build would be really good if you could just get one of the very powerful charms, only to be handed like. Bread + Bombskull + Bling and not be able to appreciably boost your power level. And it also *feels bad* when the only consistent build to go for is just snow, rather than any of the other more interesting synergies the game has to offer.

This imbalance is emphasized by the meta-progression system, pushing you to try Shrooms or Overburn or Demonize or etc. and then very often not giving you enough offerings in that theme to make a halfway-decent build.

I think the perception of balance might change significantly if the game offered you a somewhat strong leader that fit one of your meta-progression quests every so often (or something else like this) to help enable you to fill those quests without a doomed run.

[mabel]

Originally posted by AncientSpark:

With regards to Snow being the answer to everything, I don't really see it as a problem in that respect exactly. The main thing to consider is that, without a mana system, this game's action economy IS the mana system and Snow is essentially a manipulation of said mana system-like. In other words, it's creating a vital resource; it's not really an archetypical status effect in the same was that, say, Shroom or Overburn is.

This is a good point; possibly, it's one of those things that makes the game healthier by being as pushed as it is, because it is highly accessible to every run (as early on as bringing Snoof) and offers inherent counterplay to most situations in the game. I think the idea I'm trying to get at is just that it would be cool for other counterplay mechanics to be more accessible, too, to alleviate the repetitiveness of using it on everything. I've seen suggestions of Frost lowering the damage received by Teeth or being able to turn it off with Ink, and other mechanics offering alternative approaches like that to the game's tougher problems would be really appreciable.

Originally posted by Cheeseyx:

I think the perception of balance might change significantly if the game offered you a somewhat strong leader that fit one of your meta-progression quests every so often (or something else like this) to help enable you to fill those quests without a doomed run.

I think so too. I do honestly really like the way that a lot of archetypes can come online with just 2 pieces because your deck becomes so accessible with 1-count redraws and crowns, though I think some archetypes are much better at having individually useful pieces than others, which more leader options to start with would alleviate pretty enormously.

I get that it's a drafting roguelite game where making do with what you're offered and going overboard on certain nodes to chase synergies is a thing, and the more I play the more I am already coming to appreciate how quickly some little synergies come together early on. But still, the accessibility of some chase mechanics, like Sacrifice which demands you to find a payoff (Groff much moreso than Devicro) to justify spending 2 tempos on summoning something and killing it, and ideally an enabler to soften the tempo loss (Chikana/Dregg,) or Vesta/Candle being awesome Overburn payoffs but having no independent usefulness--this could all feel better.

Hmm...I guess it's really just a Shadeling issue. When I think about the other two faction's archetypes like Shell, Snow, Shroom, Junk, Bom, they're all really easily turned online by one card and many different interactions.