Origins is far more fun.

[RunicRhythm]

I don't know if it's just because this is a demo, but the D6, retaining dice between turns, and general flow of gameplay feels far more fun.

Not to mention HOW MUCH MORE FUN it is to use your dice to get event rewards. It doesn't feel unfair and gives you great drops. It's not even entirely RNG since you can decide which dice to use based on what you have

There are some things I like in this version too, but I'm finding myself far more able to get into the gameplay flow of Origins compared to this. I also think the original board was probably a bit more fun to work with.

A more specific reason I prefer the D6 besides fun is also just because it allows more balanced roll curves. I also noticed that some of the dice rewards I got actually had the same as the basic dice but upgraded in that version? I'm not sure if that was the case here but it seemed like all the dice offered were the same as my basic ones which seems incredibly lame in comparison.

Overall I just don't know why so many things that actually seemed to be working together pretty well in the original got changed.

[Missingknow]

I agree, something closer to origin's reward system and turn layout would be a lot more fun. I do like the branching paths with having to spend different amounts of movement to pick which rewards you want but the battles, what I truly loved about origins, feel so much slower with reduced maximum die values and discarding your hand between turn which limits setting up certain combos. I feel that something combining d6's and d4's would be cool to see especially because we see it already in the movement with a coin (d2), a d4 and d6.

[your.florrind]

I must be the least lucky person, I haven't even beat the first triple battle because I keep rolling hands full of zeroes, and I genuinely thought they'd taken healing dice out of the game/replaced them with campfires because I just wasn't getting any :') I'll be the first to admit i'm not Good at roguelikes, but I keep coming back to Origins, and as sad as it makes me I don't know if I'll buy the game on release if I can't even beat this demo.

[RunicRhythm]

Let me make a more specific list of the things I think worked about Origins and this Demo.

Origins:
-The D6 are more fun to work with. For two reasons. As I said before, the sides give more of a roll curve to work with things like luck and chance. An upgraded starting dice with a d6 can have multiple extra 2s and 3s to make it far more likely to get a 2 over something like a 1. It feels more like a substantial upgrade than something like only 1 extra point on one of the sides. Maybe this isn't that different in practice, but it feels far worse. On top of this, I don't like that the dice silver and gold upgrades feels so insubstantial. With a D6, in origins you started not able to get anything over a 2 at a base dice, but by the time you get to a gold dice you can get a 6. It's a big, meaningful upgrade over simply being able to add a few more points. Also, the higher point ceiling feels better. Frankly, if you're going to let us redistribute points as we want, we should be able to add as many points to a single side as we want, not limited to 4. If we want to test our luck, we should be allowed to. I know now that the second character might simply get a D6 as their dice and D4 are specific to the first character, but that doesn't change what I've said here.
-Being able to hold your dice between turns gives you far more opportunities to work strategically instead of having to hope you get the right dice and gives this game a unique flavor compared to other rougelikes. There's even an existing downside that if you don't use your existing dice they'll just sit in your hand taking up space.
-Events. The new events have clearly generally been toned down in power but also made guaranteed. The dice was a cool flavor specific to this game that other games like this dont have and made it feel worth it to carry around and upgrade various types of dice for different events. This game doesn't just have to be slay the spire.

Demo:
-I think a lot of the new dice are fun. Thorns and Poison and Barrier are cool, I love side, non damaging abiltiies and the ability to stack some of them so high is neat. More "Power" dice like how slay the spire has a lot of power buff and debuff abilities would be sick.
-The ability to remove modifiers from dice is cool, because you can take things like glass off things like terrain and mirror and sticky boost dice.
-The shop is very fun. You can get a lot of different upgrades off since the prices are so low. I think the souls economy could use a bit of work. Certain events make it far too easy to get a bunch, and otherwise you're generally pretty poor compared to the upgrades you could meaningfully manage in Origins.

Some Downsides to the demo...
-The movement system is frustrating. It's not fun to miss events because of RNG. I know you can reroll the dice, but it doesn't always work, and it's frankly not worth it usually spending money to MAYBE get the number you needed when its far more valuable being used on upgrades.
-Add more chances to get rid of dice. If you're going to give us so many cruddy starting dice and then offer slightly better ones off the bat, then it should be easier to thin. Either that or make sure the offers are so good that I'm not trying to simply replace my starting dice but instead supplimenting my deck

And a Fix I think could go a long way.
-Let the player increase the size of their dice by adding more sides. I honestly thought this was what the +1 button was for, and was disappointed when it just added 1 to all the stats instead. This could even raise the caps for the numbers, if you really want to lock it to the dice side amount. Right now it's just not really that fun or exciting to increase all your dice sides to 4, especially when there's a bunch of relics that benefit from you being at lower numbers. Tadpole jar is a super offender of this. Technically there's the one that lets you be at all 3's, which encourages upgrading dice, but tadpole jar is just far easier to get off and honestly easier to abuse. I think these things would be fine if you could instead get dice up to base side numbers of 8 or up.

[2jumpsRace4players]

i did not enjoy it as much as i enjoyed origins for sure, starting with like 4 attack sides and 1 block side already means im losing all my hp, but then getting the slap on the face with all of them rolling ZERO is not really fun...

[Hingle McCringleberry]

Same. This was way less enjoyable than Origins. Went from wishlist to way off the list. I played four runs and found them all to be way too random and my character felt ineffectual and at the mercy of RNG which when you're dealing with D4s with lots of 0 sides, there's no way even to try and strategize. Might as well be a slot machine with graphics.

[Nathan]

I think something that helps with that feeling is that origins has no downtime between events and fights.

In Origins, you go from one fight/event to the next directly. Moreover, events are really engaging since you have to put some thought into it (I may want an option but I might not have the dice colours for it). So there is a lot helping the game feel fast and dynamic.

For the new demo, when you go to the movement map, there is downtime where you have to just select each dice you want to use to reach the next goal. Yes, there is some thinking into it, but If you go from fight -> map -> event, now your downtime between fights is very significant.

Nevertheless, it was already mentioned by the dev that the movement mechanic will change, so we just need to wait for the next big update.

[Hunter]

I also miss origins, something just doesn't feel as rewarding with the new set up. I hate seeing 0's and not as much a fan of the RNG travel.

[dontnormally]

I really hope they take this feedback to heart and adjust course to bring back the fun of origins