Right, let's have an honest conversation about the state the game was released.

[sher1ock2018]

I've played this game for close to 30 hours now and it's clear a lot of work went into it.

However, there's a lot of things that are really hurting the game being released in the state that it currently is. Did the project just run out of money so you had to release it and hope to use those funds to complete it down the line?

If you're wondering what I mean let's start with some of the things that stick out:

- The thing that got me making this post is the deck selection screen. Literally the second thing anyone see in the game. No indicator that the 2nd deck is released once you hit level 14 which after close to being played to 30 hours I have yet to achieve. The 3rd Deck isn't even in the game yet and the DEVs forgot to add a "Coming Soon" banner on it so people are searching aimlessly for it.
- The EXP grind. Even with the latest patch it is still a slow grind with the multiplier. I know you want good playtime but by making the EXP requirement this big you creating a hidden boss with nothing to it's name other than a huge HP Sponge that gate keeps people from the endgame content and a variety of builds. Did you sit down and play the game and thought (pre-exp patch) that 30+ hours was an acceptable amount of time to unlock the second deck?
- Gaia's Alter, Access to the Wiki, Fusion Receipe's, Creature Evolution etc. I understand the want for mystery and I love to find out neat fusions but Jesus Christ why do I have to exit my run to get to the main menu to open up the Wiki to see what my receipe's could/would result in? Also, the fusion page is 353 pages with no search bar and you have to manually click the button to get to the next page because the arrow keys aren't mapped. Lack of hand holding to promote exploration is fine but making me not want to search for information is new.

There's plenty more but I think you get the point. I still recommend this game because of the price, animations and unique gameplay but man did you guys really screw up with the launch of something that should have been an instant hit at triple it's current price.

I just want to know what was the reasoning behind this because when I read you didn't even have the 3rd character programmed in I just had to take a step back and think this is decision had to be intentional to make players think the game had more to it than it actually does. Why not, as many people have said, release it as an early access game?

[m3talface7]

The main thing that sticks in my craw is the unfinished art.

[Zenchi]

There is indeed a lot of work the game currently still needs. Mainly more variety, faster unlocking of said variety and some balance changes wouldn't be bad either or harder difficulty options. It's a too easy to make a ~7 card deck that rotates one or two of those myriad of cards that get better the more times you play or draw it. And if you use say, Junker and the armor cards you basically can't even die while spamming your "gain 8 armor, draw 1 card" cards that you slap a nice promotion like +6 poison or +6 fire damage on and go to town with just that alone. I'm not necesarily saying they need to lower the amount of card removal but it's a bit too easy to thin your deck considering most events even pay YOU to remove cards from your deck.

Fantastic art style and visuals but everything else is lacking, like the replayability for a roguelike. Not a bad game for the price at all though, I agree. But needs a lot of updates and better QoL in things like the fusion menu among other things. Mostly things the devs have already stated they are working on so I won't bother listing everything here. I just feel like this should have been in early access or something until the devs actually finish adding everything they intended to do. But like you said maybe they had to push the game out for some reason. They are working fast on the updates so props to them for that and their hard work at least.

Currently I'm slightly disappointed at my purchase. But considering the very cheap price and that I can pick the game back up in a few months and enjoy all the updates, I can't complain too much. After all, I am mostly just disappointed due the lack of variety and if that's coming in updates that's great. I would've just wanted to enjoy all these things right now and not have to wait for them. Especially since just clearing the game until the credits it could have used more variety already in it's current state.

[mohawkidol]

Hello! I'm sorry you have experiencing stuff like that. We're doing the best we can, but our team is real small, we have 2 programmers trying to cover a lot of stuff.

We've been getting a lot of reports regarding the deck unlocks, so we'll be releasing a new patch soon where:
- decks will be unlocked after you defeat the first and the third boss in the game. So you don't need to grind up to max level for it, jsut progress through the game.
- The third deck will be available
- We will be addressing the Zillionspedia so it won't have a thousand pages and goes straight to the point for the fusions you can make, and Gaia's Altar Recipe
- We will also show the name of the resulting card in Gaia's Altar, so you can guarantee you'll get a card you really want
- We are also addressing some description issues with cards that draw from the discard pile and exile.

I'm sorry it's taking too long for all to come together. We are also working on new content to be coming soon. We're still having some unnexpect bugs, it takes time to investigate and understand them, so that's the cause for most of our hickups.
Thanks for your patience and feedback, I'm keeping an eye on everything, so I can personaly address it!

[Lilbabycat]

"minimum viable product"

[sher1ock2018]

Originally posted by mohawkidol:

Hello! I'm sorry you have experiencing stuff like that. We're doing the best we can, but our team is real small, we have 2 programmers trying to cover a lot of stuff.

We've been getting a lot of reports regarding the deck unlocks, so we'll be releasing a new patch soon where:
- decks will be unlocked after you defeat the first and the third boss in the game. So you don't need to grind up to max level for it, jsut progress through the game.
- The third deck will be available
- We will be addressing the Zillionspedia so it won't have a thousand pages and goes straight to the point for the fusions you can make, and Gaia's Altar Recipe
- We will also show the name of the resulting card in Gaia's Altar, so you can guarantee you'll get a card you really want
- We are also addressing some description issues with cards that draw from the discard pile and exile.

I'm sorry it's taking too long for all to come together. We are also working on new content to be coming soon. We're still having some unnexpect bugs, it takes time to investigate and understand them, so that's the cause for most of our hickups.
Thanks for your patience and feedback, I'm keeping an eye on everything, so I can personaly address it!

It's good to know that it's being actively worked on but it's just a bit weird that this is the production version of the game. I would have thought there would be more rigorous testing prior to release.

[Paulie Don't Surf]

We used all our available time and resources of QA ahead of launch, and probably achieved around 500-ish hours of QA in total from our Goldmaster version a few months ago, to the 25 or so internal patch builds that we had in that space of time. For an indie that's about as rigorous as we can hope to achieve.

Publishing a game is like tripping a release valve. In the first two hours if you have 6000 players, and they only play 2 hours a piece, that's 12000 hours of gameplay and feedback, across an extremely wide span of hardware and software configurations, not to mention the various interaction styles players have with software , it always means you're going to run into issues. All developers have to be primed for this moment and not feel defeated or that their years of work have been a failure. Feedback is coming no matter what.

It's something we're all ready for it these days, in all software development really, the only thing you hope for is a patient audience, and that your team has the fortitude to stay focused on reports as they come in. We did as best a job as we could in this scenario and thankfully had a very positive and supportive player base. We're looking forward to some cool things we can bring to ZZ in the future now we're in a stable period.

PW

[SrCalavera94]

Originally posted by mohawkidol:

Hello! I'm sorry you have experiencing stuff like that. We're doing the best we can, but our team is real small, we have 2 programmers trying to cover a lot of stuff.

We've been getting a lot of reports regarding the deck unlocks, so we'll be releasing a new patch soon where:
- decks will be unlocked after you defeat the first and the third boss in the game. So you don't need to grind up to max level for it, jsut progress through the game.
- The third deck will be available
- We will be addressing the Zillionspedia so it won't have a thousand pages and goes straight to the point for the fusions you can make, and Gaia's Altar Recipe
- We will also show the name of the resulting card in Gaia's Altar, so you can guarantee you'll get a card you really want
- We are also addressing some description issues with cards that draw from the discard pile and exile.

I'm sorry it's taking too long for all to come together. We are also working on new content to be coming soon. We're still having some unnexpect bugs, it takes time to investigate and understand them, so that's the cause for most of our hickups.
Thanks for your patience and feedback, I'm keeping an eye on everything, so I can personaly address it!

W changes. The zillionsPedia having 350 somthing pages where most entries where redundant and no way to filter or skip pages was a nice troll tho. i hope you dident code each entrty manually. Looking foward to the next patch. Also is part2 a thing or is that more like sequel baiting?

[mohawkidol]

Part 2 is coming, I assure you! with no additional cost.