Thoughts after Finishing

[Deknud]

Finished the Early Access of the game today. First off I'd like to say that this game has changed a lot from Ender Lilies (EL) gameplay wise, with a lot of QoL changes and general improvements. Very much looking forward to the finished game as I've also played tons of EL!

Couple thoughts I had while playing:

- Enemy density was way better than in EL. There's no super populated areas that are difficult for the wrong reasons (enemy spam) and damage taken in general feels fairer.

- Controls are way smoother and especially the dash makes it feel like I can move more freely. Animations are quicker and feel very nice overall. One minor issue I have is that holding the dash button doesn't make Lilac break into a dash sometimes, such as when turning around. This feels a bit clunky and having slower move speed after turning around from a dash, especially in combat, felt odd.

- While crafting equipment I was very confused what the stat icons meant and I had to check in the main stat menu. I thought it'd be cool if I could read a description of the stat and see a bit of text that tells me which icon is what stat while crafting.

- Areas feel more linear than in EL and I rarely got lost. This might be a byproduct of having a really good minimap, as Hamlet in EL is also very linear. In EL I got lost in areas like Witche's Thicket and catacombs and I hope to have that feeling again.

- Bosses in general felt good. They didn't feel as tanky as they were in EL and difficulty scaling felt more natural than the spikes EL had after beating a boss. Though I have a lot of experience with EL so bosses might naturally feel better to me than most.

- Similar to EL, I don't feel like level ups actually do anything. While I see the level up prompt on the screen, Lilac doesn't really feel much stronger. Being unable to actively see what stats increase requires me to manually check my stats in the menu between levels to understand what got stronger.

Very much excited to see what else this game is gonna have in store and very happy with what it already is

[DW23]

On your last point, I think a great way to create a feeling of level up progression might be to allow us to customise what exactly gets ‘leveled up’ in a way. Every level up gives an amount of points you can spend on something like dash length/speed, base dps, damage negation etc

[KoBeWi]

idk I certainly noticed when my drill went from 8 to 9 damage per tick after level up. I think levels increase only attack, but I didn't check exactly. While impact from a single level is low, it does feel being stronger after leveling a bit.

Originally posted by Deknud:

- Areas feel more linear than in EL and I rarely got lost. This might be a byproduct of having a really good minimap, as Hamlet in EL is also very linear. In EL I got lost in areas like Witche's Thicket and catacombs and I hope to have that feeling again.

Protip: it's easier to get lost if you turn off your minimap. I like to do that when entering a new location, it makes you more focused on the surroundings rather than the top-right corner of your screen.