Feedback + one strong suggestion

[chaoscow]

Hi,

I bought this game last week and have loved it. You've done an amazing job, I could spend a very long time going over everything that's done correctly. I love your take on metaprogression in story mode where you unlock both items and information on items, I love how much grind there is in quickplay and how you many easy radiant medals there are to acquire, and I love the way that endless nightmare gets clowny while endless terror is more rigidly skill-testing. This is just the surface of what's been done correctly - the three unlockable characters all feel great to play for different reasons, doing charge attacks while holding combos is a light mechanical exercise that still has the potential to trip you up after dozens of hours (which is a GREAT thing), the bosses rarely put you in undodgable positions but are still pretty difficult, the bosses are all distinctive and fun (Sentinel 0x gives me a bit of a headache because of the screen flip but it's not a big deal), the music is wonderful (my favorite track is the Void soundtrack and the Veyeral soundtrack), the boss visual design and attack design is excellent, the powers are fun and powerful but don't generally break the game outside of endless nightmare, the 400+ achievements make the game super fun for hours and hours. This is one of the most fun roguelikes I've ever played in a genre I enjoy and you've done an amazing job synthesizing everything and made some very smart decisions at every turn for the past few years.

My mild feedback for my new player experience is:

a.) I didn't figure out what radiating cards meant until a few runs in. Maybe I missed some text. I didn't mind figuring it out myself and if that's intended that works.

b.) You can't acquire 2* and 3* quick gifts without having 2/3 quick gift slots open, which I didn't figure out for a long time so I started leaving 3 quick slots open at all times. Your current design is from one perspective the kindest one in the sense that players can't be offered quick gifts that they won't be able to hold, but it might be better to offer quick gifts the player can't fit with a red diagonal line through it so that they'll know to leave those slots open.
Both of these are very mild and you could ignore both suggestions and I still think the game is 100% excellent.

My only stronger suggestion is I would strongly, strongly encourage you to put a dress on the main character. This game could and should really blow up but most of the people I've tried showing the game to just can't bring themselves to play with the nudity in the game. You've taken great pains to make a game that's approachable for players of all skill levels and it would be a huge loss for so many players to miss out due to the art when I think the story would translate just as well if they were wearing something. If you disagree that is fine and my enjoyment of the game will be unaffected, it's just something to consider especially for the Switch version.

Either way, great work - I can see how much work, thought, and consideration of feedback went into the design choices and how much effort went into the implementation, the whole package is absolutely excellent.

[Veyerals]

Thanks so much for all of that!

For a) Did you get a scene that plays the first time you enter the collection menu? Did it show up or did you not understand it? It should be unlocked in the tutorial scenes if you don't remember.

For b) You're right that this isn't communicated well enough and I will try to think of a solution for this.

Back when I released the first demo of this game 3 years ago, I was absolutely terrified about how people would react to the nudity in the opening scene. There wasn't even an option to cover it yet. I felt (and sometimes still feel) very visceral cringe when I watch videos or streams of the story parts. Even still, I just felt like this was something I needed to do. Being so raw and vulnerable is such a difficult thing for people to do, and I wish I could express feelings like the protagonist in real life.

There were so many times in the first year of early access that I wanted to cave in and change the scenes. I thought someone would hate it. I thought it would make someone so angry by now. But not a single person has expressed any sort of malicious negativity yet! As of this moment, this game has 172 positive user reviews and 0 negative ones. This game has never had a negative review in 2.5 years. That is, by a HUGE amount, longer than any other game that has ever been on Steam with this many reviews! And I'm so grateful to all of you for this! It's an honor to hold such a cool record, and part of it might be from turning away all the right (wrong?) people who would not like the game anyways.

So now I'm wondering about those people you mentioned. Why is the nudity a deterrent to them? Is it because it is too embarrassing? Is it stigma from other games with nudity and how they tend to be lewd games? Obviously, this game is not lewd, but they could be afraid that it will be. So far, It has always been religious reasons that I've been told about.

Thinking about it now, I realized that there's a certain maturity threshold that I want people to have when playing this game. Maybe being able to accept that nudity is okay was a good benchmark! Who knows?

[chaoscow]

Hi,

Thank you for the response!

The easiest way to describe the feeling I think is "I wouldn't want anyone to catch me playing this", which even has a forceful impact if someone never expects to be caught playing it. (And for those who live with spouses/parents/siblings/etc they will for sure be caught playing! It also makes it less likely for someone to recommend it to their friends even if they loved it.)

The 0 negative reviews are well deserved, and (in my opinion) one of the things that really differentiates this game is how complete the game feels even if you never go past light rain difficulty.

Regardless, this is your choice - knowing that this a topic you've considered heavily is as much as I could ask for.

[Halfshell]

Well theres no censorship (I personally don't mind) and theres blurred mist as options. Perhaps the game would do better with an option for an outfit. It would go against a core theme of the game's story, the whole 'ugly-duckling' thing doesn't work as well if she has a pretty dress. I think ultimately its tastefully done and everyone thats played it seems to agree.

[Isiel]

Originally posted by Halfshell cat:

Well theres no censorship (I personally don't mind) and theres blurred mist as options. Perhaps the game would do better with an option for an outfit. It would go against a core theme of the game's story, the whole 'ugly-duckling' thing doesn't work as well if she has a pretty dress. I think ultimately its tastefully done and everyone thats played it seems to agree.

Maybe if each character was dressed in something really worn out, as if it were the only outfit they own?

I don't know, I think it might be an interesting addition, and it might even be a good opportunity to express more of the characters' personality or something, but overall it doesn't seem like it's all that needed.

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by Isiel:

Maybe if each character was dressed in something really worn out, as if it were the only outfit they own?.

I think its ultimately upto creative vision whether that would work. I wouldn't have a problem either way but like I said, it doesn't bother me either. I originally found out about this game on a stream and noone there seemed to mind the mist option (obv better for streaming) out of a few hundred people. So maybe 1 part is some people shy away when the game says nudity with the bad rap that nudity games have had after H-games were (semi) allowed on Steam? But the other part is just the game hasn't been seen/ streamed all that much.

[Veyerals]

I'd consider it if it wasn't so time consuming to make 2 different versions of each and every scene. Then there would be a few cards that would have to have alternate versions. Not to mention some not yet revealed stuff from the future! Mist overlay is just so much easier.

[Robaho]

When I say the tag "Erotic" I was like, is this some kind of Hentai Game? The nudity is very tasteful tho and makes sense for the story.

[Veyerals]

There’s an erotic tag? I thought it was just nudity. Also, anyone can add tags so I’m not really in control of those!