I really appreciate the input, it's always hard for me to gauge difficulty because I made the game, so it really helps fine tune difficulty curve with feedback.

I appreciate updating the review as well, you have been a tremendous help.

I changed my mind about the game and changed my review. I wish you success in your work and in your search for the perfect balance.

Very interesting ideas, try to implement all this. The only thing, I would add the ability to choose perks and coins at the start of the game is in the nightmare level, because there the player already knows how to develop the hero. And at the normal difficulty level, these perks will be distributed automatically, so that the novice can immediately start the game.

I might make it so normal mode spawns you in a store level and gives you some money up front, so you can buy some items right out of the gate, and gives you 3 perk points so you can invest in different things when the game starts adding a new layer of strategy right away.

I can change Fei's heal to heal for 10 regardless of if you get hit or not, and have it still heal for the same amount but defaults to healing 10, then heals for 5 more if she gets hit and that triggers the heal over time.

Nightmare will be when you die you lose everything, chaos spawns are frequent, you lose everything on death, and long term I would like to add leaderboards for levels completed after I add more levels for levels 15-20. Currently once you hit 11+ levels completed you draw from a pool of 10 very hard temple/cave area levels.

I would also like to add new characters that can only be unlocked in nightmare mode, as with the proposed changes, you will be unlocking the characters more easily.

At the moment unlocks occur at beating:
-5 levels in a row (Ninja)
-9 levels in a row (Samurai)
-12 levels in a row (Demon girl)
-15 levels in a row (Shadow sprite)

I think I will make two game modes:

Normal and Nightmare.

In Normal, you lose half of your coins on death, and keep at least 3 of each dragon egg you have acquired, and 1 of each tier 2 item you have acquired (Healing Gem +10% Healing, Damage Dagger +1 Damage, Armor Piece. +1 Armor)

Dragon Eggs increase stats by 2, so you would start the game with +6 stamina, mana, and health if you had at least 3.

I would need to make some new variables and split the game modes (I am a 1 man team), but it is possible to do.

Normal will have MINIMAL chaos spawns (being introduces in 1.3), which spawn additional enemies at your location.

Players will start out with 3 perk points in Normal Mode as well as I can multiply XP gain by 25% so that you level up a little faster.

There are also few coins in the game. I can't even imagine what prices should be set for characters and items in order not to upset the balance.
At the moment, the game is too complex to figure out what is in it. I do not have enough patience (after 10-15 deaths, there is a desire to close the application and not start again).

There are few items and perks in this game, difficult to adjust the balance so that the players do not lose interest.

My suggestion: buying new characters and items for money in the main menu. After death, we take away everything from the player, except money and characters. We take away the purchased items after death so that players buy items again or pick up for free during the run.

The money grind would add excitement to the players.
Perks greatly affect the characteristics. If not to take away perks, then the character will quickly become invincible.

I haven't played this game yet, I was interested in reading your discussion. Can I suggest something? At the death of the hero, let things and pumping be saved, and only part of the money will be lost (for example, 10%). I think this will give the game more interest. When you know that you have most of your resources saved, it's not so scary to die. I also like the idea of difficulty levels.

People love simple games. They are too lazy to learn skills. They start the game and want to rest, not die every 1-2 minutes. You can leave everything as it is, but make the heal simple so that weak players can stop, wait for the accumulation of mana and heal the character.

Your game is randomly generated and the character is too slow. In competitive games, the characters moving fast, and the tests(challenge) are fixed so that everyone is on an equal footing.
For advanced players need a choice of difficulty. For example, in the normal mode, the heal is simple, but in the hard mode, it is the same as now.