Processing Early Feedback

I’ve been reading all of the reviews, discussion threads, and Discord chatter, and I’ve been grateful for all of the kind words and excitement.

There has been a fair share of criticism too, majority of which has been well thought out and constructive. I’ve been reading through it and doing my best to process it.

So, in no particular order, here are some of the common themes and my current thinking on them.

Criticism 1: I don’t have enough control of my deck in the roguelike.

I’m trying to process this one very carefully. A lot of my players are coming from my previous hobby project, which turned StarCraft 2 into a CCG. At least some of the critical reviews seem to be wanting a CCG level of control, and don’t seem as familiar with deckbuilders.

That said, I got similar feedback about the demo, with players asking to adjust their starting decks for more variety and control. In this case, I interpreted this as stemming from a legitimate problem with run starts being too similar to one another. This led to the Trait system, so I’m grateful for the criticism here! Couldn’t have done it without you all.

So, is there a similar nugget of inspiration I can mine here? Probably.

I’m not going to make it so you can freely design whatever deck you want, as this just isn’t that kind of game. Certain card combos are absolutely bonkers broken if you have freedom to build whatever you want, and the game is balanced around the components being rare.

But even some roguelike fans have complained about an element of deck control, namely, the fact that you can’t skip card rewards. IMO the reserves system makes up for this in terms of control, but some players disagree.

So, I have an idea to try out to give just a smidge more control. Not sure when I’ll get to it, but it’ll probably be in the next couple of months.

Criticism 2: Game is hard.

Balance is one of my primary focuses at the moment.

Roguelike win rates for Rank 1 were around 8% at launch, which is way lower than I want.

After the most recent patch, nerfing the deadliest missions, that’s up to 17%. I want to get it up to at least 25%, then reevaluate from there, so I have more balance changes planned.

For the Story Campaign, if there are particular missions that are frustrating, let me know in the Discord or the Steam discussion threads. I’m not (yet) automatically gathering data for this mode, so I lean heavily on written feedback here. Based on early feedback I have nerfs to two missions planned.

I’ll note that the Story Campaign has adjustable difficulty, so I see this as slightly less urgent than roguelike balance. But I read everything everyone writes, and will continue to search for missions where multiple players are bumping into the same bad experience, so I can fix it.

The last thing I’ll note about the game being hard is that it’s sort of supposed to be, at least to a degree. I like playing hard games so I want to make a hard game. But “hard” is subjective, and difficulty spikes are problematic. So yeah, there will be nonstop adjustments here for a while, all based on player feedback and data.

Criticism 3: Not enough progression/content.

I actually personally agree with this criticism, especially coming from players with no interest in the Story Campaign. With the roguelike alone, I probably would have priced the game at $9.99.

To be honest, I had a LOT of trouble pricing the game, as my roguelike competitors don’t have ~12-hour story modes.

Early in development I thought of the story as second-class to the roguelike, as a sort of tutorial with lore. But it turned out to be a significant investment of my time, and a big chunk of fans seemed to get a lot out of it. So I have factored that into my pricing.

But my other current focus (aside from balance, mentioned above) is making the roguelike worth the price tag, independent of the Story Campaign.

I have short-term plans for ~3 more cards, ~4 more Tech options, ~7 more starting Traits, and ~8 more missions in the pool. And longer-term, especially if I’m able to fund art for more playable factions, there will be even more.

Regarding progression, I am strategically planning to let this remain as-is so I can focus on other areas. I know that unlocking stuff is a sort of hack into the human brain. The game has a tiny bit of this with the cosmetic upgrades to cards, tech, and traits that you win runs with, but it’s pretty spartan compared to competitors. And I’m sort of just okay with this. Let the gameplay speak for itself with minimal brain-hacking. If I had infinite time and energy I’d probably gate some of the content (cards, tech, traits, missions) behind achievements.