itch.io

Firstly, forgive me if anything I say here sounds rude, that is not my intention.

Revisiting the game, I am glad to see the updates. The faster early game, especially the additional workers, is fantastic. Getting multiple tasks going at the same time is for sure a huge benefit and that change deserves praise. Well done.

However, this doesn’t actually address the underlying issue, which is how long the development of the initial camp takes.

I will grant that I could be lacking in understanding because I only have a combined play time of about 2 hours at this time, but 2 hours is more than long enough to say a player should not only have a good understanding of how to develop a camp, including a handle on each aspect that contributes to a proper camp, but should also be able to develop that camp, even at its core foundation.

Water, food, defense. I believe that’s a pretty standard foundation for a proper stone age settlement. However, I have still yet to even properly secure food, let alone be expected to have defenses before the first invasion.

Again, I could just be lacking in ability to rise to the challenge, but with so many moving pieces, and the length of time each action takes, it still seems unreasonable to expect a player to have understood the full card/development system and have implemented it effectively before an enemy camp begins stealing from them.

In this recent run, I reached a total of 4 workers, and by the time I unlocked the 4th worker at roughly the 2 week mark in-game, I am finally able to comfortably multi-task between researching/constructing/and gathering. However, it’s only a few days later I get my first invasion attack, with an attack strength of 29, and I haven’t even established my first hunting tent let alone my first watchtower which provides 6 defense.

I really wish I had more constructive criticism to provide, but the truth is I just don’t know how to best address this than to drastically reduce research/building times. As it stands now, I honestly believe you could remove the research mechanic of the game entirely, and the average player would still have difficulty reaching an established camp before their first invasion.

For what it’s worth, I haven’t given up on this game and I do love the concept as well as how you’re building it out. The card system is fun, and juggling tasks is a good brain exercise, but I think something drastic needs to be done on the core loop level if you want more player to players to engage.

In the end it is just my opinion, and again I don’t mean to step on spirit here.

If I may finish with one final, very long idea, I’d suggest pausing whatever expansions you might be working on (If you’re still working on this game, and I hope you are), and instead make yourself a timed road-map for players. Something like:

“What makes up a sufficient starter camp, and how long should the average player take to have one up and running?”

Not a town or a kingdom, just the basics of a camp.

A campfire? 2-3 villagers? The ability to gather food and water? Basic weapons like clubs, axes or spears?

If this is considered a worthy starter camp, take a look at the requirements you’ve set for each of these premises to be reached, and how long that takes.

A month in-game? 45-60 minutes?

Then we need to account for the fact players are still actively learning the card-system, the different tabs, the order of execution to go from rock-wood-knife-rope-basket-tent, etc.

Another 2 weeks in-game?

This entire process should take no more than half an hour, in my opinion. It seems there is so much more content you have in the game that I really want to explore, but honestly it takes so long to set up the first camp that I lose interest before I can even reach it.

I really hope this project hasn’t been given up on, and I really hope my words aren’t seen in a negative light. I truly want to see this game flourish and develop into an air-tight core loop that not only keeps players engaged for more than an hour, but makes them perfectly excited when losing a run and getting to start over with a new strategy.

Wishing you the very best, truly truly. 🙏

Completely respect the building on a core idea, and refusing to give it up down the road. For sure, that’s a great attitude to have in development. I suppose it just depends on how far down the road, and how much feedback that specific mechanic receives, but still an honorable dev trait and I support it.

I’ll be honest, I only completed the first level on all difficulties. The reason: I am one of those stubborn players that when presented with a 3-star system in a game, I simply must earn that 3rd star before feeling like I truly completed the level.

I know there must be a strategy to make it happen, and provided I was at least able to complete it on hard difficulty, I figured I wasn’t far off in general. The hard truth is that I simply lost interest in the game overall after so many tries. I am not one to give up easily, and will always look for redeeming qualities in a title before letting the difficulty of a challenge sway my opinion on the game. Even after finding it near-impossible I still see those redeeming qualities, but there just isn’t enough payoff at the moment to keep my interest.

By no means should you consider my one experience the reason you change things up, as it could just be that I’m a noob and not worthy of the 3 stars, but I’m grateful for you diving deeper into my feedback.

Coincidentally, I had chosen Chucky to carry on the mission and receive the council’s favor before reading the dev’s name.

Well done, Chuck, well done.

If I had to point out anything worth tweaking, it would be the randomness behind the Transports upgrade. As it stands now, the moment transports are unlocked, the previously consistent flow of work became a bit chaotic suddenly. I.E. Chucky was now all over the place, hopping in the truck to travel 10 meters to the gold drill, hopping out to pick up 17 gold, then deciding to walk with gold in hand all the way to the diamond drill, just to pick up 3 more to be deposited into a different transport, and then filling his inventory once more, but then deciding “forget the transports, I got legs and they work fine” Haha I don’t hate it, but damn if it wasn’t hilarious watching ol’ Chuck change up the flow constantly. I noticed the Driver trait available during the council’s favor appointment, and it makes me wonder if you have plans to assign workers to specific roles? I’m sure there are some hurdles to implement that into the current prototype, but think it would be really nice to specifically assign either workers to transports, or transports to drills, drills to workers, etc.

That’s about it. Only other complaint I could have is that it wasn’t long enough of demo. Definitely want more. But that’s as positive as a complaint could get.

Well done, hoping you and your family of play testers get the good feedback from the steam community you deserve, and hoping the browser community still gets love down the road.

Best of luck 👍

Really cool prototype.

Could definitely use some balancing, in particular with the upgraded roles.

Flamethrower, Heavy Machine Gun, and Sniper, are just too weak to be considered an upgrade in any way. Even the upgrades for each specific class within the Samples upgrade tree, though it’s good you’re building out a tree, the effects of the upgrades don’t address the lack of power-boost in each battle. The Flamethrower is probably the biggest surprise here, as its traditionally short range and wide arc should be far more effective against the big swarms of smaller enemy aliens, but that didn’t seem to be the case in practice.

I have attempted the first level at least 2 dozen times, and no matter the strategic mix up of units, or the fact it’s on Easy difficulty, or careful use of 3 support call-ins, I just cannot seem to get 3 stars.

On that note, the directional input for support is a very fun idea, but it really is just an unnecessary limitation. Being forced to enter a combination of keys likened to combo attacks in 2d fighting games before you can call in an airstrike just feels like an added bit of chaos with no direct reward. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but probably not the best for this style of game.

Other than that, the overall appeal is there, and it is enjoyable fending off the swarms of killer monsters. I think the character sprites look good, even if their “Run” ability is also sort of pointless, and I do get a sense of Last-stand, all or nothing, seeing them boxed into the center like this, defending from attacks on all sides.

Definitely wishing you the very best in building on this, and thank you for sharing your game. 👍

Very interesting.

I had no idea my device could be preventing me from seeing elements.

If it helps at all to know, I am on a MacbookPro.

No worries on when the next update comes around, I’m already following. 👍

Firstly, if one were to say thing X is inspired by thing Y, that’s perfectly respectable. But to call X a clone, there would have to be sufficient evidence that X is clearly and blatantly copying Y.

If you are honest in adding your own twists that branch off of something else, I believe we will see it in the end result.

Secondly, all of that sounds fantastic. I can just imagine the group of peasant-clothed women banding together with torches and spears to take the armored soldiers in the east. Hilarious. Of course if you do provide those roles with appropriately themed sprites, that works too, but Adorable Gowns vs Armored Guards has something going for it.

Keep it up, I’m a fan. I’ll be keeping an eye out for what you roll out next.

Love the current state of this.

Don’t see much in terms of issues, but rather just content that could be fleshed out or built upon further.

Unless I missed something, I believe I’ve touched on everything that is available. I had 3 tents, archer station, spearwoman station, barricade, farm, all upgraded, the fox, 300 gold, and was still unable to purchase certain locks such as the bridge or the 50 cost camp upgrade?

The sprites are a bit confusing, perhaps some text prompts above other characters similar to the first guide, to give any explanation of what investing in them rewards? On my end, both the farmer and the spearman showed an bow-and-arrow icon above their head, and I had assumed they were some unique military units.

Aside from that, I assume there are tons of ideas for how to better upgrade the camp, the individual buildings and tiers, and possibly giving the lovely ladies some distinction in appearance based on their job? Find it hilarious to see the girls spear fishing in waist high water wearing full gown and petticoat haha.

Nowhere but up from here. I think relying on AI to help make this title fuller in any way is perfectly fine. You’ve got a quaint browser game, and I look forward to seeing what you’ve got in store for it.

All the best. 👍

Such a fun experience.

I imagine there is a lot that is planned, but I must say after a half dozen new starts it is already a fairly well packaged foundation, and only deserves a few things to give it some proper replay value.

As of right now, the biggest issue is that there just isn’t enough information.

Even aside from the balancing that needs to be done, for instance the encumbrance amounts of items that are comically inaccurate, (5 arrows weighing as much as a sword) or the gold acquisition that seems rather punishing (Gathering every chest, every crude weapon to sell, and at my 3rd city visit still not having enough to outfit both characters in a proper weapon + armor set)

Having to buy arrows individually but not being able to see how many the character has remaining during a level, not knowing the current remaining health of each character during the level, or any character stats for that matter.

I think aside from some balancing in numbers that do need to be worked out, addressing the lack of available data during a run would almost instantly make this worth replaying many times more than I did.

Things like being able to see the character’s current state, I.E. + or - to speed/attack die, if an effect is preventing their movements or AP count. Knowing the attack range radius of a character similar to the way the movement radius is shown. The terrain was confusing, as a ranged fighter can’t shoot through tree tiles, but can shoot through mountain tiles, so perhaps being able to hover over tiles to see their effects/affinities, even as small as making it clear whether an archer can or can’t fire over obstacles, would be nice. In fact, hovering the cursor over individual elements and being able to see their stats would greatly solve this without needing to add too much into the UI.

Perhaps more options within the Action bar could work too, such as a specific movement action for clarity, as I often accidentally selected tiles out of movement range to move to when attempting to pan the camera, and even though it was far outside of the character’s movement range, they still took on the irreversible jog to the clicked-on location, going as close to clicked-on location as possible, running out of all AP in the process.

I’ll end by saying these are just small things that I’m sure will be fleshed out in time, and I find the game incredibly fun even as it is now, and has so much potential.

Wishing you the best of luck in accomplishing those goals, and I look forward to seeing what the next update has in store. Keep it up. I’ll be back for more 👍

What an amazing spin on the Buriedbornes universe.

To answer a previous comment, this artwork is by an artist named Torio (Toriotto) and I absolutely love seeing their stunning illustrations being used in another dungeon-themed game.

That out of the way, first I must say in regards to you using the artwork assigned to “The Ancient King” for an npc with the title of “knight”… How dare you! The high sovereign from ‘Javardry THE KING’ itself, reduced to a mere foot soldier! Unacceptable!

I joke.

The main core loop is fantastic, no need to change this whatsoever. Coming across the familiar auto-battle mechanic and artwork of Buriedbornes, but with a backpack-management style inventory system? Just beautiful. Well done.

My only complaint as of now (aside from the blasphemy of diminishing the Ancient Crown) is the odd 2d artwork turning their faced direction in the 3d halls. E.G. The blessing, or the weapon fusing random encounters. If you can figure out a way to address that, it’s the only thing really breaks the otherwise consistent appearance of the dungeon, in my opinion. I suppose I could also suggest turning up the lighting down here a bit? Even on full brightness on my screen it’s pretty difficult to make out everything I’m looking at.

Also, who the heck is Jerry, and why is he the only player I keep coming across in PvP?!

I can imagine you have plenty of other items you’d like to include down the road, and I’m sure there is a lot of balancing you’ll have to do in accordance with that gear (I never came across any burn inflicting items in 5 lives?) so I’ll wait a bit longer to comment on builds and what not.

I’ll end by saying I happily welcome this title with open arms, and I can’t wait to see where you go with this current foundation.

Very exciting. Wishing you the very best in expanding this as far as possible, with as much depth as Buriedbornes, if not more so.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for updates. 👍👀👍

“Chain together”? 👀

Now that sounds very interesting. Cheers to your progress, and to me not being a month late to seeing it again.

Yes.

Now we’re talking.

Missed the release, but well worth the wait.

Really awesome to see the character/class selection idea taking shape. Love the new terrain. Our Owl friend in the snow, just fits so well. Could be worth tying the specific characters to different regions/levels. I.E. Level 3, Desert and Palms, home of The Elephant, with its own difficulties. etc.

The permanent upgrades are a nice addition. I’m sure this is just the opener, and there are tons of ideas for how to expand that, so I’ll leave it at that, really exciting.

There’s not much more to add. Well done overall. Very eager to see what else you guys roll out. Best of luck 👍👍

A very cozy and charming game.

The core loop is very enjoyable once you get the hang of things, however, getting the hang of things is the challenge.

To summarize it plainly, there is just so much going on all at once for a first run. I think that actually adds to it positively, but for players less inclined to figure things out, I could see it preventing some from bothering to make it to a second day let alone a second generation. Due to there being so many menus, I missed out on quite a lot by simply not knowing it was happening I.E. trading or clan affinity or even crafting. I think a simple walkthrough or tutorial feature to familiarize players with the various menus and interactions would largely fix just about all everything I could consider an issue thus far.

The mechanics and smoothness of gameplay feels incredibly polished, while the appearance overall does have a nice charm to it. Some hang ups here could include the odd water behavior, especially when the player gets wet and seems to fire off water beams across the ground, and the block placing system, which does technically work, but the inability to place them above you, or to make supports that can be passed through carved out tunnels is a bit frustrating.

In the end I truly enjoyed the inheritance system, as having the “family spear” to pass down to the next generation really awesome to stumble upon. I also loved the Faith mechanic, which I am curious to see how that ends up expanding.

I will leave it there. You’ve got a really nice thing coming together and congrats on giving it new life so many years later. I am hooked, truly, and I can’t wait to see it developed further.

Very fun core loop.

Models could use tweaking. The art is very clearly AI generated, but it doesn’t look bad at all. The movement is what looks off. Perhaps instead of forcing the marines to run back and forth, they could be given a sort of teleport effect to traverse? They look really nice, and that running animation just sort of breaks their unmovable stoic look a bit. The enemies attacking the backline was a surprise, but makes for a good change of pace as opposed to the typical “all enemies come from one side” approach that other games like this tend to take. Maybe allowing them to flip direction faced as opposed to their guns rotating 180 degrees could help keep them looking sharper?

Aside from the animations, the weapons could also use some touching up. They just look too similar to really make it appear as though the marine equipped with it is actually playing that role I.E. The Heavy marine equipping the heavy mass gun, it just doesn’t look heavy enough, and as with the grenade launcher and plasma rifle, they just all look like slightly modified versions of the original base rifle. Aside from that I really like the specific classes being built out here, and I’m sure there are tons of directions you wish to take them. That’s exciting.

In the end, you’ve got a nice first build. The foundation is there, and I’m hoping you get to build what you imagine should rest on it.

Best of luck 👍

Great demo. I found myself wanting more organization during night attacks, as they came up so frequently and sporadically that it just became a chore. Nothing too hard to get used to, but would be nice to preparation phase beforehand to give a moment of pause between mining and immediately fighting. Would be a great opportunity to situate ore ammunition? Unless I missed how to select ammo type, it hurts to see that stronger ammo used on all the weaklings in the beginning of a defense round, especially after upgrading to full-auto.

On that note, a function to change between other gear like pickaxes would be interesting. I don’t know how much further down you plan to let players mine, but having a single pickaxe being upgraded consistently combined with upgrades like drones or bombs or splash damage, there comes a point where it is impossible to not immediately drop through the earlier layers. Could interesting to add a preparation phase for mining as well, where one could situate their load out for the desired mining trip in mind. E.G. wanting to grab clusters of purple time gems in dirt layers without blowing up the surroundings, making it impossible to climb back up to them. Ladder? Rope system maybe?

In the end, you do have a very enjoyable demo here. Would love to see those mixed concepts you have here developed further and touched on lightly as you go.

Best of luck to you moving forward 👍

Great Demo. No major issues that haven’t already been addressed in previous comments. On the minor side of things, the UI blocks some areas that could otherwise be used for object placement. Some slight tweaking to the visual of the barbed-wire fences would be nice, as it doesn’t appear to completely touch wall to wall in some instances, even though the effect may be working just fine. Keep it up. You’ve got a fun project coming together here 👍

Fantastic to hear your enthusiasm.

I’ll be more than happy to check it out again down the line once you’ve had a chance to implement more of your ideas, regardless of how much of my input made it in, because it is indeed a fun concept and deserves more development in my opinion.

Wishing you the very best on making that happen. 🙏

Fun first play.

The biggest issue I see right now is that the Quantity of individual elements in the game far outweighs their Quality.

I am not one to typically suggest slowing down a game on purpose, but I think starting a bit more sparingly would heavily improve the overall experience.

The ease of building new rafts or stations, the insane amount of farmable trash surrounding the raft city, the fact survivors show up so quickly and in groups of 4, are in my opinion off putting to experience so early in a run.

Pacing the growth would add a lot of longevity here.

You’ve got the sea field idea down, which is nice in that it’s interactive, but seemingly is a step backward rather than forward.

1. The sea field is built, not given at start
2. It is not automated while everything else is.
3. You have such a high rate of incoming new residents looking for work, that making this the exception for employment options is questionable.

On top of that, those 25second, 55second etc. timers you’ve placed on the farms that must be manually harvested, makes the assigned farmer pointless. I suppose it could be seen as a balancing issue, but I didn’t want to lazily apply that here as a blanket evaluation.

Ending on a positive note, I do see a lot of potential here.

From what I have explored thus far, the idea of a clean slate with a single house, a single survivor, maybe a simple 2x2 raft, sounds like an incredible start to the core loop. Raising the cost of expanding the raft or building new stations, reducing the amount of scrap surrounding, in turn making the recoverable resources at sea more meaningful and the scavenging dock more valuable. Setting aside the player’s fishing ability to solely specific chests could be nice, and provides even more identity to the scavenging deck.

Timers/manual farming- Totally for it, if it’s across the board. Doesn’t mesh well with the other automated workplaces. This would also be a nice mechanic if introduced immediately at the start, which would allow that more scarce start I described, as well as your starting solo or duo residents, feel even more valuable.

The slower/less crowded pace could also help with some slight lag I experienced on my potato computer. I’m mumbling now but these are just some thoughts, hope they encourage some positive development.

Good job, and best of luck moving forward.

Great engagement, plenty of replay value, runs smooth and feels like a very promising start. Most concerns I could point out have been addressed by previous comments.

Noticed some odd behavior occurring when adjusting existing lines. i.e. adding/removing a train or stop from a line caused in some cases for passengers to exit and walk back home, no matter the distance or terrain, while in other cases made the vehicle and all passengers disappear.

On that note, when passengers did vanish entirely, I did notice in some cases that the locations awaiting those passengers seemed to have received them instantly.

I did not dive too far into this, as the overall gameplay was really that enjoyable to overlook it, but figured it was worth mentioning as I imagine there could be an unintended game-breaking insta-transport method hanging around somewhere in the events I described above.

Far from polished, but that gives the project a charm, and is arguably better than over-polishing and causing unnecessary lag if the magnitude of levels ever grows to accommodate businesses in the hundreds/thousands.

Great job, best of luck moving forward.

Notice most of the things I could've complained about are already commented on, as well as most of the things I would compliment. 

Very fun game. It deserves a traditional boss bug. Maybe ship rocket upgrades or an ability. Ability to place your ship would be insanely fun as well.

Thank you for sharing and best of luck moving forward 👍

Thanks for the reply.

I completely understand you're working on it currently. I love hearing that.

I did continue playing around a bit more, but there seems to be a bug with the builder cat always getting stuck on the first building? he'll complete the archery range or a defensive wall, and then seemingly get locked within that build area. I suppose it's best to just hold off on exploring this title until another update has rolled out, but it just looks so fun I can't help but want to get past that slight annoyance and at least build one version of a self sustaining settlement, even a weak one.

That said, I'll leave it here for now, and I'm wishing you and whoever else may be working on this project the best of luck. Whether it's an entirely finished and polished final version, or simply a V 0.0.0.1 update, I'm very excited to see what the team cooks up next. 👍👍

This is such a nice looking game, but it is just incredibly confusing. There are problem like overlapping "E" to interact options, or the fact the first guide continues talking whether I've followed his dialogue or not, but I don't want to write this off just yet, as I'm sure there is tons to do and I just haven't figured it out.

 I have restarted multiple times now, each time eventually dying to the first wave of slug looking enemies, because I have no idea how to prevent them. The furthest I've gotten thus far, is recruited cats, which I guess work at the archery range? They just produce gold, but don't actually fight or defend. The archery towers as well, just seem to sit there with no purpose.

The sapling's growth or energy is.. what exactly? Raising either bar to max, I'm not sure what that does for the character or the settlement.

What does sending the merchant on an expedition do?

Is there a button I'm not aware of that allows me to swing this sword?

I'd really love an explanation on what everything does, or even what the end goal might be, as this setting seems like it could be very fun if given a bit of guidance, or maybe a more engaging tutorial?

 Regardless, nice looking game and I'm really looking forward to your reply 👍👍

Zora's Domain vibes. Love it.

Pleasant art style, fun demo. Can definitely see this exact framework being pushed into a much larger scale, in fact would love to see just that.

Perhaps enemies would help to add a fresh breathe amidst the grind? a wave system? auto battler?

Regardless, nice project, best of luck 👍👍

Glad to see this update and can't believe I missed it for a whole week!

Some notes:

The resource collection range seems to be off. I had upgraded it to more than 2k% but still only collected resources about 2 feet or so in front of me.

I love the overpowered feeling of mining at insane speeds/distances but by the end of this recent run I had the issue of mining things way off screen long before I could reach them to collect, to the point I would lag pretty badly when not on the Archive.

Maybe issue isn't the right word to use because it was hilariously fun, and now writing this out maybe I'm just smooth brained and didn't realize collection range upgrades don't affect pick-up distance?

(Edit: Got it. Collection and Pick-up different categories.)

On some positives

The increased starting allowance is a very nice change. Getting through that early game prior to this update was indeed fun but also quite grindy, so this change was great.

The repeater is so much more powerful now, and with 30 or 40 upgrades it becomes a beast! It took out the enemy castled off screen, had me wondering if it just bugged and disappeared. Would much rather it be OP than be as inefficient as it was before.

All in all, solid first update, still voting for expanding the interactions between the caretaker and the castle. It's a loveable duo and I'd love to see more of the lore of this universe. On that note would also love to see cosmetic/character upgrades/options? Maybe our Owl friend has a Mouse disciple? Or they know a curator Bookworm? Maybe they've stumbled across the forgotten Black Keep that holds Dark knowledge and is in needs of repairs or a new driver?

I'll leave it there, great job, you have a fantastic project coming together here and can't wait to see what rolls out next. 👍👍

My only wish is to have seen more on screen. I know that's a lot to ask as there is already a lot going on, but at a decillion or even by the time you reach the first trillion soldiers recruited, seeing the lower borders of the game screen completely empty feels underwhelming.

On that note, the fact that the champions overtake the entirety of the army's visuals once you get high enough is also a thing. If perhaps there were dedicated areas of the back line for the archers and mages so they remain visible, that would be cool too, because I loved seeing the mix of colors/projectiles.

The only real concern I found was the Reset button being overlapped by the Full Screen button. The secondary confirmation prompt prevents accidents but perhaps sliding that to the left a bit or hiding it within an options menu could be safer.

Other than that, the loop is sound, the knight interactions with the player are fun, and I spent way more time on this than I thought I would. Great job! Keep it up! 👍👍

(Catapults when? Haha)

Revisiting since I first played about a month ago.
Huge improvements.

The confirmation prompts - yes.
The new abilities - yes.
The reworked starting hand so you're not forced to play the exact same 5+5+5 each turn each new run - double yes.

The new transition screen when entering a new area and the thematic background is a very nice touch, and you can definitely "feel" more overall when navigating through each menu. Builds are bound to get pretty interesting now it seems with these new super commons alongside the introduction of abilites, wonder if you'll consider a "God Pack" in the shop? Crazy price tag for a chance at Charizard or Dark Magician or something? Still exploring more, but wanted to compliment you on your progress and this recent update. Keep it up, you've got a really fun thing going here. 👍👍

Absolutely.

Now that I've leveled up quite high, I have made a few discoveries.

1. I was indeed not aware of being able to scout with C at first, but again that may be due to me just being bad. Was that mentioned in the intro and I just wasn't paying close enough attention perhaps? Forgive me if so. It is a very useful skill and I feel it is deserving of its own focused prompt if it doesn't already have one.

2. In particular, the transition between levels i.e. "into the Rig", and also the transition from battle back to over world map. Both of these feel very sluggish, especially the pause/fade-out effect after killing an enemy, but it could be due to me running multiple expeditions in one sitting. Perhaps an E/Left Click option to skip forward through that similar to the dialogue/pre-run setup menu? It's honestly a big reason I didn't do even more expeditions in that single sitting, knowing I'd have sit through them again if I didn't get good starting equipment.

On that note, so far of the dozen or so + expeditions I've embarked on, I have only completed 2 runs, and both involved the "Itenor" gear I believe it was called.  Having tried full Corrosion, Cryo, Military and almost full Evo tech gear, not only have none of them actually made it through an entire run without eventually getting outscaled by opponents, but they also pale drastically in comparison to the Iteron chest armor. Furthermore, the 2 successful runs were not only played on "Forgiving" difficulty, but they also made use of multiple Iteron chest plates. If I recall correctly my last successful run I had around 180 health when facing the Cryo boss and still scraped by with 30 or so remaining after victory.

This leads me to suggest either an easier armor upgrade system, or a slightly easier enemy scaling, or again perhaps I'm just that bad haha.

In any case, none of these are complaints, and I still enjoy the game a ton (in fact planning on running one as soon as I finish typing this out) and I definitely look forward to any and all updates you eventually roll out. Still voting for that "shop" to spend scrap on between levels, or even to spend scrap on directly upgrading an armor piece/weapon. Would also be nice if choosing a direct upgrade to a weapon such as the one that grows with each kills, doesn't wipe the kill count. 

Anyways, off to check in with the adorable blue-eyed handler before another expedition.  👍👍

Very fun Demo - Armor and Weapons that grow with you?

Yes please.

Notes:

Having the same soundtrack droning on in the background and unchanging throughout each run gets a little repetitive, so maybe some music alternating between travel and fight screens would be nice?

Fairly challenging, even on "Forgiving" difficulty, or perhaps I'm just bad haha.

The Cryo Boss fight interaction - I suppose in hindsight it could be considered obvious a boss fight was coming up, but I assumed I was just proceeding through lore/dialogue, so maybe a heads up for players who aren't fully repaired prior to engaging?

Not knowing some enemies become stronger based on how much scrap you currently have was not so fun, doubly so due to scrap-costing upgrades being randomly found and not a guarantee each level. Perhaps a "shop" of sorts between each level to ensure you aren't accidentally hoarding scrap when those opponents do find you?

Definitely enjoyed the game, and will surely go for another run to experiment more. Love the gear set bonuses and want to try for full Evo-tek next run. (tek? tech? mech)

Well done, thank you for sharing, and wishing you the best moving forward with this project 👍

(Edit: Ability to speed things up or shorter transition screens would be a cool upgrade too!)

Enchanting take on a tower defense game!

Absolutely loved playing.

 Would be fun to see interactions between The Caretaker and The Castle, a way to bring The Castle alive. A sigh of relief, a thanks for repairing it to full, or a hum of curiosity when upgrading something.

And more stone haha, the big guy can't get enough of the stuff.

Loved it tons, can't wait to see the permanent upgrades in action, best of luck moving forward. 👍👍

Gritty and dark, and thoroughly entertaining.

 Agree with previous comment, it does resemble some other titles in terms of art style, but there is space for the swarm here on itch.

Agree with previous comments that the puzzle is a bit confusing, but the fact we actually want to solve it/proceed just speaks better for the game as a whole.

Agree that there could be some other quality options for low performance devices, but it does look nice overall.

Good job, good game, best of luck on your next project. 👍

Great update! 

Grid design is huge!

After testing with the grid design it is a huge improvement, making that intense early game flow much better.

That preview level, I'm not sure if it is meant to be that difficult but it was indeed fun! A level where your base is dead center of the map, a true last stand, great idea.

On that note: I think it would also be incredibly fun to have a mode like this, but where you are given an ample amount of time, even something like 5 or more minutes, to prepare yourself for a massive enemy attack, like a true boss level or something, although I'm sure you have some ideas about boss levels for the future.

One thing I'd love to see in a future update, is hotkeys or hotkeys within menus. I.E. "F to build Factory" or "E to upgrade" from within the building's menu. I think it would both serve to help more easily meet the fast pace of the early game, as well as pay homage to staple RTS games of the past.

Love that you specifically implemented some of the things I outlined in the previous comment, in this new update. I thank you for that, it feels nice to be part of your journey. 

The new cards, the increased size of boosters packs; the touch of color on Giants! All welcomed additions. It was very fun to revisit this game and once again I look forward to seeing what future updates bring. Wish the best of luck 🙏

Hey! That's fantastic, I'll have to give it another play now!

Absolutely, the game name is: technologia

Perhaps it could be worth reaching out to izevai to share some ideas?
Good luck 👍

Great game all around.

Fun mechanics, appealing artwork, fitting music.

An ability to hide merge/tech upgrades to review army before choosing would be nice.

Foot Archers are technically infantry, so inclusion or rewording to some upgrades that pertain only to melee units might be helpful.

These aren't complaints, just notes. The game is pretty sound as is and nothing stands out to me as broken or needing heavy attention. 

Great job. Keep it coming. 👍

I am very interested in this game!

I agree with the previous comment, it does look very polished and gives a rush of nostalgia. 

However, it does lack a proper introduction or tutorial. I too played only a few rounds, not because I lost interest but because there are so many exciting options to choose from and very little to be learned when choosing them. 

Side note: There is another title here on itch.io incredibly similar to this, even with an identical color theme to the layout, which also lacked a proper introduction or beginner friendly first play experience.

I'd love to explore this game more if you do get around to making a short and simple intro round/campaign to help a wannabe strategist like myself familiarize themselves with your game board/features. It does look like it could be hours of fun if I understood more. 

Thank you for sharing this project, and I hope this gets considered! 

I really enjoy the vibe. Between the music and the abilities I can see thus far, it looks like it could be a really great game. However, between no tutorial and the oddly mapped controls, it is really difficult for me to enjoy playing it on my laptop. But that's just on my end, so aside from that I do see so much potential in this project and wish you nothing but a successful journey. Looking forward to you expanding on that spell system, it's exciting. 👍

Ah thank you!

As for hints, let's try.

Purple Room Upper Left:  A flying witch and a sad bride - What are some synonyms for what is depicted?

Red Room Upper Left: If not Violins, maybe another instrument of that family?

Hopefully I haven't given it away completely.

Hello there.

If you are trying to help me figure those puzzles out, forgive the misunderstanding, I had completed them at the time of that post. I was simply pointing out which ones gave me the most trouble.

As for the second part of your message, are you asking me for hints?