Hi!

First things first, congratulations with the launch. I don't wanna sound like a douche so i'll start saying what I like about the game. The setting is amazing, and the graphics are very cool. The lore is amazing as always, and the backstories are nice and refreshing, you have a really creative team. Now i'll start with the things that, IN MY OPINION (before anyone jumps to my neck) could be improved. 

To address the elephant in the room, as many people said, its lacking content everywhere, playable characters, guns, level design, monsters and SPECIALLY boss attacks. Bosses are ridiculously easy. I'll give those firsts a pass since the game's been out for a week, and I expect more content to be included with time, but the design of the bosses is simply bad... I'm sorry if it sounds rough. Regarding enemies, you could resort to dungeon of the endless and bring more of the creatures present there, or inspire yourself in some of those designs, like the chimera keeper that would be amazing to have in here, or the hurna rider. Not necessarily the same foe, but the concept of the enemy that grows and the one who opens doors and could bring more enemies.

Other big thing for me is that guns that you abandon aren't useful for anything? Please implement an option do destroy them to turn them into random resources/scrap or to drop/sell to the merchants for resources.

The commands that you can give to the characters are very limited. You should implement more options regarding that, and I think it’s a BIG flaw in game design. Not being able to send a character to a room from the map is the first one, and not being able to command a character to follow the crystal while it moves is another great one. Those two would DRASTICALLY change the game, so I strongly suggest you talk about it and see if you think that you could develop it. 

Well now it’s just a pair of bugs that are annoying, one is not even a bug, but I'll say it since I don’t think it's on purpose. First one is corners. They're almost all of them bugged, and vegetation. I have a couple of clips, I don’t know if I can upload them here, better to post them on YouTube and post a link or if you want them sent to you, please tell me and i'll do. Second one is big guns and close combat. When you are using a long gun, foes at melee distance can’t be damaged. The clearest example is attempting to destroy a barrel at melee distance, the gun is just clipped within it, and it receives no damage. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that, and I suggest you to check it also if it’s not purposefully. 

Also, difficulty. I started playing in the highest and kept it like that. First games with nothing unlocked, and not knowing how to play were hard, nice. Then you discover that you just need to spam industry and put the only useful turret in chokepoints, and its done. You just go forward. No boss has killed me in my first try since they're dumb easy. If you get past first floor and have a little resource management, you simply win. To fix that i suggest various things: please, in the hardest difficulty, don’t allow characters to be revived. Doing so you solve 2 problems: one, medkits being absolutely useless since you can just die and press E to revive the fallen character, and 2 you change the playstyle drastically. You also need to balance the game in several aspects. Some perks for the characters, the crystal and guns are stupidly strong, and others are just bad options that no one is gonna use. You get healing for the crystal, and you can literally just tell him to follow you around while you open doors like a madman. Characters are also unbalanced, shroom is a freewin also. I’m not saying is easy to fix, I'm just giving feedback. I know it will be finicky and hard to adjust the game. Returning to difficulty aspect, if you don’t want to change the ones implemented, just another level of difficulty with no reviving or a very short time to do so, so you need to be in the same room or vicinity to revive the fallen character, NO teleport to the crystal (I don’t even know why this option exists, it reduces the difficulty BIG time but you are the developers, that’s my opinion only) and reduced healing maybe. Also, why no max medkits btw? I tried a few runs in easy to get the 60 mins achievement and i arrived to the core with 500+ in resources, if I needed I could just buy a ton of medkits and spam them? idk, that’s also weird.

Regarding multiplayer, and being a strategic game, no chat is something that sincerely, I cant understand how got past you. No voice chat I can understand since people online can be douchebags, but not even a text chat?? 

The last thing, and probably the most important... replayability. This is a roguelike that encourages next to 0 to play it once you get all story pieces, and only if you are interested in lore. If you wanna play just for the sake of it, what changes between one run and the next one? the characters? I don’t know, there’s a big hole here and it needs fixing. Im trying to get all the achievements just because, and while replaying I’m just feeling robotic, just redo and redo the same things time after time.

I’m quite sad that the game has been released in this state, but at the same time I got faith that you can fix it and polish it with a few updates and you will make a great game. Dungeon of the endless was a GREAT game and set the bar pretty high, that’s why I feel this one if experimenting kind of a backlash. Best of luck, I’m missing a few points i also noticed but this is long enough as it is and I don’t want to make it sound like everything is horrible. Its a nice game, it just needs a little extra. If i had to prioritize or say the most important thing, it would be the replayability. Fix that to make every run unique and fun and make the player wonder "what will I encounter next run??" and this game could be gold! I hope I didn’t sound like a douche, I know creating a game is very challenging and I appreciate and love the effort you’ve made with this game. Best of luck, cheers and lots of love ^^.

PD: please stop using Steven Universe as an inspiration for character personalities please, its so burnt out hehehe.

Good luck!! I trust in Amplified studios ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

"The commands that you can give to the characters are very limited. You should implement more options regarding that, and I think it’s a BIG flaw in game design. Not being able to send a character to a room from the map is the first one, and not being able to command a character to follow the crystal while it moves is another great one. Those two would DRASTICALLY change the game, so I strongly suggest you talk about it and see if you think that you could develop it."

This is my biggest gripe - fixing this would open up so many options for solo players that co-op folks have by default.

Quite a huge pile of information here, so let me throw my penny in.

Firstly, the lack of content, I get that, but I'm guessing that it's going to be something they build up bit by bit. There's already a vote for a new gun to be included in the game. The basis of what they got there is fun and solid despite the usual, occasional bug here and there, but that's going to happen with most games. Bosses on the other hand, I feel they're a mixed bag, they're creative and each has their own special mechanic. But some can be easy, especially in multiplayer, the last one in particular can be quite tricky to deal with as he'll attack you with waves. But yeah, more bosses, especially if they were more randomised would be nice, keep you on your toes since you wouldn't know what boss the next run will bring, but then again it's just been released. I'd rather they release a solid base they can build off of, instead of a mess of a game that has tons of content, but is rushed.

Next, guns. Now abandoning the guns you don't need I personally have no issue with. Whilst it would be nice if they can be recycled or such, it's hardly something that breaks the game. Plenty of games do the same thing where you can't do anything else with weapons you don't need but drop them.

Commands for Solo, I certainly feel would be nice, other than Follow and Stop. Plenty of times I wanted to move a companion and had to either swap to them and move them, or get them to follow and stop again. Commands like Guard the Bot, or Guard a Generator would be really nice additions. By allowing the player to issue more exact commands, it'll make it easier to command them on the fly.

Difficulty, now that's always going to be relative dependant on the player. I know that I've struggled on Hard myself, and mostly been sticking to Easy and Normal. There are ways to increase the difficulty if you really wanted to that doesn't require any higher difficulty. Try adding a cocktail modifier to a run, or even doing the run with a single hero, whilst this isn't a higher difficulty level, adding more limitations to yourself will make the game more challenging. In the case of revival, I have no issue with it, although the timer is a little long, and I think the timer should vary based on the difficulty level. The teleport to the Bot is your only means of quick travel as it were, any I have no issue with it personally. But again, it could be more of an optional, or even something restricted based on difficulty level. Give it a cooldown on higher difficulties perhaps, allowing people to still have access to that button in an emergency, but not something someone can use all of the time. As for healing, I don't think there's issues with the amount of HP healed with the medkits. Whilst they are lifesavers, they're not that exploitable in my opinion. Sure you might have dozens of medkits, but if your Bot gets destroyed you die anyways, and that has less opportunities for healing than you do. Either way, whilst I don't think higher difficulty is required, it is something that could be added at a later date.

The no chat system is awkward though, all you can do is ping. Now whilst there is voice chat in the game, there's no means to type to one another, which makes coordination with random players quite hard. Not everyone has a headset after all, or even wants to speak, an option for a text chat would be a nice inclusion, but that just my opinion there.

Finally, yeah, I'll fully agree with you on the last topic, there is a lack of replayability in a game which appears to be intended to be a Roguelike. Now I know it's still early days, so many things can change, but I was expecting to die a lot more times before ever making it close to the Core, each run being used to improve my starting position, equipment etc. It would be nice if the game was expanded upon in that manner. But that's just personal opinion at this point.

In conclusion; more adorable, cute murderous fuzzy bees please. They're hecking adorable. (Very biased here, I know)

As an addittion to my first post, I would also like to adress the lack of a leaderbord/world score with the times and scores of people. And also, there is no timer ingame to know how long you've been in the run, to get the sub 60 min achievement i had to use my phone chrono and start stop everytime you change floor etc. Please, include an in game timer, and a scoreboard.

Kulsar wrote:

 

Hi!

First things first, congratulations with the launch. I don't wanna sound like a douche so i'll start saying what I like about the game. The setting is amazing, and the graphics are very cool. The lore is amazing as always, and the backstories are nice and refreshing, you have a really creative team. Now i'll start with the things that, IN MY OPINION (before anyone jumps to my neck) could be improved. 

 

To address the elephant in the room, as many people said, its lacking content everywhere, playable characters, guns, level design, monsters and SPECIALLY boss attacks. Bosses are ridiculously easy. I'll give those firsts a pass since the game's been out for a week, and I expect more content to be included with time, but the design of the bosses is simply bad... I'm sorry if it sounds rough. Regarding enemies, you could resort to dungeon of the endless and bring more of the creatures present there, or inspire yourself in some of those designs, like the chimera keeper that would be amazing to have in here, or the hurna rider. Not necessarily the same foe, but the concept of the enemy that grows and the one who opens doors and could bring more enemies.

 

Other big thing for me is that guns that you abandon aren't useful for anything? Please implement an option do destroy them to turn them into random resources/scrap or to drop/sell to the merchants for resources.

 

The commands that you can give to the characters are very limited. You should implement more options regarding that, and I think it’s a BIG flaw in game design. Not being able to send a character to a room from the map is the first one, and not being able to command a character to follow the crystal while it moves is another great one. Those two would DRASTICALLY change the game, so I strongly suggest you talk about it and see if you think that you could develop it. 

 

Well now it’s just a pair of bugs that are annoying, one is not even a bug, but I'll say it since I don’t think it's on purpose. First one is corners. They're almost all of them bugged, and vegetation. I have a couple of clips, I don’t know if I can upload them here, better to post them on YouTube and post a link or if you want them sent to you, please tell me and i'll do. Second one is big guns and close combat. When you are using a long gun, foes at melee distance can’t be damaged. The clearest example is attempting to destroy a barrel at melee distance, the gun is just clipped within it, and it receives no damage. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that, and I suggest you to check it also if it’s not purposefully. 

 

Also, difficulty. I started playing in the highest and kept it like that. First games with nothing unlocked, and not knowing how to play were hard, nice. Then you discover that you just need to spam industry and put the only useful turret in chokepoints, and its done. You just go forward. No boss has killed me in my first try since they're dumb easy. If you get past first floor and have a little resource management, you simply win. To fix that i suggest various things: please, in the hardest difficulty, don’t allow characters to be revived. Doing so you solve 2 problems: one, medkits being absolutely useless since you can just die and press E to revive the fallen character, and 2 you change the playstyle drastically. You also need to balance the game in several aspects. Some perks for the characters, the crystal and guns are stupidly strong, and others are just bad options that no one is gonna use. You get healing for the crystal, and you can literally just tell him to follow you around while you open doors like a madman. Characters are also unbalanced, shroom is a freewin also. I’m not saying is easy to fix, I'm just giving feedback. I know it will be finicky and hard to adjust the game. Returning to difficulty aspect, if you don’t want to change the ones implemented, just another level of difficulty with no reviving or a very short time to do so, so you need to be in the same room or vicinity to revive the fallen character, NO teleport to the crystal (I don’t even know why this option exists, it reduces the difficulty BIG time but you are the developers, that’s my opinion only) and reduced healing maybe. Also, why no max medkits btw? I tried a few runs in easy to get the 60 mins achievement and i arrived to the core with 500+ in resources, if I needed I could just buy a ton of medkits and spam them? idk, that’s also weird.

 

Regarding multiplayer, and being a strategic game, no chat is something that sincerely, I cant understand how got past you. No voice chat I can understand since people online can be douchebags, but not even a text chat?? 

 

 

The last thing, and probably the most important... replayability. This is a roguelike that encourages next to 0 to play it once you get all story pieces, and only if you are interested in lore. If you wanna play just for the sake of it, what changes between one run and the next one? the characters? I don’t know, there’s a big hole here and it needs fixing. Im trying to get all the achievements just because, and while replaying I’m just feeling robotic, just redo and redo the same things time after time.

 

I’m quite sad that the game has been released in this state, but at the same time I got faith that you can fix it and polish it with a few updates and you will make a great game. Dungeon of the endless was a GREAT game and set the bar pretty high, that’s why I feel this one if experimenting kind of a backlash. Best of luck, I’m missing a few points i also noticed but this is long enough as it is and I don’t want to make it sound like everything is horrible. Its a nice game, it just needs a little extra. If i had to prioritize or say the most important thing, it would be the replayability. Fix that to make every run unique and fun and make the player wonder "what will I encounter next run??" and this game could be gold! I hope I didn’t sound like a douche, I know creating a game is very challenging and I appreciate and love the effort you’ve made with this game. Best of luck, cheers and lots of love ^^.

 

 

PD: please stop using Steven Universe as an inspiration for character personalities please, its so burnt out hehehe.

 

Good luck!! I trust in Amplified studios ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Thanks for the words ^-^
No worries, all feedback is welcome as long as it is constructive (which is your case).
All the different feedback is noted, but I can see that some elements could be more easy to change than others.