Posted November 21, 2017
It's a little short at the moment, but overall it's a good experience so far with a really engaging combat system. The art style is another big plus too. I'm really looking forward to how this game pans out in the coming months.
Going to go into some finer details now -- and this of course is all my opinion, so feel free to use it or discard it as you please =)
-You may want the player to be able to designate a leader/captain. In other words, which of your 3 characters will be doing the talking to NPC's in the cut scenes. At the moment it's random?
-There's 3 derelicts to choose from at the beginning, but 2 have been effectively sectioned off (since they' re level 1, level 2, level 3) If you want to give the player more autonomy in the game, give each node a brief description of the main quest, and scale them up to level 2 and then level 3 based on the order they were selected.
-The base screen is very static at the moment, both in terms of visuals and interaction. I come back from a dangerous trek into deep space and the only thing that's changed is a few items in the shop. There's no sense of progression or anything dynamic happening. Most of the time I just quickly made a few clicks and left straight away (15-20 seconds at most) If you want to keep people there for a little longer between mission runs, consider having NPC's that talk to the player about what's happening or has happened (a great opportunity to deliver more information about this really interesting Sci-Fi world you've created) Make that optional though, some players may want to dive straight back in. On a visual level too it feels very static, I'm not sure but possibly some animations could be used here - or maybe small visual tweaks as the player progresses (for example the 2 people at the bottom left could change after you've completed 2 or 3 derelicts)
*The next few points are much more subjective*
-As for game balancing, I think you may want to reduce the number of cards the player has access to early on. I was near the start of the 2nd derelict and I had a ton of card options for all my characters. This can be a little over whelming and I think as the game progresses, it could end up worse at the current rate.
- I was deliberately reducing the number of card options on my medic, to increase the chance of certain buffs showing up in combat and this made me a little overpowered. You might want to consider a 'sweet spot' rule. If a character has too many cards (say over 8), he has reduced stats in certain areas. And if the character has too few cards, other stats would be reduced. This sweet spot, could be different depending on the character class - which would mean the medic needs a higher number of cards by default compared to say the tracker and would reduce the above hack that I found.
-I think reducing the weapon & equipment drops would be a good idea, as currently I was getting so many it didn't feel like I was earning them. It also led to me being very over powered by the middle of the 2nd derelict, as I had great equipment on all characters from all the drops. My tracker at that point had a weaponery stat of 70+ and was destroying everything that dared to show up! (I had 3 aimed shot cards on that character too from various equipment, it was insanely effective)
-You might want to consider having certain character classes have additional non-combat functions. Maybe the Technician could hack computers or terminals in the scanner screen/The Tracker could detect biological life forms close by without needing a scan/and maybe the bruiser could use his strength in some way. I would love to have some additional stuff to do in the derelicts like the above. Even something like a trader or two in there would be great.
-The Technician as it stands seems the worse class. You might want to make him stronger, or make robotic enemies more challenging for other classes and him having some kind of bonus against them.
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Going to go into some finer details now -- and this of course is all my opinion, so feel free to use it or discard it as you please =)
-You may want the player to be able to designate a leader/captain. In other words, which of your 3 characters will be doing the talking to NPC's in the cut scenes. At the moment it's random?
-There's 3 derelicts to choose from at the beginning, but 2 have been effectively sectioned off (since they' re level 1, level 2, level 3) If you want to give the player more autonomy in the game, give each node a brief description of the main quest, and scale them up to level 2 and then level 3 based on the order they were selected.
-The base screen is very static at the moment, both in terms of visuals and interaction. I come back from a dangerous trek into deep space and the only thing that's changed is a few items in the shop. There's no sense of progression or anything dynamic happening. Most of the time I just quickly made a few clicks and left straight away (15-20 seconds at most) If you want to keep people there for a little longer between mission runs, consider having NPC's that talk to the player about what's happening or has happened (a great opportunity to deliver more information about this really interesting Sci-Fi world you've created) Make that optional though, some players may want to dive straight back in. On a visual level too it feels very static, I'm not sure but possibly some animations could be used here - or maybe small visual tweaks as the player progresses (for example the 2 people at the bottom left could change after you've completed 2 or 3 derelicts)
*The next few points are much more subjective*
-As for game balancing, I think you may want to reduce the number of cards the player has access to early on. I was near the start of the 2nd derelict and I had a ton of card options for all my characters. This can be a little over whelming and I think as the game progresses, it could end up worse at the current rate.
- I was deliberately reducing the number of card options on my medic, to increase the chance of certain buffs showing up in combat and this made me a little overpowered. You might want to consider a 'sweet spot' rule. If a character has too many cards (say over 8), he has reduced stats in certain areas. And if the character has too few cards, other stats would be reduced. This sweet spot, could be different depending on the character class - which would mean the medic needs a higher number of cards by default compared to say the tracker and would reduce the above hack that I found.
-I think reducing the weapon & equipment drops would be a good idea, as currently I was getting so many it didn't feel like I was earning them. It also led to me being very over powered by the middle of the 2nd derelict, as I had great equipment on all characters from all the drops. My tracker at that point had a weaponery stat of 70+ and was destroying everything that dared to show up! (I had 3 aimed shot cards on that character too from various equipment, it was insanely effective)
-You might want to consider having certain character classes have additional non-combat functions. Maybe the Technician could hack computers or terminals in the scanner screen/The Tracker could detect biological life forms close by without needing a scan/and maybe the bruiser could use his strength in some way. I would love to have some additional stuff to do in the derelicts like the above. Even something like a trader or two in there would be great.
-The Technician as it stands seems the worse class. You might want to make him stronger, or make robotic enemies more challenging for other classes and him having some kind of bonus against them.
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