Anyway, I didn't get much feedback from other developers, but I did find out that it's a bit hard to get into. I spent a week focusing on the initial user experience. I had originally wanted it to be like a classic game where the story is in the manual and you figured out the game by trying new things. Then I looked at the games I have to compete with.
I might have gone a little overboard with polishing the user experience:
- I added an intro cinematic, which explains the story.
- I made it ever so slightly easier. I think people forgive "too easy" more readily than "too hard" (regardless of what online forums would have you believe).
- I didn't think that was quite enough so I added in a dialog system that I could use to give some amount of hint and direction to the first couple levels.
- I still needed some way to explain all the status effects and such, and I just couldn't bring myself to do that in the dialog system. It would have been too much initial reading.
- So I opted for a few screens of reference material in the start menu.
- When trying to tersely word a help file, I realized that my combat system was generally just complicated to explain and a bit too random. So I made some technical changes to combat. Now attacks deal slightly less, but there's a chance of getting a critical hit.
As I write, I'm playing through the game and making sure the combat changes haven't broken anything. Then it's time to submit.
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