Hi William! Wow, thanks for the long feedback!!
First of all i'd like to ask you 3 questions:
1 - Did you choose Adventure Mode or Campaign Mode?
2 - How many artifacts did you found?
3 - Did you reach the end of the demo?
To answer your feedback:
- The Compass Shield is both for Finding Artifacts in worldmap, Special move in dungeon (damage/destroy, exploration, speed and invincibility) and a skillset in battle, so it's a multiuse powerful tool. You mentioned later that the multifunction might confuse the player, would you suggest some extra info for the player? The functions of the Compass Shield are mentioned in its tutorial;
- Actually in dungeon in the box in the bottomright there's a UI dedicated to show the minimap of the current dungeon floor... since in The Binding of Isaac there was no explicit text that would say the UI is a minimap, i thought that maybe it was enough to get the player aware of its existence, but you're not the first one not noticing that, probably i'm gonna boost that UI (and many others), i wonder if making pulsate the white color of the current room could be enough...
- Do you think the current currency UI is hard to notice? Not sure i understood the one about finding the right shield, the wall destroy scene triggers by moving forward it, after finding the Compass Shield;
- When you mentioned purple boxes and pink squares, did you refer to the same thing? Those blocks are the so called Obstacles in dungeon, you and enemies cannot pass through them but you can destroy them (aside few exceptions) by hitting them with a bomb or the Shield Bash skill. Doing that will destroy them and there's a chance they drop a random loot;
- By flower tiles you mean this one?
This one is a trap (a sort of mud pool), which slows you down when you step on it. I wonder if there could be a way to make it perceive more like mud...
- Red balls enemies should be the Potion-type enemy, they are very fast enemies which will always try to run away from you, on the other hand if you manage to defeat them in battle, you'll get an extra prize. Potion minions are too fast but are optional, the boss versions can actually be defeated, but it requires a bit of strategy. Technically if you cannot reach them, you can still escape from the left side of the screen so the battle will end sooner, but i'm planning to enforce their early escape from battle in case they become too distant from the player, without waiting they reach the right edge of the battle screen, by the way. By locked in a loop, you meant that you were stuck in dungeon in a spot in which it was impossible to avoid the potion? Technically if you have the Compass Shield, there's should always be a wayout;
- Could you elaborate further on the West -> East feedback, please? Not sure if i undertood what you meant... maybe that when you exit a dungeon, the needle direction is inconsistent, compared to the actual position of the next artifact?
- I didn't get what you meant by Black Artifacts... maybe the stains of darkness that appear where you walk? Or the eyes and mouths that spawn during the night?
- About the experience, at the current state the weight of exp gain is strongly pushed toward Treasures and Quests, while the exp gain by monster defeat is quite low and might not be perceived... should i distribute the exp budget more on favor of monster defeat? (the core source should still be Treasure and Quests) Or maybe it's enough increase the exp gain feedback, like some particle effect or a UI display, next to the exp bar?
- The Demo barely scratches the surface of the game, actually the game already features dungeons with several floors, in the next areas, in certain biomes (if you find the artifact that allows you to walk through forest tiles, forest dungeons have 2 floors). Not reccomended, but also dark dungeons have 2+ floors;
- There are the silver keys, not sure what you mean about the red one, though;
- Thanks again for the feedback, without any doubt i'll collect those feedbacks to enhance further the game! I'd definitely love to hear more feedbacks from you in feature, especially after i release new updates;
- There's only one way to know more answers about The Hand: playing further! (I'm quite confident you'll inevitably "meet" it, according to luck, skill, game mode and duration of the run)
this is the "enter city" icon, and clicking it will open the city UI;
those instead are dark stains, they appear and enlarge when you pass through a tile in worldmap, if you pass through the same tile more that x times, after y time has passed... something will happen;