OP impressions,
Guild of Dungeoneering:
This is better than the last 2 games, especially because it still has a lot of readily apparent potential. Unfortunately, it has its fair share of issues in its current state as well.
The idea is as simple as it sounds appealing, you are playing a roguelike simulator in which you get a randomized set of cards each round, from which you can create the dungeon elements (rooms, enemies, loot) and add them to the current dungeon layout. You arent directly controlling your character, but are instead guiding him with tempting loot and enemies. There are 2 currencies to play cards, offering some tactical decisions as well, "hope" and "dread". You get 1 dread every round, with which you can summon enemies and "hope" once you defeated those enemies, which allows you to summon treasures for your hero to take.
So far, so good. Its currently an alpha demo, so I dont want to be too harsh, but I see some fundamental design flaws with this and I felt like writing a wall of text as constructive criticism that the dev is never going to read
1. Deck customization.
Card based games require you to be able to adjust your deck to avoid completely random bullshit options. I dont see it mentioned anywhere that you will be able to do that and they currently seem to focus more on making it a highscore game (how far can you go and how much treasures can you collect before you die), instead of allowing the player to build the card deck and therefore also allow for adding other cards, because as it stands, you play the game for 10 minutes, then you get almost only crap cards that dont do anything other than raising your score. This is incredibly anticlimactic in a game with a roguelike foundation. They might be able to adjust that deck automatically based on the player level/equipment, which might work well for this kind of game, though.
2. Balancing.
They are going to have a huge issue balancing the game, as it allows you to simply not use cards you get. You can throw away cards, use them, or keep them and there is a basic risk/reward thing going on here (defeat higher level enemy, get more hope, play better equipment/treasure card), but you can way too easily cheat it. Just throw all cards away except the level 0 monsters, which you can defeat by not taking any damage at all and you can theoretically make endless progress. They might be able to balance that by automatically adjusting card chance percentages based on the player level (Level 1 - 40% chance for level 0 enemy, level 2 - 30% chance for level 0 enemy, etc), but I havent seen yet what they plan on doing regarding this.
3. Dangers
Its not fun exploring the dungeon because you are building it yourself.That might sound stupid, but the biggest draw for these kind of games is their unpredictability and while the "idea" of building a dungeon for your character to scavenger in is neat, it simply doesnt work for me on a fundamental level. They might need to add random elements (which would also counter act complaint #2) to the game, which in turn pushes them away from the player dungeoneering a bit. But still, I cant see this game working at all without random elements, say every card has a 10% chance of spawning without the player being able to influence it. That way the player will actually be forced to use some strategic dungeoneering to steer the character towards or away from a danger. Additionally, the rooms actually need to be "different", offering different strategic problems, not just look different. Poison, lava, boss rooms (every monster you put in there gets upgraded), etc.
4. Not enough strategic information.
You have a character sheet, which shows your own stats, but there is no info on the monsters, making it hard to judge whether you should even approach an enemy. Easy to remedy by adding stats to the monster cards though.
5. Character AI
It is currently just walking towards the nearest enemy/item I think, which seems... weird as you can basically steer the character to an almost 100% accurate degree, yet still only play him passively. The idea of "simulating" the dungeon for an AI to traverse and all its potential merits and potential is completely out of the window if they dont think of an improvement for that.
6. Items
Currently no other items other than equipment, but I am sure they'll add a rudimentary inventory and items like potions eventually. The current alpha demo seems rather barebones without them though as you can never regain health and usually end up dying after 10-15 minutes if you take on stronger enemies or just stay alive forever if you dont.
Potential: Yes, Chance of fulfilling potential: depends on the ambition of the dev, but considering it needs a LOT of additions -> low. They are asking 10$ for the preorder which is 50% of the targeted 20$ price point and they are FAR off from that atm.
Also:
1. Card City Nights
2. Cubesis
3. Glitchspace
4. Black Ice
5. Cosmochoria
6. Banished
7. Blue Saga
8. Action Painting Pro
9. Clockefeller
10. Bosses Forever
11. Astrovoid
12. Guild of Dungeoneering
13. Grabbles
14. Cubrick
15. Goofball Goals
16. Cloudbase Prime
I'll keep you posted as it comes closer.
