comments for Karma Keepers
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developer response: Oh this is concerning, are you using the web-version right? Is it on fullscreen? I am thinking that non-fullscreen if you are dragging and get out of the game's window the mouse will "lock" into the last state (dragging) and it will keep dragging no matter you're holding or not (probably doing a new drag action on the game's window will reset this). This should be fixable for web-versions, I need to take a look. What really concerns me is the crash, can you open the developor tools on the browser and send me the logs you see there? you can mail me at "hello[at]yonaz.dev" thanks!
Overall, I don't really know how I feel about this. I feel like I should like this, and it seems like all the pieces are there for a great little incremental, but at the same time there are a lot of pain points and offputting design choices.
What I like
+ The art style, the music, and the overall theme.
The weird
~ Why can I improve "extractors" before I can get any of them? Even after finishing the demo and branching out the skill tree as much as I could, I never even saw a way to unlock them.
~ Why are the velocity vector lines showing for all of the NPCs? (I don't mean the target lines when they lock onto something) Surely that's a debug feature?
~ Some of the popups seem to appear at the wrong time. e.g. The explanation for the ascension ball appeared after it exploded, when I would've thought it would pop up when it spawned?
~ Why does the corruption wave exist? Other than to punish you for idling too long?
~ Why are NPC health and faith separate systems? Just make the shadows do "faith damage" and that way the player can actually heal people after an invasion, feels awful to see low health NPCs and know they're going to die next time you're invaded.
~ All of the +/-X(%) upgrades appear to be linear, so the first ones are barely noticeable, which isn't great for getting players excited about buying them.
~ I keep reading "prayers" as prayers, but I'm guessing you mean it like "pray-ers" as in "those who pray"? I'd change that name if I were you, it's hard to associate that as a class of NPC rather than an item like a blob of faith.
What I don't like
- The balancing between active and idle seems to hit the "sweet spot" of being 'too active to justify low attention on my second monitor' and 'not having enough to do to justify giving it my full attention'.
- There's a lot of jargon introduced very quickly. I found it hard to keep track of what meant what.
- I spent a fair bit of time waiting to unlock fighters, only for them to be pathetic.They're the same speed as the shadows (so they only catch up if the shadows change course or run into a corner) and they deal 1 damage (barely visible on their health bar) every 5 seconds. Obviously they get better with upgrades, but I felt like I had just wasted all that time, especially with the upgrade cap kicking in.
- While we're talking about pathing, good luck if something runs into the bottom right corner because the mini-map stops you from being able to interact with them.
- All caps text is fine for headings, but using it for everything makes it harder to read, especially for those with dyslexia. I'd really look at changing the font.
- The skills talk about the chance for lost souls to turn into X, but there's nowhere I can see the overall chances? e.g. 70% keeper, 10% recollector...
- While we're on skills: You introduce a cap, fair enough, but at least make them all useful. e.g. "Shadow Warrior Rate" reducing the 60% rate to (I assume) 56% is comically useless.
- It's not uncommon for shadows to wander out of your allowed range, which is frustrating.
- I'm really tired of CRT filters and there's no way to turn it off.
It's not like the game's unredeemable, but I do find myself wondering how you played this in the early game without getting frustrated.
developer response: Hello Pangbot!
A lot of fair points here, some of them are "part of the core" and hard to remove or change without making a new game, but a lot of them are thing I can improve for sure, there are even some new ones that I didn't think about and makes sense to improve/change.
There is one in particular that it's hard to change, the linear progress (is not for all upgrades), at first you have access to 1/3 of levels per upgrade, with miracles you unlock all the real progress, so at first it looks a bit slow or not exciting but it adds up fast later and I need to have it balanced for the middle-late game (or at least try it). But I am sure I can do some adjustments to some of them. As you said some upgrades needs to change the order, or things like that.
The demo is also very limited, the number of blessings is more limited than it will be on the final game.
I am working on a lot of changes and I hope to have a better version soon, thanks for the feedback!
i've also implemented CRT curvature and scan lines in games and retro-themed applications i've made, but i'm always careful to do it in a way that doesn't hurt text-reading legibility
developer response: Why do you say I vibecoded anything? I have been working on this game over a year in a custom game engine using rustlang, there is no "vibecode" here. I am glad you make such good CRTs, where can I see them?
developer response: This seems an issue with the web-version, I can force the cursor size each frame to avoid this for the web version, one user told me that the game in their browser skip frames causing that the cursor never returns to the original size. Does the steam version cause this issue too? Thanks for the comment!