comments for Rejected Draft
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this game reminds me of Absorber, very similar but i like the different features
Honestly I really enjoy this. I'm not a huge fan of AI assets but the graphics are so inconsequential here that I can almost forgive it. All the same, to echo others, even bad sketches by real humans would be better. But I am enjoying, and hoping it unfolds as deeply as it appears. Progress is a bit slow in some areas, but I do feel a constant progression nonetheless. Happy to sink my teeth into this and look forward to future updates, thanks!
I want to like this game, but the growth rate feels rather unbalanced.
Redraw stat buffs exist, but they don't feel overly impactful even when I've dumped in 10 million points over various stats.
Initially the growth from killing stuff feels fitting for the enemy's stats, but later on it's just... I'm not sure what the word for it is, so I'll go with [scuffed]. It feels very uneven.
The enemy rarity thing initially seems interesting, but then you find out that previously discovered ones also just disappear on the next reset. So you might've just had a great reset with plenty of bonuses and allowing you to go a couple of steps further, followed by a reset without anything extra and making you feel handicapped.
Rather than the extras feeling like a reward, the lack of them feels like a punishment to me. That's not even mentioning several of the prestige upgrades being locked behind you beating a certain number of these rare spawns, so if you're somehow comically unlucky you're going to be doing a lot of resets.
The passive resource gain so far also feels rather underwhelming. I see some upgrades later on that seem to promise finally getting more than 0.1/s, but they are well outside of my reach for the foreseeable future.
Redraw stat buffs exist, but they don't feel overly impactful even when I've dumped in 10 million points over various stats.
Initially the growth from killing stuff feels fitting for the enemy's stats, but later on it's just... I'm not sure what the word for it is, so I'll go with [scuffed]. It feels very uneven.
The enemy rarity thing initially seems interesting, but then you find out that previously discovered ones also just disappear on the next reset. So you might've just had a great reset with plenty of bonuses and allowing you to go a couple of steps further, followed by a reset without anything extra and making you feel handicapped.
Rather than the extras feeling like a reward, the lack of them feels like a punishment to me. That's not even mentioning several of the prestige upgrades being locked behind you beating a certain number of these rare spawns, so if you're somehow comically unlucky you're going to be doing a lot of resets.
The passive resource gain so far also feels rather underwhelming. I see some upgrades later on that seem to promise finally getting more than 0.1/s, but they are well outside of my reach for the foreseeable future.
developer response: The game barely even resembles what it was at the time of this comment.
As the other commentors pointed out, the foundations for a great game are here, but the rate of progress from redraws is absolutely awful. Spending tons of clicks/quintessence and feeling like you barely notice a difference next run is just bad game design.
I've deleted my previous comment about AI due to the efforts to replace those images in game, and I genuinely do appreciate that effort. It makes the game feel like it's something that you care about and not just a clone of Absorber.
What I didn't comment on previously was the game and it's progression. As many others have said, status effects are ridiculously meaningless until you are tens of hours deeper into the upgrade tree that you start to even see them proc. Even then, they are basically nothing more than cosmetic. Who cares about a 25% chance to apply 1 stack of Hinder, which gives the enemy a 0.1% chance to not attack? Or the 0.2% chance to apply poison that deals 0.1% health damage per second to the enemy? Or how about the 7% to gain 1 stack of Thorns that deals ONE DAMAGE to the enemy when they attack, when the earliest enemy that gives Thorns has 7.5e8 health. Yes, 750000000 health.
My lifetime total Quintessence is sitting at 2.75e91; plenty of time has been put into this, yet still the only stats from enemies that meaningfully change anything with any consistency are health, damage, and armor.
My advice is that there is too much here (too many meaningless stats, and therefore also too many meaningless nodes on the single prestige layer) that take away from a more solid core. The brevity of Absorber is nice; it doesn't overstay its welcome and, more importantly, you feel stronger when you defeat an enemy.
What I didn't comment on previously was the game and it's progression. As many others have said, status effects are ridiculously meaningless until you are tens of hours deeper into the upgrade tree that you start to even see them proc. Even then, they are basically nothing more than cosmetic. Who cares about a 25% chance to apply 1 stack of Hinder, which gives the enemy a 0.1% chance to not attack? Or the 0.2% chance to apply poison that deals 0.1% health damage per second to the enemy? Or how about the 7% to gain 1 stack of Thorns that deals ONE DAMAGE to the enemy when they attack, when the earliest enemy that gives Thorns has 7.5e8 health. Yes, 750000000 health.
My lifetime total Quintessence is sitting at 2.75e91; plenty of time has been put into this, yet still the only stats from enemies that meaningfully change anything with any consistency are health, damage, and armor.
My advice is that there is too much here (too many meaningless stats, and therefore also too many meaningless nodes on the single prestige layer) that take away from a more solid core. The brevity of Absorber is nice; it doesn't overstay its welcome and, more importantly, you feel stronger when you defeat an enemy.
developer response: Thanks for the detailed feedback and for putting so many hours into the game! You’re actually right at the transition point where those 'meaningless' stats become the only way to progress, but I hear you and agree thay they shouldn't feel cosmetic for that long.
I’m actively working on rebalancing the early game progression. Recent updates introduced concepts of Immunities and Vulnerabilities which will allow a new dimension of balancing early sketches without breaking late game scaling, and should make status effects feel more useful. Hope you continue enjoying the game and looking forward to hearing more feedback!
Can you include patch notes directly in the game somewhere? The latest patch looks good so far, but I'd like to see changes without having to go to discord
developer response: I added the log of changes since initial release to Galaxy as an update. Will do that with every major version (every few weeks). For daily changelogs Discord is still the best source for now.
Major, major kudos for listening to the community and rectifying the AI art situation. This was an awesome example of how this could and should be handled, and now your game can receive the accolades it deserves without any asterisk or hesitation. Awesome job @Kuzzi!
what happens if i try asking for the dev password
developer response: .
I got no comments on the actual gameplay loop outside of it being VERY slow, but I understand that's probably the intent. What I REALLY want to comment on is the active work going into replacing the AI art with actual artists. Some of these drawings are fantastic, funny, and look really good!! I was really hesitant to play due to the gen-ai tag, but logging into the game every day and seeing more sketches being made by real humans is putting a big smile on my face.
Overall a good concept! I appreciate that it's very playable on mobile though it could definitely use some attention there (two or even one column in the gallery would be ideal). Having some degree of offline progression for combat would be a major quality of life improvement for mobile as well. I love a wally incremental if it's engaging and so far so good here but it's slow enough to make me move to PC so it can run all the time.
Also, you do you on AI but I honestly don't think the images are particularly nice to look at and the game would work just fine without them so having an option to hide them would be nice. I think it would also be fun to use parts of actual art that are in the public domain. Artists sketchbooks are a veritable treasure trove for this kind of thing
Also also, don't mind Jells, not every game has to be over in an afternoon. Plenty of us like something consistent to return to
Also, you do you on AI but I honestly don't think the images are particularly nice to look at and the game would work just fine without them so having an option to hide them would be nice. I think it would also be fun to use parts of actual art that are in the public domain. Artists sketchbooks are a veritable treasure trove for this kind of thing
Also also, don't mind Jells, not every game has to be over in an afternoon. Plenty of us like something consistent to return to
developer response: I'm sorry you don't like the art.
Would you like an option to hide all the images or just the subset where AI was used?
Most offensive status effects are kind of pointless when they only have 1% chance of landing and each stack only affects like 1% of their stat. The only useful one seems to be plague since it self propagates.
Dodge is so op on the enemies that it basically becomes gambling later on like why are there so many enemies with 60%+ (AND THE ANNOYING FROG)
i love the absorber vibes
It bugs me a little that overkill only works for multi-kills and doesn't actually carry over damage to the next surviving enemy.
hey, since you quit using gen-ai, why's the tag still here? is it just stuck there?
developer response: There are still some gen-ai assets left in the game, but they are being replaced daily. Will remove tag when they are gone.
I do like what's here... but I'll say that I was not expecting the rough sketch I unlocked on my first prestige to relock after the next. Given how abysmal the chances of random-unlock-rate per prestige seems to be, losing the only one I did have access to made me want to immediately chew sand. Did I miss something? Why is it like that?
Is there a setting for changing the notifications back to how they were? The tilted slightly cursive looking text is much slower for my brain to read.
I've been having a ton of fun with this, love the style and gameplay. Just when I think progress is happening too slowly, I get a glossary entry that unlocks the archive upgrade I needed to boost me again. I love thinking about all the units behind the first one with a dodge chance and low enough health that I can get a bunch of overkill, just begging the guy in front to not get hit.
I wonder when my attributes other than HP, ATK starts to affect the fight for real.
developer response: Currently I have volunteer artists helping submit their drawings to replace the AI art. Join our Discord channel if you want to get involved.