Some hopefully constructive feedback. There are two big frustrations I ran into with this game that I would recommend you avoid in the future. The first is the lack of any sort of guide or instructions. It's one thing to give your players some mysteries to figure out, it's another to make the controls and objectives nearly incomprehensible. The challenge should be in figuring out how to win, not figuring out the mechanics themselves by trial and error.

Second issue is with the combat, specifically the cups game. As a mechanism, it's brilliant, and I would love the challenge of trying to follow the ball as the cups move faster with each round. But why, on earth, would you make the cups switch one more time after you select. It completely negates your skill, because if you successfully pick the cup, that guarantees you'll miss. The only way to get the heart is to deliberately a wrong cup, and then you have a 50/50 chance that the right cup switches to the spot you picked. That is not an improvement on the game, it completely defeats the purpose. If you want the combat to be luck based, then just make it a luck game, not a skill game that punishes you for getting it right.

The music, tone, and composition of the game are pretty good, and I feel like it has tremendous potential. Maybe if you make a revised version, with a tutorial, and a combat system that's actually fair, then you'll have something good on your hands.

Edit: Thanks for the response! It's very helpful seeing the context behind some of your choices in the game. Knowing that "The Fool" selection at the beginning impacts how the cups game will play out makes a HUGE difference, because it implies that selecting a different character at the beginning could shift the game from luck-based to skill-based. That's a really cool mechanic! It shouldn't be hidden! If that sort of information were available at the beginning, even without being too specific, it would make the game a lot more fun, because one could choose the type of character they wanted to play, and then experiment to see which mode worked best for them.

i'm at 4 stars because i'm really enjoying this but having some kind of guide or prompt would bump me up to 5. i've looked through your patch notes and can't figure out exactly what some of the elements in this game are about. im playing and figuring it out gradually, but you pushing this out with no background is making me scratch my head a bit.

update: i have beaten the game and i don't know how most of it works

@axilirate by 'i beat the game' i mean 'i defeated the witch'. i leveled humor and dodged most of her attacks, then lucked out and repeatedly picked the wrong cups so the hit cup was swapped in. It took a while.

Questions: what do the cards do and why do i get a new one every time i sleep? what do humor and focus do (I thought they had to do with combat reflexes and search abilities respectively)? which plants are safe to eat,? is cooking meant to be a substantial mechanic? what is an artifact and how do i get one? why do characters pray? why are suicide and waiting options, is there ever a time where they're the 'right' choice to make in the game? it seems like there are multiple 'you only get one shot at this' encounters like finding a path or digging up a grave (i missed the second one, i forgot that if i searched the area i'd lose the prompt), is that the case or is this randomly generated? i haven't encountered most of the sprites in your game description, so i guess i have a lot more exploration to do? in terms of the story, why is there a witch and why do i need to defeat it?

I find myself comparing this to SACRIFIGHTS (https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/796087), which is also a dark-magic-themed game that requires experimentation, but which starts with a bare-bones set of prompts that at least explain the basic mechanics.

Again, I'm enjoying this and I'll probably give it a few more plays. But I know so little about how the game works that I really don't know what I'm missing in it.

liked