Reviews for Deterministic Dungeon

[Pelemus-McSoy]

HeadShotGlass had a similar experience I had, so I'll try to avoid repeating that review (but I make no promises). I will also preface this with I stopped playing in the Silver floors. I will also make an occasional reference to Pokemon.

/*The Good*/
~A sense of progression...kinda.
The beginning of each dungeon is challenging and offers weaker enemies along with the option for new, tougher enemies. With enough grinding, the end of each dungeon is relatively easy. I was even able to walk up to previous floors and one shot most of the enemies.
While this works out great in the beginning of the game, it seems to stagnate near the end, especially if you can't level past 20.

~Intuitive game play.
It was easy to pick up and play, and never once said "How the heck do I do something?" during the game.

~Not being attacked by all enemies at once.
When I first encountered two of the tougher enemies, I was afraid I was doomed given the amount of damage they do. Thankfully, it was balanced by being attacked by one monster per turn, and allowed for some tactical thinking (for me, I would target the tough guys or the Mages first).

~Optional bosses.
The bosses are strong, and making them optional was very much appreciated. It allowed me to grind on higher level monsters and come back later.

~Solid damage formulas.
This ties in with the progression. I definitely felt stronger as I went along.

/*The Bad*/
~Unbalanced weapons.
Weapons were either high accuracy/low damage, high damage/low accuracy, or low damage/low accuracy. While the low accuracy can be mildly mitigated by choosing my attack, I kept ending on 0 more often than the regular odds. And yet, I felt I needed to use the higher damaging weapons so I wouldn't be crushed by the enemies who did significant damage. Which leads me to...

~Cannot heal outside of combat...or much for that matter.
While I appreciated being completely healed when leveling up, needing to use a scroll in combat only to heal was completely unintuitive and rather unfair. Even Pokemon lets me use a Potion outside of battle. Once the scrolls are gone, I'm boned. Given that I don't usually play Rogue style games, maybe this is normal, but it doesn't make me want to play again if I get so far.

~Crappy loot pool at higher levels.
The fact I was finding Plastic Shields, Bucket Helmets, and Butter Knives when I was level 17 and in the Silver floors was mildly insulting to say the least. The sense of progression I had felt before was gone at that point.
I also couldn't tell if the special weapons I got from the Golden Orbs were secretly amazing or intentionally bad. I couldn't risk using them in the later levels due to the high damage that was being dealt to me.

~Level floor layout tended to be similar for me.
A minor issue I experienced most of the floor plans ended up being the same. Most rooms would connect to each other.

/*Suggestions*/
~Add a currency and shop system.
Sacrificing gear in the magic room for powerful magic was neat, but I'd rather be able to sell the gear and purchase some "random" gear, especially healing items. It would also help clear out the huge clutter of gear I'm not using.

~Add stronger and more accurate weapons the further down you go.
If the weapons progressed with me, I would have enjoyed this game a lot more. Pokemon had their moves became progressively stronger and remained relatively accurate (unless you get to the stupid strong moves like Fire Blast, which has lower accuracy).
When I was making an RPG a few years ago (never made it out of beta, unfortunately), I realized I was undercutting the sense of progression by making the stronger moves inaccurate or causing splash damage. Why bother learning them then?

~Let the loot progress with me.
At some point, the Wooden and Plastic gear needs to be gone completely. I was shocked I could still get those at late levels, and fed up when I had the misfortune of getting them. Even though Destiny has a crappy RNG, at least it phases out the lowest tier items as you progress.

/*Overall*/
For the most part I enjoyed it, but got annoyed by the end. I appreciate that you've been reading and responding to the comments (which means you care). I look forward to seeing a sequel in the future.

~Pelo

PestoForce responds:

Thanks for the detailed review, I'll definitely keep it in mind for the mobile fully-fleshed-out version.

[HeadShotGlass]

So, I've been playing this for the last three or so hours, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit! That being said, I feel like there's a few extreme problems that keep it from being as fun as it could be. I'm currently at level 4-2, with only one of the totems, so it could be that I'm missing out on a few things that I haven't been able to find because of the game's randomness.

First off, I do like the arcade-style stop button mechanic. It's a nice idea, and if you have the reflexes for it, you can make sure that nothing bad ever happens to you. However, I wish there was a way to enable a true RNG to allow me to speed up the game a little bit. I don't have the reflexes to influence my "random" outcomes, which makes the 0's and other unfavorable outcomes more frustrating.

Speaking of which, a personal gripe that I started developing around floor 3 is the existence of that 0 on almost every roll you make. It is one of the most infuriating things in this game, and starts wearing thin very quickly. It's comparable, in my opinion, to rolling a "crit-fail" in Dungeons and Dragons. In D&D, if you roll a 1 on your 20 sided die, no matter what stats your character has you will fail your task horrifically, even if the task was trying to open a door by kicking it. Conversely, rolling a 20 will allow you to succeed without considering your character's stats, usually with the inclusion of some flavorful storytelling.

In D&D, rolling a 1 is exactly a 1/20 chance. In this game, rolling a 0, which has almost the same effect as a crit-fail, is often times a 1/3, 1/4, etc. chance, and can be rolled multiple times, increasing the odds of getting a 0 at some point in each round. This deprives you of an attack on your turn, the chance to get loot, or how much you were able to block, and allows your enemies to act however they choose. Additionally, during the loot drop screen, you can potentially get useless items like the wooden spoon on floor 4, meaning that even if you successfully rolled the categories you needed to get there, you can still end up getting effectively nothing. Conversely, there is no way to get a random critical, where you succeed and are able to do more damage than normal. This leaves you with the choice of either doing nothing on your turn, or doing about average for the weapons you have. When you have multiple instances of the worst possible outcome happening, this starts to become infuriating. On floor 4-2, I rolled 3 enemies, all from the top available tier of minions. I then missed my first 4 attacks, hit twice for lower damage, missed another three attacks, and had to use a full heal scroll. After this battle ended, I rolled a 2, but got a wooden spoon and a tinfoil cap. This is the worst that I had, but battles often have this much amount of bad luck involved.

So, randomness non-withstanding, there are a few other problems. As far as I can tell, there's no reason to block. Ever. Yes, it does mitigate damage from an incoming attack, but it doesn't heal you, and it doesn't change the board state in any way (enemies don't take damage, get stunned for hitting the shield, etc.). Ultimately, you are passing your turn while taking a little less damage, which is a useless ability in my opinion. It's never a better choice than attacking and taking full damage. If there were other party members, and a way to predict which party members would get hit, blocking would become much more valuable.

Also, the disparity in quality of the scrolls is enormous. Some of them, like Poison and Fireball, are either weak or situational, and rarely better than taking an attack. Others are extremely powerful, to the point of being broken, like Freeze and Lightning/Psionic Blast. Also, the stat boosting scrolls take up a turn to use, instead of just being applied when picked up, which feels a little out of place. The biggest outlier, though, has to be the Weapon Boost scroll. The attack boost is so minimal that, more often than not, you end up taking the same amount of turns to kill the enemies than you would have by auto attacking. Add in the fact that you have to take a turn to apply the weapon boost, and it just ends up being useless.

A small quality of life problem that I started having is that there's no way to change your equipment except while in battle, and after picking up loot. While it doesn't present a big problem, it just feels a little awkward to either take a turn equipping different equipment, or waiting to get a piece of loot so that you can switch.It also feels weird to not be able to check my equipment while outside of battle.

All of that being said, it is a very enjoyable game. I wouldn't have played it for three hours if it was a "bad" game. I think some small things, like different character classes, additional party members, and just a little bit more of an ability to influence the game would really make this game shine.

TLDR: The arcade-style push button to stop the selector is interesting, but it may as well be random if you don't have the reflexes to reliably hit what you want. When you factor in the odds of getting useless results from your rolls, minor balance problems with the loot tables and scroll abilities, and awkwardness of managing your character, the game starts to feel a little unfair the further in you go. The game is definitely fun, and with a little work it could be pretty awesome, but because of those problems it's also something that starts feeling frustrating after a while.

PestoForce responds:

Thanks for taking the time to write this review. It's really detailed and spot on in its analysis. I plan to tweak most everything you've listed for the mobile sequel, including some other things (like different selector methods) to help even out that "unfair" feeling you're describing.

I'm also glad that, despite the many problems with the game, you were able to see thru to what makes it special. I hope you'll follow me and pick up the mobile version when it comes out!

[succdaddy]

why it gotta be so hard tho

PestoForce responds:

It can be really hard, depending on your reaction skill and your luck with loot/totems, but it can also get incredibly easy!

[monkeyswillrule]

Game was fun and pretty addictive. The only thing is the game stopped being so random when I was able to basically hit what ever I wanted, whenever I wanted without really trying. Was pretty sad that the stats only went up to 20 when I was level 13. Only thing I can really say about this game is 'Totems you da real mvp." Haha, could have used a better ending but it was still fun. Nice work.

PestoForce responds:

Thanks for the review!

[foriegncreature1]

I would give it 5 stars if i didn't play for hours just to get that bad ending.

PestoForce responds:

What was so bad about it? You saved me!