Agreed. The game is generous and the tripler is cheap. It's simple but it's fun and you can play it in short bursts yet still feel like you've achieved something.
29's my best floor now. Was using 3-star equipment only, and this got me like 300 crystals (with the tripler) and almost 4000 scrap in one run. At that point, I couldn't even one-shot the starting crab enemies. Posting some thoughts below, some for the developer and some for everyone playing. TO TANYA: Combat isn't tactical as I'd like, but I think it could get there with tweaks. One thing that may make it a little difficult to make more tactical is probably the fact that the strength stat is really important, and you can get permanent upgrades in it rather than building it up per run. That combined with health being super rare means that it's incredibly important to have enough strength to one-shot things, which puts an awful lot of focus on STR grinding... A small thing that may help: +5 health free healing or so whenever you take a teleporter to the next floor. No bonus if you jump down. Otherwise I'd maybe look into, when you revamp how the clone stats work, capping the permanent stat grind much earlier and then making STR gains be done more in the run itself? Might be a good start, and free up more design space to make the combat more tactical. Not that the game is devoid of tactics... TO PLAYERS: Some tactics I've discovered in my long dives: - It's worth it to run in ANY situation where you'd take slight damage. Get good at planning out your escape routes. Try to find the teleporter first, then keep a safe route to it in mind (without getting trapped by monsters). - Often it's worth it to jump off a cliff if you're trapped by something strong, before it hits you. - Get good at estimating what you can one-shot kill or not. If you can nearly one-shot something, consider your options for getting their health down slightly. Poison, fire, etc. Though these are pretty limited, so there really needs to be a reason to blow this. - You can use a shovel or shatterer or anything that can explode floor tiles to cut off the only exit to the starting room. This will trap the blight in there for the rest of the floor. This is super handy. While the shatterer is recharging, you can use your other anti-blight items for a few floors. - When you have a bunch of unidentified potions, take a step outside of the starting room and then start throwing them away from you, into the hallway to the starting room. The second potions of the same colors you pick up later will be permanently identified. If one's an unidentified explosive, you've just cut off the blight for free. - PRO MOVE for above: If you identify poison, fire, and explosives, you can start throwing potions on yourself instead. The remaining ones are all buffs and heals, so this way you won't waste them. It's rare for this to happen, but when it does it's a very handy tactic. - Check vending machines for healing items often. They're worth it if you can get to the deeper floors, when 50 scrap means nothing. - On later floors, some vending machines can be mimics that do immense damage. BEFORE you uncover their tile, their tile shows a "monster warning". Keep an eye out for this, because I think this may be the only way to uncover them safely. - You can avoid damage from turrets by avoiding their "cardinal directions" and not attacking them. If you must kill them and want to take no damage, a couple of poison or fire potions will do it. Or explode the floor out from under them. Or for the super difficult laser turrets, consider just jumping down a floor. - Some of the random events heal you or give you a +80 health item. Memorize what these are when you find them. - You can use the second mission, the "find new life form" one, to farm items. If you win the mission, you get to keep all items you find while also getting a free mystery crate and a bunch of scrap. You can also murder axe-wielding friendlies to stock up on their weapons and masks, which are pretty decent. That's all I got for now.
I agree with most of the positive sentiment here. Huge potential. At first I really didn't like the potion mechanic, but then I figured out how to identify them for the next use, I liked it better. I like that it resets the potion colors. Gives you something to do while working back down to where you were. The IAP is completely unobtrusive, IMO. Not much to buy really, except speed up character progress or buy skins. If you don't want to build up stats yourself, why are you playing an RPG? Looking forward to updates.
You're not alone. Had the exact same thoughts. Going to give it another try, ignoring items in favor of attribute focus. If character stats are buggy, I'll have to wait for the update before I try this approach. Maybe we should both revisit this one after it updates.
Bad, with this expensiv IAP. Every time you die, all equipment will be lost. There is no chance to find the gear again! This is really hard into the money. For this money I buy rather other games, such as Oceanhorn!
I have stability issues particularly right before the credits role on the second mission i didn't lose anything it just makes me start from lvl 1 again with the briefcase and the other stuff I got from the last play through other Than that love it Edit: no I didn't go back to spaceship still had all potions and knew what they were
Datalog mission I'm always being killed on 5th level of Datalog mission by the enemy that appears from crate, regardless my weapon and armour (I have 100 hp health). Is there any trick how to win Datalog mission? Or I just need to improve my health further?
I was playing Cardinal's Quest and thinking, sure, this is fine, but I'm so bored of the same Rogue-like setting over and over. Why won't anyone make a sci-fi one? The next day I see the TouchArcade article. This game is brilliant.
That was happening to me to. Restart your device. I've played for about 4 hours and haven't had a crash since.
iPhone 4S here. When I'm playing the game phone starts to get hot. This is after playing for awhile though. Then the game usually crashes and I end up having trouble signing into GameCenter. I know it's a memory thing. Just thinking I need to think about getting a new phone already.
Thanks for all of your discussion and reports, guys. And a very special thanks to Kepa for his insightful feedback and strategy-sharing. It might be worth mentioning that the game has a dedicated forum on our company website (kitfoxgames.com).. It's against my personal beliefs to directly advise tactics to players, BUT I will say that there are a few different ways to mitigate damage, even from the boss at the end of The Signal.
I have survived it a couple of times. Not sure if it is simply having high hp, really good wits, or maybe the right resistance from armor. Never have actually KILLED the thing, just was able to take the initial hit an RUN to the exit.
You know, I have my beef with IAP and understand the boycott tactic. But having IAP does not mean that a game is trying to fleece the consumer with paywalls. One trend, for example, is to get a free game which is the lite version, and then you pay for the full or for extended missions, which I am fine with. This helps developers work with App Store rating constraints, as well as being easier on consumers as you don't need to download a new app and migrate your data. So bottom line is, when one writes off a game simply because of IAP I think it looks more lazy and ignorant than principled. IAP fills a definite niche in the App Store ecosystem, and I think we need to support where it is working well to satisfy everyone. On a totally different note, is there a way to throw an explosive potion without hitting yourself? It would be nice to have a blast radius visual once you've identified it, too...
So has anyone tried the robot or emissary clones? Was wondering if their starting stats are any different than 001's and if so how much better
No, they're the same as the Renegade's and Assassins. The "classes" are just cosmetic skins at the moment.
