Project: Quest 65

This game is the result of the first six months of my Game Dev journey, which I for some reason devoted to a single project.  The following was released to my friends who had been following along my dev journey which I now release to the general public (along with the game) to stand as a monument to the most intellectually intense six months of my life:

I'm very excited to hear what everyone has to say once you get your hands on! Keep in mind though, that this is really just a prototype of the battle mechanics. My goal for this game is for it to be an RPG with your typical world-impacting story, cast of characters, heroes journey, etc. but for now there is none of that. This demo has a win condition (get through all the levels and defeat the final boss) and a fail state (...die), so by most definitions it is a game, it's just not my dream game... yet.

To that end, I am 100% seeking notes. Tell me what's fun, tell me what's not. Tell me what's broken, what grabs your interest, what needs to be dropped, adjusted, or nurtured. If Dev on this idea is worth continuing, I want to make sure I go in the right direction! My worst nightmare is that I get a chorus of "Nice work!", and then nobody ever mentions it again. Feel free to be brutally honest :)

Some light instructions for playing the game:

You've got a character level that sets your Health and Mana maximums, but nothing else. Your access to spells and the damage they do is determined by your Affinity to each element. Affinities are gained by picking up the colored spirits that you'll find scattered around each level, or by defeating a certain number of enemies (displayed in the top right corner). When you get your first affinity in an element, you will be able to cast the Rank 1 spell for that element. You then gain access to the next rank spell for that element every multiple of 3 affinities. Once you have one or more elements at Rank 2 or higher, you can start combining elements. Combining elements does damage of both/all element types, and creates a unique effect for that element combination. Experiment on your own to see what the special effects of each element and elemental combination are, or take a look at the in-game library to see more details once you've seen an effect or cast a spell!

On each level, you will find the Shopkeeper. In their shop, you can rest (recover all health/mana) sell any consumable items that you've crafted with enemy drops, and buy useful equipment! The inventory of the Shopkeeper is unique on each level, so don't forget to check in throughout the game!

After defeating the milestone number of enemies and being rewarded with an Affinity a certain number of times on a level, the Floor Boss will spawn. At this point, all other enemies will stop spawning, and the only thing left to you will be to defeat the Floor Boss. Once defeated you will get another affinity, the portal to the next level will open up, and regular enemies will start spawning again (in case you want to farm). Once you enter the portal you will be transported to the next level, and there's no turning back, so don't forget to visit the Shopkeeper one last time!

Some general advice:

Save often! There's no autosave and death boots you to the main menu, so make sure you don't lose your progress to a silly mistake in a fight (or a definitely never going to happen game crash).

Ask questions while you play! I hope that things in the game are clear and make sense, but so far I'm the only one who's played, and of course it all makes sense to me. Also, any weirdness you're seeing may or may not be a bug, so I can hopefully help clear things up, make an emergency fix to your save file to get you out of a bind, or fix the bug!

On that note, report bugs! Basically every bit of feedback I get from you guys is going to be going on my Issues list on Github so that I can make improvements. Anything that's broken or feels like too much friction, let me know and I'll strive to make it better!