Very cool! I love the art style and the overall concept. Here's some thoughts:
- I didn't always understand movement rules, like the train blocking you at the very beginning. I was also confused about having to stay on the road. - I expected adjacent zombies to maybe attack me eventually, especially if I did something like smash a car window.
- I was surprised at the mechanic of sacrificing inventory items to fight the zombies - felt like I wanted the ability to fight with my hands, even if there was a high chance of getting hurt.
Looking forward to see where you go with everything!
This is really great, I love a game that makes every item feel precious. I gave it a few runs and each run I felt like I knew a bit more.
That is, until the last run - I was able to gather a lot of great survival resources, but could never cobble anything together by way of weaponry. Then I ran into two zombies and used up my entire inventory and then lost.
I love the concept of having more items makes my deck more unreliable in battle, but I think a slight balance tweak towards increasing durability of items used in battle could help a bit in situations where you just can't find anything to help. Or maybe even stacking the game luck in your favor towards items you haven't been able to craft in awhile.
Or more ways to use items to get around enemies. And being able to run away from fights. Basically I want more ways to strategize certain situations than drag my entire inventory to the zombies.
Maybe there's a system around luring and dodging zombies I haven't figured out yet.
In summary, luck is a bit too much of a factor in balance, so there might be some ways to even the playing field a bit more.
I'd only write this if I thought the game showed amazing potential - so I think there's something really great here.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and comprehensive feedback. I'll put it all on my Milanote for future improvements.
There are two things already in dev, adressing RNG and battles: Animal companions, in particular dogs, making sure you always have a weapon in hand during battles. And the "Hardcharger" who will be able to defend himself with fist fights. Also planning to add a barricade crafting option, helping players to prepare fights against larger numbers of zombies.
I like to craft sharp sticks in preparation for the next fight. It's a cheap and effective (3 AP) item. For that, I make sure to always keep one knife in inventory, and sharpen all sticks, keeping only one branch for crafting the next axe.
Thanks again for your kind words and for sharing your impressions.
This is great! I read in the other comments that items used to all be reusable in combat, and I can see how it's better to have them consumable. I wonder if it would work good to have some items have more than one use, but not infinite? A tomato as a weapon goes splat, or a thrown rock makes sense to be gone after, but maybe my knife can stab more than once?
Hi BurgerDaddy, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I also think that items being consumed in battles is the right choice, it is adding a nice layer of decisions in battles (otherwise the battles would feel really dull).
There is the concept of durability in game. Each crafted weapon (the axe and the club) has a 3-times use, which is intended to be a return of investment. The knife can "just" be found (and I had some runs where I could have opened a knife shop after some days :-D). The cool thing with knife is: it can be used unlimited times for crafting and cutting. Let me share my secret of how I am using it: I always make sure to have one knife in my pockets. When I find branches, I sharpen all of them with it (keeping only one for the next axe). Sharp sticks have 3 attack points - pretty good! And when cutting animals, the bones also have 2 attack points. So with this one knife I can create a lot of attack power.
very cool game! the art is astonishing as usual and the game mechanic works as a charm! it is too easy now but consider the time limit it is understandable, with a little big of level design I think this can be a released game!
I really like the undead text on enemy when they are die lol, I don't know just makes me laugh XD
For a prototype this is really good! Visually the game is beautiful and the audio adds nicely to the immersion. The only thing that confuses me a bit is the ingame time. The clock keeps ticking even if I don't perform an action, but every action takes a certain amount of time to execute. And it seems I can perform multiple actions at the same time and they are executed in parallel (?) which defeats the point of the time system. But overall I like the game! The crafting menu is nicely illustrated and easy to understand. The combat is interesting, with every item being a card for attacking / defending. Although I feel like I should have been punished for picking up everything I possibly could (I have almost 100 items after 3 ingame days and battles are easy. I have never fought more than 2 zombies at once though.)
Want to give it another try? I changed a lot of things - survival should be much harder now (still intending to make this really hard to master ;-)). At some points there are still alot of items piling up, but in my test runs there were always moments when most of them needed to be used to overcome critical situations. To catch up with the changes you can have a look here https://humane-tiger.itch.io/9-dayz/devlog/561270/devlog-post-jam-jam-7
I just did two runs and I can definitely feel the improvements, well done!
In my first run I learned the hard way that items are consumed when used in battle, so I ran out of items and got beaten to death by a weak zombie, took him at least a minute xD But I like this, it definitely makes for interesting decisions! I actually don't remember if items were used up in the older version, but I think they were not?
In my second run I got much further, although I didn't make it either. I'm not gonna blame my death on a bug, but I noticed this: If you drink a bottle of water and eat a snack bar quickly after that, then the thirst-refill of the water is cancelled and you will only get your hunger refilled. Might work with any two consumables if you click fast enough, but I didn't test that.
Indeed my inventory didn't get cluttered this time and although I lost twice I do feel like the game is beatable, so good job on the balancing! The UI feels super smooth, love how everything from cards to gather time info fades in so seemlessly! Will beat this game one day ;)
Thanks for giving it another try and for your feedback :-) Will have a look into the bug, it's noted. The care package might have been a good compensation for that, I mention it in section Reward yourself.
When you played last time, items were not consumed. I also think it changed for good. I often end a turn intentionally, because I prefer to take the damage instead of throwing some precious items.
Also big thanks for noticing and mentioning the UI. I worked really hard on meeting my own expectations for that, which I think are pretty exaggerated.
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Very cool! I love the art style and the overall concept. Here's some thoughts:
- I didn't always understand movement rules, like the train blocking you at the very beginning. I was also confused about having to stay on the road.
- I expected adjacent zombies to maybe attack me eventually, especially if I did something like smash a car window.
- I was surprised at the mechanic of sacrificing inventory items to fight the zombies - felt like I wanted the ability to fight with my hands, even if there was a high chance of getting hurt.
Looking forward to see where you go with everything!
This is really great, I love a game that makes every item feel precious. I gave it a few runs and each run I felt like I knew a bit more.
That is, until the last run - I was able to gather a lot of great survival resources, but could never cobble anything together by way of weaponry. Then I ran into two zombies and used up my entire inventory and then lost.
I love the concept of having more items makes my deck more unreliable in battle, but I think a slight balance tweak towards increasing durability of items used in battle could help a bit in situations where you just can't find anything to help. Or maybe even stacking the game luck in your favor towards items you haven't been able to craft in awhile.
Or more ways to use items to get around enemies. And being able to run away from fights. Basically I want more ways to strategize certain situations than drag my entire inventory to the zombies.
Maybe there's a system around luring and dodging zombies I haven't figured out yet.
In summary, luck is a bit too much of a factor in balance, so there might be some ways to even the playing field a bit more.
I'd only write this if I thought the game showed amazing potential - so I think there's something really great here.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and comprehensive feedback. I'll put it all on my Milanote for future improvements.
There are two things already in dev, adressing RNG and battles: Animal companions, in particular dogs, making sure you always have a weapon in hand during battles. And the "Hardcharger" who will be able to defend himself with fist fights. Also planning to add a barricade crafting option, helping players to prepare fights against larger numbers of zombies.
I like to craft sharp sticks in preparation for the next fight. It's a cheap and effective (3 AP) item. For that, I make sure to always keep one knife in inventory, and sharpen all sticks, keeping only one branch for crafting the next axe.
Thanks again for your kind words and for sharing your impressions.
This is great! I read in the other comments that items used to all be reusable in combat, and I can see how it's better to have them consumable. I wonder if it would work good to have some items have more than one use, but not infinite? A tomato as a weapon goes splat, or a thrown rock makes sense to be gone after, but maybe my knife can stab more than once?
Hi BurgerDaddy, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I also think that items being consumed in battles is the right choice, it is adding a nice layer of decisions in battles (otherwise the battles would feel really dull).
There is the concept of durability in game. Each crafted weapon (the axe and the club) has a 3-times use, which is intended to be a return of investment. The knife can "just" be found (and I had some runs where I could have opened a knife shop after some days :-D). The cool thing with knife is: it can be used unlimited times for crafting and cutting. Let me share my secret of how I am using it: I always make sure to have one knife in my pockets. When I find branches, I sharpen all of them with it (keeping only one for the next axe). Sharp sticks have 3 attack points - pretty good! And when cutting animals, the bones also have 2 attack points. So with this one knife I can create a lot of attack power.
Yeah I hadn't managed to craft an Axe or Club before this post, nice!
very cool game! the art is astonishing as usual and the game mechanic works as a charm! it is too easy now but consider the time limit it is understandable, with a little big of level design I think this can be a released game!
I really like the
undead text on enemy when they are die lol, I don't know just makes me laugh XDFor a prototype this is really good!
Visually the game is beautiful and the audio adds nicely to the immersion.
The only thing that confuses me a bit is the ingame time. The clock keeps ticking even if I don't perform an action, but every action takes a certain amount of time to execute. And it seems I can perform multiple actions at the same time and they are executed in parallel (?) which defeats the point of the time system.
But overall I like the game! The crafting menu is nicely illustrated and easy to understand. The combat is interesting, with every item being a card for attacking / defending. Although I feel like I should have been punished for picking up everything I possibly could (I have almost 100 items after 3 ingame days and battles are easy. I have never fought more than 2 zombies at once though.)
Want to give it another try? I changed a lot of things - survival should be much harder now (still intending to make this really hard to master ;-)). At some points there are still alot of items piling up, but in my test runs there were always moments when most of them needed to be used to overcome critical situations. To catch up with the changes you can have a look here https://humane-tiger.itch.io/9-dayz/devlog/561270/devlog-post-jam-jam-7
I just did two runs and I can definitely feel the improvements, well done!
In my first run I learned the hard way that items are consumed when used in battle, so I ran out of items and got beaten to death by a weak zombie, took him at least a minute xD But I like this, it definitely makes for interesting decisions! I actually don't remember if items were used up in the older version, but I think they were not?
In my second run I got much further, although I didn't make it either. I'm not gonna blame my death on a bug, but I noticed this: If you drink a bottle of water and eat a snack bar quickly after that, then the thirst-refill of the water is cancelled and you will only get your hunger refilled. Might work with any two consumables if you click fast enough, but I didn't test that.
Indeed my inventory didn't get cluttered this time and although I lost twice I do feel like the game is beatable, so good job on the balancing!
The UI feels super smooth, love how everything from cards to gather time info fades in so seemlessly! Will beat this game one day ;)
Thanks for giving it another try and for your feedback :-) Will have a look into the bug, it's noted. The care package might have been a good compensation for that, I mention it in section Reward yourself.
When you played last time, items were not consumed. I also think it changed for good. I often end a turn intentionally, because I prefer to take the damage instead of throwing some precious items.
Also big thanks for noticing and mentioning the UI. I worked really hard on meeting my own expectations for that, which I think are pretty exaggerated.