Kindle - Prototype

The new dialogue at the beginning is very mysterious, and adds to the ambience. It would be nice if clicking on the "Breathe" button would cause the remaining text to instantly appear. The dialogue prevents the player from playing for quite a while, so that could help the player move forward more quickly if they'd like to get started with the game.

It would be amazing if further dialogue, and additional game mechanics, became unlocked as you reach greater chasm depths. The desire to know what lies below could compel people to try for ever greater depths, and the additional game mechanics could keep people interested when things start to feel repetitive.

The visual feedback for the woodcutting action feels very much like chopping wood. It's very nice!

When chopping wood, the active-action border only appears when the axe makes contact with the wood, so there is an initial moment in which you're not sure if the action is active. That's basically the same as it was previously, when you weren't sure if the action was active until you saw the XP changing. So, it's an improvement, but there's room for *more* improvement.

After giving it a lot of thought, there's something you could do with the buttons that would be fantastic: There is *never* a desire to have *nothing* active; you really just want to switch from one activity to another. So what if you made the buttons work that way? That would be *very* satisfying from a game-mechanics point of view, since you always do want something to be active.

The game could start out with an active action (e.g. Woodcutting). The active action would not be clickable. Inactive actions (e.g. Chasm) would all be clickable--inviting interaction. Clicking on "Chasm" would activate "Chasm" and deactivate "Woodcutting." In the event that an activity ends on its own (e.g. when the fire burns out), the game could deactivate the action that's ending (e.g. "Fire") and activate "Woodcutting." That would be *very* satisfying for the player. It also would reduce the player's concern over whether or not a button is active.

As for the problem of communicating how the game mechanics work:

In the Emberbind tab, it looks something like this:

Emberbind Level : 1 XP: 0 / 100
Magic Ember (♾️) Level: 2 XP: 26 / 110
Select skill: [Magic] <Empower>

I think something like this would have helped me:

Select skill: [Magic] <Empower>
Magic Ember XP: 26 / 110
Magic Ember Level: 2

You could do something similar with the actions. Woodcutting looks like this:

<Woodcutting>
Level: 8(♾️5) XP: 189 / 194
<Infuse>

Whereas something like this would have helped me:

<Woodcutting>
Woodcutting XP: 189 / 194
Woodcutting Level: 8
<Infuse>

It would also be nice to know that:

+Woodcutting XP = Woodcutting Ember Level * Infusionpower

...perhaps as a tooltip?

If you need to save vertical space, you could potentially merge the "<Woodcutting>" button and the "Level: 8" text, so the button reads: "<Woodcutting Level 8>"

Also, it would be nice if the "<Infuse>" button would only appear when an action is active. That would reduce distractions for a new player, and also prevent mistakes for more experienced players (so they don't accidentally waste their mana by infusing something that wasn't active).

Also, I just wanted to say that I withdraw my earlier concerns over the press-and-hold requirements for the magic system: The mana discharges rapidly, so you don't *have* to press-and-hold forever. You can press-and-hold for a short while, and then take a break. The ability to store mana, and release it strategically, adds an important element of strategy to the game. I think it works well.

A few more thoughts, in hopes that they're helpful:

In the "Ember" tab, next to the "Empower" button, it would be nice if there were a button that could spend whatever heat is necessary to reach the next ember level. Ideally, this button would only appear if you have enough heat to make use of it.

(At the end of the run, it can be a challenge to spend all of your heat on ember upgrades. You can easily have heat in the hundreds, or thousands, and it can be a chore to slowly to expend it all to ember upgrades at the rate of one XP point per click.)

Also, when your warmth goes negative at the end of a run, you lose the ability to purchase any further ember upgrades: Unless you're going for a record, there's not really anything left for you to do. You're just waiting, for about a minute, while your will-to-live to slowly depletes. It would be nice if the game would end automatically when your heat goes negative and "Defy the frost" is not active.

For balancing: The game feels very slow at the beginning. It's a real grind to get your first ember level to level two. It takes about three runs to do it, and you need to level up *four* different skills. I don't think everyone will stick around for this. In contrast, you can easily get two or three ember levels in a single run later in the game. That's the reverse of how it usually works: Most games feel easy in the beginning, and then get hard later on.