Review of a review of iryrwarosh

I recently watched the awesome review of my 7DRL iryrwaroshr by the awesome TheUberHunter. Here's my thoughts (or, Review of a Review of a 7DRL).

He started by pronouncing my name right (which is an achievement in and of itself), then wrong (or at least not how I pronounce it).

@1:04 "Oh Wow! That's kind of cool. (hums zelda theme)" Yes! Total victory for me. If someone starts out thinking it's cool and get's what the overall theme is, then I'm off to a good start.

@1:40 "hiding on the text". Yeah, my bad. The text should move so that it doesn't obscure your view. The "Fame" leaderboard does it so the messages should too. Again: my bad.

@1:55 "serious damage.... more than meets the eye" combat messages need to explain the weapons better. And it needs to be more obvious that goblins use weapons.

@2:40 "I have to really point that thing when I use it" Welcome to Old-School Hyrule! That's one of the things from the original Zelda. It kind of sucks.

@4:20 evasion is mostly based on your immediate surroundings: the more places you can move in to the higher your evasion is. When you evade an attack you not only avoid all damage but you actually move into an adjacent space at random. Other creatures have an evasion percent and certain items affect it. Not at all obvious and rarely important - It's confusing and probably should have been dropped.

@4:40 treasure and fame? Fame is important - It's how you win!

@5:14 "twilight zone time" One of my favorite little details. When you start a new game the screen sort of fades in but you are visible the entire time so you can clearly see where you are. I tend to cram a lot onto the screen so this helps focus on your stating location. Games that have a field of view don't have this problem since you are at the center of what's visible on the screen.

@6:12 evasion and auto-attack. Open space is good for some weapons and a closed space is better for others.

@6:30 "I don't know how first aid kits work" You need 5 rupees - that's too much. Or there's not enough rupees in the game.

@7:19 The exclamation point is an evasion potion. It should be more clear what it does.

@7:20 It took far too long to check the help. Maybe explain immediately? Help should also say what each of the items are.

@7:40 Press space to examine. Unfortunately the examine square is in the center of the screen and not where you are. This is because of some architectural constraints so that's pretty lame. Good design helps make a good user experience - it doesn't hinder it.

@8:40 Yes! TheUberHunter lost because someone else got 100% fame before he did. Victory for me! I'm glad the AI was able to win a game.

@10:05 "whatever you say dude". Many of the auto attacks like impaling on spikes aren't very clear. Part of it is because of the message/event architecture I tried using made it difficult to do some things in a specific order. It's also unclear because it affects things nearby and everything is moving so you can die adjacent to a monster that then moves two spaces away (if is has the DOUBLE_MOVE trait).

@10:20 Once again, there's a horrible lack of rupees throughout so the spells are too expensive.

@11:40 poison for 3 turns == totally weak

@12:25 "does the armor do anything? .... no.... Good to know. Good to know.". No active ability, fail on my part since everything should have an active and passive ability.

@12:56 Evasion potions are still unclear....

@13:04 Help doesn't help with items. It really should - especially the evasion potions.

@14:20 "Dork! I will Dork you in the Dork! Dork! Behold Dork!" Lol.

@15:45 The desert does have too many monsters. The reason is that each region starts with the same number of monsters. Since the desert is only 2x2, it ends up very densely populated. An oddand unintended consequence.

@16:28 rupee machine -> "I learned nothing so far!". But it does make rupees over time! You just died so quickly!

@17:05 "I was hoping for auto attack's to be more happenin'... but that doesn't really seem to be the case". Yeah; me too. It turned out to be a bit underwhelming. Maybe 100% chance would have been better.

@18:30 "a pretty good game anyway" Yay! A few things didn't work out very well but I'm glad that overall, it's not a bad experience.

@19:30 "I guess we could play one more" Hahahahahahahaha! I WIN!

@19:54 You only lasted 18 turns. With as much randomness as this game has you can end up in situations where you die quickly. You can always flee but there should be something to make sure you don't start in such a bad spot.

@20:50 "surprising, but doesn't work properly", auto attack and evade are based on chance. It is hard to know when it will happen and that should have been made more apparent.

@20:55 "a lot to learn" Ha! I really went overboard with the items and subtle points of evasion and auto-atacking. Next year will be much clearer - but also much more stuff....

It was really funny and interesting watching someone else play. It was good to see the "wtf?" moments as well as the "aha!" moments. I knew the auto attack and evasion would be unclear and that there are far too few rupees. I also figured that most people would play aggressively the first few times and die quickly. Once you see that you win by fame and not killing goblins and regular monsters, you play much more cautiously. I wonder if he noticed the flowing water, or the lava, or the different colored trees. The graphics are probably the best thing I did but maybe they're one of those things that don't even get noticed when they're done right. I don't think he knew that goblins have a random weapon or that the monsters had random traits that you can see by examining them with the space bar.

Anyway; it's great that TheUberHunter is taking so much time to play these roguelikes and anyone who made a 7DRL or is thinking of making a game should watch him play some.