The spells itself
I would try and make the spells a bit “cooler.” I understand that you may not be at the right level nor have the assets but as of now, the spells seem a bit repetitive and simple. People like stuff that look cool and flashy
The flow
As of now, it feels a bit slow-paced. The NPCs are predictable and the spell casting also seems a bit slow
Core gameplay
Right now, there really isn’t much core gameplay, it’s just killing and buying spells. This can get tedious very fast. You shouldn’t rely on people playing with friends. I would add quests, more stuff to do, more features, and a larger map at a minimum.
the NPCs
Understandably, they feel quite lacking at the moment. They just clump together in one spot and spam random spells. You can one shot them with almost any spell.
UI
The ui is quite lacking at the moment. It works, it gets the job done, but it is not very visually appealing. I would invest in redoing the ui so it looks a bit more polished and interactive
Monetization:
There is basically no monetization. I would consider adding stuff like cosmetics or chances to get rarer spells or items.
Overall, it works well without bugs (none that I could find)
I’m interested in what spells you would call “more interesting”. As I am a solo developer, I can’t create advanced assets, but were you referring to things such as including stuns? I guess the spells also come across basic, because to add 32 it takes quite an amount of time even if they are (admittedly) low quality and still require balancing.
I’m also interested if you have any ideas you’d like to tell me for “more stuff to do”. At the time of designing the game, I was mostly playing Gun Fight Arena when not coding, so the core loop ended up very similar to that. I thought auras would be too visually distracting as an unlock-able and I couldn’t come up with any ideas other than that for other unlockables or stuff to do.
As for the NPCs, I designed them to be one shot, as kids with low skill were getting frustrated when the NPCs ganged on them and overran them. They used to be quite powerful, with perfect accuracy and advanced spells, but I had to nerf, test, nerf, test etc to get them to feel good for players. The only other real alternative would be to remove them but like you say I can’t rely on players to have friends to play with.
I should however edit them so they do not clump as this may prehaps fix the previous problem.
I already tried remaking the UI but it only looked worse so the only real way forward for that is to hire someone.
I’m not sure about your particular target audience but what makes spells or abilities fun for me is mechanical differences.
For example, a spell that could teleport you, or even freeze or rewind time?
These kind of moves are less flashy VFX and more good programming or straight hard work. It is 100% doable for a solo dev (I’ve made the examples listed by myself) and I think you could look into something like this to make the spells more interesting!
Uh . . . idk if you’ve unlocked frost blast or shadow step but those spells already exist. Its just you have a 2/32 chance of getting one of those when rolling and the bots don’t use them bc they are op (and misused in shadow steps case) when used by bots.
Players where finding it really annoying for bots to freeze them and then a horde of them freezing them. attacking them, killing them and resulting in them leaving.
Hey, I think the games pretty fun, for all the npcs running around it performs quite well. A big issue that I have is the main part of the game well the spells. I think the ideas are quite interesting for them but its not conveyed well. Even in the inventory. Spells should have more of a in depth description about what exactly they do. Example: “This spell teleports you to where you click”. Another thing is that the raycasts for alot of things have huge range. Like I could toss a fire wall from one spawn to another. I would shorten the distance your able to fire things but in turn make them bigger and do more damage. Also some vfx for some things would be nice, nothing fancy but for the teleport shadow spell some sound effects and a simple black trail showing where you’ve teleported would be nice. Alot of things just need to be balanced and polished. The Ui is a little hard to understand at times. I would make assigning spells to slots more clear as well as what spell you have equipped. Even though you can see it in your hand its still nice for example to have the icon of the spell your holding be bigger for example. Also maybe move the health towards the bottom middle and have the spells above. I’m not sure why but for me personally it just feels weird to look down to the left especially when the normal health is up on the right corner usually. My final suggestion is obviously making the npcs space out a bit more but other than that for the audience your aiming to target the more simple and easy to kill npcs makes it more fun.