Figments vs. Spirits is a puzzle game built around the battle system of a turn-based RPG.
Currently the game contains 30 battle scenarios of escalating complexity, but if there is demand, I’d be interested in doing more.
This game was built off feedback I received from my previous project Trial of the 40 Figments. Ultimately, that game was unable to develop an audience because it had too high of a learning curve, so I’ve taken extra precaution to make this one easier to get into.
In making this thread, I’m looking to see if there are any design choices that may be holding back the game from succeeding, or if there are any changes I could make that would make it more accessible.
Wasn’t able to play it for too long but I love it so far!
It’s always really exciting and refreshing seeing games/art styles that are uncommon on roblox - things that look like they could be coming from a game outside of the platform.
The biggest criticism I have would be the UI though this may just be a personal nitpick.
The backgrounds, characters, and attacks are all great , but the rest of the UI in my opinion was not very interesting or colorful, and didn’t really catch my eye or make me want to read through it.
The overly- text based approach is not a good idea in my honest opinion, the white text is especially problematic with backgrounds like this
As far as I am aware, puzzle games do not develop active player bases. It seems that this game is the same every time it is played. Even if someone loved every moment of the game, would they really do it again knowing it would be exactly the same?
The next thing to address would be the “escalating complexity”. The way I see it, and I could be totally wrong on this, is that each person has their own threshold on how much complexity they want, and that each incremental increase in complexity will alienate an increasingly larger number of players. For an analogy, let’s say you added more and more sugar to a dish. Eventually it will become too sweet even for the biggest sweet tooths. That is how my first experience with this game ended. Really enjoyed it, but the moment it started to feel uncomfortable I decided to leave.
As far as improving the core design, simply dumbing things down wouldn’t be enough. There should be a value proposition for putting in more play time. Can I experience it differently on subsequent playthroughs? Can I build up power or resources over time and use them to accomplish some long-running goal? The greatest turn-based RPGs reward players with captivating storytelling too.
@tyridge77 A more visuals-based UI would be pretty easy to implement.
The suggestions by @ernakou are larger changes to the fundamental design of the game and as such will be harder to implement, but definitely things I’ll be thinking over.
Ultimately, it sounds like if I want to expand the length of the game, I should look towards having battles focus more on new mechanics instead of having them escalate in complexity.
Just thinking out loud here. Let me know if you have any thoughts about any of this.
