After sending a few runs of this, I wanted to leave my thoughts.
First off, the good. RNG never seems like an issue, which is a really hard one to get right for roguelike devs. Here, the randomness seems really well thought out and balanced. I never once thought that RNG was what screwed me out of a run, only my own approach to battles. This is really hard to get right, and I'm pleasantly surprised this game gets it right! Another good point is the general design of the game, and how everything is changed to fit the idea of a singleplayer toontown. Each gag effect, the way battles work, it all feels genuinely like toontown.
There is a number of bad points though. The first is that, like actual toontown, the platforming feels bad. Secondly is run time: even if you can save and continue, runs being an hour+ or even two hours on average isn't something that I would want out of a roguelike; the best games in the genre are succinct and have an average run time of half an hour. But most importantly is the total, absolute lack of information conveyance. It's not 2011. You're not making TBoI. Tell me what the items do. Tell me what the status effects do. I shouldn't have to look at an out of date google sheet or join a public discord server to get half-wrong information. This one is the worst aspect of the game.
Hey there! I appreciate your thoughts here, but wanted to mention a few points I think are important to mention here. Firstly, the point about game length is probably fair. We've had a lot of internal discussion surrounding the average length of a run, and have made a few changes here and there to make the experience a little quicker. On the whole, though, we're pretty happy where run lengths are at. An average run being somewhere a little over an hour is just about the standard we were looking to reach just with how slow Toontown battles are. In practice, I feel it's allowed the slow, but constant progression of your Toon to feel more natural. To get to an average run time of about half an hour, we'd need to give the player items at potentially double, if not triple the current frequency, which already feels pretty fast in my eyes. It's also worthwhile to mention that making a faithful adaptation of the Toontown Online battle system meant we had to preserve the fact that the battles are incredibly slow. They always take up the vast majority of your run's playtime, and as such, we give you the option to speed them up as a bit of a workaround.
As for the lack of information, I don't entirely disagree here. We've been talking a lot about having a legitimate tutorial in the game, especially for people who may see this game on itch, and not have much experience with Toontown in the past. Right now, the game does a very poor job of giving those players an understanding of the mechanics at play, and that is something we should work to circumvent. For items, though, I don't agree with your stance that the effects should be immediately visible. We have an item, Monocle, that will display item effects before they are picked up. Part of the game design is meant to be some trial and error, where you don't know exactly which items are maybe not the best idea to pick up. Letting the player slowly build their own knowledge on the items is almost like its own invisible progression system. Though, I should mention, for status effects specifically, those aren't hidden and you can hover your mouse over them to read exactly what they do.
Finally, I want to highlight is that as a benefit to being an open source project, we understand we may not always make the best calls on the game design end of things. But we greatly encourage modifying the game in any way to suit your own tastes. And while I understand that may not be a satisfying answer, I do promise to keep an eye on the issues you've brought up here, because we may always end up coming around to your perspective on things later.
WOW THIS IS SO COOL!!!!! I'm enjoying it immensely. The music goes so hard. So creative and such a fun idea. Thank you so much for making this and sharing it with us. I'm very excited to see where it goes.
I've left my fair share of negative reviews on this game, I'll be fr here. But yknow I realized you just gotta 100% everything in order to be able to progress, you gotta fight every cog, collect every treasure chest. and that's something I did not do. But ofc once I did this, I was able to actually progress and fight the bosses and beat the entire game lmao. fr tho 10/10 game
what do you mean 100% everything? you don't have to fight every cog and collect every treasure chest. sure it helps since you get extra items but you don't have to
Here's a small bug I've noticed in the room in The Mint with the money bags (the object, not the Cog) and two Cog battles. When you use a Lure gag, the money bags block the camera, making you unable to see anything but the bag during the luring (and trapping if used) process. This happens in both battles, but the second battle is less of a problem.
Please fix the gear room in the factory, I have died there twice, and my 2nd time i was semi far and died because the gear in the middle and the one thats semi high up, they either need to be slowed down or increase player jump height, I should not be missing multiple times in a row because the player jump isnt high enough and or the gear is turning too fast and one is to slow. Was fun up till the da offices with the big mine sweeper room and then the factory gear room.
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After sending a few runs of this, I wanted to leave my thoughts.
First off, the good. RNG never seems like an issue, which is a really hard one to get right for roguelike devs. Here, the randomness seems really well thought out and balanced. I never once thought that RNG was what screwed me out of a run, only my own approach to battles. This is really hard to get right, and I'm pleasantly surprised this game gets it right! Another good point is the general design of the game, and how everything is changed to fit the idea of a singleplayer toontown. Each gag effect, the way battles work, it all feels genuinely like toontown.
There is a number of bad points though. The first is that, like actual toontown, the platforming feels bad. Secondly is run time: even if you can save and continue, runs being an hour+ or even two hours on average isn't something that I would want out of a roguelike; the best games in the genre are succinct and have an average run time of half an hour. But most importantly is the total, absolute lack of information conveyance. It's not 2011. You're not making TBoI. Tell me what the items do. Tell me what the status effects do. I shouldn't have to look at an out of date google sheet or join a public discord server to get half-wrong information. This one is the worst aspect of the game.
Hey there! I appreciate your thoughts here, but wanted to mention a few points I think are important to mention here. Firstly, the point about game length is probably fair. We've had a lot of internal discussion surrounding the average length of a run, and have made a few changes here and there to make the experience a little quicker. On the whole, though, we're pretty happy where run lengths are at. An average run being somewhere a little over an hour is just about the standard we were looking to reach just with how slow Toontown battles are. In practice, I feel it's allowed the slow, but constant progression of your Toon to feel more natural. To get to an average run time of about half an hour, we'd need to give the player items at potentially double, if not triple the current frequency, which already feels pretty fast in my eyes. It's also worthwhile to mention that making a faithful adaptation of the Toontown Online battle system meant we had to preserve the fact that the battles are incredibly slow. They always take up the vast majority of your run's playtime, and as such, we give you the option to speed them up as a bit of a workaround.
As for the lack of information, I don't entirely disagree here. We've been talking a lot about having a legitimate tutorial in the game, especially for people who may see this game on itch, and not have much experience with Toontown in the past. Right now, the game does a very poor job of giving those players an understanding of the mechanics at play, and that is something we should work to circumvent. For items, though, I don't agree with your stance that the effects should be immediately visible. We have an item, Monocle, that will display item effects before they are picked up. Part of the game design is meant to be some trial and error, where you don't know exactly which items are maybe not the best idea to pick up. Letting the player slowly build their own knowledge on the items is almost like its own invisible progression system. Though, I should mention, for status effects specifically, those aren't hidden and you can hover your mouse over them to read exactly what they do.
Finally, I want to highlight is that as a benefit to being an open source project, we understand we may not always make the best calls on the game design end of things. But we greatly encourage modifying the game in any way to suit your own tastes. And while I understand that may not be a satisfying answer, I do promise to keep an eye on the issues you've brought up here, because we may always end up coming around to your perspective on things later.
No Commentary Gameplay
Reminder that I'm running an item guide for this game! Check it!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-NzxYwANEXSkbW2J9cFDmOTxnCKEdU8DMkiT82H-0Zo/...
The golden Jellybean pocket prank sells your chest item for jellybeans
absolutely wonderful!!! this is such a cool and unique take on the game. a fun new spin on toontown that i love very very much. peak game
so hyped for pocket pranks
What's that?
big update on may 1st
WOW THIS IS SO COOL!!!!! I'm enjoying it immensely. The music goes so hard. So creative and such a fun idea. Thank you so much for making this and sharing it with us. I'm very excited to see where it goes.
I've left my fair share of negative reviews on this game, I'll be fr here.
But yknow I realized you just gotta 100% everything in order to be able to progress, you gotta fight every cog, collect every treasure chest. and that's something I did not do. But ofc once I did this, I was able to actually progress and fight the bosses and beat the entire game lmao.
fr tho 10/10 game
what do you mean 100% everything? you don't have to fight every cog and collect every treasure chest. sure it helps since you get extra items but you don't have to
donnyboy stay mad that u arent good at video games, leave it to the rest of us who can do basic platforming
No need to be so inconsiderate..
Here's a small bug I've noticed in the room in The Mint with the money bags (the object, not the Cog) and two Cog battles. When you use a Lure gag, the money bags block the camera, making you unable to see anything but the bag during the luring (and trapping if used) process. This happens in both battles, but the second battle is less of a problem.
Please fix the gear room in the factory, I have died there twice, and my 2nd time i was semi far and died because the gear in the middle and the one thats semi high up, they either need to be slowed down or increase player jump height, I should not be missing multiple times in a row because the player jump isnt high enough and or the gear is turning too fast and one is to slow. Was fun up till the da offices with the big mine sweeper room and then the factory gear room.