Great game. Could be greater. A lot of these suggestions are lifted from other roguelikes, and would definitely help your sales with those who consider themselves "hardcore." Almost all of these would make the game play faster, which is very much needed at present. Game speed is important to roguelikers. 1. Make the game completely playable with the keyboard. Have shift+direction make you run in said direction until disturbed. Add keys for pickup, drop, sort, yes/no, &c. Making these keys custom mappable (for those with laptops, etc) would be fantastic as well. Edit: Also make bumping into monsters default into attack. As a correlary, include a fire key, followed by cursor-enabled targetting, for whatever missile/spell is primed. 2. Make the main character sprite more dynamic. Having the sprite change with worn equipment would add tons of flavor, and would even introduce better roleplaying, as people complete their "perfect ensemble." A cosmetic measure, certainly, but one that would make a world of difference. 3. Tweak disturbance. Currently you can run right up to a monster and get hit. The character's running should be disturbed once he reaches a distance of one space between himself and any monster. Similarly, a character will run straight into a teleporter. Either tweak it so he is disturbed once reaching the teleporter, or treat the teleporter as a trap, and have pathfinding navigate around it. 4. Tweak pickup. Items should first go into the inventory, and only hit the belt when it is full. That way a player can choose his belt slots more easily, and with less hassle. More importantly, make the default pickup (left-click) send items immediately to the inventory. This would cut down on innumerable keypresses, and is currently my biggest issue with the game. Make shift-Lclick divert the item to the cursor. There are so few of these, that it makes much more sense to switch default behavior. 5. Have dynamic loot comparison, ala Torchlight. This too, would save innumerable keypresses, and make the game play faster. 6. Improve drop mechanic. Perhaps have a trashcan icon on the border of the inventory screen. Allow shift+click to select multiple items, which can then be dragged to the trash, which drops the items directly beneath you. Also allow a keypress for "drop", which then lets you select an item with the cursor keys. Thanks for the fantastic game, and look forward to further development!
I don't think I saw damage from the Sneaky Shiv skill. Would be a nice addition. Oh, and I don't think there is a key to press to rest (skip turn) for an extended duration.
I second the loot comparison, as well as the pickup tweaking - having items go to the belt isn't so bad, but it is bad to have the item go to the cursor on left click rather than straight to the inventory. And same with the dropping, something needs to be done about that as its too complicated at the moment.
I have one and its pretty easy to implement: random name generator for the character this way you wont have to type in the same name all the time or think about different names every single run through plus it creates this empathy for the character because when he dies you wont lose "adventurer#632" you'd lose "John McFancypants The Billowing Fields of Corn" and furthermore it facilitate story telling among the players because they remember the character that braved a monster zoo and lived to tell the tale by name
I agree with most of those. Though, the second one, about the character sprite, is impossible and will never happen; look on the dev's blog post for a really detailed explanation as to just WHY this is (and why other games like Diablo got away with it). They did also say they'll be making alot of UI improvements, some of which you mentioned here, so that's a good thing.
I wish for more bad luck. More terrible things that can happen to you character and kill them, special items, special cursed items etc.
More skillsets! There's lots of room. Stuff like: Fish Worshipper: Starts out with Horadric Lutefisk Cube, first skill is the ability to summon an eel, ultimate is the ability to pick what kind of item you want when you deposit lutefisk into a shrine (maybe "trust in the Lutefisk God" gives you an extra enchantment on it and randomly rolls it or something).
Ah. I was putting stacks of lutefisk in and gettimg one out. So then I offer them to the fish god, I guess?
I'd like maybe a little difference in the icons, when I first started I didn't know that a complete circle was for resistances, squares for damage, and rounded off squares for skills.
I agree with the idea of unidentified items. It's part of the fun of Roguelikes, going through the dungeon, picking up stacks of potions and scrolls, and wondering just how good they might be. Also, maybe a basic enchantment value to things as well. The standard +1, +2, etc. Giving small bonuses to the appropriate stat for an item (the main damage type for weapons, main defense type for armor, etc). And scrolls. We need scrolls. That give us tons of different effects. From the standard identify, mapping, teleport, to skill specific abilities. Like a scroll that will be a one use version of whatever ability. Make the skill scroll success chance based on your character's class levels. So if you're using a final level magic ability, if you're under the level number of that skill (so the 5th Astrologer ability would need you to have at least 5 levels of Wizard) you have a chance of the scroll miscasting, either failing, or having a reverse effect (you get zapped instead of the enemy). We should also have the ability to throw potions. Those acid ones, or poison, etc... would make handy projectiles in a pinch. And let us get more skills than just the 7. Maybe make a super rare potion of skill gain (it gives us a random one). And add that effect to fountains. Naturally, it wouldn't happen often. But the possibility would be there. And how about eating corpses? Another of the Roguelike standards. Kill a monster, it leaves a corpse, you can eat it for X effect.
