Show HN: One Way Dungeon – A game I've been developing in the last five months (opens in new tab)

I'll continue supporting the game and adding new content to it. But not at full time. I'm going back to a "normal life".

(For those who don't want to install it or don't have Android, you can play it here: https://vaskivodev.gitlab.io/onewaydungeon/builds/release-1-...)

I welcome all and any criticism. And I hope you like it. Thank you!

- This is effectively a progression game, where the player builds up abilities. But defeating a low-level enemy is boring and slow, even when you kill them with your first blow.

- It's disconcerting that you forget how to punch. I was expecting punching to not advance quickly, but instead it has limited uses. That's a strange metaphor.

- Everything feels slow - not because it needs better programming, but because it doesn't resolve actions fast enough. Asking whether I want to return to the start after every enemy is aggravating.

- There's no actual sense of progression or reward.

- There's no sense of danger, either.

- The optimal strategy pretty clearly seemed to be max out speed and one type of attack. Most battles can be one shot victories. I assume it wouldn't be that difficult to build up enough durability to survive multiple rounds of a battle, but it'd likely be a lot slower. Final boss was one shot on my first attempt.

- I only did physical attacks. There wasn't much room for strategy. Tackle if tackle would kill it; wild slashes if tackle wouldn't kill it; big slash if even that wouldn't work. There were some stat change attacks available but they didn't seem too interesting. Most of the time you just wanted to do enough damage to win quickly. Sand attack seemed somewhat useful once or twice. Because battles were so short, an enemy would need to be able to survive at least 3 tackles AND survive fewer than that with a debuff in order to make using any sort of buff or debuff worthwhile. Cuz tackle/tackle is basically the same outcome as sand attack/tackle. I'm not sure any fights lasted longer than 3 rounds for me.

- I had no obvious way to know if magic was more effective against certain enemies. But in any case, physical was more than enough, and thus, splitting any points between physical and magic attack was sort of a waste. I think there was a beastiery but I wasn't really interested enough to look through it

- The attack ammunition felt a little odd. Mainly in that I mostly just wanted more tackle ammo but as the game went on, mostly got variants that felt less useful. Reckless tackle in particular felt weirdly useless in how dangerous it was to yourself. I did feel like I wanted to conserve some ammo, but mostly for not wanting the annoyance of farming level 1 for tackles. If I had known the game capped out at warehouse 3 I probably would have finished it a lot sooner just blasting everything with big slash and calling it a day.

- I think it would be difficult to continue to add more meaningful content without adding more depth to the combat.

I bet there are a lot of ways you can go with this including non-linear dungeons. There might be that but I haven't had a chance to play too far. This reminds me of the 3D dungeons in Phantasy Star I but with a much better twist.

One thing I noticed is that the text can be difficult to read easily sometime.

I look forward to seeing what you do with this!

* Too many ads. No way to escape them (eg can't pay to remove ads). Even without payment, I think you should remove ads that appear after the player finishes a dungeon. Ads can be used as a punishment mechanism when you die or when you run away. But I think it would be a lot better if you removed ads from the bottom of the upgrade screen, and if you reduced the frequency of seeing ads. I might just not play much if there are that many ads. It really degrades the experience.

After 10 minutes of playing, the repetition of messages gets a bit old. Especially in situations where one attack move has multiple similar effect. Like there's one that gives you more physical and magic attack power. However it splits up the messages and animations into two, making it take twice as long.

The winning messages could be a lot quicker too - put the "you absorb the monster's magic" (or whatever) message in the pop up that asks you whether you want to learn it or not, rather than as another combat message at the bottom you have to wait for.

And when you kill a monster, you shouldn't have to wait through irrelevant effects like poisoning them, or raising your attack power. They're dead, its over. Would be nice to squelch irrelevant messages.

Had a play through and found it pretty addictive; similar to other clickminer/grind style games I've liked in the past.

I found the action swap mechanic a little odd at first but ultimately a nice change of pace from the more typical "unlock/pay to play" style progression of actions.

I do agree with some other posters that there is a good deal of unnecessary tapping (choosing to return/continue, etc) but I think it would take a little ingenuity about how to keep the core gameplay as is and reduce those taps.

The ads did make me sad and really interrupted the flow/immersiveness of the experience. A revenue model I'd play with is a paywall after the first level (and capping the stats as kind of an "intro" experience) and doing away with the ads.

Last thought was around the item that allows the player to see the unit's information. That part felt especially clunky/tap heavy. Might be cool to just see the general strengths/weaknesses mid-battle.

Again, just a bunch of random thoughts, and the main takeaway is that you should be proud of not only building something cool, but putting it out there for others to enjoy!

I like the mix of mobile casual and pokemon / mystery dungeon style. However I played two runs (returned safely, upgraded abilities, got killed by angry bear) and I don't want to try again. I'm missing some meaningful interaction (maybe shops? or alternate routes?). I'm bored by long transitions and repeated messages after battles (maybe let me skip or speed up the animation about absorbing monster energy?). I'm also overwhelmed by seeing so many different moves; perhaps moves could drop less frequently? This way it would be more of a special event instead of a regular thing.

Overall, I enjoyed it and will look out for future upgrades.

please let me give you a few bucks to turn off ads.

Did you write a dev blog? I'm curious what your life goal was. The game looks cool. I'll try to play it via that web link you provided.