Mode4 Forums

I know that you take as example tons of game that have permadeath and that are roguelike games.
But for me, your game is not that kind of game.

Your game is about explosions, the main character almost never hits enemies directly. it's a game where you needs trial and error to be able to play with chain reactions.
Actually, when your game the most satisfying,it's when you manage to fry 5 enemies at the time.

To prove that, it's that whenever you're communicating about Bombslinger, you're showing this kind of stuffs (explosions and chain reactions)

But in Bombslinger, you're not encouraging the user when he does a chain reaction, even worse, you're penalizing him when he plays too much with fire.

Every time you try to do something crazy you pay-it immediately and then die and start with no upgrade. It drives the user to never try to chain, and force him to never take any risk.
So instead of having a dynamic game where you get crazy and put bomb everywhere to chain and maximize all the bombs, you end up by putting just a bomb on a corner, run to hide and wait, it's the opposite of a dynamic gameplay.

For now the game is too hard, and you don't have the satisfying part of the chaining.
I think, I you find a rewarding way when you chain something, it will make the game maybe a bit more easy, But then you could also increase the number of rooms.

Let me propose something:
- When you hit non-human enemies, you get food.
- bomb starts with 2-3 lines of explosions instead of 1. And you don't gain any bomb upgrade.
- When you chain more than one enemy/barrels/bomb, your bombs get more powerful for a limited time, the more you chain, the more it get powerful.
- first levels are filled with barrels, so it encourage you to chain.
- as the game gets easy, you can increase the number of rooms, to have more exploration.
- before starting a boss, you can have a room filled with non-human enemies, so you can get food.

Thanks for the detailed feedback seb!

I agree that we're currently missing out on the potential of a fun bomb-chaining gameplay and the fact that the game punishes risk-taking is definitely something we want to improve upon.

We're discussing this on a daily basis and the future updates to the game will most likely be informed by this topic in terms of design-philosophy (whatever that means )
Some ideas you suggest are bound to make the game way easier (which we might need to do in the future, but we need more data on that) but some things like playing with the explosive barrel distribution is something that we will look into managing better.

Thanks!

To continue with that idea, the chain reaction system that increase the power of bombs. that will create something "unattended"

lets say when you generate your level, you make 2-3 room before arriving in front of the boss, but then you add 10 more extra room that are not necessary to be completed to go to fight the boss.

first thing, It will increase the length of the game. But also it will introduce some speed and strategy into your game, forcing the player to think fast and take risks:
- the more room you complete, the more risk you take, but the more "power" your bombs might get.
- as the power is decreasing by the minute if not chaining, then you need to go fast.

the player will have to decide to have the right balance between power and risk. Once he judges that he's powerful enough, he can rush to the boss and be able to fight him because he gather enough power.

To a lesser extent that's already how it works in the game. The first level has sometimes non-mandatory rooms.
The following one usually have rooms that are optional (that doesn't mean that you know they are optional...you need the map item for that )