Good job with the game, it's neat and polished and the gameplay is very clever. I spend hours on the demo last summer and I'm enjoying the full version since yesterday. Quite addicting!
I just ran into two minor issues so far.
In the options, I can't change the window resolution. It's like the game only detects 1920x1080 on my computer (Windows 10). The problem seems to occur whatever option I choose between windowed or fullscreen. Any idea of what the problem would be or a possible fix?
[Warning to the casual reader, the following might spoil part of the game] During a gameplay with Ceridwen, I had both Crimson Bell and Ivy Bell spells. I cast the former, and some rounds after the latter but the Ivy Imp didn't spawn (because I already had a Crimson Imp behind me I guess?). If this is intended behavior, maybe it could be worth giving the info to the player because I really expected to be able to have multiple Imps behind me, just like some monsters can summon multiple enemies before them.
That being said, I'm having a lot fun playing the game anyway, so thanks for giving life to such an original idea!
Hello, sorry for the late response. Glad you are/were having fun!
Resolution options are just monitor-supported resolutions in 16:9 ratio and perhaps that was naive of me. Like a 16:10 laptop probably has nothing valid there. I'll see if there is something easy I can do, like a launch option to just list everything or let you scale the window manually.
Yeah, there is a limit to the amount of summons. I have added a tooltip in the update that will clarify that before you find out the hard way.
Thanks a lot for the update, no worries about the delay. :)
Regarding the window size, being able to set it manually would be enough. But as I said this is just a minor issue, absolutely no big deal. At the moment I can resize the window with my cursor when in windowed mode, it's just that the change gets reverted everytime I open the options menu (e.g. to adjust sound) or close the game. So I was just wondering if there was an easy fix to this. No problem if there's not.
As for the summon limit, finding things out the hard way is also part of the Rogue-lite genre :D Even if it was a tad frustrating at the moment, it didn't have me stop playing. Quite the opposite actually: I had to see what that Imp looked like!
Thanks again for taking the time to reply and for taking players feedback into account!
I love this game. REally cool artstyle, splendid music and good to play. Altough I struggled first playthrough but that's just a skill issue. Man can't wait to see how the full game will look (and play with the catgirl)
Really fun! I love seeing all stages of the dev process on itch, but it's nice to play a game/demo where the mechanics are already this well developed. I couldn't believe there were multiple bosses and so many different buffs and enemy abilities.
That was super fun! Always sorta delighted when new mechanics would pop up. I also liked how you could combo spells and get good synergy in your spells. Thanks much!!
great game! I really love everything about Ceridwen, but Gwen feels a teensy bit weak compared to her. I think if you gave Gwen's spells more color overlap (like how most of Ceri's spells contain purple), it would let her do more things and feel a lot better to play.
I just finished getting all the badges and quests and stuff and I have many opinions if you want to hear them :3 (don't want to be the girl that barges in and tells you how to balance your game unsolicited)
Ok so firstly these are my qualifications (I've gotten a +5 with Ceri but I didn't ss it so you'll just have to trust me)
First thing is with the modifier, the "halved health but heal after every battle" is imo one of the strongest modifiers in the game, and definitely at least a -1 if not stronger, especially since the halved health only applies to the starting health and not the health buffs you get from blessings. Not needing to care about the health you end up with at the end of a battle makes every fight except the final boss like 10x earlier, and bc of the halving not applying to blessings, after factoring in the expected health loss if you didn't have the modifier, you're only missing out on like 5 health most of the time. And this modifier is only gonna get better in future acts.
Secondly, scrying is really not worth the 3 health cost in 3/4 runs, and is definitely not worth 3 acorns if you're using that modifier. I'd recommend reducing the price to 2 life and 1-2 acorns. This might not be necessary depending on later bosses, but there's very few situations in which knowing the boss ahead of time would change whether you win or lose
In terms of starting builds, there are a few that I think need slight buffs for one reason or another:
1. Spark/Water Shield
I know that this is the tutorial build, so it's understandable that it's not doing anything fancy, but I think it just needs a small stat buff. The main problem with it is that because casting both spells requires 5 non-overlapping mana across only 3 colors, it's very difficult to scale it into casting more spells (because like, if you want to add another spell to your arsenal, to cast it you'll have to not cast either spark or water shield, which makes adding spells to your spell book much less of the power spike that it is in other builds. My suggestion for this would be to slightly tweak the stats of spark to make it red/yellow and do 3 damage, putting on the same level as frost shards, but Idk what cost/damage ratio would work both stylistically and in practice so I'd suggest playing around with the numbers.
2. Catalyst/Magic Dismissal
I love the idea behind this build, but I often find that in practice it just doesn't pan out. I am almost never able to cast more than 1 magic dismissal, and so the damage ends up being incredibly lacking, and this build is often just strictly worse than Ceri's similar bewitch/shiver build. My suggestion would be to replace magic dismissal with double cast, or if you don't want a cooldown spell in the starting build, give magic dismissal a secondary effect like frost 1 to make up for the lackluster dpt.
3. Channel/Crimson Bell
The problem with this build is that after turn 2, the only thing you can do is cast channel for 2 health every other turn and wait which, in addition to being very weak, is also quite boring. Idk if you're willing to put 3 spells in a build, but my first idea would be to add steel bell to the build, giving you things to do until turn 4 and massively speeding up the dpt afterwards. alternatively, you could make channel 3 mana and give it another effect like giving it 1 shield or applying 1 hex or smth, and make a second spell that's 1 mana and makes 1 soul gem without cooldown. Or you could swap the hp and atk of the crimson imp, or smth else that I haven't thought of idk.
And now bc I don't want to come off as a hater, here are my 3 favorite things abt the game (not ordered)
1. The art is genuinely incredible, especially the pixel art
2. The badge system is super neat and allows for a ton of hilariously strong combos
3. The enemies are really well designed and all feel very fair (yet challenging) to fight against
Holy shit I accidentally wrote an essay. I do want to stress that I think the game rn is really good, and all of these are really just small nitpicks. Hope this wasn't too painful to read lol, and good luck on the game moving forward, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it!
To be honest, the goal with the starting sets is to give some variety when you’re replaying act 1. They are not made to be equal nor viable until the end of the game, but just give you other things to experiment with so going through act 1 is more interesting.
One of Gwen’s locked spell sets gives her Dragon Slave, a 4 gem spell you have to cast 3 times before it nukes everyone. It’s probably not as reliable as the ice start, but It’s fun to play around with having an alternative win condition so I made it a set. I figure if they're not your thing you'll just go with something else.
Something I don’t think is obvious in the demo is that later acts have their own spells and badges and the base power is higher. They’re not always straight upgrades, especially if you've got some synergies going on, but there is an expectation you won’t be too precious about shedding them.
I have done “get powered up and cast lots of things” much better on Aerfen and maybe Magic Dismissal needs a reevaluation. Some badges are amazing on it though, like you can reduce the stone count and have a 1-stone spell with Repeat and, for reasons I can’t get into, that’s not too rare.
The Channel starter having at least one fight where you wait for your imp to do everything can be a bit boring, you can x3 speed or take the skip modifier but it’s still fundamentally alternating empty turns. And given Channel is a reliable generator, I could see people sitting through that…
I think 3 health is a good number for Scry tbh. It is often useful to know who you’re fighting when picking spells or placing badges (ex: remove prism for mushroom). I do agree 3 acorns is way too much, you’re basically picking that with the same mentality as “no scrying nodes” and I don’t think I need two of those.
Anyway, I don’t want to come across as defensive, I appreciate the feedback. It is interesting to hear your thoughts and I appreciate you have put sooo much time into the demo!
For random encounters what enemies you fight is determined by budget, act and battle level (orb colour, basically!). “Enemies can appear anywhere” means only the budget is checked, so you can see enemies from any act (and summons). It’s more pronounced later on when the budgets are higher!
Tysm for responding! It makes a lot of sense that most of the stuff is balanced more for later game, which is smth I definitely didn't take into account in my feedback, and kinda addresses like 90% of my concerns lol. I'm assuming the -1 stone badge is smth that appears in later acts as I don't think I've seen that? either way I'm super excited for more of the game to come out! If you ever need another playtester feel free to hmu!
So, to cast spark you need to go red yellow yellow. But it doesn't matter if you pass other stones. So red yellow blue blue yellow still works. It only matters that the gems are in order. Pristine says no, you need to go red yellow yellow exactly.
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Hey!
Good job with the game, it's neat and polished and the gameplay is very clever. I spend hours on the demo last summer and I'm enjoying the full version since yesterday. Quite addicting!
I just ran into two minor issues so far.
That being said, I'm having a lot fun playing the game anyway, so thanks for giving life to such an original idea!
Hello, sorry for the late response. Glad you are/were having fun!
Resolution options are just monitor-supported resolutions in 16:9 ratio and perhaps that was naive of me. Like a 16:10 laptop probably has nothing valid there. I'll see if there is something easy I can do, like a launch option to just list everything or let you scale the window manually.
Yeah, there is a limit to the amount of summons. I have added a tooltip in the update that will clarify that before you find out the hard way.
Hello!
Thanks a lot for the update, no worries about the delay. :)
Regarding the window size, being able to set it manually would be enough. But as I said this is just a minor issue, absolutely no big deal. At the moment I can resize the window with my cursor when in windowed mode, it's just that the change gets reverted everytime I open the options menu (e.g. to adjust sound) or close the game. So I was just wondering if there was an easy fix to this. No problem if there's not.
As for the summon limit, finding things out the hard way is also part of the Rogue-lite genre :D Even if it was a tad frustrating at the moment, it didn't have me stop playing. Quite the opposite actually: I had to see what that Imp looked like!
Thanks again for taking the time to reply and for taking players feedback into account!
Cheers!
Witching Stone Gameplay
Dumped tons of hours into this, ready to dump even more. Super Epic
I love this game. REally cool artstyle, splendid music and good to play. Altough I struggled first playthrough but that's just a skill issue. Man can't wait to see how the full game will look (and play with the catgirl)
Actually waut are the 5 dots at the bottom of chara select
They are other starting spells! You'll need to unlock them first, though (or just bypass unlocks in the options)
Really fun! I love seeing all stages of the dev process on itch, but it's nice to play a game/demo where the mechanics are already this well developed. I couldn't believe there were multiple bosses and so many different buffs and enemy abilities.
That was super fun! Always sorta delighted when new mechanics would pop up. I also liked how you could combo spells and get good synergy in your spells. Thanks much!!
Cool Game!
I really like the way it works and the sprites are really cool! :D
Kinda hard tho but then Again that's prob my stupidity getting the best of me :/
great game! I really love everything about Ceridwen, but Gwen feels a teensy bit weak compared to her. I think if you gave Gwen's spells more color overlap (like how most of Ceri's spells contain purple), it would let her do more things and feel a lot better to play.
I just finished getting all the badges and quests and stuff and I have many opinions if you want to hear them :3 (don't want to be the girl that barges in and tells you how to balance your game unsolicited)
I'm happy for any constructive feedback!
Ok so firstly these are my qualifications (I've gotten a +5 with Ceri but I didn't ss it so you'll just have to trust me)
First thing is with the modifier, the "halved health but heal after every battle" is imo one of the strongest modifiers in the game, and definitely at least a -1 if not stronger, especially since the halved health only applies to the starting health and not the health buffs you get from blessings. Not needing to care about the health you end up with at the end of a battle makes every fight except the final boss like 10x earlier, and bc of the halving not applying to blessings, after factoring in the expected health loss if you didn't have the modifier, you're only missing out on like 5 health most of the time. And this modifier is only gonna get better in future acts.
Secondly, scrying is really not worth the 3 health cost in 3/4 runs, and is definitely not worth 3 acorns if you're using that modifier. I'd recommend reducing the price to 2 life and 1-2 acorns. This might not be necessary depending on later bosses, but there's very few situations in which knowing the boss ahead of time would change whether you win or lose
In terms of starting builds, there are a few that I think need slight buffs for one reason or another:
1. Spark/Water Shield
I know that this is the tutorial build, so it's understandable that it's not doing anything fancy, but I think it just needs a small stat buff. The main problem with it is that because casting both spells requires 5 non-overlapping mana across only 3 colors, it's very difficult to scale it into casting more spells (because like, if you want to add another spell to your arsenal, to cast it you'll have to not cast either spark or water shield, which makes adding spells to your spell book much less of the power spike that it is in other builds. My suggestion for this would be to slightly tweak the stats of spark to make it red/yellow and do 3 damage, putting on the same level as frost shards, but Idk what cost/damage ratio would work both stylistically and in practice so I'd suggest playing around with the numbers.
2. Catalyst/Magic Dismissal
I love the idea behind this build, but I often find that in practice it just doesn't pan out. I am almost never able to cast more than 1 magic dismissal, and so the damage ends up being incredibly lacking, and this build is often just strictly worse than Ceri's similar bewitch/shiver build. My suggestion would be to replace magic dismissal with double cast, or if you don't want a cooldown spell in the starting build, give magic dismissal a secondary effect like frost 1 to make up for the lackluster dpt.
3. Channel/Crimson Bell
The problem with this build is that after turn 2, the only thing you can do is cast channel for 2 health every other turn and wait which, in addition to being very weak, is also quite boring. Idk if you're willing to put 3 spells in a build, but my first idea would be to add steel bell to the build, giving you things to do until turn 4 and massively speeding up the dpt afterwards. alternatively, you could make channel 3 mana and give it another effect like giving it 1 shield or applying 1 hex or smth, and make a second spell that's 1 mana and makes 1 soul gem without cooldown. Or you could swap the hp and atk of the crimson imp, or smth else that I haven't thought of idk.
And now bc I don't want to come off as a hater, here are my 3 favorite things abt the game (not ordered)
1. The art is genuinely incredible, especially the pixel art
2. The badge system is super neat and allows for a ton of hilariously strong combos
3. The enemies are really well designed and all feel very fair (yet challenging) to fight against
Holy shit I accidentally wrote an essay. I do want to stress that I think the game rn is really good, and all of these are really just small nitpicks. Hope this wasn't too painful to read lol, and good luck on the game moving forward, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it!
also I couldn't tell what the "enemies can appear anywhere" modifier does?
Thanks for your feedback.
To be honest, the goal with the starting sets is to give some variety when you’re replaying act 1. They are not made to be equal nor viable until the end of the game, but just give you other things to experiment with so going through act 1 is more interesting.
One of Gwen’s locked spell sets gives her Dragon Slave, a 4 gem spell you have to cast 3 times before it nukes everyone. It’s probably not as reliable as the ice start, but It’s fun to play around with having an alternative win condition so I made it a set. I figure if they're not your thing you'll just go with something else.
Something I don’t think is obvious in the demo is that later acts have their own spells and badges and the base power is higher. They’re not always straight upgrades, especially if you've got some synergies going on, but there is an expectation you won’t be too precious about shedding them.
I have done “get powered up and cast lots of things” much better on Aerfen and maybe Magic Dismissal needs a reevaluation. Some badges are amazing on it though, like you can reduce the stone count and have a 1-stone spell with Repeat and, for reasons I can’t get into, that’s not too rare.
The Channel starter having at least one fight where you wait for your imp to do everything can be a bit boring, you can x3 speed or take the skip modifier but it’s still fundamentally alternating empty turns. And given Channel is a reliable generator, I could see people sitting through that…
I think 3 health is a good number for Scry tbh. It is often useful to know who you’re fighting when picking spells or placing badges (ex: remove prism for mushroom). I do agree 3 acorns is way too much, you’re basically picking that with the same mentality as “no scrying nodes” and I don’t think I need two of those.
Anyway, I don’t want to come across as defensive, I appreciate the feedback. It is interesting to hear your thoughts and I appreciate you have put sooo much time into the demo!
For random encounters what enemies you fight is determined by budget, act and battle level (orb colour, basically!). “Enemies can appear anywhere” means only the budget is checked, so you can see enemies from any act (and summons). It’s more pronounced later on when the budgets are higher!
Tysm for responding! It makes a lot of sense that most of the stuff is balanced more for later game, which is smth I definitely didn't take into account in my feedback, and kinda addresses like 90% of my concerns lol. I'm assuming the -1 stone badge is smth that appears in later acts as I don't think I've seen that? either way I'm super excited for more of the game to come out! If you ever need another playtester feel free to hmu!
I saw that ldshadowlady reference ;)
Haha, I'm glad someone noticed!
I don't understand the meaning of the effect pristine
So, to cast spark you need to go red yellow yellow. But it doesn't matter if you pass other stones. So red yellow blue blue yellow still works. It only matters that the gems are in order. Pristine says no, you need to go red yellow yellow exactly.
thanks