Mineshaft Memos p1: Addressing the armor controversy & other Feedback!

Cheers Dwarves!

Welcome to our first edition of Mineshaft Memos (may be renamed based on feedback!), our format for sharing the current situation in development, addressing feedback and explaining our path forward in development.

Mineshaft Memos is supposed to be an informative but chill write-down based on your wishes and dreams. So please engage in the discussion below or in our Discord to help us shape the game. ːsteamhappyː

📜 A brief summary

Beards Go Underground is part of Deckbuilder Fest and we are hosting the first public Playtest

• Using our Discord and the Feedback form we got plenty of great Feedback that we'll adress further down

• The feedback included your concerns with enemies, a clear lack of Dwarves, visual and technical unclarities and other issues

• We have updated some of the stuff immediately and are working towards new solutions already

On other News:

• We are currently working on a new trailer for a format in June, so be ready for some quirky new stuff!

• Some quirky mechanics make their way into Beards and we're working on our first Boss

🎲 The Playtest Feedback & how we'll deal with it

First of all: Thank you everyone! Our first Playtest is currently sitting at an average rating of 7/10 stars for our first playtest. While we aim for a 9/10 in the long run, preferably 9,5 a 7 on our first version is great.

We're very happy that the overall feedback has shown that the concept and overall gameplay potential is huge. That being said, you di also not like many things, and I'll address them now:

Combat and Goblins feel disconnected/uninteractive

Feedback: Several of you mentioned that the goblins feel like a side mechanic one forgets, that they feel disconnected from the core gameplay and that one would think they can be interacted with.

How we deal with this: We agree. The enemies are currently not optimal, too easily forgotten and too complex for what their job is. Their job is to create a pacing for the players, where they need to risk their HP in order to find gold. While it does functionally work, it doesn't work for players.

We will address this by changing how enemies work fundamentally, making them less of a side mechanic but tying them to the field directly.

Where are the dwarves??

Feedback: You people missed seeing the lovely dwarves. It was too gameplay focused.

How we deal with this: We want to tell you more about the Dwarves and the world and add cool moments where you get to know them. Going forward we plan on adding little dialogues with different characters that help you to get to know the dwarves and the world underground!

That being said: We will not be able to support a huge branching storyline with thousands of things happening in our current situation. Unless that changes the dialogues will be tiny lovely bits and moments of joy for now!

Visual clutter and UI elements blending into the background

Feedback: The game is confusing. Interface elements are not always seen, some features don't get enough visibility (shapes for example), the game feels cluttered at times.

How we deal with this: Yep! Absolutely! We've already started by highlighting which shapes players found. Going forward we'll be looking for ways to explain the shapes and their usage better, as we consider it an important strategy component. Also we will try to give the UI visual and sound feedback that makes it's use clearer.

The game feels too slow and clunky (animations, pacing, and snappiness)

Feedback: The game feels too slow and doesn't reward players for their action enough.

How we deal with this

Thanks for your feedback! We try to make a really juicy game where every interaction is fun to do and have started with that. However it's not enough yet.

The reason is simple

We're deep in core systems and making interactions snappy takes a lot of time. We will make things snappy and awesome one feature at a time!

As for the game time we also also agree. Different players mentioned that it feels clunky. Animations sometimes do, action timing does. To adress this we will check how we can make things quicker but still rewarding and whether we can add speed option for players wanting to play fast as they've seen it all already!

The difficulty is too high "What's that 48 Gold level??"

Feedback: The game ramps up difficulty too fast and you do not feel prepared to deal with it.

How we deal with it: Balancing is a huge part of making a roguelike game. For our first playtest we balanced around early testers who are extremely experienced with the genre - which was way too hard. We basically said"if a pro can do it that's good balancing"- well not quite!

Going forward we will try to make the game considerably smoother in the transition from early, mid to late game so players can enjoy their runs and don't have to fight for their lives!

Armor should stack!

Feedback: It's frustrating that Armor doesn't stack. Often I feel I don't have Armor at the right times.

How we deal with it: Armor is tricky. If we allow that you can stack armor infinitely it can get out of hand quickly, especially with an armor playstyle that benefits from having armor. On the other hand it is frustrating when one doesn't have armor at the right time.

Currently we're exploring solutions that keep the game healthy but are still fair to players. One idea is to double health, armor gains and damage. Players lose 1 armor per turn, so It's a buff overall.

Some technical problems also occurred

And we fix them of course. Given that there wasn't gamebreaking bugs after our initial fixes, that's a good sign for now though! Tweening issues, UI confusion and other bugs are on our list. Thank you!

Do you have anything else you want us to have on our radar? Please tell us! We want to make this game fantastic and can only do so with you supporting development!

Thank you for your Feedback! Going forward we'll keep the current playtest up for some more time but not actively update it. The reason for that: We work on overhauled and new content, some of which we can't show yet. So we will update the playtest as soon as we can and inform you, when there's new things to try!

See you in the mines! ⛏️

Julien, Co-Founder