Patch Quest Feedback

Hey Liam, here’s my main feedback, I hope it’s helpful :)

I love the presentation of the game, the graphics are great, the confetti is great, the whole thing looks awesome.

I love how it’s got that flow idea that tetris has. Basically each run starts too easy and ends too hard, that’s great, at some point in the middle I was getting really immersed in the flow. Perfect.

Here’s my two main points:

1. When making Thrive (about cells) we started with a cell which had some cytoplasm, a nucleus, two mitochondria and two flagella. It was a great cell but it was hard to see where to go with the game. What we did was remove everything and start the player with just a bit of cytoplasm, there’s now 30 minutes of quality gameplay to get back to the old starter cell.

When playing Assassin's Creed Chronicles China they give you a tonne of abilities right at the start (kill enemies, hide in doorways, make noise, throw knives, use bombs and fire crackers etc) which are all tutorialised in the first level. IMO it would have been a lot stronger if these were introduced 1 per level and then each level had been built around that mechanic (sneak into the fireworks factory and it’s all about fire crackers etc), they could have got a lot of gameplay out of it.

I feel like a similar thing is happening with your game, the very start is quite compressed. So you get the cube shooter, lasoo, plant ammo pickups and all the animals abilities if you ride them all at the very beginning. Imo it might be worth considering expanding that process out to get more gameplay out of it.

For example just give the cube shooter, have some areas with just that (5-10 mins). Then maybe have a mini-boss where you rescue some old cowboy who gives you the lasoo. Then have another run where you have to find the fruit farmer or something, and the reward for that is unlocking the fruit ammo (10 mins).

Then maybe have a system where each time you ride an animal species it unlocks 1 more of their powers. So first you just get cube shooter + 1 attack. On the second time you mount that species you get both attacks. Then the 3rd time you get all 3 abilities and you get given a badge for your “animals mastered” collection (you’re really good at little cute animated stuff so badges should be easy). This would mean it would take maybe 1hr to fully unlock all animals with all their attacks + defence and when you’ve done so you could see the nice badge collection. Maybe some elite animals can only be lasood once you’ve fully unlocked the basic version of that species in some sort of tech tree.

Of course feel free to ignore all those specific suggestions, my point is just that would give you maybe 1.5 hrs of cool gameplay out of what is currently just in the tutorial, and it would have well spaced cool rewards that feel awesome to get.

2. Strategic Choices

In games like FTL, Rogue Legacy or Slay The Spire there is this continual strategic layer going on about risk reward. For example in STS do I take on an elite in the hope of getting a relic or avoid it and go to the bonfire to heal? In RL do I go for the boss or do I just explore, if I hit a hard room it depends how much gold I already have as to whether I will tackle it or flee.

I feel like where QP is at right now there aren’t so many choices. You just head off in a straight line along the patches. You have to fight all enemies and some shrines are individual so you always take them. There is the choice about which shrine to take out of 3 and that is nice.
What I’d suggest is having some kind of exploration / strategic choices system. For example maybe a map you are navigating (FTL and STS just have simple line maps which are different every time) or a choice of 3 rooms each time you finish one or a dungeon floor made of several patches. (Happy to discuss it with you if it would be helpful)

This would mean that at the end of each patch you get some extra layer of thinking about what to do next, just going in a straight line is pretty straight forward. Continual risk vs reward questions are interesting imo and it has a nice up-down feel where you put your head down for the room and then look up again when you navigate the map.

Personally I overall feel really optimistic about your game. I think it really could be a hit. IMO visually it’s on the level of FTL, RL, STS etc and I think if you could get it there gameplay wise it could be really strong.

Great work! You’re certainly an excellent game dev.