I've played Hammerwatch for a few days now and I really like it so far. The devs are fulfilling their objective of making a game thats a mix of Gauntlet and Diablo. There are some things that I would like to see changed / implemented, however, to improve my gameplay enjoyment:
1. I play on a laptop. An Acer travelmate with an intel 965 express GPU. It suports openGL2.1 and the game is playable when shaders are turned off (no lighting, glow, or AO). But even in basic graphics mode it is making the CPU and GPU work at 100%. I think there's probably room for optimization on both ends. I can play Diablo with good frame rates, and not max out my CPU. Considering that, if a pixelated game with no special effects is pulling so much from my processesors, it must be an optimization thing.
2. the game is similar to gauntlet with this respect: most of the gameplay is really a grind. You are tapping your attack button quickly and constantly the entire game. It's just so much! I can understand the swarms of enemies idea. But I think all of the pots and barrels is an over-the-top approach. We are forced to destroy every container we encounter, because they are really the only source of gold in this game besides the occasional treasure room. I highly recommend a system that has less containers to destroy, and higher payoffs. I am just tapping my attack button SO much… along with this, an auto attack button and/or toggle could be great.
3. It may be an anathema to what you were trying to achieve, but when I first started playing the game, I was appalled that there is no mouse support. I would really appreciate an alternate configuration that allows the mouse cursor to be the characters aimpoint and the left and right mouse buttons be attack and special ability one (mappable of course).
4. I'm sure that it has been suggested that the map be scalable and scrollable. These maps are quite large, and on the levels I have played, they can require you to travel quite some distance to get to certain areas from other areas.
5. Was it your intention that the player stop whenever the attack button is pressed? When I play as a Ranger and fire arrows while strafing, it freezes my character every time he fires. This can be a big issue when attacking ranged enemies.
6. I think that you should recover your hit point slowly over time. The food in this game is very sparse, and its locations unpredictable. You are only allowed to carry one potion, and it is a maximum health potion. To me, this dynamic is too unfriendly and can require you to backtrack very long distances because your health points are too low. Or worse, fight large groups of new enemies to get your healing combo, and/or potentially find food. I am not saying that slow hit point recovery overtime should be your primary means of healing, but I think it should exist. There should also be more effort put into healing in general. Diablo really had this down, where you could carry multiple potions, of varying strengths, and of course there was healing spells.
7. I'm sure everybody says this, but more diversity in enemies can be a good thing. The first three levels, at least, are really monotonous, because there are only three enemies: bats, grubs, and beetles. I suppose Diablo, especially Diablo one, was a bit monotonous in this way as well. But their enemies had more intelligence, more variety in how they attacked and how they moved. I just felt that by level III, I was tired of fighting masses of the same thing the same way over and over.
8. Is there a reason why the location of merchants is cryptic, and requires a lot of jumping through hoops to reach them? They are very spread out, and often painful to reach. I found it to be a frustrating part of the game. Obviously, for your story line, we can't cast town portal and go back to a village to get items, upgrades, etc. But I really disliked the difficulty of finding (and revisiting) merchants, remembering the locations of each one, etc.
I wish you all the best as you develop this game further. I certainly have enjoyed it, even with the above points in mind. I have recommended your game to others, and I hope that we can be playing cooperatively soon. Thanks for all your hard work…
