Level Bound

Prefacing my review by saying first off that I really enjoyed the game.  For someone with a drain kink, this was an excellent experience that tickled the neurons quite well. I am, however, coming back to it a few days after with the horny having worn off a bit to offer some balance feedback! (I apologize because some of this is going to sound very harsh, but I'm harshly critiquing it because I love what it is conceptually and want it to be even better.)

First, the drain mechanic itself. I think this is mostly handled very well. Drain, conceptually, has two sides to the kink, both the feeling of power of draining others, and the threat of *being* drained. Draining enemies as the player feels powerful! Mostly. It takes a bit of time to ramp up but once it does, the feeling of shaving multiple levels off at once is very satisfying. From the other side, the enemies also have threatening draining skills! It's very possible to feel things slip out of control as a player, which is a euphoric feeling in some ways but also a very difficult balance tightrope to walk.

The combat system integrates these things generally very well, as the enemy archetypes (Tank, Damage, Healer, Drainer) force thoughtful decision making on how you handle an enemy formation. Do you prioritize a drainer so they don't snowball, knowing they'll need to be killed several times if a healer is present? Do you kill the healer first, knowing the drainer gets time to snowball? Will a tank disrupt either of those plans, and can you disrupt that with status effects? I found myself enjoying the combat... mostly.

Where the system falls short comes in my opinion, in 2-3 major areas. First issue is enemy formations, some of the enemy types, and boss design. (Particularly how the bosses handle reinforcements)

When it comes to basic enemy formations, most combinations feel okay, but some arrangements slow the game to an absolute crawl or are outright unwinnable depending on when they're encountered. Double Drainer + Healer or Drainer + Double Healer are both borderline (if not literally) unwinnable if encountered early in the game before the player has any decent items. Even when winnable, the fight becomes so ungodly slow because of the need to spend dozens of turns trying to gain a level lead over the opposing drainer while sandbagging the team's HP. It's not uncommon to spend a lot of turns in a cycle of 2 characters mending to stay healthy while Red tries to gain enough of a level lead to break the stalemate, or you have to just be ok with trying to roll the dice on getting a lucky Smite to break it, which is a gambly and generally miserable experience as a player.

Outside of the basic enemies... Structures suck. A lot. Life totems are dreadfully unfun due to being unable to chew through that much HP while ALSO sandbagging your own team's HP and trying to maintain an exp lead over any drainers present on the opposing team. The Wooden Barricade was ok but not great. Probably the least offensive. The Cleansing totem is about as bad as the life totem due to the team's dependence on bleed crits to deal meaningful damage. I can't say I had much fun with any encounter that had a structure present because they, by and large, remove all the strategy present in the other encounters, because all of them are so annoying they MUST be dealt with but dealing with them is a miserable, slow slog. You are essentially forced to bring the flamethrower to deal with them quickly, which shouldn't feel like the only viable option. Especially when there is no inventory to keep it in and bring out as needed. Many players won't even know it exists!

Bosses... Mixed bag. I'll come back to these because I think this is primarily a topic for one of my other points of feedback.

Second big problem I have is that the way the game handles enemy leveling and player progression means it almost never feels like the player is getting meaningfully stronger. Consider a typical encounter where the player is actively engaging with the drain mechanic and not just beating things to death. It can take as long as 15-20 minutes depending on the formation, but by the end of it, the player's party has likely drained quite a few levels out of the enemies they were once equal with them, leaving them small and broken (figuratively or literally, depending on if you're draining them all the way.) This is great! It feels fantastic to do that. It is then immediately undermined by the next encounter being autobalanced to match your average experience, leaving you feeling like you actually didn't get stronger at all, you're right back where you started.

This happens because the player's only progression is the items. As you level you don't learn new skills, there's no skill trees or new abilities to gain that do new and interesting things (like draining a group! or abilities that combine damage and status effects, or more powerful versions of existing tools, etc) The only powerspikes are lootboxes, and some of the items feel actively detrimental to use early on, and while getting the Legendary items feels like a huge and satisfying powerspike (the Temporal Watch and Shrink/Growth rays in particular), it leaves it very feast or famine, and frustrating as a player because it feels difficult and out of your control to actually gain a leg up on the enemies.

Finally... Action economy. Action economy is the messy issue at the root of the game's balance. Without the Temporal Watch I almost never felt like I was stronger than anything in the game. The enemies are all approximately as strong as the player's characters, so largely speaking this means you're frequently forced into slow stalemates due to how much of your action economy *must* be healing, defending, draining or status effects, in order to survive. This is especially bad in most of the boss fights, which often swiftly overwhelm the player.

This is most notable on the Slime Queen Boss. Let's consider, for example, the experience of a first-time player on this boss. We're presented with a 3-enemy fight, and we see that we have the Queen, a Mage, and a Healer. We know how these are likely to behave! The Mage is a drainer, and the Healer is obvious. I, as most players likely do, concluded that I should focus down the Healer, since the healer will likely block my attempts to burst down one of the other targets. 

I, by some luck, manage to do so! Only for the Queen to immediately summon another one, and then give BOTH OF THEM ROYAL GUARD. This is, frankly, awful. You have immediately removed one of the strategies that works everywhere else from being viable. 

So I go, ok, let's reload to try to rush the queen instead! For an average player, this is strictly not possible. They can't kill her in one turn, and even if they did, they'd need to do so repeatedly until she stayed dead, because the healer is alive. I couldn't do this on my first playthrough and it only proved a viable strategy on the 2nd playthrough with cheating myself the Legendary items. For everyone else, they do around 1/3rd to half her health, the mage barriers her, then the healer mends her. Great. No progress.

Then. THEN. THEN SHE EATS SOMEONE?? Like, I expected that would be a risk, but this is a GIGANTIC action economy issue, because your eaten party member is effectively not able to do anything but slowly die and feed her EXP. All the while your other two party members are trying to stabilize the party while slowly draining the adds down until they're broken and hide behind her. This is likely the 'intended' solution because that mechanic is clearly deliberately programmed, but it takes so ungodly long and requires skewing your party levels such that Red is at least a few ahead of the enemies so that it doesn't take 3 hours of sandbagging. I was able to beat the fight this way, but it wasn't even remotely fun, and feeling pidgeonholed into that strategy felt bad. There was, seemingly, no real way to prevent this action economy problem. You can berserk her to buy yourself 1 turn, but even then she gets two actions and swings at you, so that's barely a gain. Seduction can stun her, again buying a turn, but the core issue remains, turns spent doing these things are turns that are NOT DEALING DAMAGE OR MAKING PROGRESS, as the other enemies in the fight will either be draining you healing her, barriering her, etc, and the instant she gets to eat someone you fall behind. It's very frustrating for a first boss, and definitely overtuned, even if I was able to eventually beat it.

This problem, unfortunately, persists into every single boss fight in the game. The bosses' action economy is either as good or better than the player's, so without Legendary items the game becomes a tedious slog. The Scientist and Dragon were both particularly bad for this because once again, structures are the worst thing in the game, and the decision to have the Factory and all the Robots exactly match the player's level means you can't even overlevel it. The Factory replenishes the bots so you're once again forced into the slog of draining them until they're so weak that they aren't a threat, then whittling it down. This fight is miserable even at max level with cheats. Dragon has the same problem, because of Last Stand + Life Totem and reinforcement jumpscares even when you start whittling the Dragon down. Again there is only one real strategy. I didn't fight Miss Darkness but after reading the comments she sounds so unfun that I don't even want to. I did fight the Shadow Stalkers and those weren't THAT bad. DPS race.

All this said I now need to dial back and make clear: I did really enjoy the game for my first run, but once the horny euphoria of draining wore off, the mechanical flaws and frustratingly slow gameplay hampered my desire for repeat runs and prompted me to provide this feedback in hopes the game can develop into something more engaging for the player and less slow.

I think the biggest things to address are:

1) More depth to the player gameplay. Revolves too heavily around items, which are luck to obtain. Introduce skills and means of the player to feel like they're actually getting meaningfully stronger. These skills should be strong enough to make fights *faster*, too. That's the reward for getting stronger!

2) Fix the game's approach to reinforcements and structures. "Drain the reinforcements until they're non-threatening" should not feel like the only valid approach to every boss, and structures are woefully unfun in all their incarnations.

3) Item balance could stand to be looked at. The common items often feel actively detrimental, the uncommons are in a good spot, and the Legendary feel gamebreaking to the point that it feels like the later bosses are designed around having them. (This is not a good assumption to make of the player)

Other specific issues:

- Phase shift sucks. Just take this out, all it is is frustrating for the player, from both the player and enemy side. On the same note, Red Bots are way overtuned, you may as well just quit if one is present.

- Slime Queen needs a cooldown on Consuming an ally, she shouldn't be able to eat you again instantly, this is what makes progress so ungodly slow in the fight.

Hunter is pretty obnoxious as a wandering boss. You have plenty of gameplay features you are encouraged to use and he just... nopes out of all of them. He is completely non interactable and that doesn't make him at all 'fun' to deal with

Is miss darkness even beatable?

I've tried a ton of strategie, but this is starting to feel like a bullshit unwinnable fight. You can't really outdrain her if because she pulls from all 3 companions, so I tried to do so when she broke everyone but red (and by farming hp in the early fight, so I went in with 100k hp on red, plus bonuses for the first few round through the giant status). and while I could outdrain her by like 0.2 million, she had a 300M head start that's impossible to clear without doing this fight for hours.

I probed for hidden mecanics, like drain/killing the vixen, and while she doesn't do anything if the vixens are drained she simply revives them at full health if they go down.

You can't outheal her attacks, as red cannot defend and thus is doomed of eating 800 bleed damage per turn, plus the mandatory 400-600 damage from the claws (and whatever the vixens do if not drained) and you can't damage her, as her defense stats makes anything that's not a giant deal no damage, and she heals for at least 250 hp a turn.

I seriously ask what tf even is the point of giving a fight option, that takes forever to get to, with a bs boss rush and vixens that while easy are a pain to redo every time if she can't be defeated?

Maybe I should go a beat the factory to get the robot companion, but even then I don't think it matters as she'll just drain this one too and give her an even bigger head start.

Lastly, she can't be stunned or baited into an attack pattern, so she's basically an rng boss with no way out besides 20 hours of slogish back & forth.

and for an official review of the game, fun premise severly dragged down by the biggest slog of gameplay you could imagine. Start is garbage, where you are basically rerolling encounters to avoid the slime as much as possible (regardless of the route), only to be met by an equally annoying boss that punishes you heavilly regardless on how you approach it. The gacha mecanic on equipement, as well as the one equipement rule is bullshit, not because only one equipement per character is unfair but because you can't store them. So the growth ray and temporal watch are the only viable ones, as other legendaries are only usefull against building, and the shrink ray does not work where it would matter.

I'm willing to make peace with the AI assets, but like make this game fun.

Anyway, those are my two cents, if someone knows how to beat Darkness, I'm open to everything, and if someone has the cheat code I'd appreciate as it didn't seem to have appeared in the ascension ending and I'm not interested in grinding everything again.

i did not read the rules about karma :0 and faced the impossible battle. it was my first playthrough. 
any way i could have the code for this? starting over is just bit too much for me. 

nice game and i had fun last update but now in the edge browser my images dosnt load and i cant fight against any enemy. i made it so that i have the cheatcode but now i need to do it all again in other versions and thats frustraiting

can you even beat mrs  darkness? or is it made to be unwinnable

Could you make it downloadable? I hate playing in browser but the game is awesome..

Overall this update is great. Now time to list my thoughts out.

SPOILER WARNING 

Positives

1. Love that the images change as the characters level up. Great way to visualize them growing bigger.

2. Most of the mechanics are explained, including ones that had no explanation in the original release.

3. Thank you thank you thank you for changing Red's voice LOL. 

4. The addition of items is a nice little touch, albeit a bit bare. I'll get more into that later.

5. I do like how there is now the base of an actual story, whereas in the original story there was essentially none.

6. I do like that draining does have consequences now.

Now for parts that I think could be worked on/tweaked a bit.

1. Although I do love the dynamic portraits, the existence of the shrink and grow mechanic (the effects, not just by leveling up) kind of throws it off a little. It shoots them up to what I would call their max size/final stage, but without the stats to show for it. Now I'm not saying that the growth ray should massively increase your stats, it's just a little weird visually.

2. Although more id explained than the original release there's still some gaps. Although it is mentioned to check the log, I still do wish it would be possible to see what effects do by maybe just hovering over them and maybe also being able to see how long an effect will last. Seeing the chances of ana stun working would be nice as well. Even with the logs some things aren't clear. For example I still have no clue how much damage I should expect bleed to do, or how much seduction will reduce the enemies attack. Also it's a little confusing see the growth and shrink work differently with the scientist where she just isnta kills anyone who's shrunk and she gets like five attacks when she's grown.

3. Though the items are nice, I think the main flaw is that you can get literally any item by random chance. Like you could just happen to get a legendary thing right off the bat, or only get common for ages. Another thing with them is that they're pretty vague. Yes, once I have the growth effect in battle I can see what it does in the logs but I have no clue what it does just by looking at the growth ray. Even after using it for a while I still do not understand the Dragon's Throat at all, and it just seems incredibly weak. I also do wish that there was maybe some sort of storage as it sucks having to throw a legendary item out to try a different one out, and then having to reroll it if I want to go back.

4. Despite draining have consequences it still feels like it's essentially the only way to beat enemies. Even with the goddess buffs if you're up against two or three healers you can't do anything. Also I recall in the original version that anyone attacking would steal some xp but now only Red's do. I'm not sure if that's intentional but if it is as far I could see there was zero mention of it.

5. Out of all of the bosses I would say the easiest is ironically the dragon, with the scientist being in the middle and the slime being the hardest. Killing the minions isn't really an option because they just get resummoned, and killing the boss isn't enough either because she just gets revived. Once again, we're forced to stall with draining and break the minions. Even overleveling doesn't really work against the slime because of the unholy amount of xp she steals from you when she's eating you. Unlike every other drain, her drain seems to be based off of not her xp, but the opponents. 

6. As I mentioned before, the goddess powers are a bit underwhelming... except for when it's completely broken. So for the underwhelming part, that's simply because it can just do less and less the higher level you get. Even if she's level 100 that does literally nothing if you're level 100, and you've wasted all that xp. In normal gameplay it has a very little effect. When playing normally I did not get the Divine Judgement a single time, and was left wondering what it was. Now, how can something be underwhelming and completely broken? Because divine judgement is literally an insta kill which you can almost guarantee if she's high enough level and Red is low enough level. By having Red be broken, and with the goddess at let's say, level 50, I now have a party member that will 1 hit KO 50% of the time and literally cannot be defeated. And while I have this massive cannon my other two party members can literally be doing nothing but heal each other while Red does everything. The only reason this doesn't work for everything is because it seemingly doesn't work on bosses, which isn't mentioned anywhere. 

7. Short and simple one, having multiple save slots would be nice.

TLDR:

New content is great, I like that there's a story, but the new stuff needs some tweaking to be balanced. I know that there was a lot more things that I think could be changed than I sang praise, but I'm being pretty picky. I don't want this to discourage you as I did genuinely enjoy playing this and the new additions certainly add to the game over the original version. I give this feedback out of a desire to see this game grow and develop as it's already fun, but I believe it has so much potential. As I said in my other feedback for the original version, please reach out to me if you want to discuss this any more or you want any clarifications from me. I really just want to help and see this game be great.

Now, I've buried this section at the bottom just in case someone decided to disregard the spoiler warning. For the love of me I can not defeat Miss Darkness. I'm not sure if she's meant to be beatable but if she is, I just can't. Her kitsunes are constantly spawned in by her so you can't get rid of them. She regens a crazy amount of health. She stacks an insane amount of bleed. And the kitsunes do so much damage. I tried so many times with different strategies and nothing worked.

Also on the subject of breaking enemies, love the reset that happens if you break enemies after you fully power the goddess.

Anyways again, great game, keep up the great work, and please reach out to me if you want to. It's hard for me to convey all my thoughts so if anything isn't clear or you don't agree with something, I'm happy to talk.

So what exactly is the penalty for breaking enemies? Because the game mentions there are "permanent consequences" for it but it's literally the ONLY way to win some of these fights with healers in them because breaking enemies makes their allies lose the ability to heal/buff them allowing them to be killed for good.

Otherwise the healers enter an infinite if/then loop where they heal/resurrect any low health enemy. They pretty much turn into one of those enemy fights where you NEED to kill them all at the same time or they resurrect. And it is incredibly annoying, especially since the stuns you have access to are only a 50% chance to proc and it takes forever to raise that percentage. And even the stuns become useless if there's 3 healers since whoever ISN'T stunned will just heal or resurrect one of the stunned guys. Not to mention the fact that they sometimes decide 75% health is low enough to heal and end up giving their friend overhealth so they're now at like 135 out of 75 health.

I'd recommend either adding cooldowns to the enemy heals, lowering how much they heal, or something else entirely.

Edit: after reading the description again it mentions breaking "POWERFUL" souls, does that mean whatever the penalty is, it's only for bosses?

I really like most things added in the new update - the new objective of gaining levels to empower the goddess, the changing character portraits, the equipment - but I have to say that combat becomes a massive slog as soon as there are two or more healers in the enemy team. If you're at the same level as the enemies or slightly lower, it takes forever to drain them low enough to make defeating them all in one turn feasible. 

The slime queen has this even worse - you can take down the healer, but if you don't defeat the queen in the same turn then it means absolutely nothing. And taking down the queen just means that the healer is going to bring her back. Fighting the queen and failing to win just makes it worse forever since now she's an even higher level. There needs to be some kind of limit to enemy healing - either a maximum number of uses they can do or a delay between uses. Something to prevent endless fights. 

If you really want to encourage taking down enemies quickly, giving them a powerful attack that only triggers after a certain number of turns is far better than making them heal forever. Conversely, if you want longer fights that force the player to drain levels, having enemy defense be a lot higher is much better than infinite healing, since progress remains between turns.

Additionally, making items replace Red's ability to escape makes the issue even worse. If you get caught in a fight you can't win, you now have to wait until the enemy defeats you, which could take hours. I had to refresh the page to exit a fight with the slime queen and it reset my save to the beginning again. It would be far better to lose the ability to drain so that this sort of thing can't happen.

I really do like the concept of the game, and what's here is interesting. I'm excited to see what future updates bring. I just think that something needs to be done to make fights faster without requiring the player to grind forever.

EDIT: I would also add that the double actions item completely breaks the game. It could use a little bit of a nerf - perhaps only every other turn so you can't just have 4-6 actions on turn one and bully every fight.

Ascension Update is live - Please reset your save files or it won't work. There are too many changes for me to support the old saves. Thank You. The endings and cheats were updated, so the old code won't work, just a heads-up.

Simple but still cool! I am eager to see the development and more theft content :)

About gameplay, Escape felt a bit useless. It never managed to success despite a lot of tries while I was getting siphoned. I realized then that it's better to let your party die as soon as possible to end the fight and reduce your XP loss

I wonder if I could try to help, maybe like giving some pictures. I know one day I will also try to make an attribute-theft game, also free and also while I am alone

no local download?

Any updates? No rush...

how do you discover the password to the cheat menu?

Good, but do the images change if they level up enough? Is there transformation or growth, pratically

So after completing what the game is currently here's my thoughts

Positives

1. Fetish content aside, the game is built nicely. The music for the hub is a nice peaceful little tune and the music for battle is pretty neat. It's just nice as a lot of these types of games don't have any sound or music. The sound for attacks and other actions is mostly a nice touch.
2. I know AI art isn't the hottest thing everywhere but personally I do enjoy the pieces that you've made. All the characters look great and do a good job of somewhat giving you a feel of what these characters would be like.
3. The mechanics are simple and need little explaining for the most part Sometimes games will try to get fancy and have lots of different things that just complicate it. This isn't one of those games.
4. The portrait expanding on level-up is such a small detail but a welcome one.

Feedback for Improvement

1. As I mentioned before I did enjoy most of the sounds. The three sounds that got a bit old were the mending sound, the draining sound, and the sound of Red's voice. I feel like the mending and draining are pretty loud. I couldn't tell you why Red's voice bugs me but it just kind of does.
2. While the mechanics are simple not all of them are explained fully. Mock and seduce seem to have the secondary effects of reducing defense and attack respectively, but those aren't mentioned. Additionally the odds of either working aren't mentioned openly. The only place it's displayed is the logs but most people probably won't check that. The duration of taunt isn't mentioned anywhere I could find.
3. Balance. Now I know this is only the first release and balancing is hard, and I am not trying to directly insult you or your skills. I have two mains problems: Mending, and draining. Firstly, mending. My issue with mending is how spammable it is and how much it does. It seems to do half of the users health and also any excess is turned into overheal. Due to the fact that it heals so much and is spammed by the AI, it's extremely hard to break through, even while using seduce and mock. Also there's the fact that it doesn't matter if you defeat an enemy by lowering their HP, they can just be revived. Now, this segways into my problem with drain. Drain from what I've found drains somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the user's xp needed to level up. This scales very quickly. One encounter I was up against three enemies that would spam drain. It just wasn't possible for me to keep up against it, especially due to the fact that drain heals. On the player side, when it might take several turns to lower hp to 0, due to this scaling it can be a one or two shot against an enemy, completing negating an encounter. Due to this and the liberal usage of mending, I've found that the only viable strat is to just drain both party members and spam drain on enemies, since as mentioned before the scaling is so extreme, and the fact that draining is the only way to make sure an enemy stays down.
4. Again, I know that this is only the first version so I'm was not and am not expecting anything grand but I do suggest for there to be some driving force. I know you mentioned plans for dialogue in the hub and such but I mean just a general story. Why are we on this quest? Why this party? How did they meet? Things like that.
5. Making the different party members more unique. Currently the only difference is their one skill. All other stats are the same. I feel it would help to develop the world and characters more if their stats varied.

Now I just want to emphasize that I am not trying to put your work down or discourage you, quite the opposite in fact. I'm giving you this feedback as I genuinely enjoyed playing this and want to see this be the best product it can be. I want to apologize if this came off as harsh or rude in any way. I truly do not mean it in that way. Making a game is hard work, and you have a good start. If you want to talk directly with me about this or hear more please feel free to reach out. I'm happy to help in any way I can.