itch.io

The thing with Picross is that you gradually uncover the picture, and you can start guessing what it is before you finish - you could even make educated guesses about which squares should be filled, based on what looks right. In your game, the end result - the village scene - is completely removed from the process. At best, it's kind of a reward for finishing a puzzle, but nothing more. I just don't see the point.

You said you've exported a web version, so yes, it most likely should be possible, though it might take a while. You should just need to add a script and some meta tags to the HTML, and add a few other small files (a manifest, a service worker and some icons), and then you must host the file on a secure website (ie. https, not just http - getting that set up is actually the hardest part).

When I was doing it (not starting with a GDevelop app), the most helpful tutorials I found were these:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Installable_PW...

https://medium.com/james-johnson/a-simple-progressive-web-app-tutorial-f9708e5f2...

https://web.dev/offline-cookbook/

Anyway, I'm not saying it's definitely the way to go, but it might be worth looking into.

Have you considered making it a progressive web application (PWA)?

I've found that to be pretty straight forward (I don't know anything about GDevelop though).

It allows a game to run in the browser OR be installed (on both desktop and mobile) so that it runs in its own window, feels like a native application, and functions offline. You can also publish them on the Google Play store, and in fact a lot of well known apps are actually PWAs - Tinder, Instagram, Spotify, Uber...

I love the concept (I once made a very similar game myself), and the "Space Crusade" influence is immediately obvious. Implementing "squad mechanics without the fuss of controlling each unit one by one" is a tricky thing to achieve in a roguelike, because you do actually need to control each unit a fair amount of the time, or they get left behind.

If you're going to keep the standard roguelike one-tile-per-turn movement (instead of using action points like in X-Com etc), there really needs to be an option for squad members to automatically follow the current leader (squad members could still be explicitly ordered to hold their position). As it is, the game just feels a bit too slow and clunky to be much fun.

Apart from that, and a few minor niggles (eg. I like the individual map window for each squad member, but it should be centered in the direction they're facing, not directly on them), I think it seems like a solid game.

That's fair enough about the turn skipping. Right now, I don't think the need to be near a wall makes any real difference, but perhaps if you decide to add new content, then it might do in the future.  I would also say that the "push back" attacks of the zombie and giant-skeleton don't add anything much to the gameplay.

There's also a minor graphical glitch, as you can see here:

Note that most of the screen seems to be shifted left a bit, so some content on the left is cut off, and some stuff is visible at the right edge that probably shouldn't be. I get this every time I play. Possibly due to the way the screen in scaled?

I've just gone beyond level 200 without a game-over (only stopped due to boredom), but to be honest, I'm  pretty certain it's possible to continue indefinitely. I did get reduced to skeleton form once or twice early on (due to starvation), and had to backtrack a bit to get money and a purple potion, but for the last hundred levels or so I've not been anywhere close to death.

Once I realised that ghosts don't attack you, and are actually very helpful (good for killing ghouls and giant-skeletons), that made the game a *lot* easier (same with fire).  That's what I like most about this game - there's a real sense of discovery to the game mechanics.

Anyway, thanks again for the fun game! :)

Very nice game!

Surprisingly deep, too.

Initially, I thought it was far too hard, but then I realized that you can walk into a wall to skip your turn (maybe you should add a key for that?) - that was revelation #1.

After that, hunger became the only real danger, as healing items are plentiful and the majority of enemies are harmless. Now I'd get to around floor 20, die of starvation, and then a ghoul, giant skeleton or ghost would finish me off. At this point, I was thinking the whole skeleton-vs-living mechanic was a bit pointless, as once you got far enough to start encountering ghouls and giant skeletons, it became impossible to survive long in the skeleton form. I was ready to suggest you get rid of the health system - maybe have 2HP is alive, 1HP is skeleton, 0HP is ghost, and each form has special abilities and vulnerabilities, and there are more opportunities to swap between them so there's a puzzle element to it, or something like that...

And then I played again, but thought I'd try "cheating" a bit. Instead of drinking the purple potion right away, I went as far as I safely could with the skeleton (5 or 6 floors, until ghouls started showing up), taking advantage of the fact that it doesn't need food, and completely clearing out the levels of all enemies and gold. Then I went back to the starting screen, drank the potion, and started over but with a few thousand gold in the bank to spend on food. This time, I got to floor 43 before starving to death, and again being finished off by a ghoul.

And then I suddenly realized how I was *supposed* to be playing the game. I'd always figured  that once you're reduced to skeleton form, it's basically game over, since you won't be able to advance much further before a ghoul or giant skeleton finishes you off. However, I'd completely missed the fact that you can go back to previously visited floors, thoroughly clear them out, picking up all the gold which you skipped on the first run through in order to save food (which is no longer an issue in skeleton form), and then go back to one of the shops and use your new found riches to buy a purple potion.

Of course, if you die again, you'll have to go further back to get another purple potion, and it will use more food to get back to where you were, so it could easily spiral - but as long as you keep making enough progress between deaths, it should be a viable strategy.