Been playing off and on since initial EA: My current feeling and wishlist.

[SteamMonkey]

Heyo, 

First before I say anything else... I think the game is shaping up to be absolutely amazing. Obviously the art can't be beat, it's Klei, but some of the really unique or at least extremely rare concepts and some twists on well known mechanics are refreshing. I'm saying this now because I want people to understand that even though I'm being critical and asking for things below, I still think the game is great and will be great at launch. I'm not just here to be negative, but... feedback tends to 'feel' negative because you primarily point out things you want to see improve or that you don't enjoy. I respect any dissenting opinions, even if I don't agree with them. 

Now... with that out of the way.

Firstly, the "feel" of the game. I struggle to put this into the right words, but if you know music at all, the game feels too staccato and needs a lil more legato. In that, I mean there are multiple 'hard stops' and things feel very punchy. Many moves have wind ups that stop your momentum, hit stun feels like an instant 'WHAM', even a lot of the combos just feel like individual elements that don't really flow. It's just a feel thing, the mechanics and the controls feel fine as far as execution, but the actual gameplay flow in combat feels, not quit "jerky" but just very distinctly punctuated. The closest to flow I find is when I'm playing with Striker or Bow, but even then it's only really the aggression that gets a little more smooth, the rest of the gameplay still has that abrupt start and stop feel. I don't have a suggestion on fixing this to be honest... just sharing observation here. 

In line with this, and this may be 100% personal feelings, but I can hardly stand playing any setup that's not Light. Even balanced feels too slow, dodges too short, and heavy... aside from a specific setup I tried that involved the "damage when you land" thing, I could never play a heavy setup for long. I actually felt myself pushing harder on buttons and my sticks when I use controller in Balance and Heavy just trying to force it to move faster like leaning to turn in a racing game. I feel like you could take shrink the gaps between the base H/M/L to bring H closer to where M for movement and dodge speed, and M splitting the difference between H and L on movement and dodge speed but keep the dodge distances where they are and it'd have a noticeably improved feel when playing... again, probably just me.

Powers:
Single Player vs Multiplayer: I dunno if it's in my head, but it feels like when I'm in single player, I have a half decent chance of getting a synergistic power once I have a couple in my pocket already. In Multiplayer... I feel like the pool for each player is looking at BOTH players. If I'm leaning into hitstreaks or crit or something, or a Tefra build, it seems that 'key' power I want always shows up in my partners pool and vice versa. The number of times player B got the perfect thing for player A was noticeable. Again, anecdotal at best, but it happens so often it's become a meme to me and my partner at this point. 

Powers in general feel pretty good, a few are still kinda meh but a lot of them and the types of synergy and builds you can get in a run feels pretty solid, I'm hoping for a lot more over time because variety is awesome... which leads to one of the suggestions below, blacklisting. (more detail near the end)

Builds:
This is probably my biggest criticism, and the armor update might address a lot of this. But I feel like there's a weird disconnect between weapons, powers, and armor. There are a few sort of obvious 'builds' that just make sense and have multiple outs like hit streak, or tefra boosting, or runspeed+Dmg% (lolgnarlic). But other than a few stand out concepts, everything just feels like I'm winging it or praying for that 1 key power that'll pull a build together. Piecing armor together from multiple sets could be cool but it just doens't feel that great, a few things work really well then the rest are either raw gimmick, or things we 'wish' worked and try to force, but requires too perfect of a setup in powers and RNG to really come together. Don't get me wrong, it's not that hard to end a run with a solid setup that gets the job done, but it almost always feels very much like a patchwork of loosely related things. Where this hurts is the frustration. More often than not, I'm getting 'close' to something but never quite finishing it off, even in the longer boss runs and using food to try to push towards something specific. So what ends up happening is the first power or 2 end up driving the entire run and if the rest of the run doesn't cooperate with that choice, it's just a hodge podge and doesn't really feel great. Which is a shame considering how fun the gameplay itself is.

Suggestions: 
1. and the most number 1 of all: A blacklist for powers. When you get higher up and have a nice pool of powers, it'd be amazing if we could earn a way to block at least a small number of powers from ever showing up in a run. I would, in multiplayer with my partner, IMMEDIATELY blacklist all of the 'revive and X happens' type powers. They take spots up in our pools and reduce our chances of getting things we want in a build and promote the idea of "Well, you're gonna die anyway, so take this." I don't think they should be removed, but I personally don't wanna play with em. Other people might want to get rid of tefra powers, or they just don't like the shock set because it promotes spreading attacks around the group of mobs to get a chain finish and they like to focus fire. I think it's important to make the blacklist number reasonable but small so you can't just force a couple of specific builds, but if you could, say, increase your odds by ~10-20% for a couple of builds at the 'max' Blacklist... I think that'd be a great feeling change and worth earning. 

2. Power swap: allow 2 players to swap power pools at the end of a room. If the pools aren't filling arbitrarily and there's no code making the thing I want show up in my partners pool, this just eliminates the 'Aw crap, that's the one I want!' vibe. Maybe make it so you can go to someone elses power and 'select' it but it just shows you want it and if the other person goes and selects one of yours, it completes the selection for you both. 

3. Striker: I love the striker, absolute baller weapon (lol), really unique, it's got a weird vertical chakram vibe which I enjoy. I love how it plays up and down lanes more than any other weapon in the game except maybe dashspin spear. However, the standard 'arc' recall that's on most of the strikers is horrible once you get into higher difficulties. I believe ballmerang should be the default behavior. The ballmerang, while still slow on the recall, at least has a better distance coverage and is more intuitive on how to play with that recall 'bounce' in more hectic maps. The Jackalope is great, I love the 'lane' style recall and it opens up a lot of interesting play with still having some limitations to it. I think a third option would be a 'roll' that stays on the ground and rolls directly to the hunter and pings off anything in the way at the appropriate angle. Also, just while I'm talking striker, having a "big ball", you only get 1 of them, it's bigger, it's slower, and it never bounces. When it hits something it dead stops there and recall is a slow roll back towards the player that dead stops anytime it touches anything. I can see that being super fun. 

4: Skip a power for a reroll: If you get a pool and actively don't want any of them and go to the next room without taking a power, you should get a reroll to use on the next power pool. Heck, make it a gem or a hunter's path thing. 

5: Gnarlic, just make it so you take 1% of the damage you do when you run into something. It'll make it suck up resources and require more thoughtful building instead of just 'any run speed, any damage increase, yeet'. Plus, it makes sense, you're gonna headbut something for 3k+ damage, that's probably gonna sting a lil :P 

6. Let hammers reflect projectiles that you can normally destroy with an attack. I just think it makes sense and would add a neat dynamic to the 'heavy' Hammer user playstyle, you can keep the timing tight or something so it's a skill ceiling thing.

7. Let more stuff hit strikers. The Treek striker should definitely be bounced by the special ability. 

8. My final suggestion is to ignore me and work your magic. I love yalls work. I got in with DST back when it came out and have been a massive fan of your work every since. I think you're hands down one of the best dev/studios on the market today. I love your art, the honest communication, and the dedication to the games you show. Everything above was said with love and I'm gonna be playing this either way. If it came out exactly like it is today, I'd still be popping in for some runs off and on for years I'm sure. Thanks for doing what you do. 

 

[Azamagon]

While I generally agreed with what you are saying here - as an avid Striker fan, I absolutely agree most with #3 and #7.

This, in particular:

On 9/8/2025 at 9:23 AM, SteamMonkey said:

Striker: I love the striker, absolute baller weapon (lol), really unique, it's got a weird vertical chakram vibe which I enjoy. I love how it plays up and down lanes more than any other weapon in the game except maybe dashspin spear. However, the standard 'arc' recall that's on most of the strikers is horrible once you get into higher difficulties. I believe ballmerang should be the default behavior. The ballmerang, while still slow on the recall, at least has a better distance coverage and is more intuitive on how to play with that recall 'bounce' in more hectic maps.

Yes. Very, very yes. WIth that in mind, I think then the Ballmerang itself should have its return arc to constantly home in on you (or at least during the majority of its return arc?), so that it always tries to return to you moreso than other Strikers, so it still lives up to its boomerang pun name.

I also would like to see some improvements to the Boomball. The fact that the explosion only occurs when it lands on the ground makes it quite underwhelming. I'd suggest something like this:
Whenever the Boomball lands from a high arc (be it on the ground or on enemies) it explodes for 75/100/125% weapon damage. However, the direct ball damage when landing from high arcs only deal 10% damage. This gives it a niche of having a better groupclearing power than other Strikers (and gives even better use of its Lob skill), but has less potent single target damage when using it that way.

Edited September 9, 2025 by Azamagon
Forgot a word, lol

[SteamMonkey]

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

While I generally agreed with what you are saying here - as an avid Striker fan, I absolutely agree most with #3 and #7.

This, in particular:

Yes. Very, very yes. WIth that in mind, I think then the Ballmerang itself should have its return arc to constantly home in on you (or at least during the majority of its return arc?), so that it always tries to return to you moreso than other Strikers, so it still lives up to its boomerang pun name.

I also would like to see some improvements to the Boomball. The fact that the explosion only occurs when it lands on the ground makes it quite underwhelming. I'd suggest something like this:
Whenever the Boomball lands from a high arc (be it on the ground or on enemies) it explodes for 75/100/125% weapon. However, the direct ball damage when landing from high arcs only deal 10% damage. This gives it a niche of having a better groupclearing power than other Strikers (and gives even better use of its Lob skill), but has less potent single target damage when using it that way.

I was actually thinking of the ballmerang when I mentioned the rolling return so that it'd hit the ground and try to curve back if you threw it and ran or recalled and ran. I like the idea of the boomball doing reduced but more consistent AOE as well. 

[vissogu]

On 9/8/2025 at 5:35 PM, Azamagon said:

While I generally agreed with what you are saying here - as an avid Striker fan, I absolutely agree most with #3 and #7.

This, in particular:

Yes. Very, very yes. WIth that in mind, I think then the Ballmerang itself should have its return arc to constantly home in on you (or at least during the majority of its return arc?), so that it always tries to return to you moreso than other Strikers, so it still lives up to its boomerang pun name.

I also would like to see some improvements to the Boomball. The fact that the explosion only occurs when it lands on the ground makes it quite underwhelming. I'd suggest something like this:
Whenever the Boomball lands from a high arc (be it on the ground or on enemies) it explodes for 75/100/125% weapon damage. However, the direct ball damage when landing from high msn games arcs only deal 10% damage. This gives it a niche of having a better groupclearing power than other Strikers (and gives even better use of its Lob skill), but has less potent single target damage when using it that way.

Yeah! this all hangs together really nicely. Both suggestions reinforce the identity of the weapons instead of just buffing numbers, which is exactly the right direction.

Edited January 19 by vissogu