Now that my chaotic battle game is out, one of the things I’m most curious about is how difficult it is for everyone. I don’t want it to be a hard game; it shouldn’t take you more than a couple tries to win a battle, and you shouldn’t have to know all its mechanics to do so. But since this is the most complicated game I’ve ever made and its mechanics are pretty experimental, it’s tough to gauge how hard it really is.

How hard is it to avoid taking damage and being defeated? How hard is it to keep soldiers healed (ignoring that bug where some of them end up at the edge of the scene)? How hard is it to fight each boss with all their unique mechanics? I’m curious to hear what you think.

I feel like I have a pretty good balance between everything right now, but I’ll probably change some things if it would improve the difficulty. Something to keep in mind is that I intended for Quintavius to be weak. It forces you to avoid damage altogether and rely on your allies to help you fight monsters. People have suggested a way to heal yourself, but the problem with that is it’d nullify this entire dynamic.

I’ve thought about having multiple difficulty modes, but with this kind of game I feel like it’d be best experienced with one difficulty that’s designed for everyone. Maybe I’ll change my mind (again) in the future. But something else I haven’t thought of before that might work out better is difficulty scaling; changing the difficulty based on how well the player is doing. I already did something like this for the final boss, because he’s so much more powerful than everyone before him. So (without spoiling anything) on your third try and after, the time it takes to fight him is greatly decreased.

Let me know how hard you think this game or any specific areas are. A lot of my games are supposed to be really hard because those are the kind of games I enjoy, but this is one I don’t want anyone to struggle with.