Royal Adventure: Roguelike RPG 4+

Fun, but flawed

Royal Adventure seems like a great game at first. A little slow, but enjoyable if you like rogue-like games.

The first few sections are fine, and you get to town, building up a simple but grand story, like a prologue before a great novel... but then the flaws come in.

The first big gripe I have is that there’s no “Wait/Defend” option. In most rogue-like games, you have the option to choose not to move to allow enemies to come closer without risking getting hit. This game DOES NOT have that option, thus in almost every area, you’ll be moving between safe squares to avoid taking damage, only to get corned with the only option being to take a hit... and with death sending you all the way out of the forest, losing HP too carelessly quickly ends your game.
Speaking of death though, the game is a little forgiving, in that each forest run has 6 sections. If you die you start from the section you got to, rather that the very beginning of the run. However, you only get 3 chances to do so. If you die a third time, the forest resets itself... but there is a worse part though...

My second gripe is the timer system. As you do a run, you get a limited amount of steps you can take on that run. If the timer runs out, you’re ejected from the forest, all sections are re-locked, and the forest changes.
Now, I can’t gripe about this too much, since potions that give bonus steps are common, and breaking crates/barrels will often give extra steps. To add to that, when you level up, you get to decide on one of two upgrades to power up your character, offered at random. One of these options is a permanent step-count increase (I only had the option come up once, at I think Lv10, and if so, it might only appear at specific level ups).

My third gripe is that levelling is too limited. As I said, you’re offered two options when you level up. This can be an extra health point, an extra damage per normal attack, a bonus to a certain spell type (Air, Fire, Ice) or extra points healed by potions.
This is good, but far too limiting. It means that you might WANT to upgrade your attack or a certain spell type, but you can’t due to there being no option on that level up... and if it is random and not pre-set as to what options will appear, then it’s possible that you’ll get nothing but spell upgrades and no health bonuses, or vice versa. It’s no game-breaking, but would be nice to build the sort of character I want to build.

Finally, the inventory. This is probably the least of my bothers.
You’re given very little space to begin with (4 belt slots and 8 inv slots). Plenty of space on your first mission, and I’m not sure if it was random or set to be obtainable once you reach the village, but I got a bigger bag and belt when I got there.
The problem is that even with that seemingly large space, it’s VERY quickly filled up, as each potion and scroll takes up a slot each. Understandable, but if means trying to balance between taking enough potions (that you’re bound to use up due to no waiting option), and taking scrolls to aid you.
The character you’re given (at least as far as I have gotten) is only a melee character, and thus spells are the only way to viably defeat the Banshee enemies (who can hit you from any distance, as long as you are in their line of sight, and no monsters are between you (boxes/barrels DO NOT act as cover). If you need to take several potions, it lowers how many scrolls you have at any given time...which is why it’s a pain that there’s no Wait option.

Overall, I am enjoying the game, and found it worth purchasing, but it can get frustrating, and it definitely needs tweaking.

Developer Response ,

Thank you a lot for the detailed feedback! We will fix all the issues which the game has now.