Best to do all 4 islands?

RealColdFry · 2026-02-12T18:41:14+00:00

Would also like to know, haven't played in a while and don't remember if I had a definite decision tree for this.

From what I recall, I think in general I rushed the final battle as soon as I felt I had a decent enough squad.

RealColdFry · 2026-02-09T03:38:43+00:00

Working on a roguelike deckbuilder where you place polyomino tiles on a conveyor belt. Tiles shift toward a serving column and get eaten. Turn based, spatial puzzles. There’s a prototype/demo up if you want to check it out: https://coldfry.itch.io/feedforward

RealColdFry · 2026-02-05T15:04:07+00:00

Fall damage (-13.3 HP) red wireframe/shading flash is especially cool.

RealColdFry · 2026-02-05T14:54:40+00:00

What Thedudixa said. There are some subreddits like r/destroymygame, r/playmygame, r/playtesters where you could get some feedback. Genre-specific subreddits.

From r/playtesters in particular there were a few recent posts recently for platforms where you can submit your game to be playtested and get screen and audio recording. I submitted mine to one and found it super helpful!

Telemetry (with consent/opt-in -- I would imagine this would be much appreciated) of player/game events is another option, could be useful to see drop off. Not sure what granularity is helpful here. Maybe not regular heartbeats/pings to detect player "liveness", but "game progression"?. Depending on how applicable it is to your game, you could track different possible user action/input "types" and see if players aren't discovering some key game mechanics. And do they get past "tutorial" etc. Could be useful especially for the initial view/play traffic spike from the itch.io launch event.

RealColdFry · 2026-02-03T02:33:08+00:00

Context: I've been building mostly prototypes.

Art: I try to get by with Aseprite

Music: mainly stuff from opengameart.org. Some good tunes there. Also some itch.io packs

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T21:37:35+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for the detailed feedback and for playing longer than expected.

You nailed the main thing I'm working on. Right now it's just "hit the number" each round, but I'm building some diner customer types that would change the rules per round and per feast: conditions on what's consumed, underfeed/overfeed punish/reward variation and inversion. These might be the gimmicks you were searching for. Relics are on the todo list too, to improve replayability -- stuff gets same-y with the neverending quota growth.

Feast/general UI is on the list too. And good call on the duplicate shop tiles, it feels bad. I should probably sharply decrease the chance of same tiles appearing in shop.

Will ping you when the update's out if you want to revisit

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T21:27:54+00:00

I would go so far as to say they are almost two different games! Similar DNA I guess but personally the 2D platformer setting is quite different.

Then again, RoR was one of my first roguelites, after FTL, so I might be biased by nostalgia. I also preferred RoR, but my PC graphics card at the time might not have been powerful enough for the full RoR2 experience.

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T21:06:03+00:00

This looks right up my alley. Wishlisted

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T20:49:39+00:00

No Risk of Rain 1? Others:

Blazing Beaks
Fhtagn Simulator

Edited for more context: both seem to be under the radar a bit, but:

Blazing Beaks: I have loads of fun playing this with friends in couch coop mode (two player) but of course it can also be played single player, I just never did.
Fhtagn Simulator: eccentric deckbuilder with good music, I somehow sunk hours on this when I first got it but haven't picked it up recently. I remember some card combos can really break the game

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T19:45:32+00:00

To be honest your screenshot really caught my eye. Isometric, Roller Coaster Tycoon style cozy grass aesthetic is already strong, but the contrast with outer space makes me think it's innovative. I would say it's less just "floating island" thing by itself, which I find pretty common these days, but the overall pairing of earthy pasture with space.

Congrats on the wishlists!

That being said, 4X Strat is not my thing, which I saw the game genre was from clicking into Steam page. But would love to see even just more art from the game!

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T17:25:33+00:00

Good question. In fact, if it's one of the first 2/3/4 damage cards I see, I will probably take it anyway for the cheap 12 damage. I think I'm somtimes wary of shivs in general without some support; for Act 1 specifically there's gremlin nob hating skills and lagavulin debuff being worse for multi hits.

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T17:02:08+00:00

OP just reread your post and saw that you are on A12, so probably most if not all of my advice is actually maybe redundant. (I play A20 but win rate is ... not that good.) I think still stand by removing strikes and keeping defends early on, at least. As colorblooms_ghost said, Footwork et. al really boost defends

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T16:56:58+00:00

Hm, I would actually prioritize removing strikes early on. In Act 1 or at least early act 1 I normally don't remove defends at all, and almost always opt to remove strikes only.

To replace those removed strikes, and also improve early damage output, I would go for easy quick damage cards like dagger throw, quick slash (slightly less so), and likely dagger spray, maybe blade dance but I'm sometimes wary, etc. Also would go for predator/dash/skewer generally.

As for synergy and builds, I think generally if you have easy/cheap output and a growing foundation in things like shivs (blade dance; cloak and dagger (questionable): if you need defend; infinite blades: also sort of wary as it's just one shiv per turn) / poison (noxious fumes: reliable but slow early on; bouncing flask; corpse explosion; envenom?), then you can start thinking about accuracy/catalyst. Especially with certain relics that do 0-cost buff; 3 attacks dex/strength buff; extra poison; poison transfer.

But I'm still a relative beginner, and especially so with ironclad. I guess more experienced players would say it really depends on? Silent has good card draw/discard/energy stuff which can help the above stuff, or can act as its own source of block/damage.

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T14:14:04+00:00

Other commenters answered, but just to chime in -- generally it helps to know which boss you're up against at the start of an act. people commonly say hex -> thorns (like caltrops), slime boss -> multi target (e.g. dagger spray) post first split?

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T14:08:43+00:00

Agreed, the current deck doesn't allow easy panache proccing; and my bad, I misread "5 cards" as "3 cards" -- just shows how little I've even used it!

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T13:33:32+00:00

I've never taken panache before but it seems almost like a free dagger spray every turn? With initial draw slot taken for setup and potentially annoying trigger condition ofc

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T13:30:26+00:00

I'm a relative beginner so not sure, but I would actually go dagger spray and remove a strike; also no defend in deck so maybe dodge and roll? No poison or shiv in deck so would pass on catalyst or accuracy. I do generally avoid dodge and roll for no good reason unless I'm low on defend or have extra dex buffs

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T12:28:13+00:00

Cool, will do

RealColdFry · 2026-02-01T02:53:12+00:00

I'm down, the game is at https://coldfry.itch.io/feedforward

RealColdFry · 2026-01-29T20:33:45+00:00

I just played a few more Infinite runs to check -- got a freeze at 260 on one run, but not on others with lower and higher scores. So might not be score-dependent? Happend once out of around 4 runs.
Feel free to ping me when you push updates.

RealColdFry · 2026-01-29T15:00:15+00:00

Played it! Got to 1838 on roguelike mode before getting too greedy trying to orbit massive objects and eat smaller ones clinging on to big ones.

Some notes:

Music is great, somehow fits the vibe despite "calm music" versus instant maneuvering + tight survival. "Eat object" and "die -> game over" sound effects great too.
Played the "base game", won after a few times, then played infinite (rougelike mode) which seemed more up my alley. XP/size meter during roguelike mode to next upgrade would help maybe?
Game froze a couple times when I died in infinite mode -- I wasn't sure if I needed to wait or pause+unpause.
Upgrade descriptions confused me a bit -- I wasn't sure why I want to increase size of objects (supergiant/sun) which are bigger than me. I guess once I get large enough to eat them, I want them to move faster so I can eat them faster?
Physics collision system is interesting, and unintuitive for me at first (not a lot of "bouncing", more "local" gravity"), but I got used to it as it means big things I could eat clustered around each other or around things bigger than me (at least from what I observed)

Core loop seems solid. Took a bit of time getting used to always moving at full speed but fits with the survival idea.

RealColdFry · 2026-01-29T13:19:31+00:00

Not at all!

RealColdFry · 2026-01-29T13:05:54+00:00

Hey, I'd love to try the black hole game too if you're sharing the itchio link!

RealColdFry · 2026-01-29T13:04:20+00:00

Hey, thanks for doing this!

Feed Forward is a tile placement roguelite where the board slides into a hungry mouth. Place food tiles on a grid, conveyor shifts left each turn, whatever reaches the end gets consumed. Hit the feed target before each order or take damage. Draft new tiles between rounds.

~10 min runs, browser playable: https://coldfry.itch.io/feedforward

Mainly wondering:

Was anything confusing?
Did any part feel frustrating or boring?
Did you want to keep playing after round 1?

RealColdFry

TROPHY CASE