That all makes sense. I think I was trying to be too balanced by going for health upgrades too many times and got burned by not saving up enough ammo a few times which I overcorrected into getting an ammo mutation or two every run. I'd probably be better off just embracing the glass cannon playstyle and going for one-shots more. Basically, skill issue on my part.
I'm still not sure how snake scales work, but I guess I'll figure it out for myself in the next demo version!
I played through both V0.4 and now V0.5. I really enjoyed am excited play though each new major update to be released. I've wishlisted the game on Steam and am looking forward to what all comes next! With that said, I want to leave some feedback that may or may not be helpful with development.
- This is a little dated at this point, given the change you made a few days ago, but I agree that the previous art style is probably better, though still like the other sprites as well.
-Root was my favorite character to play as in V0.4, as her unique playstyle felt really engaging to me. In V0.5, she was more frustrating to play as than anything. Even in 0 faith mode, my fight against Melody was still down to the wire, and I had even saved up a crucifix and two medkits for it! Maybe that's a skill issue, as I didn't have the grenade or either revival from the frog shop, which would have made things easier, but it was still pretty frustrating I couldn't get a good-enough run with normal difficulty settings. I usually had at least two mutations in each weapon category (accuracy, damage, ammo) and plenty more health, so I really don't know what I could have done differently. Unlike with Luna, Root's effective three-in-a-row boss fights after 60 percent felt hard to stretch my items through.
-My experience with Luna, contrary to my experience with Root, was really easy. Like. Really easy. My strategy was to get damage upgrades to melee damage (red room translator, goddess blessing anvil, etc.) whenever possible, accuracy be damned, and just get the first area's frog shop item where a missed melee attack is followed by another at 80 accuracy. Even without that, though, Luna was pretty hard to lose with for me, especially because I never had to worry about fleeing or ammo and could plan my item collection accordingly (no need for cigarettes or ammo). I don't really understand the razor blade from a gameplay perspective, though, as I never felt like I was moving too fast through a run, so I felt no need to kill myself to go back; If anything, it felt like it didn't move on from at least the first area fast enough.
-Noire felt pretty balanced, with the only regular challenge I had being damage output in the late game, but even that was easy enough to overcome with a little luck.
-The shops felt pretty balanced, and I actually found myself going to the long-gilled fish's shop a few times in V0.5, unlike in V0.4.
-The woman with snake eyes was an annoying fight, especially when it was one of my first few encounters of a game. I like the randomness of it, as with Noire from another timeline, but for the woman with snake eyes, snake scales aren't a very useful item, you can't get a mutation off killing her as Root, and I always seemed to come out of the fight with more hearts lost than with most other encounters.
-Some playstyles and strategies were really unique and fun, like going for second-hand smoke blessings and getting a ton of cigarettes, and I wish I could make those sorts of things even more viable.
-I'm not sure how to feel about the golden bullet change in V0.5. It definitely feels different than it did inV0.4, but it didn't seem to help me with my Root runs, nor was it a game-changer with Noire or Luna.
-I found it very awkward and difficult to get item-specific encounter interactions to occur, like the hunter's knife with the hanged man or dagger 48 with the red mirror. I even did runs specifically to get them, but I couldn't get it after a fair few tries. They're definitely possible, but I never encountered any of them, let alone in my actual runs, and I wish I had.
-I also never figured out what the predator and prey blessing did. Maybe I just got unlucky, but I never encountered their effects after choosing that blessing in any of my playthroughs.
-I bought all the lunar fragment purchasables and then maxed out my lunar fragment counter pretty quickly -- way before I beat the game. I'm not sure what a sustainable way to spend them would look like, but at least it would keep me from having 99 of them forever.
-The game window was a bit buggy at times, turning into a borderless window when I got a notification to my desktop in fullscreen mode more than once.
Really enjoying the game so far! Best of luck with development!
