I have a few notes I'd like to share in the hopes that you will find them helpful. Before I do, I'd like to point out that, 'although I suggest several changes', I think that the game is good and it's nice to watch the character go through enemies like a burning chainsaw through a stick of butter after a while... ;)
The graphics were done well and everything looks distinct. I wasn't a fan of the "CRT" effect. (To the best of my knowledge, colored CRT monitors never looked 'that' distorted.)
While there is a fair amount of complexity and strategy to the game, by Level 50 I started focusing on the review and ignored the gameplay entirely.
[Interface]:
- The game is easy to grasp, as long as the player speaks 'some' English, but I think a short "tutorial animation" that could be played from the Menu screen before the game starts would make the beginners' experience smoother.
This could also be used to point out some of the more 'hidden' buttons I'm going to mention in a bit.
- Thank you for including separate volume sliders for BGM and SFX. But the menu is too well hidden. I understand why you went for consistency, but a rectangle with 3 horizontal lines would make for a far more visible menu button.
- The Toggle button for active/inactive play should be more noticeable. Right now it is hard to identify as a clickable button.
- The formatting for the spells' MP-cost is a bit awkward. Instead of "Fireball 3 MP", how about "Fireball (3 MP)"?
- 4-digit coin costs (to upgrade spells) clip outside of the fields.
- The "Drag to cast a spell" 'hint texts' can hide text in the description box (it would be cool if it was "pushed back" by said box).
- The stat screen's 'hint texts' still show when that screen is collapsed.
- Several spells list neither cooldown, nor duration (Doom Dogs, Dagger Toss, Toxic Flask - maybe others).
- Having to drag the healing spell onto the player character seems redundant (unless there are friendly NPCs later on [I noticed the "Mercenaries" option, but it never unlocked for me]).
- Having a semi-collapsed option for the 'spell bar' that doesn't show any tooltips or upgrade buttons would be convenient and free up a lot of visible screen. (A semi-collapsed stat-box could free up screen space as well. Everything below the coin counter is information the player rarely needs.)
- The distance between the sell buttons and the inventory spaces should be increased so players don't start to sweat if they want to use the last 3 spots in their inventory. ;)
[Balancing]:
- The 'Blood Flames' spell steals next to no HP, considering the coin cost, MP cost, area of effect, and cooldown.
- The 'Doom Dogs' spell seem to be overpriced (coin-wise) or underpowered.
- The 'Toxic Flask' spell acts too slowly to be useful.
- In terms of item progression, I found 'Scorched Boots' with +41% Fire damage early on - and then much later a pair with +15% Fire damage. Tying the +% range to the level would be possible way to have the player find "the best item in the game" within 20 minutes.
- In terms of spell-control, having the character select a good target themselves for a single click would be a convenient third option. (Dragging to cast a spell is a bit clunky.)
This can currently already be done by clicking the auto-cast button, but immediately clicking it to un-toggle again sometimes doesn't register - and clicking the big, colorful button is more intuitive.
[Miscellaneous]:
- 'Örnöga' is a recognizable title in a list, but you would have to look it up when talking to friends - Even if you pronounce it "Ornoga". I wouldn't change the title at this point, but I wanted to leave that remark for future projects of yours.
- Spells cannot be aim/cast close to the lower menu bar - which has to be open in order to select spells. Moving th center of the screen to the center of the 'visible' area when the bottom menu is opened would help to make this less of an issue.
- The BGM loop is too short and becomes annoying rather fast.
- It is possible that triggered effects can toggle autocast - but it is also possible that I thought I disabled autocasts again and did not double-check if the click registered.
- Item drops are relatively rare, even with a 'Chance' stat of 25. Finding a gray item is just 'sad'. Either gray items should be left out entirely, be the standard equipment early on, or should be moved on a different loot table that is more likely to drop. (If you do the latter, a 'sell all gray items' button would become mandatory.)
- I died while sorting my inventory. A beeping noise when on low HP ( < 15% ?) would be appreciated.
- There seems to be no way to speed up MP replenishment through Stats. (The only method I have found were 'Ober's Gauntlets which replenish 1 MP per attack.)
- If the spell 'Regeneration' is increased by +Water damage, I'm sure players would appreciate a notice on that spell, making it clearer.
- If there's more to the butterflies that live near the center of the map, I was unable to figure it out.
- I suspect there is a secret to the area outside the wall, but after trying to wait and using area of effect spells, I'm out of ideas. (Walking into the endless darkness to the east got me nowhere.)
[(Suspected) Bugs]:
- At some point while idling, the muted Music went back to full volume, but there was nothing unusual happening on screen. (This occurred twice before I figured out what was going on: The 'Settings' menu reacts, even while collapsed. I had clicked on the 'invisible' volume slider by chance.)
- After a while, certain empty spots in my inventory counted as "full", without having items placed in them.
- When I had a "full" inventory, items dropped to my feet. Even after selling every single item from my inventory I couldn't collect those dropped item (I tried walking over them and clicking them). (Update: Clicking on them works now. The issue might have been fixed by purging my entire inventory, but I can only speculate here.)
- Sometimes, the more translucent burn effect did not get removed and remained stationary on the map indefinitely.
- To the best of my knowledge I never came across a method to increase my 'DMG Reduction'. (It might be an unused leftover from the beta.)
- 'Scorched Boots' were supposed to leave a flame trail. They didn't. ;)
- 'Aqua Belt' was supposed to trigger 'Doom Dogs' (x4) - which happened only when the spell was cast, but not when it was (supposedly) triggered by another item. (I had a 'Ober's Hammer', which triggered 'Regeneration' with a 5% chance). Also: The spell 'Doom Dogs' summons 4 dogs - as does the effect. The "x4" implies 16 doggos. ;)
- 'Aqua Belt': "Waterpulse triggers Waterpulse x3". While it makes 'Waterpulse' significantly more viable, every other item I found had more varied effects that were triggered - not more of the same. I suspect that this might have been unintentional.
[Personal Request]:
Could you please add which tools/engines/etc. you used to make the game? It is rather rare for a game to run in my browser setup without mayor hiccups, so I'm curious.
(The field is called "Edit Equipment?"/"Software" in the project manager [visible after clicking the button "Previews"], but I have no insight on how to fill it 'competently'. I just know how the end result looks on the users' side of things.)
[Addendum 2025-03-21]:
I was directly switching equipment pieces over 400 times while I played and never ran into the bug @yungidarkness described in their review ( https://www.newgrounds.com/flag/add/18219667/2002 ). Same with the loss of equipment that @Caasi2 described ( https://www.newgrounds.com/flag/add/18222326/2002 ).
I expect that both of these issues may stem from the same root-cause. While the loss of equipment that they experienced might be a device-specific bug that does 'not' occur on PC (or it might be tied to an update made after I wrote my review) there is 'something' not right with how the inventory was programmed. From what I read it might also be tied to the crashes players experienced.
As a small remark for other players:
On my setup, the game was running faster once I disabled the CRT-effect.
After 5 points of 'Vitality' to get rudimentary HP-regeneration going, 'Chance' and 'Wisdom' were the only stats worth my time. While there are 2 items that regenerate either 10 HP or 10 MP when you dodge. Their impact isn't brilliant. Dodge is something to consider when you already have a means to regenerate MP from it, but not before.The 'Chance' stat on the other hand will increase the speed with which you find those items. (And remember that items can also be sold...)
Do not focus on melee! Rather: Learn spells. While the cheapest fire spell deals good damage and has a good frequency, the cheapest earth spell will effectively deal 3 times its damage when used at close range against bosses and mini-bosses. The wind spells are "not great", even with massive buffs. The cheapest water spell ('Waterpulse') will even deal 4 times its damage if you find and wear an 'Aqua Belt'. The other spells look interesting, but due to their cooldown, you will not get the chance to cast them a second time per combat and they are a massive strain on your MP-economy.
Gym Showers EXTENDED 
The mystery of the wet erase photo bottle. 
How castles were built. 
Örnöga: Idle 
Lolipop Sim (discontinued) 
Suno AI 
Sucks to be Luigi: Past Lives 
Rikku-FFX-2 
