The first floor can be a bit rough.
I'm still trying to tweak the early balance a bit. I want Demon to be a challenge even early on since with permadeath you'll be seeing it often: I'd rather it be a bit too rough the first 3 or 4 games than be boring and easy the next 30 or 40 after. But, I'm still polishing this up, sometimes T:1 is slightly too mean right now.
Ability count is definitely high in Demon, but on the other hand, abilities also stand in for equipment for me in the form of passive/reactive abilities. Demon doesn't just have the main character + 3 monsters, it also has the 5 extra monsters you can have in your stable to swap in and out. I was worried asking the player to manage 9 sets of abilities + 9 different equipment sets would be too much. I could see equipment being much more feasible if it was 4 characters though. I may still go back and add 1 equipment slot each (trinket or something) for each monster, that might work out okay.
Haven't decided yet on that. How many equipment slots can your monsters have in DB? I remember reading some don't have any, but is it always 0 or 1, or do some allies have multiple slots sort of like the usual RPG character (i.e. helmet, weapon, armor, two hands, ring, etc?)
Re: Dungeon Art, it hasn't been an early priority, but I do want the dungeons to become interesting places to explore. I've mostly been dodging it for now because I was more worried getting the more unique parts working and feeling right: recruiting monsters, permadeath combat with a group of AIs the player has to depend on to act properly, the various mechanics for customizing the main character and his monster allies. Once I feel completely solid on those fronts, I'll move on to trying to get my dungeons a bit more interesting. If nothing else, I'd like something to break up the cycle of combat and progression management just a little... some other sort of encounter. Maybe various objects that ask you to make some sort of choice? For example, a statue that lets you interact with it in various ways (ignore it, pray to it, remove a gem from its forehead, or sacrifice a monster to it, all with different potential results), or a ritual circle that's holding some powerful demon trapped... do you free it and try to recruit it, or leave what others locked away alone? This sort of thing would only be a small % of the encounters though, combat is the meat of Demon for sure, but I feel like if these are done right, they would be interesting and exciting to find and spice things up a little more.
The primary gameplay for Demon? I'd say it is fighting your way through the dungeon, recruiting new monster allies and new abilities, incorporating the ones you like into your strategy, then moving further in to face greater challenges and more new, more powerful allies and abilities. Combat is definitely a big part of it, but that process of recruiting new monsters and abilities and customizing them is important too. People I've watched play often spend a surprising amount of time planning out which monsters to try and recruit and what abilities to pass around. One of my favorite types of feedback is when people have sent me screenshots of crazy monsters they've made over the course of the game. I feel like people wanting to do that tells me the customization and progression elements are fun.
Oh, hey, there was something else I wanted to ask: how much direct control do you give players over the monster allies behavior in Dungeon Bash? Is it almost totally AI-driven like Demon, or do you offer more options/ability to directly control your monster teammates?
