Hi everyone, Matt Chandler here! 

Thank you all for the valuable feedback on Aggressive Sales Tactics!  Here are some changes that we plan to implement in future builds that are both pulled from things we intended to do, but there weren't enough hours in 48 hours, and from all the great feedback that has been submitted to us during the GMTK Game Jam 2023 voting period.  Thank you so much for playing our game and telling us how you think we can improve Aggressive Sales Tactics!  

We’re always looking for more ratings and feedback, so please if you're reading this please share your thoughts with us if you haven’t yet!  I intend to play and rate the submission of everyone who provides feedback before the voting period is over! 

Here are some adjustments that we have planned to implement, but nothing is set in stone yet.

BALANCE ADJUSTMENTS: Right now the game is far too easy and that is it’s largest issue.  We plan to ramp up the difficulty over time.  Right now the player gets stronger with upgrades and the enemy doesn't noticeably get stronger.  Once you get going you can easily steamroller the towers. 

Bug fixes: We are aware of some bugs that also affect the strength of some units, making the game easier than intended.  Also it appears that selling items at a loss may remove more gold than intended.  Let's just agree that that's a balance feature trying to be a little bit more punishing making up for too much starting gold.  

In game tutorials: I've written a lengthy how to play on the game page, and there is a more condensed version that is a little less clear in the start menu.  There should be an option to teach the player and guide them through the basic mechanics in the game.

Reduce the starting gold:  Right now it is 100 gold leftover from testing to make sure the system functions.  The cost of each unit still needs to be evaluated, but I want to reduce the amount of starting gold to provide two options: reliably and easily get the cheapest unit out on the field ASAP, or have to either sell a stronger unit at a loss or wait more time to deploy it.  Right now the player can immediately get three of the cheapest knights, or two of the rangers, or one of the mages every time at the start.  This starts the player's momentum off far too strong too early and even just this one change could make a big difference.

More clarity and player feedback:  I would like to polish up the player experience and make it more obvious what's happening when. More sounds, more visual feedback!  When either the player or customer gains or spends gold, I would like there to be a pop up number near what's affected showing the amount each is changing.  This alone may make the mechanic of customers spending money passively every few seconds much clearer.  We are also planning to implement health bars for the towers and for the player units and make it really clear what the difference between each unit type is.  We will also hide the buttons for customers past the current max amount.  If you can only fit two customers, only two buttons will show up. 

Move the upgrade buttons: The upgrade buttons on the right side of the screen block the view of multiple towers.  I would like to make those buttons into a pop-up that appears when you click an 'upgrades' button on the left side of the screen, making the line of combat more clear and removing the advantage a few towers have on stealth checks.  

Game Over condition:  When all towers are standing after a set amount of time the player loses.  However this mechanic may be changed and was implemented as an easy failure condition for such a short jam.  I think there should be player punishment for having all towers standing, but maybe it's not the failure condition.  Whatever the end result is, there will be more feedback leading up to a game over so that players are not surprised when it ends.  

Altered upgrades:  I ran into some bugs implementing the upgrades I intended, so what upgrades are in the GMTK Game Jam 2023 build do not reflect the vision for the game.  The upgrade that allows multiple customers to show up at once was intended to actually be just reducing the time between customers arriving.  I also intend to try out reducing the amount of time between passive sales.  These proposed changes would need some playtesting.  

Benefit for units surviving to the end of the path: Once balance adjustments are made, and it’s more difficult to have units survive all the way to the end of the path, we want there to be a reward for them making it all the way.  This will encourage the player to use stronger, more expensive units, maybe even selling them at a loss, versus spamming the cheapest unit over and over again… a strategy that works with no downsides right now.  

A Stock Mechanic: Another method to combat unit spamming I would like to implement is a stock mechanic.  This mechanic doesn’t exist right now solely because I ran out of time to make it.  I would like the player to periodically need to spend gold to restock their selection of items in the store, meaning if they only have 2 bows, they can only send out two rangers until they buy more bows.   If the player is out of an item if they need it right now, I think a ‘rush delivery’ mechanic would be cool where they can buy the item in the moment, but for an inflated cost.  

Removing customers from the store: Right now if a customer gets below 30 gold, you’re forced to sell them a weapon at a loss.  That’s no fun, we’re addressing that. I think the player should be able to remove a customer from the store without selling them a combat item if they wish.  Maybe most customers leave pretty quickly once hitting 0 gold… but maybe some loiter a little longer…

Additional Control Schemes: We’ve received some feedback that moving the mouse from the bottom of the screen to the side repeatedly can be uncomfortable.  We’re going to look into improving this for mouse players, and also supporting more keyboard and controller play.  Right now the mouse only controls are a limitation of the 48 hours time limit and are not intended to be long term.  Controls all around will be looked at.

Visual Cohesion: Adjustments to the game's style are being considered.  A lot of people really like the mixed 2D-3D aesthetics and point towards other games that pull off a similar style really well such as Octopath Traveler.  I adore Octopath Traveler myself and would absolutely love that direction.  Others have mentioned that they think the two different styles don’t really mesh and it might have more personality as a sole 2D pixel art experience.  I don’t know which way it’ll go for certain, but the one thing that is certain is the 2D Pixel art is here to stay.  Our 2D  artist Áiron Bruce really knocked it out of the park!

Performance: Some players are really struggling with running the game on their machine, and we’re going to look into making that better.  I learned a lot from watching a few streamers play the game, and there seems to be a trend with Unreal games struggling performance wise.  Before even playing Aggressive Sales Tactics once finding out it was made with Unreal they mentioned they’d have some issues and they were right!  We’ll see what we can do to make this less of an issue.

Thanks for playing, and thanks for reading!  I really enjoyed working with my team and I think we made a really great project in a very small amount of time. It just needs more time for polish. My first GMTK jam was a real success no matter how we placed in the ratings, and I’ve had so much fun playing all of your games too! -Matt