Taracacho

I played Strata for about an hour, and I genuinely enjoyed it. I also felt that the game has a lot of potential. I’m sending these ideas from the perspective of an actual player, so I hope they can be useful. First, I think auto-healing should be removed or heavily limited. It makes the game far too easy. There is no real sense of danger because players can simply wait a few seconds and fully recover. Instead, maybe there could be rare shrines inside the dungeon that restore a certain percentage of HP. Second, the enemies feel too weak. They are simply not threatening enough. Even the wizard attacks are easy to avoid because the projectiles are clearly visible, so moving a tiny bit to the side is enough to dodge them. Third, movement speed feels too slow. Since there is no level-up system, players have to keep moving slowly toward their destination forever. I think Strata would be much more fun if it had a roguelike-style level system, where players can choose upgrades such as movement speed, attack power, and other stats, similar to Vampire Survivors. Fourth, there are too many items. Right now, the game feels like it is mostly about picking things up. Items do not feel rare, and collecting them becomes more tedious than exciting. I think the number of item drops should be reduced to around 1/10 of the current amount, so that finding an item feels exciting enough to make players want to run toward it. Fifth, enemy strength does not seem to scale. Even after going down many floors, the enemies do not feel stronger, so there is almost no tension. I also think it would be much scarier and more interesting if enemies were already walking around the dungeon from the beginning. Sixth, the return escalators/elevators should appear much less often. If every floor has a way to return safely, there is no real tension. If they only appeared around 20% of the time, exploring deeper floors would feel much more dangerous and exciting. Seventh, there do not seem to be real rare item drops. Since there is no treasure chest-like system, the dungeon starts to feel repetitive. I reached floor 21, but I eventually got sleepy and stopped playing. Eighth, I would love to see rare bosses that can drop a small amount of tokens. Even if the amount is small, it would make the game much more exciting. Something like the Metal Slime in Dragon Quest would be perfect: rare, exciting, and rewarding. Ninth, the music stopped around floor 14. That felt a little scary, probably unintentionally. Finally, I think entering the dungeon should require a small entry fee every time. Since players can currently enter again and again almost for free, the game could easily be abused by bots. Also, losing does not feel very frustrating because players can simply say, “I’ll just enter again.” A small entry cost would make each run feel more meaningful. I really like Strata, and I believe it could become much more exciting with more danger, rarity, tension, and EARN potential.