I bumbled into a few design elements that resulted in cascading success of such high magnitude with such huge rewards that the remainder of the game was trivial, with nothing more than silly (but fun) experiments and fine-tuning.




The arcshard(?) is a game changer and radically overpowered. The 15% proc rate is incredibly high for an already rapid-fire-trap, resulting in mass-lightning and stun effects that can hardly be matched by lightning traps or frost traps themselves. Used with ANY synergy (pierce, lightning damage, stun duration, etc) this unique becomes a shift from clever choke point or trap synergistic builds and straight into "just build lots of these and rush every wave". The inherent game design synergy of lightning and frost effects was already quite powerfull, but now it's combined with a rapid-fire-chain-gun.

Suggestion: Radically reduce the proc-rate of lightning on this item. 5% would be a good reduction. Keep in mind it's not just ONE dart trap, it's MANY dart traps combined. The cumulative effects need to be considered beyond just using Singularity.

Similar to the Dart Unique, the knock-back on this unique is quite bonkers. Like Dart, once in your posession, this unique ends the requirement to build intelligently.

Suggestion: Radically reduce the knockback on this unique, or stop scaling the knock-back with trap level. It becomes akin to a punch from SuperMan, and the Chakram has a pretty high fire rate already.

Once Endless is unlocked, suddenly you're given great wads of free XP for literally no work. Finished the level? Sure, just press one button, literally do nothing, walk away and come back in 5 minutes for double, tripple, or x10 your previous level-finished XP. You can of course earn more XP playing actively, but you just don't have to. Your solid story-mode-defense will last many, many waves with just the press of ONE button, and earn quite mind blowing XP.

Suggestion: I don't really have one...Endless mode though fun, is literally free-XP-for-zero-work. It is non-sensicle. See my suggestion for Ethereal and Grinding below.

I understand the intended mechanic for Etherial maps, however ultimately these only serve to snowball your progression much in the same way the above items and Endless do. It becomes virtually impossible to play through the intended "story game" the first time without being SO OVERPOWERED by the time you get there, that each and every boss will literally die at their gate, often they will not even become visible. In fact, the only boss I even saw outside the gate was the "Mysterious Challenger" from DW1, purely because he's fast...

I did not grind once, and only replayed a few maps on the rare occasions I failed an optional objective. I ultimately concluded that I needed to focus squarely on story-only-maps so I could finally get to the end. I was something like lvl 250 by the time of ascension which is absurdly overpowered. Keep in mind NO grinding, and most endless waves I just schlepped my way through, often walking away. (Repeat: endless mode is free XP at the end of every map...assume that every player presses that button)

Suggestion: The game feels as though it was intended for progression WITHOUT the XP gained from both Endless Modes, and Ethereal maps. Many threads exist suggesting the removal of grinding-repeat-XP, and the same should probably apply to Ethereal maps also. Their reward is bulk-items already. I feel the same should apply to Endless, no XP, just item rewards.



Fun game. Some fun mechanics. A tough challenge to balance for sure. (Bola traps need to find their place... ) The game feels right until somewhere around lvl 20+ for free endless XP, and then the lvl 35'ish zone where you bumble into one of the absurd uniques (purely luck based, could be much earlier), then everything snowballs from there.

Otherwise, this is a premium game. Nice job!