[Feedback] The Cursed Ascent (now with poll!)

[jk37]

The please log in does not appear and I am logged into milovana. I have tried it both with incognito mode and without. I see where is says game saved while I am playing, but when I go back to the play later it doesn't give any option to load a saved game and starts at the beginning. I do use a VPN, could that be affecting the saves?

[jk37]

Well I just went back and tried it again and now it seems to be working. When I went to play again it says continue ascent and takes me back to where I left off. Probably something I was doing wrong. Who knows. One other question, if you die in the game does the save just take you back to just before that vixen?
Enjoying the tease, thanks again!

[lor205y]

This is amazing!

I did a quick playthrough of Realm 1, and then logged out for some tests to better understand stuff. I've got a few questions, but it's possible I'm just being dumb

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Is there an explanation of the various curses the witch offers you? I don't see one, and I can't figure out what they do. I If this is a "play it and try to figure out" sort of thing, I may be missing the intention there and not really sure how to figure it out, if that makes sense...

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Related to the above. If I choose anything other than ignorance at the start, I seem to be missing the Analyze option later on. Am I imagining that?

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Does Analyze sometimes use up a turn action slot? I feel like it does, but I might be crazy...

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Do the two girls in Realm 1 who tease you forever actually do something if you stick around long enough? I think I got up to like Force Stroke 7 before I bailed.

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Do you get a random sampling of enemies each time you play a realm? I think I saw some different ones in follow-up tests than I did in my play through.

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Does cleanse only work on currently existing buffs? For example, if I see an enemy is intending to use burn on me and I cleanse in that turn, will it work? Or does it only work on the burn after she casts it, if I use cleanse in the next turn?

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Other than this, the thing that trips me up the most is getting very confused by the buff/debuffs, and what various modifiers are currently effecting game play. I'm slowly learning them but I wonder if it would help to have a status message at the side that says for example "Burn is damaging your health by 3 per turn. Fear 2 is causing you to be unable to X and Y" for example.

Edit: oh, one more! Sorry!

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In the dojo, I asked to re-roll the options available, and it used up 20 (or whatever) gold, and said "new skill learned" but I don't think it actually added a new skill.

[tckt78]

There's some weird loading error that I'm going to examine again tomorrow after rebooting my machine. Basically transitions didn't run smoothly as if there was a lot of computational stuff going on. Definitely annoying for smooth game play. Not sure if anyone else is having a similar issue, but thought it was worth mentioning.

May definitely be one of me new favorite teases!

[Roundhound]

This is amazing!

I did a quick playthrough of Realm 1, and then logged out for some tests to better understand stuff. I've got a few questions, but it's possible I'm just being dumb

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Is there an explanation of the various curses the witch offers you? I don't see one, and I can't figure out what they do. I If this is a "play it and try to figure out" sort of thing, I may be missing the intention there and not really sure how to figure it out, if that makes sense...

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Related to the above. If I choose anything other than ignorance at the start, I seem to be missing the Analyze option later on. Am I imagining that?

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Does Analyze sometimes use up a turn action slot? I feel like it does, but I might be crazy...

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Do the two girls in Realm 1 who tease you forever actually do something if you stick around long enough? I think I got up to like Force Stroke 7 before I bailed.

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Do you get a random sampling of enemies each time you play a realm? I think I saw some different ones in follow-up tests than I did in my play through.

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Does cleanse only work on currently existing buffs? For example, if I see an enemy is intending to use burn on me and I cleanse in that turn, will it work? Or does it only work on the burn after she casts it, if I use cleanse in the next turn?

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Other than this, the thing that trips me up the most is getting very confused by the buff/debuffs, and what various modifiers are currently effecting game play. I'm slowly learning them but I wonder if it would help to have a status message at the side that says for example "Burn is damaging your health by 3 per turn. Fear 2 is causing you to be unable to X and Y" for example.

Edit: oh, one more! Sorry!

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In the dojo, I asked to re-roll the options available, and it used up 20 (or whatever) gold, and said "new skill learned" but I don't think it actually added a new skill.

I have played through a few times and can probably answer a few of these questions.

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Is there an explanation of the various curses the witch offers you? I don't see one, and I can't figure out what they do. I If this is a "play it and try to figure out" sort of thing, I may be missing the intention there and not really sure how to figure it out, if that makes sense...

It looks to be a figure it out kind of thing. I'm fairly sure that any text you get that is underlined has been added by a curse. Most of them seem to put a bit of a twist on normal activities although I did spot one that made it fairly different. Also, using some keys you can gain a power that lets you know what each curse does.

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Related to the above. If I choose anything other than ignorance at the start, I seem to be missing the Analyze option later on. Am I imagining that?

Does Analyze sometimes use up a turn action slot? I feel like it does, but I might be crazy...

I'm pretty sure the analyze ability comes from choosing Ignorance. I did not take it my first playthrough but was able to learn it. On my second go I chose ignorance and had it.

I believe it does take a turn and it makes sense. Its a skill you are choosing to use to gain more knowledge about the enemy instead of directly fighting. Although maybe if you have the ignorance curse it shouldn't since its meant to make it a bit easier and "losing" an action makes the fights way harder.

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Do the two girls in Realm 1 who tease you forever actually do something if you stick around long enough? I think I got up to like Force Stroke 7 before I bailed.

Just like the assistant before her I think they are mostly there as a warmup as the difficulty goes up a fair amount in the next area. Like you I never saw them attack so I think its just to ensure you are good to go for later.

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Do you get a random sampling of enemies each time you play a realm? I think I saw some different ones in follow-up tests than I did in my play through.

There is some randomness to enemies you will face. The first zone is a bit limited but I think I have seen 6 in zone 2 and you face 3 or 4 typically before the end.

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Does cleanse only work on currently existing buffs? For example, if I see an enemy is intending to use burn on me and I cleanse in that turn, will it work? Or does it only work on the burn after she casts it, if I use cleanse in the next turn?

Yes cleanse looks to work only on debuffs already on your character so it won't do anything to that burn3 coming your way. Although an ability to reduce the duration of incoming debuffs would add a fun layer.

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Other than this, the thing that trips me up the most is getting very confused by the buff/debuffs, and what various modifiers are currently effecting game play. I'm slowly learning them but I wonder if it would help to have a status message at the side that says for example "Burn is damaging your health by 3 per turn. Fear 2 is causing you to be unable to X and Y" for example.

This is my one main complaint so far as well. Most are fairly straight forward like burn or regeneration but things like reprimand had me puzzled. You can search for these terms in the glossary although I think a spoiler note in this forum could be decent so you can look at it while playing. Debuffs like reprimand can be "safely" ignored as it doesn't affect combat directly but weakened, burn, regeneration, etc can't be.

Now for my own feedback, I am really enjoying it so far. I have managed to get 3 keys and unlocked the edgelord class but haven't taken it for a spin yet. I am glad you put in the two you did at the start as the basic one wouldn't have challenged me much at all while tormented was fun especially with a few curses mixed in.

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Some curses and tasks don't line up very well. I can't remember the exact details but I had tasks like "Bounce your cock 5 times, while stroking near the edge". That one isn't too crazy by any means but a few I got when I did a quick run where I just grabbed like 5 curses was causing some interesting tasks.

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The difficulty feels a bit weird at times. Some fights are really simple while others are a real slog. It does look like most are on a sequence so you can find an opening to get attacks in most times however a few in particular caught my attention.

Hitchhiker in the carnival is quite tough. You only really have one round to get any damage in and she is dishing out quite a bit herself. I think I had block 2 when I beat it my second time through and it was only barely.

Flower girl in the mansion was just annoying. Thankfully Caprice is one of my favorite models but the combination of her heal, regneration? (I have only faced her once so far), and other debuffs meant sometimes I only dished out 2-3 net damage in a whole round.

Also, is there a use for the rest action outside of not being forced into a bad action?

[itslate]

One other question, if you die in the game does the save just take you back to just before that vixen?

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No, if you die, your run ends and that gets saved. You do still get keys and a full or ruined orgasm according to the realm you cleared.

I did a quick playthrough of Realm 1, and then logged out for some tests to better understand stuff. I've got a few questions, but it's possible I'm just being dumb

You are not being dumb! I wanted to make a tease where you really get to explore. You start by not knowing anything and being at the mercy of those vixens but the more you learn, the farther you can get and the more confidently you can face them. Looking up a status in the manual is always an option and buying keys will also help you to know more about the game.
Roundhound already knows so much about the game that I don't need to add anything

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In the dojo, I asked to re-roll the options available, and it used up 20 (or whatever) gold, and said "new skill learned" but I don't think it actually added a new skill.

I will check on this. If you re-roll, no new action should be learned. Maybe you accidentally clicked twice?

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This is my one main complaint so far as well. Most are fairly straight forward like burn or regeneration but things like reprimand had me puzzled. You can search for these terms in the glossary although I think a spoiler note in this forum could be decent so you can look at it while playing.

Yeah, we should absolutely keep using spoiler notes when talking about information that isn't obvious, like curses, unlocks, etc. I don't mind talking openly about status as much, though. Those can be looked up in game for free.

Now for my own feedback, I am really enjoying it so far. I have managed to get 3 keys and unlocked the edgelord class but haven't taken it for a spin yet. I am glad you put in the two you did at the start as the basic one wouldn't have challenged me much at all while tormented was fun especially with a few curses mixed in.

That's really interesting, let me know how you like him! I am not super happy with the ballooning yet, but some curses will make it more interesting. I actually started with only the tormented Rogue and decided late in development to add the cursed Rogue for less edge-oriented players. I am known for the mega-edging teases, but I wanted this one to also have more everyman-appeal

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Some curses and tasks don't line up very well. I can't remember the exact details but I had tasks like "Bounce your cock 5 times, while stroking near the edge". That one isn't too crazy by any means but a few I got when I did a quick run where I just grabbed like 5 curses was causing some interesting tasks.

Some curses would need a bit more of fine-tuning. The one you mentioned would need some extra time or a pause for example. But if you find some questionable combinations, let me know!

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Hitchhiker in the carnival is quite tough. You only really have one round to get any damage in and she is dishing out quite a bit herself. I think I had block 2 when I beat it my second time through and it was only barely.

Flower girl in the mansion was just annoying. Thankfully Caprice is one of my favorite models but the combination of her heal, regneration? (I have only faced her once so far), and other debuffs meant sometimes I only dished out 2-3 net damage in a whole round.

This is super valuable feedback. There are over 30 Vixens in this game, I didn't have time to really balance them all thoroughly. Also, depending on gear and actions, some Vixens will be harder or easier to beat. I will look at the two you mentioned, but

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it is no wonder the Hitchhiker was hard. She is very hard to block because of swift2 and she makes you slow, one of the most debilitating Debuffs in the entire game. You can use her Berserk to your advantage, though. Some Vixens are best dealt with aggressively, others, like the Flower girl, need the right timing to kill.

Also, is there a use for the rest action outside of not being forced into a bad action?

No, resting is skipping your turn, basically. The smith might sell something interesting though...

[sparkyjo]

Bug report:

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After completing Realm 2, I was given a key. But in Realm 3, when I look at my stats, the Keys stat still shows 0.

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Keys are only awarded at the end of a run. End the run and the Key will be awarded to you.

You need to remove the done button from the timed tasks as unless you "hold your pc muscles for 5 seconds" you have failed.

PC holding seems to work fine on my end: Both the timer running out and clicking Done! count as successful tasks. Do you fail the task when you click done?

You seem to have missed my point.
If you are requested to perform an action for a set time and you click done before the timer has finished you have failed to perform the action for the correct amount of time and therefore would have failed the task set.
you are correct though both the timer and the button work. but the button shouldn't be there.
It is appropriate for the "stroke x times before the timer runs out" tasks as these have a different goal.
still love your work

[itslate]

Now I got you, you mean fail like cheating or not completing, although the tease acknowledges it as a successful task. Yeah I would need to differentiate between two types of task variations:
Do this x times and do this for x seconds. And then I would only put done buttons on the former. This goes on my to-do list.

[noivale]

Personally, I have found the inability to find out what some keywords do really annoying, and the glossary is pretty clunky in general - capitalization isn't consistent and you can't use it in combat which is when you'd want to use it, plus you can't search actions (I tried to use Death Blow like 5 times and I still have no clue what it's supposed to do, it just deals 0 damage every time). A forum post listing each keyword and what it does would be highly preferable. I think I'll refrain from replaying it until something of the sort is available.

I see it mentioned above that curses are supposed to be a figure-it-out thing, but I feel like with the amount of them that are available that's kind of overkill. Maybe keep 3 or so "secret" curses and have the rest explained?

If the above is implemented, this has the potential to be the most replayable tease on the site.

[Roundhound]

I think curses can be left as a mystery. I believe all of them only effect the tasks and not the combat directly. Some of the vixens do give hints like the Fallen Angels.

I do agree that a post here on the forums with the battle keywords and abilities would be useful. In game would be best of course but having worked with EoS in the past, its a pain to input loads of information. I'm also unsure of a good way to do it. I imagine the reason it exists as it does right now is because of this. If you don't do a keyword search it would just be 30+ buttons on the screen. Also, each of those buttons have to be set up manually which is a lot of clicking as I don't believe EoS supports programming that would let you easily make that many buttons. It would be nice if the search wasn't case sensitive. I am not sure if EoS easily supports this, I might poke around with it later.

It would also be nice to modify what a task can ask you do to but as above lots of configuration is a pain in EoS. For example I don't like flicking my balls or cock because it just doesn't do anything for me. I can't seem to flick hard enough to make it worth doing.

That's really interesting, let me know how you like him! I am not super happy with the ballooning yet, but some curses will make it more interesting. I actually started with only the tormented Rogue and decided late in development to add the cursed Rogue for less edge-oriented players. I am known for the mega-edging teases, but I wanted this one to also have more everyman-appeal

I still haven't played a round as the edgelord yet and yes that ballooning concerns me especially since I am trying to deny myself right now and things like holding with only a few fingers is the best way to push me over. I agree that it was a good idea to include the two types. I can easily do 50-100 edges in a session but that definitely isn't the majority based on the number of teases that support that.

It could be interesting to be able to create your own class where you could choose the task type and maybe the difficulty.

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it is no wonder the Hitchhiker was hard. She is very hard to block because of swift2 and she makes you slow, one of the most debilitating Debuffs in the entire game. You can use her Berserk to your advantage, though. Some Vixens are best dealt with aggressively, others, like the Flower girl, need the right timing to kill.

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Yeah Hitchhiker might be a little overtuned especially since I find her WAY harder than the carnival boss and each time I fought her just before. And yes, I used berserk against her. Block, Block, Block, Attack or something like that was the combat.

Flower girl overall is fine as half of this game is paying for your actions. I just felt that she last a few rounds too long. I think I had only an attack of 5 so it wasn't going quickly.

Balance will always be super hard in a game with a "simple" combat system like this for the numbers. 5 attack might be not nearly enough but 7 could trivialize it. It's why I am not too focused on the balance itself outside of mentioning outliers to the flow in general.

[Throwawimaway]

Hey there! I made it as far as

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the sorceress/magician?

In the second round and I discovered

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that she added some kind of debuff (I think it was fear 4?

) But whatever combination of things came together, I was only left with the option of checking stats and therefore got stuck unable to do anything while facing her and had to quit! I was doing so well too. It's quite a challenging tease and that was my third attempt! But it's good! It's a little difficult to keep track as

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it's not consistent how often smiths, dojos, or the witch shows up and so it's hard to know what to buy. Compounding this is that there was no description for what ether does or what the tinder gets you

. Also, it's not clear how the "deadly sins" make your game harder. Just a few observations. Love the tease though! Great job!

[Helequin]

Gave this a try this morning, great tease and concept. Have some hopefully helpful feedback to think about, but want to re-emphasize the tease is brilliant as is and a definite 5/5! I'm just always thinking about the ways we can tinker with things

I'd probably take a middle ground with the curses. I don't think it's necessary to have a detailed explanation of what they do, leaving quite a lot of mystery to it, but some hint or a quick description would be nice. In a way the Curses appear a form of tuning the tasks given in game, but the names are of little hint and even the underlined tasks don't necessarily point to a common theme. I played with the curse of Pride and still am not entirely sure what it all did.

A post here with battle keywords would be helpful for sure. I opened the tease in two tabs so I could use the glossary while playing, but it is a bit clunky.

Unlike Roundhound I found Flower Girl to be about the easiest Vixen in the game and I only had the base attack damage. Might depend on the skills she used, but a small hint:

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My fight with her lasted only 3-4 turns IIRC. Even with only the basic skills you can do 20 damage in one turn.

Some more flavour and personality to the various Vixens with what they say would be welcome to help them come alive more. Their various mechanics all gave them unique characteristics when fighting them, but there's wasn't a lot of dialogue to set them apart personality wise.

Some more specific things I noticed or thoughts I had while playing through as Tormented Rogue, feedback will include game spoilers:

Obfuscation

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Intentionally obfuscating and being vague about information is very much a rogue-like trope. But I think the game goes too far with it. Starting out, I literally have no idea what any curse does, what options are available at any of the locations (more on this later) or what items do. Items at least tell me once I buy one (or use a chemical), everything else is just left super vague. I didn't know entering one shop would lock out the others. Training at the Dojo prevents buying skills, but buying items from the Smith does not prevent buying a key. Can I have multiple weapons or other item types? No way to know without buying two and hoping (looks like they did stack).

This makes the game initially less about making choices and more about hitting random buttons and trying to remember what happened. The core mechanics are simple enough to be easy to work out, but it left me not so much a sense of discovering mysterious secrets as just having no idea what's actually going on. The way locations work made this feeling worse.

I made it all the way to the top in my first run and I still don't even know what keys are for because there was never a location where it seemed I needed one.

Game Flow / Locations

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Being forced through each level step by step is kind of rough. On the up side it does make for some interesting decision making about what service to use (Witch, Dojo, Camp, Smith). Is there a point to battling if shops are available?

On the down side it felt a bit wonky that I couldn't check the smith's inventory and then go back later on in the realm, or decide the Smith's items suck and spend my time at the Dojo instead. With shops being limited to you must buy right now, you can only enter one shop at all, having randomly rolled inventories (Dojo, Smith), and costing gold to purchase items of unknown use, buying anything is more of a hail mary or 'it's better than nothing' purchase than an interesting strategic decision.

Once I worked out more how the shops function, it felt skewed. With a low amount of gold (30g) a trip to the witch is a guaranteed potion (healing) and tinder (more healing at camp), and maybe some other tools for more gold. Likewise, I can try and buy a random skill from the Dojo, or just train there twice for free. Notably I managed to find Attack II, which appears to do 3 more damage than Attack. Considering Attack II cost gold to purchase and risked a random selection of skills and didn't boost the Limit Break while training attack does, I'd rather just train Attack twice for free for a guaranteed +2 damage and work towards buying out the smith or witch when they appear.

The Smith items I did buy were all pretty useful, so that definitely helps the system feel better.

The current game is clearly balanced around the system as is, and feels about right so I wouldn't rush to change the entire system around. But if you do make a sequel, it might feel more interesting to allow players to browse all of the shops (either at set points or freely when outside of battle), while keeping gold costs as the primary method of limiting what players can buy along with a limited shop inventory per realm.

Restlessness and Timers in general.

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I think Restlessness needs to die. Most of the tease will auto-play without waiting for input from the player except when the player is deciding on an action. Restlessness also makes this timer based, making sure than any sort of RL disruption will ruin an ascent. I understand the premise of forcing a quick reaction, but it didn't really work for me and removed any way to pause the tease.

The timed tasks are also strange. Why have a timer on do something X times if the timer will just auto-succeed the task? Some of the curses add tasks which are at odds with the timers. "Edge within 35 seconds and hold for 5 seconds," came up, but as soon as I hit edge it switches to a hands off timer. Or edge tasks which would clearly require two hands, but the player is also expected to hit the edged button before the timer ends effectively make the timer shorter (need to get back to the button).

I'm not sure what you can do about some of the more complex tasks and timers in general, but it may be that honour system ends up being the best way (show the timer, then have succeed or fail buttons).

Debuffs and Balance Stuff

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I don't want to go too far here as Roundhound mentioned balance isn't super critical to the game being fun when it blends both the game combat and the teasing.

But something was pretty glaringly obvious to me; focusing on Cleansing just seemed useless after the early game (or that one poison happy Vixen). Likewise for Destroy Buffs which was helpful for a round or two then dropped off. The trouble is the later vixens started tossing around stacks of 6, 8, 10 or even 12 debuff and can stack more during their turn. At 2 removal per action (or even 4 if trained twice), I'm better off to just do other things than even try to remove them. Not being able to choose which debuffs are cleansed makes this even more true (I never really worked out how Cleanse prioritizes what to remove).

Big caveat here is I had spiked shoulders from the smith. This trivialized the Dutchess and any other Vixen who actually attacked since I could build up counter by double blocking every turn. Turns out, Counter 12 is nasty .

In fact, Spiked Shoulders may have really skewed my game. There are so many debuffs to our attacks (Block, Armor, Weakness, Blind, the one that stops attacking at all), that it can be slow or difficult to get around them. Meanwhile, there's only one debuff to block and I didn't come across any Vixen who would attack for more damage than a double Block would stop. Of course a Vial of Poison or perhaps skills I didn't find could substitute for the spikes.

I'd also say that like a lot of Rogue-likes with such limited healing (potion and camp only though I may have missed skills of course), the game pushes the player to really play one way. Preserving health is paramount, and it never makes sense to do something to cause large amounts of damage but take some in return verses taking no damage and slowly whittling the enemy down. Once I figured out that healing would be extremely limited and played this way, I really had no significant challenges with the battles until Goddess threw down Burn 10 and I learned Remedy only clears 4 debuff. Luckily she was on low enough health I could Boost and kill her.

Game ends

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I did play around with the tease a little bit and got a character killed to see what the outcome was.

Whether at the very top or dying, the encounter with the Witch is a bit anti-climactic. Obviously winning her game was great, but it would be fun to have a bit more of a tease and reward for winning or a possible punishment for losing.

Also, what happens if the player loses control and ruins/cums to a vixen? Having a button to admit you came and receive and appropriate punishment would be awesome. Sure, ideally each vixen would have their own (but that's a crazy lot of work), but even just having the witch show up to show her displeasure would add to the tension of having the vixens tease and edge us. As it is the game is very focused on the Vixens taking down our health bar, but what if they just tempted us into ruins instead?

[LittleElfBoy]

I do like me some roguelikes. But since this has a save feature, I'd be great that if you played/finished with a certain curse far enough or if you encountered enemies etc. that you could have like a dictionary/beastary with what you discovered at least. Roguelikes may be about recovery, but I'm not investing so much time into this tease that I memorize all the aspects at all times.

Even beyond that, you are hardly getting an idea what your curses do and this unfortunately makes this tease not stand out as much from any other tease on this site as it should. How many people do you think will actually figure out what all the curses do? Maybe there is one that's really awesome for someone and that person will never find it because he tried out 3 he doesn't like before dropping this game. At least give us some hint for what the curses do, this is a huge run-defining decision after all.

Oh yeah its kinda stupid if you get a task like "fap 10 times in 5 seconds" but when the timer runs out you are cosidered having been successful. If I'm too slow I win 4head.

[itslate]

Personally, I have found the inability to find out what some keywords do really annoying, and the glossary is pretty clunky in general - capitalization isn't consistent and you can't use it in combat which is when you'd want to use it, plus you can't search actions

I found this criticism fair: Capitalization shouldn't matter and if I buy gear at the smith, she should tell me what it does, just like in all other shops. I patched both things Search status in battle is also a good idea. Goes on the to-do list.

It could be interesting to be able to create your own class where you could choose the task type and maybe the difficulty.

But whatever combination of things came together, I was only left with the option of checking stats and therefore got stuck unable to do anything while facing her and had to quit!

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This sounds like a combination of silence and fear. I thought I made sure that wouldn't happen, but there is one combination with the only curse that does affect gameplay. Maybe you picked that one without knowing what it does.

Is there a point to battling if shops are available?

Battles are the only way to gain Gold, apart from getting cursed.

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Considering Attack II cost gold to purchase and risked a random selection of skills and didn't boost the Limit Break while training attack does, I'd rather just train Attack twice for free for a guaranteed +2 damage and work towards buying out the smith or witch when they appear.

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That's fair. But unlocking AttackII makes the third attack action unlockable, which you might find worthwhile doing

it might feel more interesting to allow players to browse all of the shops

The rogue-like games I love have this feature, but they also have way more content than this tease. It's about making meaningful decisions and that requires information. I understand that the first runs you have no idea what you are buying before you buy it. But I made sure nothing is trash and you get told what it does after purchasing it. I feel with that and the option to buy all information later with keys, the replayability is higher. Obfuscation is a big part of this game and I understand if that throws somebody off. But exploring means you start in unexplored territory.

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focusing on Cleansing just seemed useless after the early game (or that one poison happy Vixen). Likewise for Destroy Buffs which was helpful for a round or two then dropped off. The trouble is the later vixens started tossing around stacks of 6, 8, 10 or even 12 debuff and can stack more during their turn. At 2 removal per action (or even 4 if trained twice), I'm better off to just do other things than even try to remove them. Not being able to choose which debuffs are cleansed makes this even more true (I never really worked out how Cleanse prioritizes what to remove).

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That depends on the Debuff you get. Some are so nasty, you have to remove them. Between training it and associated gear, I feel ceanse is a pretty big part of the game. You may have missed how it works on multiple Debuffs, though

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Big caveat here is I had spiked shoulders from the smith. This trivialized the Dutchess and any other Vixen who actually attacked since I could build up counter by double blocking every turn

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Nice strat! You can beat a lot of Vixens with that, but some don't attack directly you at all.

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Preserving health is paramount, and it never makes sense to do something to cause large amounts of damage but take some in return verses taking no damage and slowly whittling the enemy down.

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I think the Witch would like that it forces people to play slowly, thus getting teased more and longer. And you may have missed one way to heal yourself there.

Having a button to admit you came and receive and appropriate punishment would be awesome

That's a cool idea, maybe I will add that. I might look at the ending and improve the writing on it a bit.

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Punishments are hidden in the game somewhere.

How many people do you think will actually figure out what all the curses do? Maybe there is one that's really awesome for someone and that person will never find it because he tried out 3 he doesn't like before dropping this game. At least give us some hint for what the curses do, this is a huge run-defining decision after all.

Yeah, this game really isn't about instant gratification. But if someone likes the game, I hope he

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saves up 4 keys to buy the complete information on all curses.

[iiilllililiill]

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I unlocked the King of Sodom to see how he played, but he seems to be bugged. He has the same task set as the Tormented Rogue