Updated 7/7/2024 – This write up has been updated to include the dev’s response.
Pre-Script: It occurs to me after writing all of this that it will make absolutely no sense if you haven’t actually played the game I’m talking about. Whoops, and sorry. Actual reviews on a game to come later this week.
I’ll do a review of Million Monster Militia at some point, but it won’t be this week. To make a long story short, I think my time would probably be better spent trying to give some constructive feedback then bashing.
First, some context:
1. Million Monster Militia is a bag builder/slot builder heavily in the vein of Luck Be A Landlord. You draft units, units are randomly placed onto a 5×5 grid, and you try to score enough total points each round to pass a threshold. It has somewhat different framing then Luck Be A Landlord, but that is how it works.
2. I’ve played 16 hours of it. I don’t think this makes me an expert, but I do think it gives me space to have some thoughts.
3. Right now, I don’t recommend the game for a lot of reasons, many of which are fixable/are already being fixed, and a few more which might not be.
Hello developers!
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as rude. Most of the time when I write things for this blog, I aim for a tone of being a perpetually snarky dipshit. Obviously this isn’t quite the correct tone for sincere feedback.
This whole thing is grouped into three parts. The first ones are things I think you NEED to do. When possible, I’ll try to give examples, and say why I think you need to do them.
The second part will be a bunch of general thoughts and feedback, and while you could ignore any suggestions I make here, I suggest you read them at least to hear the thoughts.
The third part is just insane ramblings. I think they’re relevant, but they also could just be wrong.
Okay. Here we go.
Part 1. Please Make These Changes
- Fix The Wording Of Unit Abilities
There are a lot of units in your game. Many of them do not actually do what they say they do. I know you’ve already fixed some of these, but you haven’t fixed all of them. I’m going to give one example, but I had about 10 earlier.
The Time Bomb says that it gives a multiplier of 0X to all units. That’s not true. It doesn’t give a multiplier of 0X to itself. Maybe this was missed because it has base zero damage.
Plenty of your units do things like this. I am begging you to fix them.
Dev Response:
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll put the example of the time bomb into our bug tracker. It's really easy for descriptions and abilities to get out of sync. If you have more examples of this please let us know so we can fix them!2. Add An Options Menu
Yes, there already is an options menu. No, these are not enough options.
This is what your game looks like on my screen. There are two critical problems here. First up, there is no resolution, secondly, I cannot actually move the game window.
Maybe everything was coded so that the game can’t be rescaled. Fine. Just add an actual top bar or something so I can drag it around then.
Dev Response:
You should be able to move the game window with the arrow keys, and resize it by dragging on the corners.
3. Keywords/Codex/Readability
A bunch of folks on your Discord have already suggested this one, and even better, they suggested good keywords, so I’m not going to dig too much into this one. But yeah. Better readability on units, keywords/key text being called out, and things like the codex having filters or searches would all be nice.
Dev Response:
Agreed that these would be nice to have! It would be quite an undertaking currently as it'd require rewording all the units, and some things work almost the same, which means we'd have to probably change how some things work to line up under these keywords. I agree this would be nice an ideal world, but we'll have to weigh the benefits against the time it would take to implement.4. Have Units That Create Additional Units Show Those Units
For any unit that creates an additional unit/item/etc, make it so that I can see what that unit is. Here’s how Luck Be A Landlord does it. You mouse over a unit, and a pop-up of information shows up above that.
I don’t need you to make it pop-up. For all I care, it can open a link to a Wiki page if it has to. But I need it to show me what the extra units it generates does.
Note: I’m aware that there’s something to be said for the wonder of discovery and experimentation, but I think at a fundamental level you’re making a bag builder, and that means I should be allowed to know what’s going into my bag.
Dev Response:
Another thing that would be very nice to have, but quite difficult to implement! We do already have this on our radar if we find the time to do it.5. Let Me Skip The Campaign Cut-scene, Let Me Fast Forward Damage
So now we’re veering into really nitpicky, but demonstrable territory. I don’t want to have to skip past the opening cutscene each time I open the game, it’s just kinda frustrating. Also, having timed it, I think that a full round (deploy/activate/return) takes about 10 seconds, which is just about (give or take a bit) twice as much as Luck Be A Landlord. Yes, it’s minor, but it adds up, and I think it does contribute to why I feel so burnt out after a game of MMM. It would be nice if there was a way for it to go faster.
Dev Response: The cutscene playing multiple times is a bug. Fast Forward damage is a little tricky but enough people requested it, that it should be on the list...
Part 2. General Rambling
You read the first whole bit. Awesome. This next bit is just a bunch of rambling, but I’ll try to keep it concise.
1. Going to War With the Army You Have
I’ve seen other people say this as well, but I really feel like I have to force builds to win. Synergy doesn’t feel like enough to clear anything past the tutorial. Maybe I’m not very good. But also,I’ve played for more than 10 hours. Usually I have a good handle on a game after that much gameplay. I’m not sure how I stayed bad in this one specific game.
2. Some of These Units Just Feel Bad
Time Bomb and Focus Shrine I am looking at you. I get that technically there is a use case for Time Bomb where you pick it up to stall rounds out while digging for more units? I guess? But it’s rare, so I’ve never actually done that?
And Focus Shrine. Okay, I do not understand this one. In exchange for doubling the damage of SOME of my units, I take double damage? Why? Is it because I’m supposed to draft multiple copies of it? Is there something obvious I’m missing?
Honorable mention for Biologist here. It increases the damage of plants. There are a total of 2 plants, and one of them eats humans.
Which Biologist is.
3. Some of These Units Are Always Good
Hello, Med Kit, Extra-Health, and Extra Life. Each one of these units should just have the text “Take an additional turn” on them. They are always good. There is no cost to taking them other then opportunity cost of the other items that they are compared to. They fit into every single build I’ve ever done.
It just seems weird to have a subset of items that work in every single build.
4. Do I have to Play Through The Entire Campaign To Unlock Custom Mode?
This one is like… just a question. Do I? Because a custom mode to place units and test stuff would be more useful to me while trying to beat the campaign, than after I beat it.
Part 3. It is entirely possible I am wrong about everything I express in this part.
Okay, so now we’re in the third part. Again, congrats on releasing your game, and reading through everything I’ve written so far. I’m not sure the approx $7 I gave you really requires you listening to all of this, but I’m either putting it here, or in the final review of the game, so I’m putting it here for now.
I think that some of what might be hurting my experience with the game is that while you’ve used a sort of base structure from Luck Be A Landlord, you’ve pushed certain parts of the system in directions that aren’t actually more fun.
Here’s a few big ones:
1. LBAL allows the player to continue drafting and playing through a full cycle even if the engine they’ve constructed clears the current target quickly, but MMM forces the player to advance when they beat a target. In LBAL, I’m rewarded for overly successful builds with more room to maneuver and pivot into the late game, in MMM I’m punished for them.
2. LBAL has systems that open possible builds without punishing me, specifically items and essences. These give me freedom find build-arounds and perma multipliers. But every thing in MMM is a unit, which means even if a unit can open a path to victory, it can just as easily end up being dead weight if the right support doesn’t show up.
Okay, and finally:
I think the fundamental math of adjacency is a bit broken in MMM.
To be clear, I am open to being dead wrong on this. I am not good at math. But I think the fact that you’re using a 5×5 grid compared to LBAL’s 4×5 means that you’ve pushed the odds of any two items being next to each from just about 30% down to 19%, or from just under 1/3 to 1/5.
Ed Note: Okay, I know the math here is actually wrong, because at best, I solved for the comparative odds of placing a object, then placing a second object and the object being adjacent, but those odds DO serve as upper bound. So assuming math is right, MMM is less likely to have favorable adjacency for any two things then LBAL is.
There are a lot of units that care about what they’re next to in MMM, but I think the odds are much lower, and this might be part of WHY it feels much harder to create synergistic builds that run across multiple archetypes (Monster Hunter + Hydra + something else, because it’s just much less likely you hit the favorable locations).
Conclusion
Congrats on releasing your game. I’m glad that you’re working to fix some of the stuff in the Beta branch. You have a interesting mechanical base to work with here, I hope you continue to work to improve the game, and if you read this entire thing I am sorry.
Also sorry for all the comparisons to Luck Be A Landlord.