With Hooves of Fire

Excellent game with simple but solid game design and beautiful ascii asethetic! 76 tries before I could finish the journey > < Very addictve

Only that the game crashes frequently in either me or my friends' Windows pc... (Even at the moment when I just beat the game and saw the victory screen, which frightened me a lot)

I wonder if this could be fixed...

Anyway, thank you developers again for bringing such wonderful game experience!

Firstly, excellent game, closing in on Brogue in terms of aesthetic.

Secondly, please expand on this, or give it to someone who will. 

It would be perfect for an open world CRPG akin to CoQ, and while extremely time consuming, I don't see how one couldn't integrate basic party mechanics (imagine the possibilities, you could have legitimate battles between pike phalanxes! That would of course require modifications to the AI*, but still), inventory, and armour/defence systems (percentage based defence would work a treat, with armour utilising the already present health system via flat reduction). Oh, and dismounting, of course. Then determine some theme appropriate missions, and disperse them throughout a few permanent settlements. Bonus credits for the slow growth of Atagan territory as a time limit for the main questline.

* A possibility to increase realism and interest would be a reaction speed system, where at the end of an action, the actor stores the best possible current action for their next turn. Upon that turn, they then have a chance to revert to that action, allowing the sequence @  \L  =›  @ —L  =› @ —L the alternative @  \L  =›  @ —L  =› —L, wherein the @'s stored action of moving towards the lancer is acted upon even after a threat is superimposed between the two. This allows for further unpredictability and natural flow between AI combatants, though applying it to the player is of course not recommendable.

As previously mentioned, armour would function best as a flat decrease to damage taken, perhaps with a 1 value variation so it doesn't get absurd. For reference, gambeson (padded cloth) can realistically stop the sort of arrow fired from a horse bow on occasion, and lamellar should nullify the majority of blows. Given the theme, encumbrance doesn't seem particularly appropriate, nor realistic. Weapons might provide a (relatively large) chance to avoid an attack. Shields seem tricky to represent, but if possible would serve as a large increase to defence, greater against lances and arrows than against swords, and of course directional. Peak defence would realistically be somewhere around 80%, given a combination of sword and shield. Where possible, spear and shield should lose consistently to sword and shield. 

All systems above are easy targets for a skill system (the sort without flashy manoeuvres, like in dcss).

I'm a big fan of this game, even though after several hours of playing I couldn't beat 90%. Made a vid of my valiant attempts in case it brings you joy. Thanks for developing this game!

Very cool! One of my most memorable moments was seeing a messenger right in front of me while I was targeted by a bow. I went ahead and lanced the messenger and his own corpse slowed me down and prevented me from getting hit by the arrow. Can't say that's ever happened to me in a game before!

Are you planning to update it at all? If so:

1. I wish there was a first-arrow tutorial that explained that while the enemies aim their arrows ahead of you, you should aim right at where enemies are instead of how far you think they'll go forward, lol.
2. My biggest stumbling block has been the clarity of what constitutes a non-enemy land obstacle, especially around encampments. If not for more obvious colors, I wish that the "V" key at least explained everything non-land, not only enemies.
3. I wish F and V doubled as 0 and period as it would be great to play it all on the NumPad alone, one-handed.
4. Be able to press "R" to quickly restart when you die.
5. Zoomed-in full-screen with no vertical black space would be nice.
6. The game doesn't actually say that you should head east lol. I tried heading south for a while and west and didn't understand what was going on. It should just wait to see what direction you first move in and require that to be the %-accumulating direction. That would be truly dynamic and unique.
7. I would like a sound, like a horn or something, to indicate that an enemy horseman was called. I went through a dense area and must not have been paying attention because suddenly 4 horsemen came from the edges all at once and I didn't recall seeing that many messengers, lol.
8. More voices would be nice so that my injury cry isn't the same as the enemies' death knells, haha. I'd be happy to contribute in this regard if desired.
9. This might be pedantic: it's confusing for "Esc" to be in the keyboard controls menu in the bottom when pressing it doesn't actually do anything by default. Maybe "cancel examine/shoot" as its descriptor would work better.
10. The menu itself hides enemies, which is risky for us against messengers. It would be nice if it was more translucent and less opaque.